[FanaticOnWheels]

Originally Posted by sheetumanu

Hey Guys,

I have had android experience (read amazing experience) with two devices. My wife has a Samsung Galaxy Ace and I had a Samsung Galaxy 3.

Yes, you read it right, I had a G3 'coz I lost it a while ago and am still missing it a lot. It's time I got myself a new phone and that's how the confusion set in.

Galaxy S2 vs iPhone 4

I am in a utter state of confusion. While Android is more feature packed, open-source, easy to use, iPhone come with a set of limitations I guess.

I was all set to pick S2 until I laid my hands on iPhone 4 at Reliance digital and was sold to it's beauty, precision and elegance.

I need your help in making this decision. If I decide to jump the ship (android to iOS) what should I be ready to sacrifice and what should I be looking forward to?

Looking forward to your valuable inputs...

Let me try to answer your question :

1. iPhone 4 is stable. You should use an iDevice to see what this means.

2. Regarding Flash : This, not only in my opinion, is NOT optimized for mobile devices. An Adobe official himself has said that Flash struggles on phones. It does. I've seen a few devices that support flash, and it's sad. Moreover, most of the popular sites do have an HTML5 version which the mobile phones run seamlessly. Youtube, for instance, has such a version. I have never missed flash on my phone frankly.

3. Bluetooth - Mixed bag. I haven't felt the pinch, since I hardly use it to transfer music/videos etc from other phones. I download them directly on my phone or if there are photos to be transferred, they can be done over the internet as well. There are third party apps that let you do proper bluetooth file transfer (need to jailbreak)

4. App store - this is something you MUST experience. There is an app for just about every need of yours.

5. Camera - The phone has an excellent camera. it beats many Android phone cameras that have 8MP cameras. The autofocus is best experienced on the iPhone. Video recording is seamless. I was blown away by a few pics that I took on the phone. People have told me it looks better than the ones taken on their digital camera!. This is no comparison of course, but the camera is excellent. Just the thing you would want to have in your pocket.

6. Retina Display - See it to believe it. Period.

7. iOS 5 - brings lots of new features to the phone. Some are really great.


It is agreed that Android is more open source and offers more customization. However, will you be using all of those features regularly? See that factor. For instance, I don't really need live wallpapers on my phone.

If you are looking at productivity, I think Apple is the way to go. Anyways, you cannot go wrong with either.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by mav2000

I have used android for more than a year before moving to the iPhone. I don't seem to be missing any features and I am also blown away with the fluidity and stability of the phone. My milestone used to hang at least once a day and tge battery was not too great either

Just curious, what version of Android did you have on your milestone. BTW, I am the reverse of you. I switched to Android after a year of iPhone 3GS.

[mayankk]

Originally Posted by sheetumanu

Hey Guys,

I have had android experience (read amazing experience) with two devices. My wife has a Samsung Galaxy Ace and I had a Samsung Galaxy 3.

Yes, you read it right, I had a G3 'coz I lost it a while ago and am still missing it a lot. It's time I got myself a new phone and that's how the confusion set in.

Galaxy S2 vs iPhone 4

I am in a utter state of confusion. While Android is more feature packed, open-source, easy to use, iPhone come with a set of limitations I guess.

I was all set to pick S2 until I laid my hands on iPhone 4 at Reliance digital and was sold to it's beauty, precision and elegance.

I need your help in making this decision. If I decide to jump the ship (android to iOS) what should I be ready to sacrifice and what should I be looking forward to?

Looking forward to your valuable inputs...

unfortunately, if you are even slightly inclined towards customisation, the iphone doent make sense.
yes, it can be done, but the whole circuitous route to do it is very tedious.

