Annoyance 1: Why can't the gsm suppliers write halfway decent PC software

[BertN45]

I am annoyed I am ....ing mad, why can the gsm/cell phone supplier not deliver software that works. In the past I had a couple of Nokia phones and I tried to use the "Nokia PC Suite", which was a big waste of time.

Now I have tried to use Samsung Kies, it is a disaster and an unbelievable piece of ..... I can't load the video directory from my GT-S5260, it is already busy for 10 minutes, with Ubuntu I do the same in a couple of seconds. Connecting to the phone on USB takes minutes. I can understand it, when I connect for the first time, but why do they have to scan all Samsung mobiles again the next time.

My distaste for this type of software is caused by:

The software is always bloated, Samsung Kies needs more than 1 GB of memory and a dual core processor of 2gHz!!
Why use the old DirectX 9c, why not use the standard windowing APIs.
Many of the functions simply do not work. Even the most important one: Google Contact sync fails every time. I have to delete all contacts on the phone and than it works.
Why not support LINUX!


I get sick of these amateurs releasing very poor, buggy software and making billions with their businesses. I am mad! Do you have comparable experiences with your phone manufacturers?

[doorknob60]

Is there an advantage in using the software? I know my Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 just mounts as a Mass Storagr device, I think pretty much all Android devices are the same. You aren't forced to use their software, you can still use other methods to copy things (unlike Apple).

[Mikeb85]

I have an HTC Amaze, the HTC Sense software on the phone itself works great, and it connects to the computer (Ubuntu) as a mass storage device so transferring files is drag and drop... For syncing contacts, updates, etc..., it does that over the air...

[bmeakings]

I agree completely. I've got a Galaxy SII but Kies refuses to connect to it via USB which is the only way to upgrade the firmware. The software is also slow to start up and uses some ugly custom UI. I hope they get their act together when they roll out Ice Cream Sandwich, but right now I'm wishing horrible things to their coders. Funny enough, my mum's cheap feature phone running Bada works fine with Kies. But not their flagship product. Huh.

I'm also going to point my finger at motherboard manufacturers who are guilty of this. Their bundled tweaking utilities usually sport a horrible, gaudy interface that's painful to look at and their websites are examples of why to hate Flash. Thank goodness for CPU-Z and HWMonitor, but too bad they're Windows only.

[donkyhotay]

It always seems stupid when hardware manufacturers don't open their source code. I can understand it when you make money off selling software but when you're already giving the software away for free anyway then opening the source is free coding, porting, and bug testing all in one without any real downside.

[BertN45]

Is there an advantage in using the software? I know my Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 just mounts as a Mass Storagr device, I think pretty much all Android devices are the same. You aren't forced to use their software, you can still use other methods to copy things (unlike Apple).

Of course you can use it like that and I often do so, because it is faster. The advantage of the PC software should be:
- Contact sync, you can maintain a central contact database in e.g. Google or Ubuntu one and sync those contacts with your phone, Thunderbird email client and e.g. Skype. It also copies the photos of your contact to phone and Thunderbird.
- Most people do not really know about video and audio format and the size of the photos on their phone and computer. The PC software automatically converts those media formats and picture sizes to an optimal size for the phone.
- Calendarsync

[pelle.k]

I get sick of these amateurs releasing very poor, buggy software and making billions with their businesses.
Freakin agreed. It's very, very sad. I've said to myself (as an amateur developer) where is the quality control on this turd software? i KNOW they can do better than that. My only explanation is that the board of directors have no clue of what they're doing, and i hope that will ultimately put them out of business. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be happening.
They continue write utter crap software that they preinstall on PC's, or in the case of mobile devices, force us to install if we want interface with their (in many cases) proprietary technology.
And to top it off, they skin the apps to look like a freakin tiefighter or something. If i wanted my apps to look like a freakin christmas tree from hell, i'll be sure to let them know about it. Only people in kindergarten (with a few exceptions, apparently) thinks that shiz looks cool.

