I definitely want to address a few things that bug me on these forums. This is coming from a tech fanboy who has extensively used Palm, Windows, Android, Blackberry, WebOS, and of course I am a huge fan of Apple. A true open minded person will use whatever he or she likes for their own needs and wants.
Hardware vs. OS
I think people get two things confused and same goes for computers, the manufacture of the phone does not always make the OS. This is a rare and nice case with Apple which is why their products are so successful and less buggy. The fact that YES most android based devices tend to feel plastic, is NOT googol's fault its samsung, htc, and so on. I have owned practically every high end Android device Sprint EVER offered, as well as the other OS's named above. For what they offered at the time I enjoyed them each in their own way until something better came. I personally like the light feel of the plastic Android based devices and to me the lighter the better. But that is what I like until thats all I knew. On the other hand recently having bought an iPhone 4s. I do like the high end feel of the glass and aluminum edges but they both have their pros and cons. The iPhone would definitely damage a lot faster if it drops but looks and feels way nicer in terms of build quality. Most android based phones do tend to feel more plastic but survive a drop way better.
Features:
Smartphones have been around LONG before Apple EVER got in the game as have touchscreens. There are tons of BASIC features for business/every day people that are plenty helpful and useful that were around in the Palm OS days from the late 90s such as having a CALL LOG last up to a year or more for ALL of your incoming/outgoing/missed calls. (how come OS manufacturers all miss the boat on this one?)
The fact that ONE OS comes out with a feature FIRST, and others copy it to enhance their product is NOT a bad thing at all in my eyes, I enjoy it cause it gives me the consumer much better options to chose from. I like that in iOS5 Apple copied Android's format of the drop down notifications, I like that ice cream sandwich took some of iOS5's great simplicity techniques and incorporated them. I like that BBM has been so successful that Apple felt the need to introduce iMessage. What is wrong with learning from your competition? it obviously WORKS is why they copy it or polish it with their own gems.
I feel that Android due to having so many phone manufactures SO FAR has definitely been fragmented and every phone i owned was a totally different android experience some good and some bad. I have always noticed an issue with lag in all the wrong places a phone should never lag, such as in the Phone app lol. They all start out nice and fast and after a few weeks or months of heavy use you can go to dial a call and nothing happens at all it just acts as if you did nothing. This has happened primarily on samsung and Motorola devices. A battery pull helps at times and other times you just have to wait. Depends on what is important to the user. It is pointless to have a huge screen phone with tons of nice features such as HDMI and DLNA, and 16gb built in memory and so on such as my last Galaxy S2 did, when the phone does not work when you want it to work. I would much rather have something work 99% of time without issues than have better features which don't always work. It didn't take me much time at all to adjust to the smaller iPhone screen. I would definitely love a bigger screen but this OS experience has been superb. I do however absolutely hate the following things on iPhone:
Limited Call log, no way to apply groups to your contacts natively without an app, The call screen doesn't show the phone number on a active call for a stored contact, sending contact info to anyone outside the iOS family they never get it cause its in apple format, when you group text/mass text it does not separate the message to each recipient it puts it in one message and when you get a reply the original message is not there, and tons of other Little things which make a big difference in my day to day user experience but these are things that are important to my every day use and to me they have been features that have been around since early 2000's so it boggles my mind that manufactures drag their feet on them.
Of course there are tons of amazing features from the ease of use, the transitions, the folders, the restore from backup or iCloud where it literally puts your ENTIRE phone from call log to text to numbers to folders all in the same place is PRICELESS, the cloud services are great altogether actually and so much more.
Truth be told NOTHING is 100% so find what works the BEST for you depending on WHAT you actually use it for. I am a power user and I cannot say I have ever found a phone to date that lasts as long as I would want it. I can never make it past half a day with ANY phone regardless of brand or OS. Cause I probably send 7,000 text a month, 10,000 mins a month of calls.
