Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple is doing just fine.

News has it that Android's latest OS offering nicknamed "Honeycomb" will require dual-core processors. While the new Motorola Atrix has one, even the upcoming Samsung Infuse doesn't, and neither does every other existing Android phone out there.

But, wait until Honeycomb comes out and you'll have millions of end-of-line, incompatible, non-upgradable, and/or abandoned single-core and slower or insufficient devices, making the end-users feel abandoned by their carrier, manufacturer, and Google, altogether.

Meanwhile, Apple has and will continue to push the iOS hardware and software in decent harmony. Slow and steady wins the race.

Dan Morrill who is a member of the Android team tweeted that the news about a minimum processor requirement is false. Google hasn't put a minimum requirement on Honeycomb.
 
im an apple fantard but its quite clear that they lost the mobile war and will go the way of the, well, apple again soon. jobs will likely 'retire' for another 10 years so his replacement can take the blame, then come back and do something amazing again
 
im an apple fantard but its quite clear that they lost the mobile war and will go the way of the, well, apple again soon. jobs will likely 'retire' for another 10 years so his replacement can take the blame, then come back and do something amazing again

I'm not clear as to why you think this will happen. Do you really think they will simply cede the marketplace to any competitor?
I think it's important to remember that the 'gee whiz' factor at CES doesn't always translate into actual products OR actual consumer sales... And I really don't think the average consumer is as wowed about the technological marvels released at CES as some of the people who report on it are.
I'm sure Apple has a strategy that they plan to follow that's not necessarily to match feature for feature with other phones. They've always been more about the overall user experience and ease of use. So, it will be interesting to see what Apple does in June- assuming that they follow their usual refresh schedule.
 
They're behind, and have been since Froyo. Maybe not in the apps, but the OS itself is lagging behind Froyo in performance and functionality. And no Flash? Cool, no 70% of the web.

They need to set aside old grudges and act for once in the favor of their customers.
 
Having switched from an iphone 3gs on ATT to a DroidX on Verizon, I can say that out of the box, the iphone is clearly the better platform. Everything is polished, and everything works well together. I hardly had any complaints, and being that the 3gs was my first smart phone, it blew my mind as to what a phone could be.

When I first got the DroidX, I was a bit disappointed but endlessly fascinated by all the options I had to customize it. I've spent far more time rooting/flashing roms/themes/tweaking the system/overclocking/etc. on my DroidX than I ever have on my iphone (even when jailbroken).

Once you tweak your droid, it kills the iphone in terms of customizations and functionality--but the iphone still kills the droid in terms of polish and stability.

So if you want to spend the time and the money, get a Droid. If you want polish and basic functionality out of the box, get the iphone. As far as reception goes, Verizon is the hands down winner for my area. I always thought the skipping in Pandora was just inherent--but it was just ATT's network.

Things I love about my Droid that I can't get on an iphone: being able to switch out batteries on-the-go; Verizon; customizations (one-click dial/navigation from the homescreen, weather widgets, other widgets); NAVIGATION (google navigation is hands-down the best I have ever used. the turn-by-turn is available only on android to the best of my knowledge)

Things that I miss about the iphone: unified inbox; itunes; music player (android's sucks at the moment, but honeycomb's player looks amazing); the polish and never worrying about my handset rebooting/freezing.

Apple had the jump and revolutionized things with the OG iphone. Everything since then has just been incremental improvements. They've lost that revolutionary edge. Say what you want about Facetime, but imo Apple needs to change the OS to stay competitive. Allow things like widgets, one-click dial/text/nav, etc. and I wouldn't miss my droid at all.
 
Apple has competition? :confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:


Me a happy Nexus-S owner, says the same about Android, and I was a HUGE iPhone1 fan and loved that phone. But the iPhone feels stale and dated today. It is now for the non tech savvy Mom's and Grandma's. Android is for the tech geeks :)

Verizon is getting the iPhone ? Who cares if it's just the same ol iPhone4, that is nothing to get excited about one bit. If you on Verizon, and want a new phone this Spring, they are many better phones to choose from, compared to last years iPhone.

