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Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

Not really. I think the better term is locked out of the ancient CDMA networks of Verizon. Nexus series is GSM, which is used globally, except for Verizon in the U.S.

Samsung (w/ Verizon) install so much bloatware on their new Android phones it is bordering ridiculous. Why would new Galaxy S4 users want an uninstallable NFL app?

The Motorola and LG Nexus android phones are comparable to iOS in terms of actually working.

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I personally had a terrible experience with the Motorola Droid. It worked well initially but got progressively worse with each update. Crashed constantly. Every update added bloatware (CityID, Madden, etc..), very frustrating. I went running back to iOS (iPhone5) and can't be happier.

Isn't that a five year old phone? I don't use one now but I think they might be a bit better now, at least I've heard good things about Moto X.

... and herein lies the problem.

I know what I'm getting when I buy an iPhone. Navigating Android smartphones is a minefield.

Are you sure you know it's a problem? You haven't bought anything but an iPhone for five years...

Three years, after my Droid 3 deteriorated so far that it was basically unusable and neither Verizon nor Motorola would do anything about it.

> Not really. I think the better term is locked out of the ancient CDMA networks of Verizon. Nexus series is GSM, which is used globally, except for Verizon in the U.S.

Don't overstate the rarity of CDMA or the ubiquity of GSM. Yes, GSM is effectively the global standard, but CDMA is way more popular than you say.

Examples of other CDMA networks include China Telecom (40+ million subscribers) and au by KDDI in Japan (20 million subscribers).

A full(ish?) list is available on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CDMA2000_networks

Many of those are specialty providers, legacy networks, etc., but a fair number are regular old cell phone providers.

It is as bad as I am saying it is, regardless of your cherry picking. You can see GSM (red) vs CDMA (blue) global adoption rate here:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Cel...

The Nexus and Motorola phones work fine on GSM. If anything, it's more of a reason to buy them than avoid them like you said.

Edit: And I quote:

>"Maybe not Google Nexus, but then you're locked into the inferior network coverage of AT&T or T-Mobile."

No, it's not. You said GSM is used everywhere except Verizon in the US. That's just plain wrong.

If you'd like to say that your point remains valid, I completely agree. But if you're going to insist that your factually incorrect statement is not wrong, we're going to have a problem.

Also, I did not say anything about reasons for buying different kinds of phones. I only talked about the number of different kinds of networks available throughout the world.

Regarding your edit: that's not me.

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