VeeshanVault

Is the Android market and the platform itself mature enough to match the seeming effortlessness of the iPhone? Sprint is hyping their allegedly truly unlimited data, and I have been generally very happy with their service for going on 8 years now. But I do not want to have another device that I have to constantly mess with like a PC.

I know you said no iPhone, but Sprint is rumored to get the iPhone next month and keep it's unlimited data as an ace in the hole vs AT&T and Vorizon. If that is true, I'll get an iPhone with Sprint.

I've had an LG Vortex for about a year, does what it's supposed to do, no work required, no complaints at all with the platform.

Get used to shorter battery life no matter what you get, iPhone included. Turning off BT, WiFi and GPS when you aren't using them helps, leaving GPS off makes a big difference as the the vendor ware wants to talk to it when it's up.

I use it as a PDA, GPS, ebook reader, light email & surfing, occasional use as an mp3 player and sometimes I even talk & send texts on it.

The OS isn't as polished as the iPhone, but it does the job well enough for a phone. Unless you're downloading and trying everything available like a 3 year old on Mountain Dew you'll likely not run across anything that doesn't work due to OS fragmentation.

I've got 4 market apps I run regularly besides the canned ones and another that some folks at work put out. Android may not be able to claim as many titles as Apple but who cares as 99.9% of them are useless crap on both sides.

Haven't even rooted it for a couple very good reasons, won't start off on that tangent.

For hassle free, iPhone is the only way to go. A bazillion people using the same phone (unlike the opposite Android with a bazillion different phones) makes for a lot of help and support for a single phone/platform.

As Fair said, it looks like Sprint gets the iPhone 5 in October (prob 4" screen, monster CPU, iOS 5 which solved the message center issues, etc) If you have Sprint (man I hated them when I was with them), you can stick with them and get the best hardware/easiest to use phone/most support/stable combination by grabbing the iPhone 5.

LOL, figures the apple cock chugging fanboys chirp in on a thread that specifically NOT about the iphone.

Seriously though.
Android, iphone, blackberry or windows phone 7... all offer a pretty hassle free experience

Sometimes it is just better to not go apple. At a certain point, they all sport faux-hawks and apple stickers on their hybrids. Yep, Apple fans annoy folks enough to buy other products.

miir wrote:Android, iphone, blackberry or windows phone 7... all offer a pretty hassle free experience

WinPhone7 is a decent option as well, couple folks at work have and like them, prettier than Android but a bit more limited. Again, to me it's primarily a phone (not a lifestyle statement) so....

BB is nice but seems to be more aimed at someone who wants to use it for business-type stuff.

miir wrote:LOL, figures the apple cock chugging fanboys chirp in on a thread that specifically NOT about the iphone.

Judging from the original post, he likes iphones and wants an iphone-like experience but is going to stick with Sprint. I assumed he was unaware that Sprint would be getting the iphone 5 in about a month's time. Did I read it wrong, or are you just being your usual asshole self? I guess that is for Masteen to decide. I'm not going to skip out contributing to someone's questions just because you are a cock about pretty much goddamn everything these days.

Maybe he was looking for opinions from people who use a smartphone other than the iphone.

I've tested/evaluated pretty much every smartphone that's out there (Samsung Epic 4g last week) so I have a pretty good idea on how 'hassle free' current phones are... unlike some people who seem to think that the iphone is the one and only choice for smartphones.


And my comment was really directed at winnow... not sure why you got your panties in a wad.

Besides choosing to use the best smart phone out there, I don't have any stickers or bother anyone at stores or in public places about what phone they should use.

It's possible to use the best phone and not bother people about it. (except people on this forum, which was flame born!)

My only real complaint with my VW diesel was dealing with the "squeeeee!" of the fanboys. Apple users are 10x worse, right up there with 12 year girls with new Bieber album and 30- and 40- something insta-bikers with a shiny new Harley and matching accessories who think sons of anarchy is the coolest show ever made.

It's just a phone.

Flame-born. Like it!

---

As for phones, I am pleased with the iPop4, but will explore other options next summer when my contract rolls. I am grandfathered with AT&T so data is not an issue. Hoping Android makes some leaps to further promote competition and price lowering.

Wow, I hadn't heard that Sprint would be getting the iPhone. I'm definitely gonna wait to see how that shakes out.

