That goes same for apple drones, so stop crying.
Galaxy Nexus vs. iPhone 4S
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sk1wbw
Suspended
"Stop crying" and "drone". See, you proved my point. Late for homeroom class?
TerrierMike
macrumors newbie
I think people really spend too much time and energy arguing about which phone is better and should just get what suits them.
But just to add my two cents...I'm a Verizon rep. I have had a ton of phones in the past two years, including the droid 1, incredible, droid x, and fascinate. Also used a bb bold touch 9930. And those are just some of the ones I've used extensively as my main phone. I've owned many many more android phones (I buy a lot of phones to resell or give good deals to friends and family). I have also owned a xoom and iPad.
However, I bought the iPhone when it came to vzw in February, and preordered a 4s on day one, and have never been back to Android or anything else. And believe me, I've tried. I can play with any phone I want to. The past week or two during slow times I have taken the rezound, razr, and galaxy nexus out of their boxes, loaded my gmail accounts on them and played on wifi for a few hours. And after the initial wow factor for the particular phone wears off, I happily put it back and pick up my iPhone.
Android users laugh at people who say the iPhone just works, but overall the damn thing just does. On any given day I can easily expect at least five people to come in with issues with their android phone. On the other hand, I'm surprised to see more than two people come in all week with their iPhone. Now, a lot of that is due to the more open nature of android as opposed to apples closed down ecosystem, causing many people to come in with issues that someone like me or anyone else on these forums who are adept with rooting, reinstalling os, getting rid of trouble programs, etc. which, as techies, we could fix. But not all of it...
For instance, I like the gnex. Cheap plasticky Samsung feel aside, I really dig the big screen and think ICS is a big step forward. But it's absolutely ridiculous that Samsung can't put a decent radio in their devices at this point. It kills the whole experience. Why do I want this big fancy phone if I can't get a freaking signal? The fascinate I had was the exact same..and I hale that phone more than any other and checked xda daily in hopes of improvements. Yea, I know a software update could make things better...but why should I have to wait on something that isn't even a guarantee? The motorola phones have great reception...but so does my iPhone. And no micro sd slot?? That was one of the big advantages of Android to me.
And despite processor clock speeds, while overall smoothness has definitely gotten better on android, these phones brand new out of the box are still not as smooth as my iPhone that I use every day with 100+ apps and thousands of messages loaded on it. So I know they won't be after loading them down.
And I understand LTE sucks battery, but even on 3G the iPhone kills all others on battery life. Slap one of the many battery cases available on it and there's just no contest.
And the apple app store still seems a few steps above the android market. The apps, on average, are just better and more polished.
I'm really not trying to sound like an apple fanatic. Maybe if the razr was running vanilla ICS I would even give it a real shot. And while iTunes does make things easy I still hate being locked down and not being able to drag and drop media as I'd like to. And I'd really love a bigger screen.
At the end of the day though, the iPhone is where it's at still. Commission wise, I make less money selling an iPhone, sometimes half as much or even less if it's a top tier android (there are four tier levels and each one pays differently). But 90% of the time I still direct customers toward the iPhone because I'm that much more certain that it won't be returned (thus saving my paycheck) and honestly because I'm that much more certain they will be happier with it. They come to me for advice and their experience will determine how they view me, so I want it to be good. It sucks that we still make less on iPhones in some cases but hopefully that will be changed.
But just to add my two cents...I'm a Verizon rep. I have had a ton of phones in the past two years, including the droid 1, incredible, droid x, and fascinate. Also used a bb bold touch 9930. And those are just some of the ones I've used extensively as my main phone. I've owned many many more android phones (I buy a lot of phones to resell or give good deals to friends and family). I have also owned a xoom and iPad.
However, I bought the iPhone when it came to vzw in February, and preordered a 4s on day one, and have never been back to Android or anything else. And believe me, I've tried. I can play with any phone I want to. The past week or two during slow times I have taken the rezound, razr, and galaxy nexus out of their boxes, loaded my gmail accounts on them and played on wifi for a few hours. And after the initial wow factor for the particular phone wears off, I happily put it back and pick up my iPhone.
