My thoughts on a few smartphones

AsSiMiLaTeD

So we all know the new iPhone is coming out tomorrow, and me getting one has been a foregone conclusion for a while now. A couple days ago though I started thinking about it, and figured I'd look at other options as well. It's true that I'm integrated into the Apple ecosystem at this point, but really there aren't THAT many things that I need synced to my phone, and the things that I do need synced like contacts and calendars can easily be done through Gmail anyway.

I currently own the iPhone 4S and will be purchasing a 5, but I wanted to compare a couple other non-Apple phones as well to make sure I'm getting the most bang for my cellphone-buying dollar. I honestly cannot get into the Windows phones, they're not bad phones per se, I just don't care for the interface MS is doing with those and Windows 8. I like some of the Android interfaces and so all 3 phones I'm comparing are Android models.

A couple bit of background info worth noting:
- I've been down the Android route before. My first phone was the C(r)aptivate by Samsung, the first Galaxy phone. Things started out ok enough but went sour on me fairly quick, and even to this day Samsung has refused to fix the GPS issues those phones had. I also went through 3 Motorola (h)Atrix phones as well. I was really turned off by the locked bootloader since that defeats the purpose of Android, but ultimately what killed it for me was that each phone had major problems (the first two would randomly reboot and the third has a very yellow tinted display)
- I REALLY hate Samsung for reason outside of their phones (I'll spare you all the rant but suffice it to say they've screwed me on 3 different products within the last 2 years and have further compounded the problem with HORRIBLE customer service)

HOWEVER, I've tried to put each of these aside in an effort to provide an unbiased review. Things have changed quite a bit in the last year or so on Android, and right up front I can tell you that the UI, OS and overall experience on each of these 3 phones is MILES ahead of what I experienced on the two phones I had in 2010 and 2011.

In addition to trying out new phones I also wanted to test the waters with the other networks as well, so here's what I ended up testing with. Even though my iPhone 4S is a year older I did use it as a baseline device (it's nice to have something familiar to compare to):

Samsung Galaxy S3 on Sprint
Droid Razr Maxx on Verizon
HTC One X on AT&T

You will note that obviously the iPhone 5 is not on the list since it hasn't been released yet. Since I've been out of the Android game for a year now I wanted to get these 3 phones a couple days ahead of time and have a chance to compare them directly to each other without the iPhone coming in and mucking things up. Rather than do an in-depth review of each phone that you could just read elsewhere online by someone likely more qualified I'll just provide my thoughts in a few key areas.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Size
The first thing I'll say is that all 3 phones are big, I would say borderline ginormous. Honestly, they're all a bit too large for me. I have smaller hands for a guy, but I would say that of all the adults in American my hands are probably an average size. Compared to the 4S they all feel a little too large, especially to be used comfortably with only one hand. While I can easily slip these in and out of my pocket with one hand, I basically cannot use any of them with one hand. That's not a deal breaker for me, but after a day or so of using each of these I find that it's one of those things that I took for granted.

Design and Build Quality
While it feels the thickest of the 3, the Motorola is my favorite. There is some kind of surface texture on the back that has some grip to it, which I really like alot as on a phone this big you want every possible way to keep it in your hands and that texture on the back really helps. Motorola does a smart thing too where they don't carry the soft touch on to the sides, so that the phone slides into your pocket easily. It's a small thing I know, but those are the things that stand out for me. The HTC One feels very solid as well, the back and sides have a sorta matte plastic surface that feels nice to the touch. It's not as grippy as the back on the Motorola, but isn't slippery either. It looks to be a kind of unibody construction, and as a result has a very solid feel to it. The Samsung feels downright plasticky and cheap. Being an iPhone user, I do like the physical home button on the Samsung but otherwise do not like the build, feel, or design of that phone at all.

Display
All 3 phones have excellent displays, with the Samsung having slightly darker blacks and more vivid colors than the HTC. Unfortunately, both the Samsung and Motorola have Pentile displays, which I do not like. My eyes are very sensitive to sharpness, and the Pentile screens are all just a little off for me - I've never seen a Pentile screen that I really like reading text on. So for media and casual photo viewing I would give the Samsung the slight edge because of the colors, but I do alot of things on my phone that involve text as well and just prefer the HTC screen overall.

