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KentuckyHouse

macrumors 68030
Jan 29, 2010
2,714
983
Lexington, KY.
I see you have a 4S and a Nexus and Galaxy S3, and have owned an HTC One X? How would you rank them if you could only own 1 device? I have an iphone 4 now and just got the Galaxy, have an iphone 5 coming in the mail, and my cousin has an HTC One X he tried to convince me to get over the S3, he loves it and he was an Apple guy before.

I am giving the S3 battery a second chance. I turned down the brightness to 50%. Also yesterday for about 30% of the day I had live wallpaper on because I was showing the phone off to some people at work who wanted to see it.

So today I have taken it off the charger at 8:30am and now at 10:05 its at 92% with light use, I guess not too bad but I'll see how it lasts throughout the day.

I still may end up going iphone for the imessage and Facetime factor, but that is personal to my situation. Almost all my friends and fam have iphones, and my daughter's mom who I am no longer with has an iphone and my daughter facetimes me often.

I guess i could use Google Voice to get around text charges (but sucks no MMS) and a third party app for vid calls like Tango...but Facetime is baked in, which makes it more likely to be used by my non tech-savy ex and my daughter.

To address your last comments first, I definitely don't blame anyone for wanting a iPhone. Especially the 5. I never want to sound like I'm bashing the iPhone, as I obviously own one and love it. And I know, sometime in the next couple of months, once the hysteria has died down, I'll end up getting one. The one thing I've been asking for was a bit larger screen and now that they've got that, I'm sold. I also think the black 5 looks dead sexy.

And I don't blame anyone for wanting it for the proprietary things like Facetime over cellular. I have a friend that works in Texas 2 weeks out of every month and it's been invaluable for him to be able to stay in touch with his 5-year old son.

Ok...on to your questions...LOL. I'll try and keep this organized so as not to confuse anyone (or myself, for that matter!)

iPhone 4S: What can I say? It's a wonderful phone and I'm sure the 5 will be even better. I used it exclusively for 7 months until I got the Galaxy Nexus (I'd had a Galaxy S2 before this as my first adventure into Android). The only reason I wanted both platforms is that I get bored easily, and I'd noticed that I'd started to get bored with the 4S (even with it being jailbroken). So, that's why I keep both platforms...I get bored or tired of one, I switch for a while and all is well in the world. :D

Galaxy Nexus: My first "pure Android" experience. Heck, my first ICS experience as well. I had no idea how great ICS could be when you remove those stupid custom carrier skins. But ICS was nothing compared to when I got the Jellybean update. Holy cow! It's the first time I've used an Android phone where the fluidity and smoothness actually rivals my 4S. With that said, I'm an avid Apex Launcher user on my Android devices (because I like to be able to remove the icon labels...they just clutter up the screen too much for my tastes). If I had to recommend one Android phone above all others to someone, for the best all-around Android experience, the Nexus series would be it. I don't like the screen as much as my S3 (which I'll get to in a minute), but it's still very nice. One thing I've never found that great is the on-screen navigation buttons. It's not that I hate them...they're just different. Sometimes I like them...sometimes I don't. What I don't like is how they take up so much of the screen real estate. I know, they disappear when you're in certain things, but what they effectively do is turn a 4.65 inch screen into a 4.3 inch screen. It's definitely one of the things you have to get used to in Jellybean (although you can remove them or make them smaller with a custom ROM, so that's an option).

One X: This is the only phone I've used where the build quality actually rivals the iPhone. I've actually owned 2 of them. I got the first one before I got the S3 then sold it when I decided to keep the S3. But I missed it so I bought another one a week later. I actually like the latest version of Sense 4.0 as it's smooth and works well. But there were some quirks that I just couldn't deal with on either of the ones I had.

One of the biggest things for me on a phone nowadays is the quality of the camera. I use the camera literally every day in my job (some of my work involves inspecting and writing work orders to install road signage so I take pictures of locations that go with the work orders). The one thing I'd heard over and over about the HOX was that the camera was amazing. Lots of people on XDA say it's better than the 4S or S3 cameras, so I had high expectations. Unfortunately, neither camera lived up to them. I, for the life of me, couldn't take a picture that didn't have some sort of blur in any situation. Low light, bright sunlight...I could never get a great shot. I tried all kinds of different settings, but it just never worked for me. It was like I couldn't hold the phone steady enough to get a clear shot. And this happened on both HOX's I owned, so it wasn't just one particular phone. This was a deal-breaker for me and thus I sold the second phone as well.

Other than that, the HOX was a great phone. I didn't think the speaker volume was all that great, although you can tweak that with some apps from the Play Store.

Which brings me to my final phone...

Galaxy SIII
: Probably the best all-around phone I've ever used. I would place it just ever so slightly in front of the 4S for a couple of reasons. The screen is just amazing...big, bold, and beautiful. There ARE times I feel like the phone is a bit TOO big, but those are few and far between. I also like the customization and I feel like the notifications are more well-done. It's easier to set them up and get them working how you like.

One thing that I use CONSTANTLY is the speaker phone. I'm in the truck a lot during the day and since I don't like using a bluetooth headset, the speaker phone is a must. The S3 finally has a speaker that rivals the 4S. The speaker on the GNex and HOX were awful...so low and distorted. But the S3 and 4S speakers are darn good. I do think the S3 speaker is better (louder/clearer), but they've said they improved the speaker on the iPhone 5, so I'm looking forward to seeing how good it is.

As a side note, I'm waiting until after Friday to see how iPhone 5 users feel about the screen. The one thing I've read for the last couple of years is how saturated Android screens are, how the colors aren't real looking. But now, Apple has stated that they've added 44% more saturation to the iPhone 5 screen and I want to see how this goes over. And it's noticeable too. In the side-by-side shots of the 5 vs. the 4S, you can definitely see more pronounced colors on the 5. This is going to sound like blasphemy around here, but the iPhone 5 screen looks much closer to an Android screen now and I'm wondering if people are now going to complain about it (or are they going to say Apple "does it right" and waited until they could implement it their way?) Time will tell.

So, if I had to pick one phone out of the 4 I've had lately, it would be the S3. But there's no denying the iPhone 5 is going to be amazing, either. Those two should be neck-in-neck over the next few months for me (at least until Google announces the next Nexus phone!)
 

sneaky butcher

macrumors 6502
Nov 8, 2011
345
0
jailbreak...honestly

you get almost unlimited customization with the benefit of ios.

you dont get any app developer made widgets on a jailbroken iphone. Practically every app for android that could use a widget in some way has one.

When i download a new app and it doesn't have a widget i feel disappointed. These days its extremely rare tho :)
 
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