Eg:
I got my wife an iphone4 and a galaxy tab.
she's ok with the iphone, but i saw so many 3rd party apps that one couldnt put on it, while she was happy with the (for her) perceived endlessness of the app store.
i won that one.
but i know soon ill have to upgrade the OS.
and then wait for a jailbreak, and then go through the whole process.
who wants to do that over and over again?
and then the sheer stupidity of converting videos, and then putting them in.
even after a JB, its not the most fun thing to do, in addition to putting in apps.

meanwhile, in tab land, i did not miss the retina display.
"so detailed, you cant even see it".
sorry, i am okay with display so fine that i can see.
appstore, really cool.
drag and drop videos and music, apps.
and the BEST part.
unlimited storage.
i have around 5-6 microsds, and when im out on a trip, or someplace where i need to pass the time watching videos etc, i can just swap the memory.
one usb drive sized case, holding 4 cards, how inconvenient could it be?


i too have decided to switch to android(but from winmo, in my case).
constant upgrades/rom switches from xda.
planning to get an arc or an SE dual-core if and when it comes out.

EDIT: add to that, count in the look you get when you meet someone with a "latest-er" verison of the ophone.
"oh, you still have a 2g/3g/4?i went and got the 5.you should try it, its much better!!"

[akhilesh]

Originally Posted by mayankk

unfortunately, if you are even slightly inclined towards customisation, the iphone doent make sense.
yes, it can be done, but the whole circuitous route to do it is very tedious.

Actually the reverse is true. I found jailbreaking my iPhone to be much easier than rooting my SGS 2.

Originally Posted by mayankk

and then the sheer stupidity of converting videos, and then putting them in.
even after a JB, its not the most fun thing to do, in addition to putting in apps.

Ever heard of VLC player for iPhone. No need of any conversion. Just put the video and it will play. And its FREE.

Originally Posted by mayankk

meanwhile, in tab land, i did not miss the retina display.
"so detailed, you cant even see it".

I am sorry but put the displays side by side and you can see for yourself. Although I agree that iPhone's screen has starting to feel a little to small by today's standards.

Originally Posted by mayankk

and the BEST part.
unlimited storage.
i have around 5-6 microsds, and when im out on a trip, or someplace where i need to pass the time watching videos etc, i can just swap the memory.
one usb drive sized case, holding 4 cards, how inconvenient could it be?

Agreed. I wish iPhone came with expandable memory or Android worked well out of the box just like the iOS. Guess you can't have it all.

Originally Posted by mayankk

EDIT: add to that, count in the look you get when you meet someone with a "latest-er" verison of the ophone.
"oh, you still have a 2g/3g/4?i went and got the 5.you should try it, its much better!!"

Isn't that the case with every phone out there. For example SGS and SGS II. One of the biggest problem with Android is fragmentation.

[mayankk]

Originally Posted by akhilesh

Actually the reverse is true. I found jailbreaking my iPhone to be much easier than rooting my SGS 2.
ok.

Ever heard of VLC player for iPhone. No need of any conversion. Just put the video and it will play. And its FREE.
i think i may have heard of it.
but for a non-JB inclined person, what is the option?


I am sorry but put the displays side by side and you can see for yourself. Although I agree that iPhone's screen has starting to feel a little to small by today's standards.
ok

Agreed. I wish iPhone came with expandable memory or Android worked well out of the box just like the iOS. Guess you can't have it all.



Isn't that the case with every phone out there. For example SGS and SGS II. One of the biggest problem with Android is fragmentation.
yup.agreed.(although this was more of a tongue-in-cheek comment .)
but at least you get the option of choice.
even winmo wasnt so limited in options of devices.
I personally am bored with iphone and its patented design!

its all a matter of choice really.
personally i dont like the defensive strategy, and "my bat,my game!!"attitude of apple.

[akhilesh]

Originally Posted by mayankk

its all a matter of choice really.
personally i dont like the defensive strategy, and "my bat,my game!!"attitude of apple.

Me neither but I don't have a choice. Had a lot of expectation from SGS II but audio quality and build put me off completely so much so that I sold it within a week.

