What a difference a year makes. I remember last year we had a large Galaxy Nexus defense force where most of you were just defending the Nexus saying you would never settle for anything but the pure google experience (even though the phone hardware had such major flaws). Jokes were made about Blur, Touchwiz and Sense. But, to be fair there was a lot of GNex bashing also (myself included).
Now it's the other way around and the Nexus 4 is being bashed and Touchwiz is lauded for it's extra features. lol.
Don't use the term defense force. Defense force is normally used as a term to mock individuals who take an opposing view, and by saying that you have made it clear that you aren't even prepared to have the discussion in a rational manner.
The Galaxy Nexus at the time of release was not a majorly flawed product as you describe. Did it have weaknesses? Yes. Do all phones have weaknesses? Yes. Do even the best phones have weaknesses? Yes.
There is a lot of discussion on this forum about what in many cases are subjective arguments. For example, phone lacks feature X. Feature X is important to me, it is unimportant to you.
Skins are highly subjective, and beauty is difficult to measure because it is subjective. That doesn't mean you can't measure things such as ease of use, customer experience and product satisfaction though.
I think it says a lot about where stock Android is, and even now where Nexus phones are, by the type of complaints that now dominate our thinking.
Rewind to the Nexus One... poor radio, loss of signal and data. Atrociously small memory for saving app data (512mb). Materials discolouring, or worse rubbing off. Far less than stellar battery life. Capacitive keys that you had to press slightly above. Touch screen that couldn't properly handle multi touch (swapping fingers). Pentile Amoled with terrible outdoor visibility on sunny days. Froyo...home screen dots not working right. Text in app drawer looked terrible. No consistency in UI at all. Multitasking for only the last 6 apps. Often laggy and unresponsive. Poor keyboard. Non scrolling widgets... actually the list is nearly endless..
Fast forward to 2012
Nexus 4... small memory for saving media no expandable memory, expensive build materials but more likely to crack if you drop it, battery life OK, but far from amazing. No LTE in initial release. You can't get one because they are sold out everywhere! (not really a problem before on a Nexus device). Jellybean. Unhappy about lock screen widget UI. Some unhappy about clock widget UI. Quick controls aren't all toggles. No unified messaging.
Basically as we progress more and more of the software (and hardware complaints) either drop off, or become more trivial, or are just plain subjective. Do we have the perfect Android phone yet? No. I fully expect when the next Nexus phone launches it'll have LTE, a new build of Android which addresses a few more niggles and moves a little closer to perfection. And then we'll still find things to bitch about endlessly.
That doesn't mean we are wrong to complain, but what we should do is find some perspective. I think with some of the Nexus 4 stuff and 4.2 especially, that perspective has gone out of the window. You'd think that 4.2 was so terrible you shouldn't bother upgrading and that the Nexus 4 is a bad product that was ill thought through. The thing that really showed this up was the quick controls. We didn't even have quick controls in 4.1. After everyone found out that they weren't just toggles people were very critical. The rational response to a new feature would have been to say I love the design, I love how it makes the sub menus easier to navigate to, but I'd like them to be toggles to improve them further. When you don't give any credit for the distance they have traveled and only criticise that there is still some more left to go....that's destructive not motivational.
Anyway I've prattled on long enough. Android is a pretty healthy state right now and it's only going to get better. Here's to the Galaxy S4, the HTC Two X, The Nexus 4x and Key Lime Pie.
