Hear me out. For a long time Android phones were, and still are by many, thought of as shit. Now a real Android enthusiast knows the difference between an S series and a what the fuck even is that Android phone series. However, the layman doesn't. They don't separate the hardware from the software.
This same cycle is now evident in Android TV devices. Look at this sub. Nearly every post about something having giant failures is some no name tv running Android. Others, like there one that inspired this post, are from low end brands like Xiaomi. The enthusiasts know to buy a separate box and the shield tv is the defacto gold standard.
You look at a sub like cordcutters when best device is asked, there are so many people responding Apple TV. Apple's lockdown of software makes all Apple TV devices perform at the same level. If someone's only interaction with Android TV is on a shit devices they believe all Android TV is shit and they're not going to want to drop money on an expensive device. Whereas any interaction with apple tv is identical, the consumer has faith their money will be well spent.
We need more Android TV devices so we get more developer support but just in the last year this sub has went from - my shitty Chinese Android box - to my shitty no-name Android TV. The Android brand once again takes a beating from it's open source nature and Google's push to get it widely adopted.
Not sure what the solution is, but i can't imagine the trend changing. A shitty soc in a tv with a few gb of storage and you can to market it as a smart TV. It's hard to blame the manufacturers.
what, the only people that think Android phones are shit are some of those extremist Apple fanboys or smartphone haters. Android is by no means perfect, iOS isn't perfect too, but you're being too extreme.
vocal minority, almost every place on the internet dealing with technical support suffers from this, but in reality most people don't have problems that often
Except that other OEMs do it too, most non high end TVs have low to modest specs, they put the barely mininum to run Youtube and Netflix and that's all. Since TVs are expensive and most people aren't buying $1000+ TVs, OEMs have to cut costs, specially when the apps most people will be using aren't that CPU/RAM intensive to begin with.
I joined this sub because I own a Hisense Android TV, but I'm not the one using it the most, it's my mom and while I sometimes notice how Android TV can get laggy and slow, my mom just pushes the Netflix button, watches a movie, and gets it done no problem.
Most consumers don't care if their TV has a slow processor, a low amount of RAM and internal storage, they just want the apps to watch movies and that's all.