I already have a crackbrrry from work, so the apps I imagine I'll be using would be things like the GPS-to-gmaps, urban spoon, fantasy football, maybe a market app with alerts set to foreign indices to fool the cougars at the martini bar into thinking I have money , stuff like that.

I have an HTC Evo running Cyanogenmod 7 and I like it. The iPhone/iOS is a nice platform, but I like being able to make changes to my phone if I feel like it, so I prefer Android since it is open source.

The carriers don't like you doing stuff to the phones, but I waited until mine was out of warranty before I started tinkering with it.

No problems with Sprint here. Much better coverage than AT&T around my house, which is where I use it most of the time.

Xouqoa wrote:No problems with Sprint here. Much better coverage than AT&T around my house, which is where I use it most of the time.

Carrier quality can vary a lot market by market, a blanket statement that x sucks doesn't usually hold true. Unless you're speaking of AT&T's data network of course.

I've been rockin a Windows Phone for the last few months now and I'm loving it. I put on the RTM leak of Mango and it's a fantastic phone. I have a feeling that now that there's multi-tasking, a lot of the mobile devs are going to start targetting the phone as well. (alongside iOS and Android that is)

The thing that's kept me from jumping onto the iPhone bandwagon was the fact that ATT (and now Verizon) suck balls. Dropped calls out the ass, sporadic coverage, SLOW. If Sprint gets it, I'll be the first dude in line.

The shit that Animal and Zoocow are talking about are exactly what I DON'T want to have to do to get acceptable performance. I have a PC gaming rig and an IT jerb at a company that doesn't replace it's tech infrastructure until it's broken. That's all the troubleshooting and tinkering I care to do.

masteen wrote:The thing that's kept me from jumping onto the iPhone bandwagon was the fact that ATT (and now Verizon) suck balls. Dropped calls out the ass, sporadic coverage, SLOW. If Sprint gets it, I'll be the first dude in line.

The shit that Animal and Zoocow are talking about are exactly what I DON'T want to have to do to get acceptable performance. I have a PC gaming rig and an IT jerb at a company that doesn't replace it's tech infrastructure until it's broken. That's all the troubleshooting and tinkering I care to do.

AT&T has dumped a lot of money into their network, so has Verizon. Would expect the crappy areas to get better at least over time.
Part of the problem is the design of the iPhone itself, developers who don't understand the mobile environment are another. With the Android crowd it's largely just raw bandwidth & retransmissions. Sprint will be just as negatively impacted by the iPhone as AT&T & Vz have been. Vz it's been very localized from what I've read, I haven't seen any problems locally.

Sprint could send a super model to suck my dick twice daily and give me a free iPhone 5 with unlimited b/w and I still wouldn't use their company. Worst experience ever.

As for droids, my only complaint (as experienced in use of android apps on my rooted Nook Color) is the seeming lack of standards. Some apps work on some devices, some don't work on others, etc. Giving credit where due, at least with all apps on the most popular phone you know they'll work. Android seems like the wild west still, though what little reading I've done with a fair lack of interest, seems to indicate it's getting a bit more strict.

These days I'm more interested in having a good phone versus having a good multimedia device. Then again I think I'm suffering from tech burnout and just don't really care these days.

It still makes me laugh that national and international companies can and do have such regional differences. Sprint is far and away the better carrier in S. FL, especially the keys.

Over in Europe, I had my phone set for strict anti-roaming, and I don't think it worked at all outside of London and Oxford. Meanwhile, my buddy's ATT phone had good signal pretty much everywhere.

masteen wrote:It still makes me laugh that national and international companies can and do have such regional differences. Sprint is far and away the better carrier in S. FL, especially the keys.

When we both worked in St Pete all Sprint had was high(er) frequency PCS bandwidth in the Tampa area, given our geography it's about the worst thing you can have here except in the urban areas, or build a lot of towers, which they didn't have at the time.

The only reason I put Mango on it myself casue I'm curious/impatient. I could've easily waited another few week till Microsoft releases it officially. All the phones currently on the market will be getting the update.

Updating to Mango was less hassle than a typical ios update.
Android updates are pretty straightforward too.

I'm assuming you meant NoDo but yeah.. it was very painless.

Phone popped up a message that an update was available. Asked that I plug it into a PC. Zune kicked up and downloaded/applied the update to the phone.

