Extremely Early first impressions of the iPhone 4s by an Android User

[chuffman15]

former mytouch 4g user.
i love everything about this phone. ill give up my 4g speeds for the seamless flow of this os. my on/off button was located on the left side instead of the iPhone right side. I'm constantly trying to turn it off on the wrong side.

got my iPhone 4s on friday at 10am
sold my my touch 4g saturday at 9am

 

[FranksWildYears]

Another first time iPhone user from Android.


The build quality is quite remarkable, this is the most quality feeling phone I've ever had.

The sync thing still confuses the hell out of me as I never know if i choose to sync if its going to wipe my phone. So basically I just do everything manually which i feel is probably limiting the usefulness of my phone as I also cannot then utilize wireless sync. I never use it on my ipods either as i just manually do everything.

I have 'Manually manage music and videos' ticked, because I don't want it to try to chuck everything from iTunes at it, but it's fine to let it sync the other stuff. Plug it in, get it to make a back-up and you'll be fine. If in doubt, back up. I've never had an instance of an iPhone deleting my stuff.

 

[ctbear]

A quick double tap of the screen automatically scales the text to fit the screen on web pages. No need to pinch to zoom all of the time unless you are trying to zoom on something specific.

I'm sure he was talking about text reflow...in that case, no iOS doesn't do that.

 

[HiRez]

different colors? no. one color? yes, just enable LED Notifications.

I don't really understand the purpose of this. The LED is on the back of the iPhone. I'm either using my iPhone (in which case I'll see the message on the screen and won't need a light), and 99% of the time I'm not using the phone it's either sitting back down on a table, or in my pocket, and in neither case would I see an LED. So what's the point?

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I'm sure he was talking about text reflow...in that case, no iOS doesn't do that.

Well, the Reader feature will do that for sites with article-sized main pieces (text and images). Just tap the "Reader" button when/if it appears in the address field.

 

[aberrero]

This isn't a deal killer for me, though I am concerned about battery usage.

My phone died at 5pm today. Not happy about that at all. I'm going to give it another go tomorrow, but I was expecting a lot more out of it.

I don't really understand the purpose of this. The LED is on the back of the iPhone. I'm either using my iPhone (in which case I'll see the message on the screen and won't need a light), and 99% of the time I'm not using the phone it's either sitting back down on a table, or in my pocket, and in neither case would I see an LED. So what's the point?

You can't be serious.

 

[b24pgg]

You can't be serious.

It's a valid question.

On Android if you had a new email, a little green light would flash next to the earpiece on the front face of my OG Droid; a new text would flash another color, and facebook notifcations would flash blue.

It's an awesome feature and you can't really compare the Flash on the back of the iphone to the LED notification light on a Droid.

 

[VydorScope]

You can't be serious.

I am sure he is, but the LED on the iPhone is not anywhere near as the nice as the feature on android because..

1) On Android phones the light is on the correct side of the phone
2) On Android the light is different colors for different events
3) On Android there are apps that will stack the colors for you when you have multiple kinds of notifications

Its one of the very few features I think I will actually miss.

 

[Reluctant Adept]

I'm sure he was talking about text reflow...in that case, no iOS doesn't do that.

While I suspect the original answer was indeed what the OP was looking for, it's worth noting that reading mode offers another approach that does reflow text into a format with a standardized reading font and format. When Safari sees a page that has dominant textual content it will put a Reader button in the address bar to access this feature.

Most of the time I find the double-click to auto-size content to be sufficient.

 

[aberrero]

It's a valid question.

On Android if you had a new email, a little green light would flash next to the earpiece on the front face of my OG Droid; a new text would flash another color, and facebook notifcations would flash blue.

It's an awesome feature and you can't really compare the Flash on the back of the iphone to the LED notification light on a Droid.

Right.

I think I misunderstood what he was saying in his post. The notification lights on phones like Blackberries are totally different. I miss the light from my Epic, especially with the lack of statusbar notifications as well.

