The Dark Side...

[Roger Garstang]

Well, my LG Optimus G failed on me and wouldn't keep a connection to the cell network. I got it from Best Buy and they never have any selection of phones that are less than 1-1.5 years old. The iPhone 5 was $150 on a special that just started though, and as much as I hate Apple and their stupid patents I decided to exchange for it and pay the $50 difference just to see what all the fuss was about.

At first my rankings on phones before getting an iPhone was Android being the best, of course, then Win Phone 2nd best, then all the rest being about the same. After using it and the last Lumia 920 though I gotta say Win Phones are horrible. I'd place iPhone 2nd to Android. I miss all my tweaking, but I can always trade to my wife who still has my original Note. The most important thing for me though is work emails and actually making a call...sad to say it actually does both of those and contact management better than Android. Screen is still small, but very clear. My biggest complaint is only like 3 of the apps rotate landscape. All the rest are portrait except a few 3rd party things I downloaded. Most of the ones stuck in portrait are needed to setup the phone too which got really annoying with my big fingers and completely wasted the bigger screen in my opinion.

I really hope someone is able to make something like B4A for iPhones too so the iSheep can see what they are missing in their apps because I'm not really impressed. In the selections so far almost all apps except maybe Twitter (And Email/Phone mentioned above) are 10x better on Android.

 

[thedesolatesoul]

The iPhone 5 does do many good things. The loading times on heavy games is incredibly small. There is no doubt that phone is fast and smooth.
My only problem is the price vs utility point. Given that recently Android phone prices have shot up very close to the iPhone, there is less difference now.
Ofcourse hacking and tweaking the phone is for us geeks.

 

[mc73]

emails??? A company gave a 4s to me as a present. Cold hearted I setup an email account, what a waste of time, comparing to the way I work with my blackberry, but even with my gmail account in an android I use. Haven't tried the 5 yet, I have one in a box which most probably will be the Christmas gift for my girlfriend. In case she's thrilled, I'll finally have a good reason to break. Ok, just kidding.

 

[Roger Garstang]

I used to love Blackberry email too. My only thing with it is to emulate push email it has all your email go through their BES server and push to you and I'd rather have direct access to my email without it going through some 3rd party server.

My Boss and a co-worker complain about their 4s and 3 email as well. I never used either, but from their complaints it does seem like the 5 handles it better. My big thing is IMAP email, and I have yet to see an Android phone do it right 100%. My host has the root set to INBOX and all other folders below it for Sent, Trash, Drafts, etc. Android never can seem to see it right. I had one Android that saw it , but didn't pair folders right. I had another that didn't pair folders, but did see it and allowed long pressing the folders and assigning which they went to. Neither of those let me see all emails though and usually limited to the last 25/50/100 at a time (I have 300-500 emails and need to look back at history for customers and my own receipts, etc). Android also keeps trying to use IMAP Idle which either wastes battery or isn't supported, while the iPhone detected it properly. The iPhone 5 also saw everything and let me setup each folder how I want as well as seeing the last 50-1000 messages.

The contacts were pretty slick too and allowed syncing with Google's Exchange, or to save battery and syncing two things I exported them to VCard and imported to the cloud which manages them nicely.

The iPhone also allows for an SMS Subject line which I hadn't really seen before...I'm guessing it uses the weird MMS format behind the scenes I used to get from iPhone people all the time that was annoying to have to open to read. The boxes become really tiny when enabled though, so I disabled it and Group Messaging (Most likely also the weird MMS format since it was usually a text sent to many people).

Price point was also a big factor for me, and with the only phone worth buying on ATT now being the Note 2 at $300 and most of the rest being $100-$200 the $150 wasn't that bad. A lot of the price increases are due to all the patent craziness too (Mostly Apple, but some of what you pay for Android goes to Microsoft and others as well).

In the end though it is just a phone and come End of Feb I'll probably get an Android (As well as still developing Android for work and personal apps) for my wife's upgrade unless there is nothing good again and she likes the iPhone. I just wish app purchases would transfer.

 

[Roger Garstang]

My "Brief" History of Phones

Aside from the 1st 3 Sprint phones, the HTC Fuze, Nexus S (Failed after a few months and Best Buy could only exchange for another so we got the Note), Pantech Link, Sony Ericson, Samsung Impression, and what is in the Have it- I had most of the rest for a month or less for one reason or another.

At one time I had a 5 Line family plan, so only the Smart Phones were usually mine. Down to 3 Line again now.

 

[latch]

One of my friends gave me an iPhone to develop on. I couldn't imagine having to use it every day.

 

[susu]

Please remember if you want to publish your app to Apple App Store, you need to wait for their approval. It may take up to 2-3 months. I love the way Google Play works. You only wait for 3-4 hours before your apps "live".