An Android users take on the iPhone 4s

Here is your long awaited iPhone 4s review!

Most people here know that I have been with Android since the HTC Evo 4G came out. However, I became sick of Android and the inherent glitchiness and bad business practices by manufactures. I find it completely unacceptable that instead of fixing a poorly made handset (Samsung Charge, Razr maxx) they just churn out another handset and screw over the users who just got the thing (52 days int he razr's case). If apple puts out a bad phone or has a software issue, people will know, and they will fix it.

Hardware: It's heavy, very heavy. Oddly heavy for a phone of its size, but I guess that comes in the territory when you use quality materials. This thing is all glass and metal, no cheap Samsung plastic here. Its well built and solid, but that creates a problem. This phone is a glass covered brick when dropped, and they are very easy to smash. You almost need to have a case (especially if you have an AT&T ip4 :googlyeye and want to make a call). The phone is fast, responsive, and almost never lags. No home screen redrawing issues like on so many android phones. The A5 processor is more than up to the task.

Screen: Its small, but beautiful. The retina display is wonderful, extremely clear. However, it does not have the deep black levels that a Samsung SAMOLED+ screen has. However, its not Pentile like those crap Motorola screens are. It is super clear, but its small. It is smaller than almost every Android phone released now. While this helps battery life, there are times where I would want a bigger screen. It just isn't big enough for GPS navigation, I have trouble reading the directions when mounted on my windshield. Here is a point that I do enjoy about the screen. Something that I have noticed for a long time is that Android phones don't seem to get dark enough. In a dark room, such as a movie theater, the iphone screen will be very dim, appropriate for the situation. Android phones just don't seem to have the ability to dim to that degree, and its annoying.

OS: iOS. This is easily the biggest change for me. Android, in my humble opinion, is a sloppy mess in its 2.x iteration. I have not tried 4.x, but neither have 99% of people. From the very first interaction screen, the lock screen, I like things already. Every music player integrates itself into the lock screen for easy control, even with album art. That is underrated. There is also a fast camera option, but must Android phones have that now.
Deeper into the OS, it is a big change for me to not have widgets. I love widgets. I always had a weather radar, big clock, sports scores, etc on my home screens. iOS does not allow this, at all. Now my home screen is just folders and icons,. I miss widgets, but I understand why they are not on iOS. They are resource hogs and take up a lot of space.
iOS is very stable. I have only had 1 random reboot in a month. That would be a common thing on my Android phones. iOS never seems to lag, ever. This might be due to the way apps are multi-tasked. Nothing can run wild in the background, like on Android. No app will open itself and peg out the CPU at 100% and need to be hunted down.
However, some things do bug me. As everyone knows, iOS is very closed down and simplified. There are sometimes where I don't have the option to customize things, like a separate volume for messages or the fact that I can't turn off the need for a password just to update an app. I want to jailbreak, but I read about too many issues in doing so.
Oh, and apps do crash on iOS. They are no more stable than Android. When apps work, they are usually a better experience than their Android counterparts, but things do crash on iOS.

Camera Video sample (of course, compressed by YouTube)
[video=youtube;p7kQ974byus]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7kQ974byus&hd=1[/video]



Conclusion The big question now is "are you happy with the iPhone?" The answer is, for now, yes. I will eventually go back to Android, of course. However, I will wait until 4.x is a usable OS and manufactures stop churning out garbage devices every 3.2 weeks. The iPhone is a simpler device, and what it does, it does very well. After enduring Verizons LTE outages and many issues where I would have no data at all, a reliable 3G phone is a very appealing thing. Will I wait on line for the next iPhone? Hell no, not in a million years. Will I consider it? Yes.

 

RF reception is typical for a Verizon CDMA only device. It works where it should. All my recent Verizon phones have been LTE devices, and those just flat out suck. Way too many periods where I had no data at all. The iPhone works well when it has 3G, and even manages to chug along with iMessage on 1x. Sometimes the signal meter goes a little whacky though, telling me I have a -46 signal when I know that's impossible, but that happens I guess.

 

Thank you! I got lazy when writing that and should be adding more soon.

He sure is. We also have a snow bengal.

Here are a few pictures of them, all taken on the iPhone

 

For one thing, Verizons 4G LTE simply isn't ready yet. However, every new Verizon Android phone worth having is an LTE phone. I got sick of having data issues and outages, so I wanted to go back to 3G. The only 3G phone worth having on Verizon is the iPhone. Blackberry is a joke and Verizon, for all intensive purposes, does not have Windows Phone.
Android just outgrew itself. There are a few instances where it pissed me off. One example is music playback. The build in Android music player has no response to in-line headphone buttons for song skipping, which I used a lot. An app called PowerAMP would do it, but because of the way Android is built, that app did not always have "focus" of the button. So I would hit it, and random things would start playing music or blast my ear with voice dial. An iOS, it just works.
Integrating apps like Pandora onto the lock screen for easy song skipping is also something Android simply does not do. (hell, WebOS did that since day 1).
As stated above, I also really got sick of Googles (and the Manufactures) inattention to issues their phones ship with. The compass on my Droid Charge and RAZR never worked properly. There is a google forum page with thousands of pages saying the same thing, but no response from Google:
[video=youtube;1wD7IYQYHJ0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wD7IYQYHJ0[/video]

I felt like it was time for a change, and I am staying far away from the bucket of Kool-Aid.

 

It was definitely not a device issue: Issue 16741 - android - compass not working on gingerbread roms - Android - An Open Handset Alliance Project - Google Project Hosting

 

A little more use, a little more observations. There are some things that iOS falls way short on. First and foremost is the built in Maps app (as well as weather).
It, it's awful. These 2 apps are basically in the original form from when the first iPhone was released (maps has minor modifications). Anyone who has used Google Maps on Android knows how advanced it is. 3D buildings, indoor maps, selection of POIs on the map, navigation. iOS does none of that. It drives me nuts that you can't actually select POIs on the map. That makes no sense. You can do it in a round about way of seeing what you want to check out, type in a search for it, and then it comes up. But then you are just left with basic info like phone numbers. No reviews or anything. iOS falls way short here.
And whats up with the weather app? Its absolutely useless.
I'm also having an issue with storage space. I have the 16GB model, and I am nearly 100% out of room. iTunes tells me that the phone is using 1.33GB of memory for "other," but won't tell me what. There is now way to clear this without a full wipe. According to Rene Ritchie of iMore, "Should be much lower, but isn't extraordinarily high (high enough that you want to wipe and start at a new device." Yuck!
On the positive side of things, battery life is still great. It blow away anything I had on Android away.
Also, the BBM rip-off iChat works very well. Android needs their own version.

 

The weather app looks pretty much the same as iOS 1.0. Its data is provided by....Yahoo??? It has an icon that always says 73' and that makes me sad cause its not true. If the calendar icon can show the right date, why cant this show the temp? All the app does it show the "current" temp and 7 day high/low. It doesn't even have a radar page.
As for G+, that is not a chat app, really. iMessage is identical to BBM (except it usually works).

It just bugs me that Maps on iOS is so piss poor, and Apple users accept it and think its great. Its awful!

 

It may be good for group chat, but not for BBM style communication. Lets just all switch back to blackberry.