I will wait for the iPhone5, and hopefully Apple catches up, and surpasses the competition. But then Android will not just sit around and wait for the iPhone5, with Android 3.0 due later this year, with the biggest changes ever for the OS, it should be interesting to see them duke it out.
 
No widgets, no notification system, text ring tone the same, small 3.5" screen. If you don't think the iPhone 4 is a bit out of date, your just an Apple sheep no offense. My sister has the iPhone 4, and compared to my Nexus-S, it just feels old and boring, no real customization.

I just love this. Just because a product doesn't fit your needs or wants, anyone whose needs and wants it does fit is a "sheep". :rolleyes: The fact is, many consumers don't need, want, or even remotely care about dual-core processors, widgets, notification systems, or any of the other crap you do. If you asked them to explain the difference between Android and iOS they'd ask you what Android and iOS are.

Apple isn't interested in an arms-race with the rest of the industry. They're interested in providing the best experience possible to the average consumer. That's what consumers care about. Not specs that, at the end of the day, don't mean a whole lot.
 
I also love a Nexus S owner with his atrocious pentile matrix screen telling us that the iP4 is yesterday's technology.

The screen on those pentile matrix OLED/SAMOLED crap should be embarrassed to be on 1999 hardware.
 
I just love this. Just because a product doesn't fit your needs or wants, anyone whose needs and wants it does fit is a "sheep". :rolleyes: The fact is, many consumers don't need, want, or even remotely care about dual-core processors, widgets, notification systems, or any of the other crap you do. If you asked them to explain the difference between Android and iOS they'd ask you what Android and iOS are.

Apple isn't interested in an arms-race with the rest of the industry. They're interested in providing the best experience possible to the average consumer. That's what consumers care about. Not specs that, at the end of the day, don't mean a whole lot.

This. I love how the guy even says he is a TECH GEEK. Most people buying products are not. The average joe doesn't care about all the specs and what not. They want something that is easy to use and iOS/iPhone provide that.
 
Apple isn't interested in an arms-race with the rest of the industry. They're interested in providing the best experience possible to the average consumer. That's what consumers care about. Not specs that, at the end of the day, don't mean a whole lot.

Good call here. Apple seems to be positioning themselves to dominate the home world. First you have the MAC, based on UNIX, but presented in a way that users can simply do everything they want. Then they hit the iPhone because the OS was originally designed to be a tablet, but the market wasn't looking for a tablet and it happened to hit a home run on it.

Fast forward to the past year with Apple. The products just work. I'm not sure which order this came out in, but they launched the iPad. The new defacto way to browse the internet while sitting on the couch. I am a self admitted tech geek, and work in the tech field, and many of my peers have and love the iPad, both 3G and wifi only. Then Apple TV. This is one that I have not experiences - yet. But I hear that it is awesomely integrated. A coworker of mine has a Mac, Apple TV, and the iPad and can play anything anywhere he wants when connected to his home network. Exactly what Apple is going for. I might just need to learn more about the Bonjour protocol - and quickly.

The iPhone4, is just setting the stage for the next wave, FaceTime or video conferencing in the home. How big is video conferencing in the corporate world, that if you can miniaturize it and allow folks hundreds of miles apart to see each other - AWESOME! That is where Skype is having to go as well.

Launches of the iPad2 rumored to have the front facing camera will just ignite the whole facetime deal even further. Apple definitely knows what the consumer wants, and the competition is trying to emulate it quite often. Now there are leaders in other categories, that is natural in a free market and it is great for all users.

I was anti Apple for so long, but have slowly but surely made my way towards Apple as everything just seems to work together.
 
I also love a Nexus S owner with his atrocious pentile matrix screen telling us that the iP4 is yesterday's technology.

The screen on those pentile matrix OLED/SAMOLED crap should be embarrassed to be on 1999 hardware.

The much better color reproduction and better viewing angles and better contrast are so worth awkward pixel arrangement, especially when you can't differentiate between them anyway at regular viewing distances.

Please just stop posting.
 
The much better color reproduction and better viewing angles and better contrast are so worth awkward pixel arrangement, especially when you can't differentiate between them anyway at regular viewing distances.

Please just stop posting.

No they aren't, staring at a pixelated screen all day sucks, since you hate everything Apple, why don't you run along somewhere else?
 
