[Google Pixel 6 Pro] vPro97:
Dear fellow member at XDA.

Recently there has been a lot of threads about software bugs and things that just don't work as expected. These threads are to be expected, for this is a forum where we share those experiences and help each other towards solving them. XDA has always been this way and how can we shed light on a problem without being vocal about it?

But just as sure as there are threads about issues and complaints, there are post from people who have had a seamless experience and are extremely satisfied with their devices - and I'm truly happy for you, I'm mostly in the same boat! But let us not downplay the annoyances and bugs that fellow members experience and hinders them from enjoying that same experience you and I share.

Threads containing complaints over bugs often spark a vast debate that leads to no solution - rather it causes division and makes people shy away from both XDA and Android in general. Therefore; let us not start fighting over our individual experiences and rather respect each other and let everyone contribute without being judged.

For we are different - both in what we perceive, what annoys us and what we can live with. For some of us the cost of the phone puts a huge dent in our pockets, for others it's pocket change. And both are okay - it's the reality.

Some of us who have been using Android since the early 10's may have developed greater patience towards the operating system. Back then, it wasn't a question of whether you had bugs or not - it was rather a question of whether you had bugs that impacted your use case of the phone or you could live with them. Finding a phone without flaws was (and is still to a great extent) impossible.

We often advised each other to flash custom ROMs and custom kernels - that both voided our warranty and created a huge hassle for those who just wanted their phone to work (don't we all?) without all the hassle. For some people and maybe those who had more time on their hands, it was a fulfilling experience and it did indeed give you vast control over your device.

But the custom ROMs weren't the "end all be all" - if you flashed a AOSP rom on many phones, you'd lose the manufacturers phone processing as the camera drivers weren't open source. Sure you could mitigate some of that by installing GCam, but that's only assuming GCam was available for your device - and even then, it was subpar compared to the camera on the stock ROM. Rooting and flashing isn't without its risks, too. The P6P is rather forgiving, thankfully, but with many older devices you would lose your warranty and potential phone features since there had been a 'security breach'.

What I wrote above is not a 'carte blanche' for Google or any other manufacturer to release a software full of bugs - nor should we accept that Android is flawed by nature. Heck, it wasn't even acceptable back then! This is simply to shed some light on maybe why some peoples patience threshold for the occasional frame drop/bug here and there may be larger.

And others have maybe switched to Android from a rock solid iOS with the intention of enjoying a greater level of customisation, only to be faced with bugs, framedrops and things just not working as smoothly as they used to. Frankly, can you blame them for being disappointed? They gave up on something working really well and went against the good old saying 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' for a greater level of control over their devices and just faced headaches.

'Oh well, just switch back to iOS, what's the problem?'. The problem is simply that Android is more than a decade old now and still is plagued by bugs, fragmentation, subpar user interfaces and software issues. As previously mentioned, that wasn't acceptable a decade ago, and it still isn't acceptable. People switching away from Android doesn't solve this issue - rather we as consumers have to speak up when things don't work. And that's what your fellow members are doing here on XDA.

Post your own experiences (and even the good ones!), but post them in a respectful and acknowledging manner. Maybe one day we can all enjoy a bug free phone while those of us who enjoy tinkering with our phones can enjoy the same phones for even more reasons.