{"id":2941,"date":"2011-02-13T05:18:03","date_gmt":"2011-02-13T10:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=2941"},"modified":"2014-03-17T08:41:45","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T12:41:45","slug":"how-to-buy-an-android-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=2941","title":{"rendered":"How to buy an Android phone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently there was a request  for advice on a mailing list I frequent, on how to choose an Android phone from the plethora of offerings out there. Here&#8217;s what I had to say on the matter:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p> 1) Because Android is Android, the underlying hardware &#8211; and thus the vendor &#8211; is a significant differentiator.  Pick one with a good track record. My favorite is still HTC, but Samsung and Motorola are turning out good kit as well. Stay out of Motorola&#8217;s price basement, though, some of their low-end handsets are best avoided.<\/p>\n<p>2) Staying out of the price basement is in general a good idea.  It&#8217;s not so much that the low-end phones lack features as that they&#8217;re more likely to be afflicted by poor build quality and carrier crapware.<\/p>\n<p>3) Do not buy a phone running an Android variant that has been skinned. If you see &#8220;runs MotoBlur&#8221; or &#8220;runs SenseUI&#8221;, avoid.  These skins don&#8217;t add any value and tend to be flying cover for crapware and promotional tie-ins. Thankfully this is a receding problem and will probably be history by year end.<\/p>\n<p>4) <em>Do<\/em> give extra consideration to any handset supported by <a href=\"http:\/\/wiki.cyanogenmod.com\/index.php?title=Main_Page\">CyanogenMOD<\/a>. This will guarantee you an upgrade path even if the vendor drags its feet about them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently there was a request for advice on a mailing list I frequent, on how to choose an Android phone from the plethora of offerings out there. Here&#8217;s what I had to say on the matter:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-2941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-smartphone","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2941"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5553,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2941\/revisions\/5553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}