Without a world of choices, it would be totally boring if there was only 1 of everything in the marketplace cause it would never urge companies to be better or do better. As far as these forums to each other their own and what they use it for. Hope this helped.
Hardware vs. OS
I think people get two things confused and same goes for computers, the manufacture of the phone does not always make the OS. This is a rare and nice case with Apple which is why their products are so successful and less buggy. The fact that YES most android based devices tend to feel plastic, is NOT googol's fault its samsung, htc, and so on. I have owned practically every high end Android device Sprint EVER offered, as well as the other OS's named above. For what they offered at the time I enjoyed them each in their own way until something better came. I personally like the light feel of the plastic Android based devices and to me the lighter the better. But that is what I like until thats all I knew. On the other hand recently having bought an iPhone 4s. I do like the high end feel of the glass and aluminum edges but they both have their pros and cons. The iPhone would definitely damage a lot faster if it drops but looks and feels way nicer in terms of build quality. Most android based phones do tend to feel more plastic but survive a drop way better.
Features:
Smartphones have been around LONG before Apple EVER got in the game as have touchscreens. There are tons of BASIC features for business/every day people that are plenty helpful and useful that were around in the Palm OS days from the late 90s such as having a CALL LOG last up to a year or more for ALL of your incoming/outgoing/missed calls. (how come OS manufacturers all miss the boat on this one?)
The fact that ONE OS comes out with a feature FIRST, and others copy it to enhance their product is NOT a bad thing at all in my eyes, I enjoy it cause it gives me the consumer much better options to chose from. I like that in iOS5 Apple copied Android's format of the drop down notifications, I like that ice cream sandwich took some of iOS5's great simplicity techniques and incorporated them. I like that BBM has been so successful that Apple felt the need to introduce iMessage. What is wrong with learning from your competition? it obviously WORKS is why they copy it or polish it with their own gems.
I feel that Android due to having so many phone manufactures SO FAR has definitely been fragmented and every phone i owned was a totally different android experience some good and some bad. I have always noticed an issue with lag in all the wrong places a phone should never lag, such as in the Phone app lol. They all start out nice and fast and after a few weeks or months of heavy use you can go to dial a call and nothing happens at all it just acts as if you did nothing. This has happened primarily on samsung and Motorola devices. A battery pull helps at times and other times you just have to wait. Depends on what is important to the user. It is pointless to have a huge screen phone with tons of nice features such as HDMI and DLNA, and 16gb built in memory and so on such as my last Galaxy S2 did, when the phone does not work when you want it to work. I would much rather have something work 99% of time without issues than have better features which don't always work. It didn't take me much time at all to adjust to the smaller iPhone screen. I would definitely love a bigger screen but this OS experience has been superb. I do however absolutely hate the following things on iPhone:
Limited Call log, no way to apply groups to your contacts natively without an app, The call screen doesn't show the phone number on a active call for a stored contact, sending contact info to anyone outside the iOS family they never get it cause its in apple format, when you group text/mass text it does not separate the message to each recipient it puts it in one message and when you get a reply the original message is not there, and tons of other Little things which make a big difference in my day to day user experience but these are things that are important to my every day use and to me they have been features that have been around since early 2000's so it boggles my mind that manufactures drag their feet on them.
Of course there are tons of amazing features from the ease of use, the transitions, the folders, the restore from backup or iCloud where it literally puts your ENTIRE phone from call log to text to numbers to folders all in the same place is PRICELESS, the cloud services are great altogether actually and so much more.
Truth be told NOTHING is 100% so find what works the BEST for you depending on WHAT you actually use it for. I am a power user and I cannot say I have ever found a phone to date that lasts as long as I would want it. I can never make it past half a day with ANY phone regardless of brand or OS. Cause I probably send 7,000 text a month, 10,000 mins a month of calls.
Without a world of choices, it would be totally boring if there was only 1 of everything in the marketplace cause it would never urge companies to be better or do better. As far as these forums to each other their own and what they use it for. Hope this helped.