That felt good. I should ventilate more often! :)

[LowSky]

I'm also going to point my finger at motherboard manufacturers who are guilty of this. Their bundled tweaking utilities usually sport a horrible, gaudy interface that's painful to look at and their websites are examples of why to hate Flash. Thank goodness for CPU-Z and HWMonitor, but too bad they're Windows only.

CPU-G (http://cpug.sourceforge.net/) and Open Hardware Monitor (http://openhardwaremonitor.org/) the Linux equivalent.

Technically lm_sensors can monitor your Linux machine very easily from a terminal.

[juancarlospaco]

Because they dont hire me...

[3rdalbum]

I don't think many companies can actually write decent Windows software anymore. It's not just the phone manufacturers.

[ve4cib]

I am annoyed I am ....ing mad, why can the gsm/cell phone supplier not deliver software that works. In the past I had a couple of Nokia phones and I tried to use the "Nokia PC Suite", which was a big waste of time.

I've got a Nokia and just avoided using the PC Suite software. Mount the device as a USB mass-storage device, drag-and-drop files. Done. Or use Bluetooth. Or install Open-SSH on the phone and use SFTP. Lots of options. (Personally I like the last one, because being able to SSH into your phone is just cool.)

[Paqman]

Tbh, I haven't felt any need to install software on my PC to talk to a phone for years. Phones are stuffed full of connectivity, they shouldn't need to connect to a PC unless you want to shift a big file quickly.

The Android phones are excellent as stand-alone devices, because they can sync directly with a Google account. No need for the PC at all.

[3rdalbum]

I've got a Nokia and just avoided using the PC Suite software. Mount the device as a USB mass-storage device, drag-and-drop files. Done

When your phone runs slow and you read on the Internet that you need to back up all your data and reformat your device... well, you can't use drag and drop for that.

So you use the PC Suite. And you find that, even though the software claims to have backed up your messages, it in fact has not. And your girlfriend is getting annoyed because not only has the backup and reformat procedure caused her to lose all her SMSes, but it has also failed to fix the problem.

killall phone-management-software -9

[QIII]

I don't think many companies can actually write decent Windows software anymore. It's not just the phone manufacturers.

Do you know how hard it is to write good software for that mess?

Well. Guess I can't complain. I make an obscene amount of money trying.:p

[BertN45]

I do not have an android phone, but a more simple one. I can only add Java programs (mostly games).

But fortunately I detected that the phone supported Exchange Active Sync and that almost works perfectly and in real time with Gmail. Only it confuses telephone at work with mobile for work and it confuses email at home, email at work and other email. But I can live with that.

I deleted Kies from XP on my virtualbox and downsized XP again to 512MB. I sync now my gmail contacts with Thunderbird and my GT-S5260 phone. Only Skype is still a pain in the ***, I have again to use Windows to import contacts from gmail. With a few exceptions I use it only for phone calls, so probably I switch to the VOIP competition :D

[ve4cib]

When your phone runs slow and you read on the Internet that you need to back up all your data and reformat your device... well, you can't use drag and drop for that.

You can if you mount the device as an FTP or SFTP network drive. Normal USB mass-storage won't necessarily let you access all of the configuration files, but SFTP will. Or it does on my particular phone. Trick is figuring out where the config files are stored, but a combination of Google and some careful poking around the filesystem works pretty well.

I do agree that it would be pretty nice if the manufacturer-provided sync/backup software worked better than it tends to though.

[coldraven]

My Nokia C1-01 was buggy so I wanted to update the firmware. I tried Nokia PC Suite in my virtual XP but that was a waste of time. I had to do it on a real XP box, it worked but what a bloated mess NPCS is!
Now I just use gammu to backup my contacts via blutooth and drag and drop anything else.

[BrokenKingpin]

My Android phone just mounts as a mass storage device, which is how I prefer it. Media can be synced to it with most media/music players, and contacts/calendars can just be synced over wifi.