 

[HiRez]

You can't be serious.

I'm completely serious. Please explain to me what good a light I can't see is. I'm not trying to be an ass, I really don't understand how useful it would be (at least in my case).

 

[Zwhaler]

I am sure he is, but the LED on the iPhone is not anywhere near as the nice as the feature on android because..

1) On Android phones the light is on the correct side of the phone
2) On Android the light is different colors for different events
3) On Android there are apps that will stack the colors for you when you have multiple kinds of notifications

Its one of the very few features I think I will actually miss.

That is a pretty cool feature. Maybe developers will come up with something to have more complex flash and flicker patterns to try replicate this until Apple enables color LED?

 

[00trayn]

I am sure he is, but the LED on the iPhone is not anywhere near as the nice as the feature on android because..

1) On Android phones the light is on the correct side of the phone
2) On Android the light is different colors for different events
3) On Android there are apps that will stack the colors for you when you have multiple kinds of notifications

Its one of the very few features I think I will actually miss.

Agreed, that's exactly what I mean. It's nice that I can have the LED flash, but it is on the wrong side of hte phone. I always have my phone face up in my car or on my desk or something and the light would catch my attention, and very quickly I could see what it was. An email I'd ignore til I had time to check, a blue light was a Kik message from my boyfriend and pink was a text message. It was just a convenient way to see what's coming in. I'll get over it, but it will be missed.

 

[TM WAZZA]

Coming from a Galaxy S2, I can pretty much relate to the previous Android users here about their experiences

 

[Steviejobz]

i love all these fandroids finally coming around to the darkside.

Several of my blackerry or die friends have also been making the "end of era" proclamations on facebook how they finally are making the switch to Apple and iOS and love it.

Better late than never and glad to have more folks aboard

 

[EmbraceTheOne]

I didn't read it all yet, But I read the first paragraph. I wanted to say, I agree with the Notification bar. It would be awesome if there was SOMETHING on the Bar to tell you something is waiting.

…time to keep reading.

 

[TM WAZZA]

i love all these fandroids finally coming around to the darkside.

Several of my blackerry or die friends have also been making the "end of era" proclamations on facebook how they finally are making the switch to Apple and iOS and love it.

Better late than never and glad to have more folks aboard

Hmm, Apple is the darkside? I always thought it was the 'brightside' (if there's such thing) because I've always had iOS devices. I just switched to Android for 2 weeks and never going back, so Android is the 'darkside' for me.

 

[AppleScruff1]

i love all these fandroids finally coming around to the darkside.

Several of my blackerry or die friends have also been making the "end of era" proclamations on facebook how they finally are making the switch to Apple and iOS and love it.

Better late than never and glad to have more folks aboard

What I like in this thread is people being polite and respecting each other. Android users giving their likes and dislikes and Apple users not jumping all over them for making constructive criticism.

 

[davelanger]

Open Settings.
Select General.
Select Usage.
Turn Battery Percentage to "On".

Great tip, i love that

 

[Mr Bigs]

i love all these fandroids finally coming around to the darkside.

Several of my blackerry or die friends have also been making the "end of era" proclamations on facebook how they finally are making the switch to Apple and iOS and love it.

Better late than never and glad to have more folks aboard

They're not true die hard BB fans then !!!!

 

[aberrero]

I'm completely serious. Please explain to me what good a light I can't see is. I'm not trying to be an ass, I really don't understand how useful it would be (at least in my case).

Sorry, misunderstanding.

I agree with you that using the camera LED doesn't make sense. I thought you were arguing that LED notifications in general didn't make sense.

And thanks for the tip about battery percentage.