The best bit about iOS is that its behavior is consistent across apps and it works like a machine which saying a lot for a software. With more than 100 apps on my iPhone 3GS and its underpowered 600mhz processor and 'only' 256 MB of RAM, the iOS still runs butter smooth, has never given me out of memory errors and has never freezed upon me. It may not have then openess of Android but I dont miss it because it works out of the box. All the functionalities have been implemented well. Case in point is GPS which gets a lock with in few seconds even without A-GPS. All this is commendable for a smartphone OS.

[sheetumanu]

Originally Posted by mail4ajo

Its easy to just press down and copy/paste in SMS. Faster than manually typing it. If you list out the features iphone doesnt have, it will be a big list. But the user experience and apps is nothing like what I have used before. I will NEVER EVER use a Nokia again unless they revamp the UI.

I too have turned away from the good 'ol Nokia for better reasons.

Originally Posted by FanaticOnWheels

Let me try to answer your question :

1. iPhone 4 is stable. You should use an iDevice to see what this means.

2. Regarding Flash : This, not only in my opinion, is NOT optimized for mobile devices. An Adobe official himself has said that Flash struggles on phones. It does. I've seen a few devices that support flash, and it's sad. Moreover, most of the popular sites do have an HTML5 version which the mobile phones run seamlessly. Youtube, for instance, has such a version. I have never missed flash on my phone frankly.

3. Bluetooth - Mixed bag. I haven't felt the pinch, since I hardly use it to transfer music/videos etc from other phones. I download them directly on my phone or if there are photos to be transferred, they can be done over the internet as well. There are third party apps that let you do proper bluetooth file transfer (need to jailbreak)

4. App store - this is something you MUST experience. There is an app for just about every need of yours.

5. Camera - The phone has an excellent camera. it beats many Android phone cameras that have 8MP cameras. The autofocus is best experienced on the iPhone. Video recording is seamless. I was blown away by a few pics that I took on the phone. People have told me it looks better than the ones taken on their digital camera!. This is no comparison of course, but the camera is excellent. Just the thing you would want to have in your pocket.

6. Retina Display - See it to believe it. Period.

7. iOS 5 - brings lots of new features to the phone. Some are really great.


It is agreed that Android is more open source and offers more customization. However, will you be using all of those features regularly? See that factor. For instance, I don't really need live wallpapers on my phone.

If you are looking at productivity, I think Apple is the way to go. Anyways, you cannot go wrong with either.

Nicely summarized I must say, thanks !! I do have a question around Camera in iPhone; does it offer different modes as in Night, Portrait, Landscape etc? Is it possible to change certain setting like ISO etc?

Originally Posted by akhilesh

Isn't that the case with every phone out there. For example SGS and SGS II. One of the biggest problem with Android is fragmentation.

even the android versions for that matter; while folks are enjoying Gingerbread, my Galaxy Ace is still running Froyo with no hope of upgrade

[FanaticOnWheels]

Originally Posted by sheetumanu

I too have turned away from the good 'ol Nokia for better reasons.



Nicely summarized I must say, thanks !! I do have a question around Camera in iPhone; does it offer different modes as in Night, Portrait, Landscape etc? Is it possible to change certain setting like ISO etc?



even the android versions for that matter; while folks are enjoying Gingerbread, my Galaxy Ace is still running Froyo with no hope of upgrade

The camera does offer portrait and landscape modes based on how you hold the phone. You have a very good LED flash that does a good job in low light conditions. There is another interesting mode called HDR that captures the same photo thrice with different levels of exposure and combines the best of the three shots to give excellent lighting.

Moreover, a test was conducted by symantec whose results were released today. iOS was found to be more secure than android, which was expected.

Head to iFans for the post.

[mayankk]

Originally Posted by sheetumanu

Nicely summarized I must say, thanks !! I do have a question around Camera in iPhone; does it offer different modes as in Night, Portrait, Landscape etc? Is it possible to change certain setting like ISO etc?

as fot this bit.
for settings, youll have to buy an app.
I have supercamera, for under a 100 bucks.
if you go with the free version, youll have one or the other limitation.

[chevelle]

i have an iphone 4 and galaxy S and not the S2. All the points mentioned below are my opinion formed over 8-9 months of experience.

