Long time readers of Electricpig will know that I’ve been quite the advocate of Android. I prefer the less stringent conditions for runnings apps on it, and I love how seamlessly it works with your Google account.
What I do not love is that even after more than three years since the first Android phone was released, it can still delete ALL of your text messages in the blink of an eye. Google, this is *not* acceptable.
I test a lot of smartphones for Electricpig, but for my own personal handset, I’ve been using a Google Nexus S (made by Samsung) since December last year. It’s the flagship phone for Google: it’s the one that gets updates first, and it’s the device Google uses to show off all its new ideas, like Android home automation, even though there are now far more powerful Android handsets available.
I love it. Or at least I did, until yesterday when it inexplicably deleted every single one of my threaded SMS conversations for the last eight months – I’m not sure how many I had in total, but some conversations with a few friends had hit the 300 mark over that time.
To be clear, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even have the Messaging app open. They’re just gone, and a cursory look online reveals that this is an recurring problem for Android users, and not just Nexus S owners. And one Google has somehow still not managed to fix.
Having a bug that wipes every single one of your text messages isn’t just annoying, it’s inexcusable. The damage is does to trust, to how I see the brand and the platform, is immeasurable – I’ve happily returned to the PlayStation Network despite the hack, but this has made me think long and hard about my next phone.
For years, Google was notorious for keeping all of its products in beta, to the point where even the company admitted it had become a joke. Gmail laboured in beta purgatory for more than four years. Two years after launch, Google Maps Navigation for Android it still in beta. This is to some extent purely semantics, but it’s still ominous to think that people might rely on a beta product not to store their communications, but drive around at speed. You know, in the real world, where people can get deaded.
It speaks volumes about the release-first, patch-after culture of Silicon Valley that Google still seems to treat Android in the same way, despite the fact that it’s now the world’s most popular smartphone platform. That might be OK for a new internet start-up, but when you’re handling the data of a large percentage of the global population, there are bugs, and then there are unforgivable bugs. There’s been uproar with phone hacking of lately, but having all your communications deleted is in its own way an invasion of privacy just as damaging.
I spend a lot of time arguing with James Holland (former editor-in-chief of Electricpig) about the merits of Android over his precious iPhone. I can’t say I’m winning at the moment – how can I pit this agains Apple’s “It just works” mantra? He’s got all his SMS conversations since mid-2007 on his iPhone still.
As it happens, I have all my messages backed up. I’ve been using the free SMS Backup+ Android app to sync my SMS history as a Gmail label, and sure enough, everything I have up unit yesterday is nicely archived and easily searchable. But this is a third-party app I had to search out and install – not everyone will know this is even possible.
What’s really annoying is that Google not only sees messaging as just another feature it’s OK to leave holes in and come back to, it’s that it’s still treating SMS like were at the dawn of mobile technology. SMS has long been too transient a form of communication. How many of you have text messages from the 1990s anywhere to hand still?
We rely on SMS far too much for it to be disposable. Apple has backed up your messages (locally) for a long time, and is making the smart move by stashing them in the iCloud for you too. Google needs to provide a seamless, out of the box way to do likewise, so whether you buy a Nexus S or a HTC ChaCha, your texts are automatically saved. In the meantime, fix that damn bug.