Android users laugh at people who say the iPhone just works, but overall the damn thing just does. On any given day I can easily expect at least five people to come in with issues with their android phone. On the other hand, I'm surprised to see more than two people come in all week with their iPhone. Now, a lot of that is due to the more open nature of android as opposed to apples closed down ecosystem, causing many people to come in with issues that someone like me or anyone else on these forums who are adept with rooting, reinstalling os, getting rid of trouble programs, etc. which, as techies, we could fix. But not all of it...
For instance, I like the gnex. Cheap plasticky Samsung feel aside, I really dig the big screen and think ICS is a big step forward. But it's absolutely ridiculous that Samsung can't put a decent radio in their devices at this point. It kills the whole experience. Why do I want this big fancy phone if I can't get a freaking signal? The fascinate I had was the exact same..and I hale that phone more than any other and checked xda daily in hopes of improvements. Yea, I know a software update could make things better...but why should I have to wait on something that isn't even a guarantee? The motorola phones have great reception...but so does my iPhone. And no micro sd slot?? That was one of the big advantages of Android to me.
And despite processor clock speeds, while overall smoothness has definitely gotten better on android, these phones brand new out of the box are still not as smooth as my iPhone that I use every day with 100+ apps and thousands of messages loaded on it. So I know they won't be after loading them down.
And I understand LTE sucks battery, but even on 3G the iPhone kills all others on battery life. Slap one of the many battery cases available on it and there's just no contest.
And the apple app store still seems a few steps above the android market. The apps, on average, are just better and more polished.
I'm really not trying to sound like an apple fanatic. Maybe if the razr was running vanilla ICS I would even give it a real shot. And while iTunes does make things easy I still hate being locked down and not being able to drag and drop media as I'd like to. And I'd really love a bigger screen.
At the end of the day though, the iPhone is where it's at still. Commission wise, I make less money selling an iPhone, sometimes half as much or even less if it's a top tier android (there are four tier levels and each one pays differently). But 90% of the time I still direct customers toward the iPhone because I'm that much more certain that it won't be returned (thus saving my paycheck) and honestly because I'm that much more certain they will be happier with it. They come to me for advice and their experience will determine how they view me, so I want it to be good. It sucks that we still make less on iPhones in some cases but hopefully that will be changed.
This thread is great even with the sniping BUT I need help.
I have to get a new phone. Or more accurately a new carrier. I have been with ATT since they started and Cingular and Cellular one before that. The quality of the signal at my home is no longer acceptable.(?trees) ATT has been great. They changed sims on my iP4 and my wife's old RAZR several times, came to my house, tuned the handsets, gave us a MicroCell (also replaced it once) and have reduced some month's bills, BUT I lose more than 80% of calls. Yeah, 80%. Last week, the head of some ATT Mobile division called and said ATT gave up suggesting that since our township has not, and does not permit new towers or rebuilding old towers, we should look for a different carrier. I happen to be off contract so I am looking. Sprint does not claim to cover our street outside Philly. My daughter is coming this week and has a Verizon Thunderbolt that I will experiment with. If this gets me out of the vortex of blind spot we will get two Verizon phones.
I tried to read most of this thread, but did get overwhelmed by the nastiness that results in inaccurate or inflated claims. Can someone tell me what would be best for a year & might carry me to a truly new iPhone model or beyond. I am pretty into Apple stuff, but not committed. My wife wants the cheapest flip phone, but I want another smartphone.
I am a bit put off by having to throw away a perfectly good iP4. I still have my 3G in a drawer and know I would NOT go through the hassle of selling, just to buy another nearly identical phone. The iP4s has no new features I crave and I might be annoyed at losing the ability to talk and surf simultaneously. I do that a lot. I really do not have experience with any Android but 4G sounds useful and a bigger screen might help my failing eyesight.(anyone know if the base fonts are bigger or just the screen?) Which Android? By that I mean the flavor of the month issue. Nexus v REzound v RAZR. Maybe wait a month. Two good friends at lunch Tues, just pulled out brand new Rezounds, but they did it for the better camera. I am a camera nut, but use my DSLR. Only use my iP4 camera to email a question about something.