UI
This is mostly personal preference. All 3 phones were running ICS, so the base OS and menus are somewhat similar across the 3, but they do each run their own skin on top of the OS. Honestly I'm not a big fan of the MotoBLUR or whatever they're calling it these days. It basically feels today like it did when I had my Atrix, just not quite as smooth as the other two. To me the Droid feels a bit dated in this respect, others have managed to create a smoother UI, time for Moto to catch up. The Samsung Touchwiz and HTC Sense UIs are both very smooth and fluid, I had no hiccups whatsoever with either system. Strictly in terms of the UI I prefer the Sense as I like the ways I can edit and add things to pages better than the Samsung approach, and I like the fact that the HTC has the dedicated recent apps button vs the Samsung and I like the way you dismiss notifications and close apps better on the HTC. Touchwiz is nice though in that it has a more iOS feel to it in places.

Camera
In terms of software the Samsung and HTC are ahead of the Motorola, burst mode on each of those is very nice and the ability to capture stills in a photo is also a plus. The overall camera image quality and software experience on the HTC is my favorite of the bunch. I like the way you invoke the burst photos on the HTC a little better and like the way it automatically picks the best of a group of photos and seems to do a good job with that. The image quality is very similar between the Samsung and HTC, I just prefer the HTC software.

Performance
I alluded to this in the UI section, but the Samsung and HTC feel very closely matched when it comes to performance. The Motorola is clearly outclassed by the other two phones in both the overall snappiness and the benchmarks that I ran. I’m not big on benchmarks and you can find scores elsewhere online, I'm just noting how the phones 'feel'. So the Samsung has twice the RAM but similar processor to the HTC. The RAM is nice in theory and the Samsung does bench a little better than the HTC, but in real world use of running multiple apps on toggling back and forth the two phones felt very similar.

Call Quality and Data Speeds
It may be the network, but of the 3 the Motorola has the best call quality for me by a significant margin. The Samsung and HTC though on AT&T and Motorola on VZW have much faster than the Samsung on Sprint, but that's totally network dependent and not a factor of the phones since they're all LTE. I prefer the cleaner calling and dialing screen on the Samsung over the other two.

Features
This sounds like a vague category and maybe it is, but it's a very important one in this comparison. The Samsung knocks it out of the park when it comes to what I call 'extra' features. I'm not going to list them all, but the Galaxy just has tons of features (Smart Stay, all the stuff you can do on the lock screen, swipe hand to capture screen, lift to head to go from texting to calling, press and rotate screen to enable camera mode, etc). The HTC has a couple things like turning device over to enable speaker phone during a call, but the feature list of the Samsung is far superior, I love all the 'neat' features it has. Some may call these features gimmicky, but I don't think that's fair to the effort and creativity that must have went into designing them.

Overall impressions
So let me set my hatred for Samsung aside for a moment and give my unbiased thoughts. Honestly, overall I prefer the HTC out of the bunch and will be keeping that model as my Android device and to compare to the iPhone 5. But let me caveat that a little and explain a perspective that may sway you to the Samsung instead.

If I were to completely ignore the design, build and how the phones felt in my hand I would actually end up with the Samsung. Even though I mentioned liking the HTC better in several areas, I'm a sucker for 'creature features' and was really pleased with the Samsung in that regard - I was more pleased with the Samsung features over the HTC than I was with HTC gap in the other areas. TONS of cools stuff on the Samsung Galaxy S3.

However, as much as I love features, the thing I'm most picky about and I'm the biggest sucker for is design. I hate how cheap the Samsung feels compared to even the HTC (much less the iPhone 4S that I'm used to). I won't claim that the build quality is bad because I have no empirical evidence of any QC issues with the Samsung. All I can tell you is that it feels cheap and looks cheap, honestly it feels like a big plastic toy. While I'd hesitate to call the HTC a phone with a premium feel, it certainly looks and feels more solid than the Samsung and. I honestly don't know how more people aren't put off by the cheap design by Samsung. Yes the 'innards' of the phone are what matters and how it functions, but I feel like they've taken those parts and stuck them into the absolute cheapest housing they can find and have charged me a premium price for it.

