Only difference is, Samsung could actually produce this. We all know Apple will string along its users for years, dishing out small pieces of tech annually. It only took Apple 2 years to figure out LTE. 😀 Maybe in another 2 years, the iPhone will get NFC or an LED Notification light! 🙄
Don't need to worry about software though. Apple just waits for Google to put out the latest version of Android and then copies or steals the ideas. Even then, they tend to screw up the stuff they copy. Hello Maps. Hello Notification Center.
It didn't take Apple 2 years to figure out LTE. It took Qualcomm 2 years to produce power efficient LTE modems. Don't forget Apple (and most Android phone manufacturers) use Qualcomm's LTE modem chip. Apple was smart not to include LTE until it was "ready" both external and internal. LTE wasn't even rolled out to a significant portion of the world until the second half of this year. Even now it's still being rolled out in most parts of the world.
iPhone 4, 4S and 5 all have LED notification lights. It's a feature built into iOS that utilizes the LED flash on the back of the iPhone. Albeit it's not on the front which would make sense but it's certainly not missing. Besides, not every high-end Android smartphone has an LED notification light anyway. It's not a feature that separates high-end from low-end.
As for NFC, I don't think Apple will ever include it in an iPhone. Why? Because of Google's poor implementation of it. I hardly see it used anywhere and this includes major cities like SF where people tend to use the newest and latest technologies. Google is doing a poor job of laying the foundation for NFC, security issues/flaws aside. I'm not even going to get into the NFC security debate.
Actually, it is the other way around. Early versions of Android makes it evident that Google was targeting BlackBerry. It was only shortly after Apple introduced iPhone that Google quickly changed the OS completely to compete with iPhone/iOS. Let's not forget that Project Butter was started for this very reason. There wasn't enough time to change how the UI was drawn efficiently and quickly for touchscreen based input. Android from the beginning targetted a trackball/trackpad and keyboard based input. Only through Project Butter did they finally resolve the underlying system-wide issue of UI and why quad-core Android smartphones with plenty of graphics power still had easily noticeable UI lag. Google Maps existed well before Android or iOS. Hardly relevant. As for notification center, Apple did take the idea of a notification center from Android which had it from Day 1 but they also got ideas from Palm's webOS as to how notifications appear. Things are not as black and white as you make them out to be.
Apple Maps works. Google Maps works. I find Apple Maps' UI to be a little less cluttered and the voice to be a little more clear. Google Maps does have less errors but then again, the recent Australia mishap didn't exclude Google Maps. They had problems in the same areas as Apple Maps did. But they have much less reason to because Google Maps is almost a decade old whereas Apple Maps is still a newborn baby. I find Apple Maps to be just fine. In other countries, I have friends tell me it works well. Same goes for Google Maps.
It would be more fair to say that Google copied more from Apple than Apple from Google. It's also fair to say that both companies get ideas off each other.
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At iOS 7 you'll still be drip-fed features that have existed on Android for some time already, but marketed as "New & Revolutionary".
How do you know? Can you predict the future? Do you work for Google? iOS 7 and Android Key Lime Pie are unknown.
You edited your post. My friend's 3GS doesn't lag that way. My Dad's 4 doesn't. My Mom's 4S doesn't and my 5 doesn't. Weird. I was just reading a very long 10+ page article about an hour ago. I tapped the top to quickly scroll to the top. Smooth as butter. It has been this way since iOS 2 (the earliest one I've used).
The two big iPhone commercials Apple is running right now show off the panorama feature of the camera and, I love this, the GROUNDBREAKING noise cancellation microphone.
Gamechanging indeed.
I just saw a commercial for the Droid Razr HD that showed some girl using Google Translate. Hardly new either. I don't see your point.