went from an iphone 4 to S3 then after 4 painful months, sold it and went to an iphone 5. These are the things that I have realised after using both:
S3>iphone's:
- bigger screen. At first I thought it was impractical, but after a while you really begin to appreciate the size.
- camera speed.
- some OS actions such as swiping to call/msg and S-beam.
S3 problems:
- extremely poorly designed button placements. Probably one of the worst ergonomically designed products I have bought in recent years (funny how they still advertise it as 'designed for humans'). The back and menu buttons in the front are capacitive and easily mis-pressed cos they are located at where you would normally hold the phone especially in landscape mode. The side buttons are easily mis-pressed too resulting in either a change in volume or in most cases, turning the screen off while doing something.
- the phone's feels like cheap plastic. If you've ever taken the back cover out you'll know what I mean. it feels like a 5 cent piece of plastic.
- the volume setting is horribly designed. Some people might appreciate the 3-4 volume sliders for different processes/apps, but I find it terribly implemented or not useful for a phone. When you turn the phone's volume down to zero you would expect the phone to be silent, but no, not on the S3. It decides that you only want that app that is open to be silent and the phone will still ring. Absolutely annoying when you are in a quiet place like a meeting room or at the movies.
- the screen is horrid. As many have pointed out, yes it is big and it uses newer technology. But samsung decided to increase the saturation so much that everything looks wrong. From a photographer's POT, this is unacceptable. Though you can slightly correct this by changing a setting in the settings. But still, the quality is no where near the iphone's.
- APPS. Although the gap is slowly closing, but the amount of quality apps in the app store far exceeds the amount in the play store on android. This is what happens when there are no guidelines for developers to follow.
Although I must admit, I am getting a bit bored of iOS and the iphone. If apple doesn't come up with something that's enticing enough for me, then I'll have to start looking elsewhere.