In reality, any of these phones would do and I lean toward iP4S anyway. Is there a decent place to look for insightful comments without the insults. It's only for a year. THX
I have to get a new phone. Or more accurately a new carrier. I have been with ATT since they started and Cingular and Cellular one before that. The quality of the signal at my home is no longer acceptable.(?trees) ATT has been great. They changed sims on my iP4 and my wife's old RAZR several times, came to my house, tuned the handsets, gave us a MicroCell (also replaced it once) and have reduced some month's bills, BUT I lose more than 80% of calls. Yeah, 80%. Last week, the head of some ATT Mobile division called and said ATT gave up suggesting that since our township has not, and does not permit new towers or rebuilding old towers, we should look for a different carrier. I happen to be off contract so I am looking. Sprint does not claim to cover our street outside Philly. My daughter is coming this week and has a Verizon Thunderbolt that I will experiment with. If this gets me out of the vortex of blind spot we will get two Verizon phones.
I tried to read most of this thread, but did get overwhelmed by the nastiness that results in inaccurate or inflated claims. Can someone tell me what would be best for a year & might carry me to a truly new iPhone model or beyond. I am pretty into Apple stuff, but not committed. My wife wants the cheapest flip phone, but I want another smartphone.
I am a bit put off by having to throw away a perfectly good iP4. I still have my 3G in a drawer and know I would NOT go through the hassle of selling, just to buy another nearly identical phone. The iP4s has no new features I crave and I might be annoyed at losing the ability to talk and surf simultaneously. I do that a lot. I really do not have experience with any Android but 4G sounds useful and a bigger screen might help my failing eyesight.(anyone know if the base fonts are bigger or just the screen?) Which Android? By that I mean the flavor of the month issue. Nexus v REzound v RAZR. Maybe wait a month. Two good friends at lunch Tues, just pulled out brand new Rezounds, but they did it for the better camera. I am a camera nut, but use my DSLR. Only use my iP4 camera to email a question about something.
In reality, any of these phones would do and I lean toward iP4S anyway. Is there a decent place to look for insightful comments without the insults. It's only for a year. THX
I don't know about that, my SGII has better reception/signal strength then either of our iPhones at least here in South FL. I would be lucky to get 1-2 bars inside publix, on the SGII I maintain full bars. Even in buildings where I could still get a signal (though the phones struggled to maintain), or same buildings where a few friends work where their 4s get no reception... mine does. Actually we just had a thread on here about that with the 4S reception issue in buildings (which is odd considering the antenna design?).
I'm fully impressed by battery life on my SGII, it's fairly similar to my iPhone 4 in use, though the 4 has better stand bye time but that goes without saying since it's tops in that category. But I'm getting better life then on 4S or 3GS. I think a lot of people don't know how to setup these phones right, or calibrate the battery so the right settings are read (my phone didn't last as long until I calibrated, just like on my MBP where I calibrate to get the battery % readings correct). Yeh there are Androids that drain, but I can say the at&t SGII is pretty damn good on battery life, even using GPS Nav multiple times like I did today running around for the biz.
But yeh I agree that a lot of people that have issues are the put'z who root and have no idea what their doing or install roms, mess with files etc and then actually bring it to the store like that to fix (have friends who did that).... think a lot just don't know better lol. Or download apps from the market place that end up causing issues (yet they never read the reviews and had they they'd see to avoid that app).. had friends do that to lol.
mysterioustko
macrumors 6502
It was an sales analogy..pay attention....and no everyone doesn't know someone with an iphone..maybe in your small little world, but not in reality. And once again it was a sales analogy...keep up..
TerrierMike
macrumors newbie
In response to surferman...
I definitely believe you, but you're also talking about att which is a GSM carrier so completely different radios. I don't know much about anything other than verizon but I do believe I have read that in particular Samsung has a problem with its cdma radios. And that was certainly the case with my fascinate (galaxy s). I loved the hardware and really wanted the phone to work for me, and tried every hack available, but the sucky reception just completely bottlenecked the whole phone. If the nexus got similar reception to my 4s, I would seriously think hard about switching even though I still greatly prefer the Apple app store.
