Sunday 11 January 2015

Don't Buy Day 1 Products!

That statement has served me pretty well in recent years. As with most things in my life, this largely refers to technology, but I realised that it works well for most things in life.

I bought my Nexus 7 (2013) around 18 months ago, i.e. within a fortnight of it being becoming available for purchase in the USA. At the time it seemed like a great idea; even now, the Nexus 7 is still a great purchase. However, as with many Day 1 purchases, many serious issues awaited...


As you may know from my previous post on Android 5.0 Lollipop on the Nexus 7, my tablet suffered from the infamous touchscreen issues which plagued early models. These issues, for me, mainly come in two variants; namely ghost touches and unresponsive areas. Ghost touches are where the screen registers touches that I don't make, and the unresponsive areas are the opposite, where touches are not registered at all.


That was just one example of one product; there are countless examples all over the tech world. Apple's iPhones, for instance, have been notorious for Day 1 problems, so much so that some problems got their own names; (Antenna-Gate or Bend-Gate anyone?). On the Android front, HTC's Nexus 9 tablet suffered from light-bleed (see Explanation of Terms) and poor tactile feel on the hardware power and volume keys. 


It's not just hardware either. Software also tends to be full of Day 1 bugs. Sticking with Apple, their latest version of iOS, iOS 8, was so problematic, between its installation and in-use issues, that some tech sites specifically advised against updating immediately, and to wait until the patch build, 8.0.1 was released. The same thing happened with Android 5.0 Lollipop, with 5.0.1 being released within a few weeks of the original update, patching various issues including video playback on devices such as the Nexus 7 (2013).


TL;DR? Just wait at least a month before purchasing a product you've been eyeing. This will give the manufacturers time to fix the wares, so that you don't potentially end up buying a dud product.


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