Fact: Apple fans will only accept things as being useful when Apple says it is.

Example: when the 3Gs came out, it used the same 320x480 HVGA resolution screen. Many said "who needs higher resolution when I can do just fine with the current resolution."

Then Apple brought out the high pixel density screen for the iPhone 4, and now all people can talk about is pixels, even though the screen uses plain old LCD technology with IPS. The "retina display" isn't even an Apple creation - the screen was originally sourced and produced by LG.
 
This. I love how the guy even says he is a TECH GEEK. Most people buying products are not. The average joe doesn't care about all the specs and what not. They want something that is easy to use and iOS/iPhone provide that.

This is an excellent post and I think these are points often overlooked or minimized by a more techno-savvy crowd. The average user doesn't care about a lot of the things that a more technology oriented crowd thinks about. They're not as worried about customization or moving home screens or widgets. They want a phone that just works seamlessly and seems stable.
So while many reading these threads demand those sorts of things, the typical user is a lot less concerned about them.
 
No they aren't, staring at a pixelated screen all day sucks, since you hate everything Apple, why don't you run along somewhere else?

Even at about a foot away, that awful pentile matrix display is pixelated. High resolution photos and film clearly look compressed because of the missing subpixels. Anyone with discernment and decent eyes can attest to this fact. Ask DisplayMate. Sure, one could look at the 4-inch screen from 2 feet away, but then good luck trying to read normal sized text or see regular sized photos. By contrast, I regularly get up within 2-2.5 feet of my 37-inch HDTV when I play shooters, yet because the S-IPS pixel structure is so dense, and image quality is so superb, I cannot perceive the pixels despite the awfully low DPI of a 1080p TV at 37-inches!

Missing that many subpixels leads to low overall detail and image quality. Both the iP4's display and the Motorola Droid/Droid 2's IPS LCD have far superior color reproduction as well, not to mention overall image quality.

Anyone who is willing to sacrifice all of the advantages of an IPS LCD for a crappy pentile matrix screen just because the latter has amazing black levels must be pretty simple minded. It's not like the iP4/Droid have awful blacks either. See the Sony XPeria X10 for atrociously unacceptable blacks.

WHEN Samsung stops fooling around and gives us OLED displays with full RGB matrix, then we can put LCD to rest. The funny thing is that one of the first companies that will offer an RGB OLED screen is probably going to be Apple, supplied by Samsung. Samsung supposedly rejected Apple in regards to its SAMOLED screens, but there is no way that Apple would use a pentile matrix SAMOLED display over the IPS Retina.
 
Even at about a foot away, that awful pentile matrix display is pixelated.
I had a Nexus phone prior to my DroidX and all I can about this assessment is wrong. I had not noticed any pixalation during normal usage. Now I did't get a ruler out and measure the distance between my eyes and phone but I use it as most people do. Anyways It was a great phone, awesome display because of the AMOLED.
 
I'm over on Engadget looking at the CES updates. CES isn't even until tomorrow and 4G superphone after superphone is rolling out of ATT and Verizon. Big screens, dual core processors, 1080p video, 8MP cameras, new OS...it is a full on android assault.

Spec-whore much?

4G = not even rolled out, and iPhone 4 uses HSDPA/HSUPA 3G which gives 4G a run for it's money.

Big screens? The screen of the iPhone is perfectly sized ... it already dominates the front portion of the phone, and larger means a WORSE battery life (battery life is something other phones don't have.

Dual core CPU's would be cool, I do think we'll see these soon. However, do remember that again, you're looking at killing the battery life. WHO needs a dual-core phone? What exactly are you doing, ripping or converting movies?

1080P Video? 720P (1280×720) video can barely be saturated on ANY smartphone, you think we need 19200x1080?

8MP Camera? Did you NOT read any articles when phones with higher MP were released AFTER the iPhone 4? Oh, that's right, despite having less MP, the iPhone 4 came out on top, because picture quality is NOT solely about MP.

Android, in terms of OS, is still way behind iOS. Plus, we've been receiving small updates since the huge release of iOS 4, and you can expect another update before the next huge update of iOS 5.

Are Droids great phones? Yes. Is Android a competitive platform? Yes. But Apple is still beating them to the punches and is basically 6 months "behind".
 