So, there you have it. I know I'm gonna get flogged for this post because the Galaxy is such a popular phone, but those are my thoughts nonetheless.

Drenis

and they all run the least secure OS.

I didn't read your entire post but am adding that I would only buy a Motorola if given the option based on my experiences with the other brands. Regardless of OS, those other brands are dead to me because of a variety of issues and poor satisfaction.

I hope you give a BB10 London a run when they hit in Jan. The iPhone 5 is a bit disappointing to me. I expected more from Apple.

Sherardp

Good read bro.....I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 and like it alot. It's a tad large, but like you I will be comparing it to my new Iphone 5 as well. Not much to dislike about either, both have performed well for me. Which Iphone 5 are you opting for? I'm going for the 64gb model so I can have all my music on it.

badchad

For me, I've determined that my needs are pretty basic: I need text, email, internet, GPS, music, camera etc., but not much else. I've used Android for three years, and in my opinion, the true Android experience comes from skinning it and custom ROMS. I've simply lost interest in seeking out the latest ROM and working out the bugs on them. I also agree, that I need a portable phone, and I don't want to go much bigger than a 4" screen.

The simplicity, and the (purported) battery life are what have me jumping ship to the iphone.

avelanchefan

Sherardp wrote: »

Good read bro.....I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 and like it alot. It's a tad large, but like you I will be comparing it to my new Iphone 5 as well. Not much to dislike about either, both have performed well for me. Which Iphone 5 are you opting for? I'm going for the 64gb model so I can have all my music on it.

How is the battery life on the S3 sherard? I think I am going Samsung over IP5.

Gadabout

badchad wrote: »

.... and the (purported) battery life are what have me jumping ship to the iphone.

Not sure what your using now, but the Galaxy S III has a 2100 mAh battery, Apple is just stating there specs in talk time. Apple has never really competed for the biggest battery and I suspect with them just quoting Talk Time they won't be in the 2000 mAh range.

As far as phone size, I'm waiting for the Galaxy Note 2. I want something that makes it easier to use in the car. The larger the screen the better. If they would make my 7" Galaxy Tab usable as a phone instead of just a tablet I would be using that. That being said, I have never worn belt clips for phones and the cargo pocket or jacket pocket works well for any size phone.

I carry the iPhone 4 for work and would have preferred they went Android for work purposes. The iPhone is simple and easy to use, but I find it limiting. Maybe things have changed with the newer phones but it drives me crazy to have one huge contact list and a favorites list, no groups to sort the large list. I'm also constantly using my personal phone to get files from work, onto my computer at a customer location where I don't have internet access.

Scott

evhudsons

I've had iphone since day one, and now have the samsung galaxy s3. It was like learning apple after years of microsoft so there was a learning curve. First off I couldnt text due to predictive text which is by default on. I turned it off and all is well. the battery drained like a **** and I got worried. did online research and installed a power saver app and a task killer. the battery almost doubled in time at least to where my iphone was and I use the phone as my computer. One thing that also helped a lot was to turn off wifi when it's idle. There's no need to have it on and it was the major culprit of battery drain. What was once a big problem is now a major selling point, the battery can last a long time. In fact, after my tweaks I think the stock battery is just fine, it can go a day and a half without having to charge, and it charges much faster than the apple 4s I had.

I ordered the Mugen 4600a battery from china for a bill including shipping. Now I have three full days of power while I use it constantly, and with high brightness on the display and all. Of course I play music a lot, take pictures, view youtubes, etc. This thing rocks and I doubt iphone 5 will come close. I added memory, it had 32g built in and now I have the 64g mainly for music, photo and video storage. Now that I am more familiar with it, I rooted it and now all kinds of options open up.
With the battery, it takes literally a second to a second and half to easily pull the back off and swap batteries. I don't need it with the longer lasting battery, but sometimes I want the power to die down low so I can get a full charge, it actually lasts too long. I kept the stock battery and keep it full as a swap, so I can go easily three to four days without recharging.

They have cheap batteries with chargers online for about $20, so if you think battery is the issue, it isn't anymore. Your battery memory on the iphone goes to crap, you need a new phone, not so with the android.

