I tend to read a lot online these days, and its not just articles; frequently there is more information tucked away in the comments sections than there is in the stories they accompany. If you want to know how people are feeling about something rather than simply harvest the facts, the answer often lies in amongst those smiley faces, LOLs and deleted expletives.
How are Nexus One owners here in the UK feeling about Vodafone, for example, over the delay to their Android 2.2 upgrade? Well angry, would be the answer judging by the comments. Its not just the delay that has got the emoticons riled either, despite saying that Google updates would arrive untouched, Vodafone are now including some modifications of their own, causing the delay and sparking rumours and asterisks aplenty that features such as tethering and WiFi hot-spotting might be missing from the UK update. ‘Slodafone’ as one commenter called them responded by saying the mod is simply to ensure that everything works properly within the different comms infrastructure here – a fair point, I think.
Still it seems that this is symptomatic of a growing anger at carriers in general – those that bought their Nexus One direct from Google will have had their update already and comments pages are full of tales of people who did not buy carrier-locked phones rubbing the noses of those who did in the proverbial deleted expletive.
With carriers here in the UK offering so many “free” phones with their contracts its easy to see why people follow this route. However it also costs nothing to dig around on the web for a while and equip yourself with the knowledge needed to get the right deal for you.