 

[lilo777]

Coming from a Galaxy S2, I can pretty much relate to the previous Android users here about their experiences

BTW, there are three new videos on youtube (not mine ) comparing P4S and SGSII:

Comparison Part 1
Comparison Part 2
Video Camera comparison

The comparison covers a lot of ground. To summarize:

IP4S Strength:

* Screen resolution
* Better voice commands (Siri) - but not by as much as one could expect. There are cases where Siri is not as good as Android's voice commander. For example, Siri will only play music if it can found it on the phone. Android's commander does that too but if it can not find the music locally it will go online (Rhapsody)

SGSII Strength:

* Faster and smoother browser
* Faster app loading

SGSII's 1080p video also looks better in this particular test but the cameras might be optimized for different subjects/situations.

 

[wellok]

I too am a new convert from Android. I only had one Android device, and had been planning to go to the Nexus Prime (or whatever its release name will be). Then, just a week ago, I bought my first Mac... a Macbook Air. I was so blown away by OS X and the build quality that, as I put it, "I want Apple to make everything I touch." So the next day I decided I was getting an iPhone.

And I have to say... all the stuff I thought I'd miss, I don't. After having random "a little smarter than dumb phones", a BlackBerry, and then the Droid X, having a phone that seamlessly syncs without being a stupid pain in the ass is a joy. I thought not being able to jailbreak immediately would have me breaking out in hives because I couldn't stand non-rooted and customized Android, but once again, I'm surprising myself.

The LED was another sticking point for me ever since I first got a BlackBerry. In the last couple days I've found it's so ****ing peaceful to not get blinked at. I'm still getting "phantom blinks" but I'm breaking the "stare at phone for a few seconds to look for a blink" habit. Slowly. It's liberating in a way.

In summary, brb while I plaster my car with Apple stickers.

 

[ZBoater]

I too am a new convert from Android. I only had one Android device, and had been planning to go to the Nexus Prime (or whatever its release name will be). Then, just a week ago, I bought my first Mac... a Macbook Air. I was so blown away by OS X and the build quality that, as I put it, "I want Apple to make everything I touch." So the next day I decided I was getting an iPhone.

And I have to say... all the stuff I thought I'd miss, I don't. After having random "a little smarter than dumb phones", a BlackBerry, and then the Droid X, having a phone that seamlessly syncs without being a stupid pain in the ass is a joy. I thought not being able to jailbreak immediately would have me breaking out in hives because I couldn't stand non-rooted and customized Android, but once again, I'm surprising myself.

The LED was another sticking point for me ever since I first got a BlackBerry. In the last couple days I've found it's so ****ing peaceful to not get blinked at. I'm still getting "phantom blinks" but I'm breaking the "stare at phone for a few seconds to look for a blink" habit. Slowly. It's liberating in a way.

In summary, brb while I plaster my car with Apple stickers.

Welcome to the dark side! I took the same route with the MacBook Air. I've used iPads since day 1 and had the original iPhones, but for the past two years I did Android (Droid, Xoom, and Thunderbolt).

It is definitely a different experience, the Apple way or the highway on a lot of stuff, but the integration of hardware, software, and now cloud services and AI are pretty impressive. It still bugs me to no end they push stuff down your throat whether you like it or not (Newstand anyone?) but there comes a time when you decide resistance is futile, and its easiest to be assimilated. Too many other things going on in real life....

 

[aberrero]

Too many other things going on in real life....

That's really what it comes down to.

I bought the Macbook Air because I needed the battery life and stability. I got the late 2010 model and I'm going to sell it sometime soon to replace it with a mid-2012 one.

I had both iPads and I wouldn't consider getting an Android tablet, except for a really cheap one like the Kindle Fire.

Had an Android phone for the past year and, while I like it, I really need something dependable and with good battery life. It's not so much that Android is bad or that it can't be reliable, just that I can't help but constantly mess with it all the time.

 

[ZBoater]

I may get a Galaxy Tab just to mess around with it. Probably a 7 or 8" form factor just to be different.

And I'll tether it to my iPhone 4S to get on the Internetz...