I definitely believe you, but you're also talking about att which is a GSM carrier so completely different radios. I don't know much about anything other than verizon but I do believe I have read that in particular Samsung has a problem with its cdma radios. And that was certainly the case with my fascinate (galaxy s). I loved the hardware and really wanted the phone to work for me, and tried every hack available, but the sucky reception just completely bottlenecked the whole phone. If the nexus got similar reception to my 4s, I would seriously think hard about switching even though I still greatly prefer the Apple app store.
TerrierMike
macrumors newbie
What's the point of being condescending? And if you can use car analogies that don't really make much sense (an iPhone being a focus and Android a merc??) then I don't see anything wrong with a little over generalization to make a point. No, not everyone knows someone with an iPhone, but as a vzw rep, I can tell you that generally, unless the customer just has no idea about anything smartphone related, if they are interested in moving to one, they way more often know someone or have at least talked to someone with an iPhone/iPad/iPod touch who likes their device and recommends it than someone with whichever Android phone you may choose. And often times they know someone with Android who they say hates their phone, but basically never the opposite.
With the iPhone 4 being $99 now, we are having a ridiculous amount of people switching from Android. Yes there are blind followers who are going to buy Apple no matter what. My girlfriends family is pretty wealthy and her, her little brother, and her mom all have MB pros and also two iPads, all to basically do some Facebook and online shopping. I feel that's a bit ridiculous. And in fact this kind of thinking really gets on my nerves because I know no matter how much better of a machine I may feel my Lenovo x220 is than a macbook in many areas, I know I could never convince them of that. But to chalk up as much of the iPhones success to these types of consumers and not to the actual quality of the product as some people like to do is plain delusional.
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yeh I heard that about the cdma radios as well. I'm loving AT&T's hspa+ speeds too, better then the avg persons WiFi and same battery life as 3G. I used to want LTE but with how fast hspa+ is, don't see a need for it on a mobile phone unless they improve battery tech and hopefully newer chipsets next year for longer life on LTE.
Not in my 'small little world'? How ignorant can you be?
lilcosco08
macrumors 65816
sk1wbw
Suspended
No, because most Android users are pimply faced immature kids who are still in school.
Vegastouch
macrumors 603
Thats pretty funny considering most of the posters here are kids too
phpmaven
macrumors 68040
While that is true, it's also true that if it was a piece of crap, it wouldn't sell like crazy.
Ummm that's like saying most apple users are skinny Jean wearing hipsters
onthecouchagain
macrumors 604
Cry me a river?
Apple drones are hilarious...
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Agreed!!!
No he's actually right. Statistically shown, Android users are typically from a younger demographic. Sorry, it's true.
sk1wbw
Suspended
Cry me a river?
Android drones are hilarious...
----------
Agreed!!!
See, I can edit posts too.
Yeah. It's been 8 years since I have been with a CDMA carrier (sprint ) and my last CDMA phone was a Samsung. Bad reception. Been with Cingular/Att since.
Just picked up a Verizon Galaxy Nexus. Great phone. Fast. Super speedy LTE.
However horrible reception. Gotta be Samsung's CDMA radio cause my friend with Verizon iPhone still has 2-3 bars in bad coverage area. I usually only get 1-2 bars with my AT&T iPhone 4s.
Verizon galaxy CDMA/LtE. Zero bars.
Lava Lamp Freak
macrumors 68000
I just returned my Galaxy Nexus and am back on the iPhone 4 after using the Galaxy Nexus for a week. I loved the phone, but it has some major issues, for me, that made it a downgrade from the iPhone 4.
I do not consider myself an Apple fanboy even though I have used an iPhone since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007 and have used Macs since 1995. However, I do consider myself a perfectionist, and things that other people don't even notice drive me bonkers. I have tried almost every Android phone that has been released for the last two years, and the reason I keep trying Android phones is because I'm sick of the iOS UI and I want a larger screen. Ice Cream Sandwich has a beautiful UI, and I greatly prefer it over iOS. I hope that Apple makes some drastic changes to the iOS UI in the next update to make it again feel exciting to me. Otherwise, I will likely move away from iPhone permanently in the future if they don't change the UI and use a larger screen.
