Carrier/manufacturer crapware is my primary problem with Android. I hate it. I root to uninstall it. I’m due for a new phone, and I’ll be going to the Play store for a “Google Edition” to avoid the crapware.
I fucking hate my iPhone 4. The nav system is a piece of shit, iTunes integration sucks, and the Facebook app makes me want to kick puppies. It’s slow. The camera takes shitty pictures. I’m still pissed off at Apple for their overpriced but entirely mediocre iPad.
I had one of the earlier model Droids and had no idea how good I had it until I got the iPhone 4. One thing I will say about Droid, though, they aren’t very user-friendly in comparison. It took me months to figure out what my Droid could do. But I don’t care. It was worth it.
November 2013 I’m renewing my contract and getting a Droid. Can’t wait.
Bam!
I’ve been thinking about Cyanogenmod…I’ve heard lots of good things about it. I’ve already had to jump through hoops beyond simple rooting just to install non-market apps (it’s an AT&T phone), so I should be up for the challenge.
Something I didn’t address in my previous post was music…due to my need to have my entire audio collection with me at all times, I don’t use my phone for music. I have an iPod for that. :o
I thought that the Captivate got an update to allow it to use non-market apps, but mine has been rooted for so long I haven’t followed Captiavate updates in ages. AT&T started allowing non-market apps a few months after the Amazon App Store came out. By the time I got a Skyrocket, about a year after the Captivate, it was a matter of checking a box in the options to allow non-market apps.
I really like Cyanogenmod on my old phone, but that’s a Galaxy Nexus and so the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) based Cyanogen works flawlessly. On non-nexus devices it’s best to peruse the XDA forums before flashing the likes of Cyanogen to make sure that everything works. On my new HTC One I have thus far stuck with Sense-based mods because some of the hardware goodies don’t work with AOSP-based roms like Cyanogenmod, or even the official Google Edition.
For the benefit of the OP, I will say that I occasionally find Android to be glitchy. Unfortunately for the OP, this is entirely because I flash custom roms that are developed by third parties and are backed by neither Google nor manufacturer nor carrier.
FWIW the only semi-tricky thing I remember about a CyanogenMod install is that you need to do all the cache clearing and data-wiping by hand, but it’s easy enough to follow the instructions. Also you will lose your downloaded apps; just make sure you have saved them all on Titanium Backup, which makes it easy to restore everything including saved logins and passwords for specific apps.
Was an iPhone user from 1st release to the 4s. iPad user too.
Got my first Android when I picked up the Nexus 7 on a whim, mostly thinking I’d let the kids use that to keep them off my iPad. Within a couple of days I’d been won over by the openness and flexibility of the system. Freed from the many painful iOS constraints over transferring files, tweaking the UI, being tied to itunes, I found myself using the Nexus more often than the iPad.
When the iPhone 5 was announced, it just seemed like no particular step forward from the 4s. A few spec improvements, but that was about all. Previously I’d upgraded my other iPhones as soon as the newest shiny came out, but this time I was pretty much underwhelmed. When the Nexus 4 specs were confirmed I placed the pre-order the same day.
I’m pretty much a platform slut, so will happily jump ship as soon as something better emerges. As it stands though, I’m seeing nothing that entices me to buy another Apple. iOS is frankly an inferior platform to Android for multitasking and configurability. I’ve had none of the problems the OP mentions, and believe me I have no patience for unreliable hardware. Hopefully Apple will find their old creative mojo and leapfrog the competition, but I’m starting to wonder if they’re not lost without Jobs.
This is my sentiment exactly, including the bit about Jobs.
Don’t get me wrong, Apple, even without Jobs, is much more innovative and creative than Microsoft. It just seems they’ve recently gone protectionist with everything, which is negatively impacting their focus on ingenuity. I mean, was it really worth it to sue Samsung over Apple’s copyright of rounded corners? What about copyrighting rounded corners in the first place? And I don’t see a long term benefit to the corporation by increasingly restricting how users can use their phones and tablets.
I’m an Apple guy. All my computing devices used to be Apple, my laptop and desktop still are, and I wouldn’t switch to a Windows based computer, or Windows phone (sorry Nokia) if I got one for free. Apple’s mobile devices, however, frustrate the heck out of me, especially after using corresponding Android devices. I hate having to use third-party apps to transfer files or manage my data. Surely enabling standard USB file transfer can’t be that difficult to implement or present insurmountable security issues.
I used to have an HTC Evo Shift 4g for more than two years. It was top of the line when I got it. Frankly it sucked so bad that HTC should stand for Hate This Crap. I now have an iPhone5 and it’s superioririty is refreshing. I will never be going back to Android, and I say this as an enthusiastic Ubuntu tweaker.
Who else wants to take robardin along the next time they go smartphone shopping?
A most impressively informative post.
Concur on all these points, but as I mentioned, what I consider the the much poorer camera experience on the GS4 from the iPhone 4S is enough to get me to go back to the iPhone, if it doesn’t change in the next generation.
I am surprised at Spice Weasel’s take -
Yes, the iPhone 4 is slow (the 4S is slow, the 4 non-S even more so). Yes, it lacked LTE network support, which was puzzling at the time it came out and now that I’ve experienced it, should have been much more of a showstopper issue than it was at release time. The FB app? I haven’t noticed the Android version to be any different than what I did on my iPhone, except nicer to use on a larger screen. The NAV guidance? The little blue dot can be strangely lagging or way off sometimes, yes.