I loved my iphone, I still love my wife's iphone, but I love my gs3 much much more. If you are a grandma type user of computers, DON'T get android stick with iphone, but otherwise I have to say for me the gs3 wins on every level, but it's not for everyone.

The large screen helps, and the display is insane.

Syndil

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

However, as much as I love features, the thing I'm most picky about and I'm the biggest sucker for is design. I hate how cheap the Samsung feels compared to even the HTC (much less the iPhone 4S that I'm used to). I won't claim that the build quality is bad because I have no empirical evidence of any QC issues with the Samsung. All I can tell you is that it feels cheap and looks cheap, honestly it feels like a big plastic toy.

This was the main reason my other half went with a HTC Evo 4G LTE (One X on Sprint, basically) instead of the S3. The OS and features are irrelevant if the phone doesn't pass physical inspection. I agree the One X isn't the most solid feeling phone either, but the S3 is just crap. I've held toy phones that feel more solidly built. Then again I find the iPhone just ridiculous with glass with exposed edges on both sides, so... :P

I don't need a lot of features or apps--almost any phone can handle email and calendar, and that's really all I need. For that reason I'm still rocking a Palm Pixi. I've waxed poetic about it before, but seriously, the design of this phone is brilliant. Built-in inductive charging, a rubberized back/battery cover that simultaneous acts as a case for the phone (encompasses the entire phone)...

Cases are a pet peeve of mine BTW. If a phone has a great design, a) it shouldn't need a case in the first place and b) I wouldn't want to cover up the phone anyway. Instead of having great-looking phones, most people have goofy-looking rubber or plastic bricks with a phone somewhere inside. Anyway, going off on a tangent here... The Pixi was done right. RIP Palm.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I agree with you on the case thing, and of course disagree on the design of the iPhone. I love the way the new phone looks and I'd never put a case on it, kinda defeats the premium look and feel of the phone...

I don't have a case on my current 4s either. I've dropped it once down 4 flights of stairs and of course broke the screen, took it to the apple store to get a repair estimate and they replaced it free of charge.

I dropped my blackberry curve several years ago and other than a few scratches it was fine, and it was very light and all plastic construction.

My point is that I don't think the iPhone is any better against a drop, and in fact it's actually going to be worse since plastic should hold up better to drops vs metal and glass. But in 12 years of using cell phones I've had just the two drops, so that's not something that's going to play a big role in my decision.

For me it's not even about the looks so much as the feel in my hand. How it feels in my hand is the second most important factor after stability, and for whatever reason the iPhone is just the perfect fit for me, is very stable, and does what I need it to do.

All that being said, I really like the htc one x, and who know how the new iPhone will feel with the bigger screen...

jbooker82

I have had real good luck with my HTC Thunder Bolt, and will deffinatly give HTC a good look when my contract is up here in 6 months.

Syndil

Well that's the downside to being locked in to such a closed ecosystem. Either take the phone they give you or do without--no choices. Apple love/hate aside, they could at least offer a smaller device or one with a keyboard. They make differently sized laptops, a gazillion different iPods, why only one iPhone? Really doesn't make sense to me.

Anyway almost all of the current crop of phones are too large for my liking. This trend for phones with larger and larger screens is going in exactly the opposite direction of what I prefer. In fact if I had the option, I'd have a Veer instead of a Pixi, but it was only released on AT&T and I am pretty much married to Sprint. The Pixi is tiny by today's standards, but the Veer is a pebble. Look at this thing:



So sad that Palm is no more. And I wasn't even a Palm fan until the Pre and webOS. Such a brief heyday...

AsSiMiLaTeD

That's not an apple thing, that's just the smartphone world. Take apple out of the equation, find me a small or keyboard equipped GOOD android by Samsung or HTC...it doesn't exist...

Syndil

Samsung and HTC make several different models to choose from, some with vertical layouts, some with horizontal slider keyboards, etc. There is only the one model of iPhone. I don't believe in such a thing as one size fits all, whether its clothing or smartphones.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Cool just throw up a link to those phones to help us out. So a small phone or a keyboard phone by Samsung or htc that's a top tier android device.