Android, in terms of OS, is still way behind iOS.
How so?

I mean, android has a better notification system, widgets, full multitasking. I think iOs has a better handle on the SDK/development, consistent UI, though its implementation has inhibited other advancements.
 
Apple is aware of the competition but they are not a me too company. Nor do they put too much stock into 'ruling' the market.

No widgets, no notification system, text ring tone the same, small 3.5" screen. If you don't think the iPhone 4 is a bit out of date, your just an Apple sheep no offense. My sister has the iPhone 4, and compared to my Nexus-S, it just feels old and boring, no real customization.

My Brothers and I, are big tech geeks, we build are own custom pc gaming machines, we love to tinker with gadgets, etc...We all bought the iPhone1 when it first came out, and man that phone back in 2007, seemed like it came from the future out of StarTrek, it was bad ass cool. Fast forward to 2011, and now all I see with iPhone's are Moms' and Grandmas, and most the tech geeks I know, moved onto Android or WinMo7. Seriously it is funny, how the iPhone has become the generic smartphone now. I see more non techie people have it now.

The iPhone5 better be a big step forward. I want dual core, a larger screen, widgets, and notification system, if it gets all that, I might go back. But then it will be competing against the EVO-2, and Nexus-3.0 this summer.

Competition is good for the end consumer.

Thank you for telling us what we already knew. Apple caters to the consumer market and not the hardcore geeks.

P.S. iPhone 5 is unlikely to meet your expectations
 
Last edited:
I also love a Nexus S owner with his atrocious pentile matrix screen telling us that the iP4 is yesterday's technology.

The screen on those pentile matrix OLED/SAMOLED crap should be embarrassed to be on 1999 hardware.
A little Wiki info for those wondering why you're going nuts bashing the pentile matrix:

PenTile RGBG layout uses green pixels interleaved with alternating red and blue pixels. The human eye is most sensitive to green, especially for high resolution luminance information. Thus the RG-BG scheme creates a color display with one third fewer subpixels than a traditional RGB-RGB scheme but with the same perceived display resolution.[5][6] This is similar to the Bayer filter commonly used in digital cameras.
 
Looking past just phones for a moment, Apple dominates every market they are in.

The MP3 player market by revenue, brand and marketshare.
The phone market, by revenue and brand.
The tablet market by revenue, brand and marketshare.
The high end PC market, by revenue, brand and marketshare, (note Apple are not in the low end PC market).

Even if we look at the PC market as a whole they still dominate with revenue and brand. Apple made a profit of 14bn in 2010, Dell made a profit of 1.4bn. Just focusing on the Mac, they still beat them in profit whilst selling 1/10 of the computers.

If you dominate every single market you sell your products in, you must be doing something right. Of course Apple do not have a monopoly or a way of stifling competition in any of the markets they are in, therefore they can't pull a Microsoft and sit with their thumbs up their asses for 6 years. They must remain competitive to keep their dominance.

You can't achieve this level of success without either being competitive, or tying people in to your product.

And back to the topic of phones.. It's really quite sickening reading some of the tech spec whores. A smart phone is software, the fact that your phone has a faster processor than mine doesn't negate from it's software. Software will always be the most important part of the puzzle, hardware speed is for the most part, just marketing. We need to move in the direction of optimising software for multiple threads and to behave far more efficiently, not chucking faster hardware at everything. It's marketing propaganda and many of you appear to have bought a front row seat.
 
I don't list the specs because they are all that matters. I list the specs because they sell. When your average consumer walks into a Verizon store they see the little info cards. Typically the bigger the numbers on the card, the "Better" the phone is.

Likewise, most of the VZW sales staff will reference bigger numbers, whether it be memory, processor speed or camera MP to position one phone as better than another.

"The iPhone only has a 5MP camera Mr. Smith, this Droid has 8, clearly better". The average consumer that is looking for a phone doesn't know any better. That is why the specs matter.
 
How so?

I mean, android has a better notification system, widgets, full multitasking. I think iOs has a better handle on the SDK/development, consistent UI, though its implementation has inhibited other advancements.

Full multitasking? Android multitasks the same way iOS does.....it just has more multitasking APIs than iOS.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.