Pros of iphone 4

- great screen
- useful LED flash
- a little bit stable os. see below for problems faced.
- many apps.
- good camera, especially outside.
- great build quality
- good battery life.
- paid $250 for device alone. it better be good.
- resale value is good.

Cons of iphone 4

- i had to replace the phone because of bad pixel. not expected when spending $250 for device alone.
- while using it, a message came up saying the phone is overheated and needs cooling down and it shut down.
- phone hanged thrice. apple store representative told, its because of many apps running simultaneously. was shown to manually kill all apps.
- screen size very small after using 4" of GS.
- bulky compared to SGS.
- apple's restriction of using itunes, this and that.
- mine is a non-jb one. can't play videos w/o converting.
- no drag and drop for audio/video.
- BT problem. i pair it with 3-4 devices. doesn't support all. can't BT pair with my sony laptop.
- copy and paste problem.
- no widgets.
- no notification bar as in android. i know its fixed in iOS 5, but mine is still on 4.3.
- no live wallpaper. i like it.
- no true multi tasking.
- JB is a pain. Unlocking is again a pain.
- GPS doesn't lock faster.
- no tab browsing safari. i think its fixed in iOS 5.
- have faced death grip problem. at same place, i get 4 bars in SGS, i get 1-2 bar in iphone 4.
- glass back, always worried about dropping and breaking it. with a otterbox or any other case, gets super bulky.
- non-replaceable battery.

pros of SGS

- great screen. size and quality.
- seamless BT pairing with all devices.
- GPS locks early in this one.
- live wallpaper, notification bar, widgets a boon.
- awesome multi tasking. while updating apps on one side, i play games, apps get updated by downloading and installed automatically.
- tabbed browsing. option of multiple browsers.
- copy, paste not a problem.
- need no itunes. drag and drop.
- plays my 720p and 1080p videos without any conversion and jitter.
- drag and drop of files from computer.
- slim to hold, doesn't make its presence felt in pocket. iphone 4 does.
- rooting and unlocking is damn easy. Samsung has built in unlock tool. super easy.
- quite reliable till now. no problems of hanging, overheating. touchwood.
- love the built in task manager.
- got it free as a part of black friday deal. no regrets.
- user replaceable battery.
- biggest of all - memory expansion.

cons of SGS

- no LED flash. i seriously wish they provide one. will be really useful as a LED torch.
- average camera. iphone's is a little bit better. but sgs has more features.
- average battery life. iphone does 2 days easily, SGS last 1 and half day max.
- low resale value. but then i am not selling it ever.
- built in speaker not good. but still louder than iphone 4.
- samsung and at&t extremely slow at pushing OS updates.

these are some of the points. i like both devices. but somehow i prefer the SGS more. Awaiting SGS 2. i have used iphone 2G and 3GS before too. I have managed to brick my 3GS and 2G before, so i am not taking more chances with iphone 4.

Sorry for the long post.

[sheetumanu]

Can you save document files on iPhone?

[slicvic]

Originally Posted by sheetumanu

Can you save document files on iPhone?

You would need the iWork app by apple to open word, powerpoint and excel documets. It is available on the appstore for 30 Dollars

[mayankk]

Originally Posted by sheetumanu

Can you save document files on iPhone?

clear out your messagebox, sir.
PMs are bouncing.

[sheetumanu]

Originally Posted by slicvic

You would need the iWork app by apple to open word, powerpoint and excel documets. It is available on the appstore for 30 Dollars

Opening a document is another thing; I am talking about storing a doc; let's say I receive an email on iPhone with an attachment (pdf or office doc). Can I save that attachment on phone memory?

Originally Posted by mayankk

clear out your messagebox, sir.
PMs are bouncing.

Just cleared it bro; sorry about that; please re-send the PM.

[Brocklock]

Anybody know if it is possible to get a US iPhone4 (legally) unlocked in India by Aircel / Airtel? Anybody try anything similar yet?