Syndil

Slow down there. I was trying to be a good boy and not make this an "Apple vs. the world" thread like any thread containing the word "Apple" usually does. I'm just saying, I think it would be good for Apple to offer more than one type of phone. Don't you?

Oh, and Samsung Galaxy Metrix 4G, Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G. And why limit ourselves to just HTC and Samsung? I am partial to Motorola myself. Luckily, Motorola makes Android phones too. Imagine that, a choice of manufacturers as well! There's the Admiral, the Photon Q... If you want small there's the Sony Xperia X10 Mini Pro, the HTC Aria... Small is a lot harder to find among the current trend of "bigger is better" phones, but still, there are choices. Unlike Apple, where you have zero choices. You'll take the one single model they offer or you'll do without. Reminds me of Ford, back in the early days. "You can have any color you like, as long as it's black."

Gadabout

I love my Palm Pre Plus and would still be running that phone, if Palm was still around to make a go of it. I loved the feel of it my hand, it actually felt like a small polished rock. It was really nice to be able to multi-task and call and use the web at the same time. The OS of the Palm phones was done right. I agree RIP Palm

Scott

evhudsons

For a while, I thought "Android" was the competing brand of phone. I got confused when different brands were calling their phones android. Now I know, but it was alien to me the whole thing. Imagine if there were scores of choices of iphones.
I use my phone as a portable computer. Otherwise I would just use the $20 gophones and use my provider chip to carry the account. I used to do that, never dropped a call, never had a problem, battery lasted forever, voices were super clear, and I could as mad as I wanted or sloppy drunk and break the thing and would only be out $20. I would just take the chip out and get another $20 phone.
Ahh,, those were the days. But now you can't mess with my phone and if I break it I will not be so happy about it.
In my opinion, one of the pros of the iphone was the feel of it and the build. But I had scratches, chips etc even with a case, and the cheap feel of the samsung is misleading. I already have been carrying it around with no case at all. It's like the cheap plastic feel of your car bumper, but if things smack it lightly it doesn't scratch or bend or break as easy as metal or glass. Also and I haven't figured this out, my iphone screen was always messy, while the galaxy s3 tends to stay fairly clean and smudge free. It's glass but seems different in that regard. My wife uses my phone too so it's not my hands that are messy or clean. Of course it may be better with the iphone 5, I'm imagining it is.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Syndil I have a response typed up and still may send it via PM, but for the sake of this thread we'll just say I disagree with your assessment of Apple. I'm fine with choice as long as it's done right and you don't give me alot of 'crap' to choose from.

AsSiMiLaTeD

By the way I have the iPhone 5 in hand and will post my thoughts later on today

badchad

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

By the way I have the iPhone 5 in hand and will post my thoughts later on today

Mind sharing how you got it? Did you pre-order or stand in line?

I thought about trying to get one after work 4:00PM, but assumed there's really no sense in even trying, as they're long gone by now.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I'm hesitant to admit it since I know I'll get flack for it, but I stood in line for about an hour this morning. We decided we'd go around 7:00 (they opened at 8:00) and see how long the line was, if it was short enough we'd get one otherwise I'd just come on in to work early. We got there and there were about 30 people ahead of us in line at AT&T.

I got the model I wanted and was out of the store by 8:15. Big kudos to AT&T for having enough people on hand and doing a great job with crowd control, Apple could learn alot from watching how AT&T ran the store this morning, 20 employees checking people out and never more than 25 people at a time in a very large store.

badchad

Had I known stores were opening at 8:00 AM, I would have done the same. I usually roll into work just before 7:30, so I figured I could duck out about 8:45 to hit the nearest Sprint store.

Around 8:30 AM I realized the nearest Sprint store (purported to have inventory) was further than I thought, and had been opened for a while. I doubt any will be there at the end of the work day. Meh, looks like I'll have to wait a couple weeks.

