I am amazed at the number of android fanboys crowding every forum nowadays including macrumors....talk about having huge insecurity.
Anyway, the only apple product i owned (since i now use a galaxy s 2) was the iPhone 4, and i miss it. Here's why:
Battery life:
The S2 has removable battery life. iPhone 4 doesn't. Here is the catch: with exact same usage of 2 hours of phone calls, 1 hour of music and about 1 hr of wifi browsing, 1 hour of movies/shows, the iPhone 4 used to last from 6am in the morning to midnight (I have a long commute so phone gets used a lot).
The S2 barely makes to 4pm. I am not an average user by the way. I have owned several androids before (Desire, Galaxy S, Arc, Nexus S) and i am fully aware of rooting, ROMs and how undervolting etc works.
That is all well and good for idle and standby, but no amount of tweaking could increase my actual screen on time. If stock was dead by 4pm, tweaked, UV'ed and Litening ROM'ed S2 now goes dead by 5pm. Such an annoyance. I am not a fan of carrying extra stuff like chargers and extra batteries; i mean c'mon..but i am forced to. People who swear they get weeks of battery life have exact same "screen on" time as someone who gets bad battery life. Funny how no one ever talks about that. 3G is the absolute killer for android, and LTE will make them worse, or already is for some of them. This was the same with previous android models, and it makes me angry at times that no one cares to address this.
The Screen:
Ok, the screen is big. Good. I give a plus for that as I am a fan of sizable screens for browsing and reading. S2 wins on that. But the resolution could need some help.
"But retina is a gimmick".
Yes and no. It depends on what you do. If you read, put an iPhone 4 side by side any 800x480 4.3inch screen and see what i mean. Seriously. However I was willing to let this go. Still bothers me on daily basis as text is not sharp enough and i get annoyed at times at reading zoomed up text which ends up using the big screen the same way as the smaller sharper one on iPhone.
However, the new phones will have HD screens and this will get rectified. You should wait for those if you read a lot. Other wise, this screen is perfect for watching movies; that is, as long as the battery lets you.
The Bloat:
The S2 comes loaded with literally tens of apps of which I barely use 3-4. This is stupid. And if you have even been to xda, you would know what i mean. The first recommended step after getting every non-Nexus android is to root, then install titanium backup and delete all the bloat. On the other hand the iPhone 4 has 2 apps i counted as bloat: the itunes app and the voice memos. Tucked away in the folder though, i rarely cared as every other app was basic functionality and the phone isn't loaded with useless stuff. Again, if you like to root, you can take care of it. Me, personally i find this a very bad move from the phone makers. Just load what is needed for function and that's it. If i need a game i will download it.
The apps:
Oh yeah. The apps. Ok I know what you are thinking: "this guy is now going to say app store beats android market in app volume and yadda yadda etc".
Actually, my beef is not number of apps. I am not a heavy apps downloader. I could care less if android market had 10000 or 10000000 apps as long as basic needed apps where there.
But the stock apps are largely meh. The browser while smooth and nice, is no where as sleek looking and easy to handle. Big screen helps here, however i never type forum posts using it. Email app needs an overhaul. Half of the time it fails to download full message while the connection is fully working, and sometimes zooming is a pain. So you might need to download an email app. Kind of ironic considering huge stock app numbers and still the need to download an app for basic function.
The keyboard could need some help. I make a lot of mistakes. However, swype is nice. This is another plus for the S2. But the tapping keyboard needs to be better. It is ugly, and the wrong keys are pressed a lot. I downloaded swiftkey X ($4.99, not free because of no amazon market in Canada) and it was somewhat better. Again third-party dev support needed for something that was supposed to be functional as stock.
Overall UI:
I have used 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3. I must say, neither of those versions improve the UI. The Nexus has a cleaned up UI, but not so aesthetic. Touchwiz offers extra goodies but the colored menu and the big icons with funky font was annoying. You can download the launcher pro from market, i tried go and adw and both looked horrible to me. You can customize using widgets and launchers, but then that adds to the extra processing power and considering i don't have a need for either, i just reverted to stock and live with the ugly (IMO) UI for now. It feels clunky, very user unfriendly and the stock menu should be what MIUI offers, which i ended up un-installing due to adding more battery woes and bugs for me.
Misc.
Rooting, ROMs and everything else is nice. But after flashing tons of ROMs on all the phones i had, i ask myself: what do i gain. Do i actually understand how this all works? do i actually get something extra from the modified "ROM"? The answer is, i get customization and minor performance changes, so minor that i barely even notice. I follow the instructions and it is super easy to load up ROMs on samsung compared to an HTC for example, but i never cared to know why. And most people don't. So this begs the question: what exactly makes an android user a technology genius if all i see is people flashing ROMs and then asking for indicators on how to install certain apps etc.
It is a lie. I am in control systems engineering. I fail to see how a bugs ridden platform which allows users to flash ROMs qualifies for being technologically advanced while a working flawlessly code with so much capability gets labeled "dumb". If anything my engineering career has taught me true accomplishment is building systems and machines which might be complex but look user friendly on the outside and are easy to deal with. I fail to see how this is not a technical marvel that an OS does many things without failing to respond to a user's commands at will and does everything elegantly and nicely. This is what engineering is really about.
Sure openness and "freedom" is nice. I switched from IP4 to android four times because every time i though it had evolved and the big screens, the drag and drop of media are cool, and it is. But it comes at a price. Sadly i don't like to pay it and will be replacing the S2 with a new WP7 or perhaps 4S down the road. Or maybe hope that QNX shows up soon enough in phone form or someone is kind enough to pick up Tizen to make it mainstream, although not in near future i guess.
Specs are cool. But what did specs give me? Apart from the large screen everything else was useless. The 2.3 on S2 dual core is same 2.3 on Nexus. Same on arc, same on incredible and so on. Nothing different. No optimization. What am i going to do with them specs? How do they really translate into real life usage? Is all I am supposed to do with an android phone is run a benchmark app 24/7 and gloat about my quadrant score on the new behemoth specced phone that pales in comparison to iOS or WP7 or even Meego and QNX for usage. I have a playbook and recently gave a chance to galaxy tab 10.1. I loved the gesture based UI of playbook and the smooth function, while the tab lagged with nothing on it yet and the UI just looked terrible to me. Playbook is simply amazing
My advice is to try it. Every phone is not for every one. The above are my experiences ofcourse. But I gave fair chance to the OS and concluded it doesn't do it for me. I love the ability to use my media without iTunes but am not willing to pay the extra price. So I am looking for alternatives now. ICS might be different but who knows, i am no fan of the new buttonless format shown in leaked pics. They might have just gone with a gesture based UI instead of the clunky approach.