The Galaxy Nexus has a beautiful screen. However, the Galaxy Nexus screen is Super AMOLED and not Super AMOLED Plus, which means it is using Pentile instead of RGB like newer devices, including the Galaxy S2, are. This makes the screen not quite as sharp as the iPhone, even though it is a higher resolution and very close to the same PPI. Also, blacks were amazing, but whites were not. Next to a phone with an LCD screen, whites looked very dingy. However, the screen complaints weren't deciding factors in my decision to keep the phone or not to.
Like I said, I am a perfectionist, but it wasn't those imperfections in the screen that killed the deal for me with the Galaxy Nexus. I had decided to accept those things because I love the UI of ICS, the inky blacks, and large screen. But when it comes down to the most important features of the phone, the phone just sucks. For me, the most important things are battery life, camera quality, call quality, signal strength, and music streaming over bluetooth.
As a multimedia device, the Galaxy Nexus is amazing. The inky blacks and vibrant colors means you can watch movies and look at pictures and be amazed every single time. However, just the screen being on drains the battery at half a percent a minute, and doing anything at all drains the battery at one percent a minute. I'm not exaggerating: I left the screen on and watched the rate at which the battery drained. In my week of use, I was fully draining the phone and recharging it every day, and a couple days I actually fully drained it again after recharging and still was almost dead before the end of the day after the second charge. For a device that is used on the go, I can't rely on it if it dies that quickly. I'm not always in a position that I can recharge it as soon as it dies, and I'm not going to start carrying an extra battery with me.
Another thing that is high on my list is camera quality. The camera in the Galaxy Nexus sucks. As far as that goes, every Samsung Galaxy device I've tried had a horrible camera. Every picture — even if taken in great lighting — looks like it has been ran through Photoshop's watercolor filter. Every picture looks smudged and has no fine details. Low-light pictures — which the device is actually advertised as having "top notch low-light performance" — are terrible. They seem to have tuned it to snap photos faster at the expense of quality.
Regardless of all of the features a phone has, it is still a phone and making calls is kind of a big part of the package. The Galaxy Nexus has bad signal strength and horrible call quality. My mom has an iPhone 4 on Verizon, and in places where she had one or two bars, I had none, and I would be unable to get an internet connection while hers would load web pages just fine. And even in places where I had all bars, the call quality was still horrible. On top of that, bluetooth call quality was also horrible — both on my end and the receivers end. I make calls from my car over bluetooth every day, and it is unacceptable to me to not be able to understand what is being said because of the crackling I hear over bluetooth. With my iPhone 4, calls have always been crystal clear over bluetooth.
I also listen to music over bluetooth in my car every day during my one-hour-each-way commute to school, so that is also something important to me. The implementation of AVRCP is screwed up in ICS. When playing music over bluetooth, connected devices won't pause the music. It will stop it but it won't pause it. When I receive a call, every other phone I've had, including phones with previous versions of Android, would pause the song and resume it upon ending the call. Not so in ICS. It stops playing music and upon ending a call it replays the song from the beginning. Multiple calls during a single song could mean not being able to get through a particular song for a while. Besides that, ICS still only supports AVRCP 1.0, which means no metadata over bluetooth. iOS, Windows Mango, and WebOS all have AVRCP 1.3, which is important to me since without it it just says "streaming" on the screen in my car instead of displaying the song title and the artist name.
Yes, the Galaxy Nexus is unquestionably a better multimedia device than the iPhone, but it sucks as a phone, it sucks as a streaming music player, and it sucks as a camera, when compared to the iPhone 4S. What works for me may not work for you, but for me the Galaxy Nexus is not a replacement for an iPhone 4. It is a terrific replacement for an iPod Touch, though, but as a device that is used to make calls and that is used outside of the house and away from a power source, it just isn't reliable.
I do not consider myself an Apple fanboy even though I have used an iPhone since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007 and have used Macs since 1995. However, I do consider myself a perfectionist, and things that other people don't even notice drive me bonkers. I have tried almost every Android phone that has been released for the last two years, and the reason I keep trying Android phones is because I'm sick of the iOS UI and I want a larger screen. Ice Cream Sandwich has a beautiful UI, and I greatly prefer it over iOS. I hope that Apple makes some drastic changes to the iOS UI in the next update to make it again feel exciting to me. Otherwise, I will likely move away from iPhone permanently in the future if they don't change the UI and use a larger screen.
