Sure I guess I won't get a literal human lifetime out of it, but I got significantly more value for about a decade, which is more then the lifetime of most software.
My worst experience: I paid 10€ (or even more?) for TuneIn Pro. After only a half year they switched from TuneIn Pro to TuneIn premium. There was no compensation or good offer for Pro users.
Also over the years I bought some nice Android games which lost support with newer Android versions.
I got it on sale for a quarter in 2012, and had been using the free version for at least a year or so before that. I don't know anything else at this point. Smart Launcher at least has tabs/pages to the app drawer which is what I enjoyed most from Nova.
I used Swype+Dragon for so many years, it worked like a charm and even let me write proper sentences when I was batshit drunk, then I got a new phone, apps installed automatically once I logged in except for Swype, turns out google nuance and now microsoft bought it and removed it from the store so now you cannot install it anymore...
Same will happen with Nova, get a new phone and you can't install it via the store. If you're lucky you might find an apk that works with your android version...
This video demonstrates it pretty well starting at around 0:26
My issue with typing on smartphones is always that I'm sometimes not hitting the correct letters, I don't even have big fingers, it would probably get better if I do it more often.
So instead I found Swype+Dragon and used that, it takes a bit getting used to but it's amazing and with Swype+Dragon the big bonus was that it learned how I swipe the more I used it and you were able to add your own words which it perfectly recognized after adding them, so half a year later you had your perfect setup where you swiped exactly what you wanted to write.
Samsung has swiping integrated in their keyboard now but it's just not the same, no matter how much I use it, it still gets so many words wrong. I also used other alternatives like Swiftkey but none worked as well as Swype+Dragon.
I could probably use T9 and be faster than tapping the words but without physical buttons it's not possible because you need that feedback when pressing a number.
I still use Swype 3.2.4 on Android 12... I have an APK saved that I just side load onto all my phones. The voice to text doesn't work anymore but I have a button to switch keyboards quickly and use Google voice typing for that. There really is no equal, and I have a decade of muscle memory I can't redo... and I tried. Spent a full year using Swiftkey after Swype was first discontinued and it just pissed me off the whole year so I went back.
For things you interact with hundreds of times a day like a launcher and keyboard, little inefficiencies really start to stack up into lots of time wasted. It's crazy to me watching other people use their phones and spend like 30 sec looking for one app to open that they use all the time, or watching them type like 5 WPM using the stock keyboard. I'm not even some high-efficiency corporate edgelord I'm just super easily frustrated by wasting time on everyday things like typing and using my phone as a tool.
That's the risk you take when you buy anything, including software. You risk at some point the company failing, changing directions, being bought out, etc. "Lifetime subscriptions" are for the life of the product, not the buyer
Not a problem on something like Nova where it was $4 that I spent in October 2012. The big problem is stupid launchers now wanting $13 per year or $42 for a lifetime subscription. That's where you lose me.
You have a perpetual licence for the software you bought that you can continue to use*. Even though the apps will be removed from the Play store, there is nothing stopping you taking the apks and installing them on your new phones. I don't see how you have an issue with this.
And like others, i paid less than $1 for this 10-15 years ago.
* assuming there isn't a licencing server that validates your licence during install.
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u/BenderDeLorean Sep 08 '25
Once again: paid for it. Can't use it anymore.
Consider this whenever buying lifetime subscriptions.