AsSiMiLaTeD

So I've spent the day with the new iPhone and will share some thoughts here and in the iPhone 5 thread:

Setup
The first thing I want to comment on is the process for setting up the phone to begin with. I turn on and activate the phone, and the first screen I'm presented with asks me if I want to set this thing up as a new phone or restore a backup from iCloud. Well I have the 4S doing full backups to iCloud, so decided to just do a restore of that backup vs configuring this phone and installing all apps from scratch. It doesn't get any easier than this, tap a button and the phone restores from that back with all your settings and apps. It keeps EVERYTHING (contacts, pictures, emails, voicemails, documents, settings, it even remembers where all my apps were on the screens which isn't all that helpful now since I have 5 rows but you get the idea). I was expecting Apple's servers to be crashing and burning today given the release, and they may very well be, but I had no issues or hiccups. I assume other guys like Samsung and HTC now also have something similar, the only thing I can say is that it works beautifully on the iOS devices.

Design and Build
We'll start with the size, it's perfect for me. The screen is a little longer but not wider so it still fits in my hand as well as the 4 and 4S before it. It's a very nice looking phone, but more importantly it FEELS great in my hands. The size, weight and balance are perfect to me, and the materials have a very 'premium' feel to them. You can tell that alot of work into the design and build of this phone, they obviously care just as much about how it looks as they do about performance. That being said, it's not going to stand up to drops very well because of the glass. If you're prone to dropping your phone then you'll need a good case for , and IMO that takes away from the feel.

Display
Simply put, this display is gorgeous. It's obviously not the biggest display available, but I'd argue that right now it's the best display on a smartphone. It's very sharp, blacks are black and colors are very accurate. There's not really much else I can say about it, you just have to see it. I want to say it's slightly better than the 4S, but they're very close except for the size.

UI
There are no changes here other than another row of icons and the face that not every app has been updated for the bigger screen yet so some things will run in letterbox mode.

Camera
The camera is also very similar to the 4S. I have not played with the new low light stuff yet and that is supposedly better, but have no direct knowledge of that. Panorama is very cool. There have been apps that have done that for a while, the functionality built into the camera works better and produces better results than any of those that I've used. There is no burst mode like on the Samsung or HTC though, would have liked to see them include that. IMO the iPhone takes better pictures than the other phones I tested, but some of that comes down to color preference, like what always comes up in the Canon vs Nikon debates.

Call quality and data speeds
Call quality is actually a little better than on previous iphones, especially when I'm outside. Data speeds are the same as on the HTC over LTE, just outstanding!

Performance
You can find benchmarks and stuff online, I have not looked into those yet. What I can tell you is that it is FAST. It blows away the 4, and is faster than the 4S although the difference isn't as significant, I can tell you that Geekbench score on my 4S is 650 and on the 5 is 1614, for whatever that's worth.

Features
This is where I'd say the iPhone falls short of some of the competition. Remember all that cool stuff that I mentioned on the Samsung? Yeah the iPhone doesn't have any of that. The 'features' are what lured me over to Android in the first place a couple years ago, and they're still ahead of Apple in that department. If you want all the latest features like all that cool **** Samsung has, then the iPhone is not for you. What ultimately lured me BACK to iPhone though is the stability of the platform. It doesn't do everything, but what it does do it does very well IMO.

Maps
I really like the look of the new maps app, but there are complaints about it online. I did some testing around here and it's working fine, but I will not make a final determination as I just haven't used it enough. I've read that it's incomplete and has some issues. Apple's new to the maps game, hopefully they'll get it all figured out.

The Connector
OK, so I think people are overreacting just a bit on this. Does it suck that people are going to have to buy an adapter? Yes it does. But they've been using the same adapter for 5 years on the iPhone and 10 on the iPod, find me another company who's used the same adapter on all their products for that length of time. The fact is, things change, ESPECIALLY in the realm of technology. The new adapter is much smaller and when you see the iPhone 5 you'll understand why they had to make it that way. People want lighter and thinner, well you're going to have to give up some of that legacy technology to get that. I 'get' the argument that Apple should use the Micro USB like everyone else, the only issue with that is that I don't believe that connection has the capability to control peripheral devices like the Apple connector does. Samsung sells more smartphones than Apple, why aren't there as many accessories and peripheral devices for their phones?

Overall I really love the phone. I'm not going to make the claim that's it's absolutely better than the other options out there like alot of reviewers do, but it's the best smartphone I've ever used, to me.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I wanted to make another comment regarding aesthetics, build and feel of phones...