The Galaxy Nexus has a beautiful screen. However, the Galaxy Nexus screen is Super AMOLED and not Super AMOLED Plus, which means it is using Pentile instead of RGB like newer devices, including the Galaxy S2, are. This makes the screen not quite as sharp as the iPhone, even though it is a higher resolution and very close to the same PPI. Also, blacks were amazing, but whites were not. Next to a phone with an LCD screen, whites looked very dingy. However, the screen complaints weren't deciding factors in my decision to keep the phone or not to.
Like I said, I am a perfectionist, but it wasn't those imperfections in the screen that killed the deal for me with the Galaxy Nexus. I had decided to accept those things because I love the UI of ICS, the inky blacks, and large screen. But when it comes down to the most important features of the phone, the phone just sucks. For me, the most important things are battery life, camera quality, call quality, signal strength, and music streaming over bluetooth.
As a multimedia device, the Galaxy Nexus is amazing. The inky blacks and vibrant colors means you can watch movies and look at pictures and be amazed every single time. However, just the screen being on drains the battery at half a percent a minute, and doing anything at all drains the battery at one percent a minute. I'm not exaggerating: I left the screen on and watched the rate at which the battery drained. In my week of use, I was fully draining the phone and recharging it every day, and a couple days I actually fully drained it again after recharging and still was almost dead before the end of the day after the second charge. For a device that is used on the go, I can't rely on it if it dies that quickly. I'm not always in a position that I can recharge it as soon as it dies, and I'm not going to start carrying an extra battery with me.
Another thing that is high on my list is camera quality. The camera in the Galaxy Nexus sucks. As far as that goes, every Samsung Galaxy device I've tried had a horrible camera. Every picture — even if taken in great lighting — looks like it has been ran through Photoshop's watercolor filter. Every picture looks smudged and has no fine details. Low-light pictures — which the device is actually advertised as having "top notch low-light performance" — are terrible. They seem to have tuned it to snap photos faster at the expense of quality.
Regardless of all of the features a phone has, it is still a phone and making calls is kind of a big part of the package. The Galaxy Nexus has bad signal strength and horrible call quality. My mom has an iPhone 4 on Verizon, and in places where she had one or two bars, I had none, and I would be unable to get an internet connection while hers would load web pages just fine. And even in places where I had all bars, the call quality was still horrible. On top of that, bluetooth call quality was also horrible — both on my end and the receivers end. I make calls from my car over bluetooth every day, and it is unacceptable to me to not be able to understand what is being said because of the crackling I hear over bluetooth. With my iPhone 4, calls have always been crystal clear over bluetooth.
I also listen to music over bluetooth in my car every day during my one-hour-each-way commute to school, so that is also something important to me. The implementation of AVRCP is screwed up in ICS. When playing music over bluetooth, connected devices won't pause the music. It will stop it but it won't pause it. When I receive a call, every other phone I've had, including phones with previous versions of Android, would pause the song and resume it upon ending the call. Not so in ICS. It stops playing music and upon ending a call it replays the song from the beginning. Multiple calls during a single song could mean not being able to get through a particular song for a while. Besides that, ICS still only supports AVRCP 1.0, which means no metadata over bluetooth. iOS, Windows Mango, and WebOS all have AVRCP 1.3, which is important to me since without it it just says "streaming" on the screen in my car instead of displaying the song title and the artist name.
Yes, the Galaxy Nexus is unquestionably a better multimedia device than the iPhone, but it sucks as a phone, it sucks as a streaming music player, and it sucks as a camera, when compared to the iPhone 4S. What works for me may not work for you, but for me the Galaxy Nexus is not a replacement for an iPhone 4. It is a terrific replacement for an iPod Touch, though, but as a device that is used to make calls and that is used outside of the house and away from a power source, it just isn't reliable.
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Well, I have a 4s and have just purchased a galaxy nexus. I fancy a change as I'm getting bored with apple ios.
However.................
I will give it a few weeks of using both then decide which one to keep.
Ive had iphones since they were released so it should be interesting.
However.................
I will give it a few weeks of using both then decide which one to keep.
Ive had iphones since they were released so it should be interesting.
Same feelings I had with the Skyrocket! And I am now back with my iPhone 4. I had it for 2 weeks too.