But the camera takes shitty pictures? What?
As I wrote earlier, I’ve found the S4’s camera to be so much less usable for my purposes than the iPhone 4S was that I am planning to go back to the iPhone as soon as they come out with a larger screen (and maybe even if they don’t).
I’m a pretty serious (dedicated if not high-caliber) amateur photographer, and I felt comfortable enough with the iPhone 4S’ picture quality to bring it alone with me (no P&S camera, no SLR) on a road trip last year, when I was traveling light and had no room for carrying my SLR camera for “real” photography. I was perfectly happy with my results:
My 2012 “Nor’Easter” Motorcycle Road Trip
Except for the screencap of a route on Google Maps, if you check the EXIF info on those pictures, every one was taken with my iPhone 4S. Yes, even the one showing my iPhone 4S being used as a GPS unit - that’s how awesome the iPhone 4S is :D. [OK, in reality I took it with my wife’s iPhone 4S.]
After 2 months of trying to do the same with my S4, I have thrown my arms up and given up. I took my SLR with me on this year’s major motorcycle road trip, to Scotland.
This is partly a software issue - I haven’t yet found a camera app for the S4 I like nearly as much as the Camera+ app on the iPhone. None of them allow me to adjust white balance and focus quickly and easily before shooting - and partly a hardware issue, with the shutter lag from the not-great autofocus. If there’s any motion or high-contrast area in the shot, the S4 always tries to re-evaluate everything after you press the button. The ability to compose the frame, pre-focus/pre-balance and then just SHOOT IT NOW NOW NOW is what makes photography fun.
I read extensively on reviews of the S4 camera vs. the iPhone camera before going with the S4, and in retrospect they’re not at all what I do and how I do it with my phone. They must all have taken very still shots or something.
Here’s a set I took recently using solely my Galaxy S4, because I left my SLR in the car by accident:
Except for the very still shot I took of the bobblehead of Mookie Wilson, everything is just a little blurry. Even of the still frames of uniforms and pennants behind a glass display case. And this is with “Anti-Shake” enabled and using “Sports” mode for the shots of the MLB mascots!
At least, that what I tried to do. It’s gotten to the point where I’d like to just keep it on “Sports” mode all the time, just for the quicker shutter setting, but the settings on the camera app keeps resetting itself: half the time I check and Anti-Shake is disabled again, and the mode goes back to Auto every time I close and re-open the app. I HATE AUTO, STOP DOING EVERYTHING IN AUTO BECAUSE IT’S DUMB AS A BAG OF ROCKS. AND I HATE BLURRY SHOTS, WHY IS ANTI-SHAKE OFF BY DEFAULT?
HTC One?
I’ll admit that I’m likely to give the Nokia 1020 a go next, just because of the camera.
Perhaps. I chose the S4 over the One for the removable battery and Micro SD Card, but if the camera were as usable to me as the iPhone I might look at it closer next time around.
Presumably this has come up in the iPhone world as well–a major aggravation in the Android world is that the shutter-mute option is gradually disappearing as new devices and OS versions come out; it’s actually illegal in many places to have a silent camera, including South Korea, Samsung’s home country. The laws themselves are intended to stymie such low-lifes as would surreptitiously take inappropriate pictures of other people. If you’ve been wondering not only why the mute option isn’t there anymore, but also why the shutter volume is entirely unresponsive to any available system settings, this is the reason.
Now I’m wondering if shutter lag is intentionally built into the system with the same objective. Because according to this the iPhone 5 and my 2011-model Galaxy S2 have pretty much the same specs.
Oh yeah: I hate the way the speaker on the S4 is on the back. Whut?
I have am iPhone 4 and the only thing I really dislike about it is the fact that some jackass put the speaker on the bottom of the fucking phone instead of on the face of the phone.
<brrrrRing!>
“Hello, Dumbass Design! What can we poorly do for you?”
I understand that the headphone jack for the iPhone 5 is on the bottom of the phone instead of on top, so Apple must have gone back to the same people for that little feature. Luckily, I have a stereo bluetooth headset, so that won’t be a problem for me even if they don’t rectify the flaw with the next iteration of the iPhone. I do hope to upgrade this fall or next spring and I can’t wait for a better camera and a (hopefully) louder and better placed speaker.
I don’t think it’s the shutter speed or lag per se, but the autofocus. If I focus at stationary objects on a desk or something, as many of the sample shots in reviews seem to be, it’s fine. I’ve concluded it’s the overactive autofocus coupled with the lack of a way to just set the focus and then shoot. Software fixable, I’d like to think… But as yet, nothing doing.
HTC One?
Unfortunately there’s no single perfect phone out there. Each has pros and cons. However, despite the lack of an SD slot and removable battery, the stereo speakers on the front of the HTC One are in an entirely different class from the speakers on any other phone. Also the power button is on top, though personally I prefer the Samsung power and volume button layout.
Yes! I wonder if it’s a design philosophy of Apple vs Android? If you tell an iPhone to take a picture, it says, “Yes, Sir!” and spends at the most 1 second focusing before shooting, at the risk of out-of-focus shots. Android phones seem to only start to focus when you tell it to take a picture. My HTC Magic was a bigger piece of crap, it must have taken 10 seconds to start the camera, in addition to only focusing after you pressed the shutter.
I actually prefer the headphone jack on the same side as the charging. This way, if you have your phone in a bag, all the cables come out in the same direction. Otherwise it’s like a python that’s just swallowed a cow.