The argument can easily be made that a phone exists to provide a function and that the form doesn't matter as much so long as it doesn't fall apart in your hands. I 'get' that argument, and would not choose form OVER function unless it's just really close. But with my phone I'm constantly going in and out of pocket with it and constantly handling it and if it doesn't feel right in my hands then it's just not a good experience. I probably have this opinion to a larger degree than most people, so just wanted to point that out.

Syndil

I'm with you on that. Honestly I could make any UI/OS combination work for me. All smartphones have the capability that I need. So for me anyway form definitely takes precedence. Hence my completely oddball choice of OS.

rooftop59

I will say that when I moved from the 4S to an HTC One X the biggest thing I missed was Siri, and the biggest thing I gained over the 4S was the full free GPS. It SUCKED on the captivate (which I had for over a year) but it rocks on this phone. Not need to buy a separate unit, no need to pay for map upgrades. But before the 5, the 4G LTE was a big improvement, and I do prefer the larger screen, although any bigger and it would be too much for me (that's what she said). Other than that the differences are fairly minimal (and the 5 has a bigger screen and runs on 4G LTE so those are mute points) to me personally, accept that I do not use iTunes but of course its on my computer and I have almost no music on my phone since I use Google music (and yes there's an app for that). So to me at this point it becomes a matter of aesthetics, very particular features for power users (which I am not), and to some extent which ecosystem you are tied into, although that is becoming less and less of a factor. So then the biggest factor is cost and resale value, and although the iPhone costs a little bit more it will always sell for more on eBay. I guess warranty and customer service are also factors, and apple seems to be pretty solid on those points. Just my 2 cents...

Syndil

Hmm. I pay full price for my phones (no upgrade discounts/contract extensions for me), and I also tend to keep them much longer than average; say 5 - 7 years as opposed to 1 - 2 years. Resale is not a concern for me at all, as no one wants a phone that old. But if I'm keeping a phone that long it of course need to be built to last. That is why the glass on the iPhone 4S was such a joke to me. I am very good with my phones, but inevitably during the length of time I keep my phones, they will experience one or two bad drops. Looks like Apple learned their lesson and dropped the "glass sandwich" design for the iPhone 5, although it still appears that the front glass has an exposed edge, which would be a deal-breaker for me.

And while I would definitely appreciate the feel of anodized aluminum in my hand, the Pixi still wins in the design department IMO. The back cover/battery cover encapsulates the entire phone, and forms a lip around the front face of the phone rather than allowing it to be exposed. And if I should happen to mark up the rubberized back cover, it is very cheap and easy to replace (despite containing the circuitry for built-in induction charging), making my phone look new again. I doubt replacing the anodized aluminum body of the iPhone 5 will be cheap or easy once that aluminum finish inevitably gets marred--unless of course you put a case on it. See post #9 for my feeling on cases, however.

Disc Jockey

You're not going to go wrong with either phone. I like to tinker with my phone and I like that I can put an SD card in the Samsung for additional storage and that's why I went with the S2. My wife still has a Iphone 3 that she loves and is going strong to this day so you can't argue with the stability and build quality there. You can't say that about the earlier Androids but I think they have caught up in terms of maturity of the OS.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Syndil wrote: »

That is why the glass on the iPhone 4S was such a joke to me. I am very good with my phones, but inevitably during the length of time I keep my phones, they will experience one or two bad drops. Looks like Apple learned their lesson and dropped the "glass sandwich" design for the iPhone 5, although it still appears that the front glass has an exposed edge, which would be a deal-breaker for me.

Check out this article with videos I posted over in the iPhone 5 thread, drop tests on the new phone yield excellent results, even when compared with something like the Galaxy 3 which should in theory hold up better against drops given it's very light plastic construction. In second video the guy has to throw it down to get the screen to crack. Apple love/hate aside, that's pretty damn impressive for a phone with that much glass on it.

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/09/21/iphone-5-vs-samsung-galaxy-s3-drop-tests-show-very-durable-device-and-screen/

AsSiMiLaTeD

Here's another video, this showing the galaxy 3 against the iPhone 4S.

The 4S screen is completely toast but it still works vs the galaxy where the screen is less damaged but the phone no longer works.

http://youtu.be/K7e9ebi41Wc