When the much-awaited upgrade to Android's core operating system finally made its way to the HTC Evo last week, I mentioned I was concerned it wouldn't knock out a peculiar bug I had seen with my phone, which at times locked it up, or made it take actions I hadn't initiated myself. In the interest of fairness, it is worth noting the bug is gone.Whether it was solved between Eclair (2.1) and Froyo (2.2) or whether HTC's code was cleaner this time around, I am not sure, but the end result is the same, and I am much more confident using the phone than I was before the upgrade.
Mentioning the issue obviously opened up the potential for criticism from folks who see Google's ecosystem as introducing fragility, but as mentioned when I discussed my intent to be pragmatic, even if I have made a personal choice, I want to be fair, pointing out both what has been great, and what has been less than fantastic. The intermittent locking bug, which emerged just after an over the air (OTA) update from HTC in June, at times threatened to upend my preferences and pull the rug out from my switching away from iPhone. But it's gone, and it's full speed ahead in using the platform which now seems more natural to me than when I bump into iOS on the iPad.
Also gone with the 2.2 update? Many of the application failures that at times popped up from background applications, as mentioned when I first discussed my experience with Evo. While 2.2 wasn't a game changer, in my opinion, adding a few nice features and some speed, the real benefit to me has been making the entire experience more smooth and eliminating issues I had - not a moment too soon.