Android Discussion

Oh God I can imagine. I've never meant "I feel you bro" as much as I do now. Is it insured, or are you looking at a repair/new phone?

 

Eh, I've owned 3 smartphones over the last few years. The worst I've done is a couple scratches on the bezel of my S2 in a drop that couldn't have broken the screen, only scratched it, more of a slide. Most of the deals here are at least £5 a month for insurance, generally a little more, so over the last 5 or so years I've saved at least £330. If I have to buy a new phone now then I've already saved the cost of it, and that's not even counting the fact that I'd have to pay an excess on an insurance claim. Dumb is dropping your phone

EDIT: Also if I really cared then I'd invest in one of those phone condoms, one of the better ones of those will protect against the vast majority of drops, and isn't £5 a month. I'm just too hung up on how sexy my phone is without a case.

Ooh nice, how is it? I've never used a Toshiba Android device, what do they do to Android compared to stock?

 

Phones here don't really get up to £600, but £400 is a fairer price. But still, over 1/4 of the price of the phone over it's life, when my odds so far don't dictate that I have a 1 in 4 chance of totalling it, still not worth it. And again, this doesn't factor in a ~£50 excess charge.

And where the hell are you paying AT LEAST £50 for a good protective case? The most I'd ever pay is £35-40 and I could turn my phone in to a tank for that. A ~£20 rubber case will protect against the vast majority of drops. With the kind of case I would buy if I were going to, unless it gets run over by a car I'm gonna be fine, so I really don't know where you're getting this from. Now liquid damage, that's another thing entirely. The vast majority of my friends who've totalled their phones have done so by dropping them in the toilet or other liquid damage, very few of them have done so by dropping them. But then they're also all pretty careless with their phones, which again I am not.

I think dedicated phone insurance is a rip off for my purposes. I'd much rather tag it on to my house insurance since it rarely costs any extra, and I'll be paying that anyway. But even then, my parent's house insurance will cover it even though I don't technically live there any more, I just pay them the cost of the excess and bam, new phone without forking out £60 a year.

 

Fair enough, but for my part I'm glad I haven't wasted my money for the past 5 years.

 

Sigh dude, I know precisely what insurance is, and you still haven't pointed out the flaw in the maths that applies to me. It's about weighing likelihood against cost, and if you're asserting that you should pay whatever something costs just because "it's insurance" then that's stupid. The fact is that I've already saved enough to buy a new phone without paying an excess, you can call me lucky but I think in large part I'm just careful. I know there are factors beyond my control which are also part of the point, but you know damn well that the vast majority of claims on this kinda insurance are going to be for things like people dropping their phones or water damage.

You have much less control over getting sick than you do being careful with your phone, same with home insurance and auto insurance. Even if I'm a super careful driver, insurance also exists because of how likely someone else's carelessness is to affect me. Who crashes phones?

I'm not saying insurance is pointless. I'm saying that the major benefits of insurance are more based on carelessness or not investing in a solid case than they are random chance which is out of your control. I've got a track record of babying the **** out of my electricals and it's done me well. I'm fine just shelling out of my own pocket for a phone is mine ever does bite the dust (also, repair hasn't even been brought up yet, if I break my screen I'm not forced to buy a new phone, people need to start remembering that repairing expensive electrical goods is an option, and often the best one), because overall I think that'll cost less. Sure, maybe two bad accidents are going to befall me in the next year or so and I'll have to fully replace my phone twice and I'll regret not having insurance, but I could also get hit by a car tomorrow, doesn't mean I have to bank on it.

Again, what I was essentially arguing against wasn't the principle of insurance per se (since, again, I am insured in a sense, just not a dedicated phone policy), but the fact that I think phone insurance in particular is over priced. If you compare it to home or auto insurance, it's more expensive in comparison to the value of the item. Why? Because they're more likely to have to pay out. Why? Because there are enough people who are more careless with phones than they are with locking their house or driving safely, because frankly those latter two things matter more. I'm not saying "if you drop your phone then you're stupid" by any means, just that phones are in an interesting position of being expensive enough to care about and insure, but not expensive enough to get cut up about in the same way you do a car crash or your home getting robbed, so people are a little more happy to take a "**** happens" approach.

 

Nova Launcher Prime is on sale today for $0.25. I use Apex free, but have heard from most people that Nova is better in terms of paid versions. I bought it and am loving stuff like finally have app drawer folders and tabs, recommend it to anyone using ICS or above since it's so cheap.

 

Nova is a launcher. Pressing the home button basically equates to opening the launcher (or rather switching back to it), which is why it asks you if you want to use the Sense launcher or Nova. A launcher basically amounts to your homescreens, dock and app drawer. If you like the way those are set up (based on the fact that Nova offers a lot of customisation for all three aspects) more than Sense then stick with Nova. Which bits of Sense are smoother, though? Transitions between homescreens etc?