Originally Posted by
jostrat21 Sigh... It's just more useless additions that lack function & the option to be turned off. I'm really scratching my head over verizon's decision to make this official. Well, actually not really - the release of the storm2 w/in two days is no coincidence. I really hope that verizon released 328 just to get an OS 5 out there around the storm2 release, knowing that they would be releasing mr4 soon after.
But I question whether verizon did this knowing it was buggy, to try to get some of the early adopters to jump on the storm2 bandwagon.
But what I'm really afraid of is whether verizon released 328 because they are losing faith in RIM's ability to put out an OS that's any better. It's been a year, & this is the best that they can come up with? Either not enough time is devoted due to the multitude of devices that they have to develop for, or this painfully dated java os has finally hit the wall.
I'm probably in the minority, but once again I switched back to 167 w/o screen transitions. I've run every OS to know that, despite what people say (e.g., "328 is 1000 times faster than 4.7"), the speed difference is negligible. Flick scroll is a novelty & is still buggy, & honestly becomes more of an impediment to me after using it for a few days. Threaded sms is done much better by 3rd party apps, which will only work on 4.7. I'll admit that the native browser is faster on 5.0, but that matters not to me b/c I use opera almost exclusively - which is another reason why I switched to 4.7 - not being able to use mini in socket mode on 5.0 is a huge drawback. On top of all of the other bugs, I simply cannot understand the screen dim when orientation switches to landscape. I don't care if it's not noticeable if you turn your backlight % down - for a phone that is meant to rotate, this is inexcusable.
And speaking of orientation, it's about d*mn time RIM implemented the ability to switch orientation manually. I do not know what I would do without stoptilt. When orientation is still buggy after a year, & just about the first entry to everyone's findings of a new OS discusses orientation, there is clearly a problem. No other full touchscreen phone (not even running windows mobile) has orientation issues like this, and all of them either manage orientation much better, or give the option to rotate the screen manually. When every critic of this phone mentions this problem, how the h*ll do you neglect it for a year?
And those screen transitions? Honestly, sometimes I want to vomit when looking at them. I'll never forget when they were first implemented in 151, howarmat said they looked like bad powerpoint transitions. At first I found it funny, but now I find it sickening that from 151 to 328, they still look cheesy as all h*ll. And of course, in true RIM fashion, there is no option to turn them off. I don't like transitions at all, not even when they work properly, as on the iphone. To me, it's just another time-wasting novelty that wears off after five minutes. And just b/c the iphone has it, you do not need to copy it, RIM - especially when your best effort to do so shows the utter age & shortcomings of your dying os. Not even lazaridis's mother could love these transitions.
And the best new features implemented in os 5, key ghosting & keyboard popups, are now gone. Why, RIM, B/c they were buggy? Since when does a newly added feature/change that is buggy stop you from continuing to implement it in its buggy state? At least you could turn these features off (what a grand idea!).
In addition to the new call back number intruding on screen real estate in sms conversations, what's the deal with not being able to remove the header band, or significantly decrease its size? I use small fonts, & there was hardly any room left for the actual conversation, so I can't imagine what it was like for people using anything over size 8. And do I have to have a picture of the contact at all times within that window? All that photo does is take up room. You can create an image smaller than the standard thumbnail size, which does decrease the header size, but not to the degree that I would like to. And since you cannot just turn off the contact image w/in a conversation, if you want to use a smaller image to decrease the header, you have to do it for every contact.
And this new compression of images when not zoomed in is such a strange move on RIM's part, if it was intentional. Did they do it to decrease the load times? If not, why the h*ll would they? I'm not even big on pictures, & in fact I didn't even look at one until someone started a thread regarding this topic, but that just does not seem acceptable. My roommate's iphone still loads pictures faster without compressing them.
But I digress...
EDIT: sorry, civic, did not mean to hijack your thread. Started complaining about something & I guess I couldn't stop. I'm just so frustrated with the state of RIM's os development at this point. I don't know about you guys, but after 5 years of being a devoted blackberry user, I'm switching to something else when my contract ends shortly, as much as it pains me to say it. RIM needs to realize the shift in the market & demand, & at some point realize that this java os has run its course. How many more band-aids can they put on this flesh wound? Sigh...