I'm assuming you meant NoDo but yeah.. it was very painless.

Phone popped up a message that an update was available. Asked that I plug it into a PC. Zune kicked up and downloaded/applied the update to the phone.

miir wrote:Updating to Mango was less hassle than a typical ios update.
Android updates are pretty straightforward too.

A typical iOS update consists of plugging in your phone and clicking the mouse button once. And as of this fall you won't even have to do the plug in part.

Android updates were easy to do, that is assuming the phone you have is able to get the update. Then you have to take into account the company that made your phone holding you up on getting the update so they can make any necessary changes to their shit they build in, and same for your service provider.

Playing devils advocate to winnow is one thing, but claiming ease of use for a android device is even in the same neighborhood as the iPhone is straight crazy talk. I had 4 different android phones before the iPhone and they were all crap in comparison.

I haven't used any of the windows phones much, but I've watched friends messing with theirs and from what I've seen the os looks better than android overall.

I've been testing iOS 5 for months now with a developer account.

The cloud sync'ing of your apps and other data is pretty bad ass. Shit's just there...everywhere. Starting with IOS 5, the OS updates will be delta releases so you can just wirelessly update with small patches. I buy an app using iTunes and "poof" it's on my iPhone and iPad in seconds. Same for if I buy an App using one of my devices. It wirelessly is available to all my devices within minutes. I don't have to do shit which is what you want in portable devices. The background stuff going on with iOS 5 makes life even easier than it already was for iOS users.

The message center kicks ass. I know that part was playing catch up to Android but it surpassed what Android offers. As has been the case int he past, Apple sometimes takes awhile to add certain features but when it does, it's the best implementation.

I'm also looking forward to iMessage or whatever the hell it's called. I hate paying for SMS.(biggest rip off ever) iMessage will allow IOS to IOS devices to us SMS for free, it's integrated right into the SMS app which will automatically check if you're sending to another IOS device and use it's own service if so. I don't communicate with anyone using text that doesn't have an iPhone so it's great for me.

iOS 5 is a major update to the OS. Add a nice 4" screen, even faster processor, improved camera from already great camera, and a basket of fruit and you've got your best choice for your next phone coming up in less than a month.

Winnow wrote:...I buy an app using iTunes and "poof" it's on my iPhone and iPad in seconds. Same for if I buy an App using one of my devices. It wirelessly is available to all my devices within minutes. I don't have to do shit which is what you want in portable devices. The background stuff going on with iOS 5 makes life even easier than it already was for iOS users.

Can't see anything going wrong with that. Wonder when they'll manage to get the Chinese hackers who've been ripping off their customers for the last 18 months out of iTunes store? You can get powned from all you're devices at once now, that's an improvement.

Winnow wrote:I don't communicate with anyone using text that doesn't have an iPhone so it's great for me.

That made me laugh

Winnow wrote:iOS 5 is a major update to the OS. Add a nice 4" screen, even faster processor, improved camera from already great camera, and a basket of fruit and you've got your best choice for your next phone coming up in less than a month.

But a phone nonetheless, not a defining part of my self image.

Aabidano wrote:But a phone nonetheless, not a defining part of my self image.

Yet only a phone allows you to define the image of others.

Fairweather Pure wrote:

Aabidano wrote:But a phone nonetheless, not a defining part of my self image.

Yet only a phone allows you to define the image of others.

Only in some people's case, most folks not so much. I'd suspect to most owners it is just a phone but it the vocal minority make the rest look douchey

And it's an easy are to spin people up that take it too seriously.

4" phone? Booring!!
Bring on the 4.7

http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-titan/index.page

Animalor wrote:4" phone? Booring!!
Bring on the 4.7

http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-titan/index.page

4.7" and probably lower res than the 3.5" iPhone screen!

That's the one thing that I thought would bother me about the iPhone. However after using it and seeing some of the htc phones, they're just too bulky for a cell phone. I personally wouldn't want a screen much bigger than I have, if I need a bigger screen for something, it's something I'd rather do on one of my many other devices anyhow.

masteen wrote:Wow, I hadn't heard that Sprint would be getting the iPhone. I'm definitely gonna wait to see how that shakes out.

I already have a crackbrrry from work, so the apps I imagine I'll be using would be things like the GPS-to-gmaps, urban spoon, fantasy football, maybe a market app with alerts set to foreign indices to fool the cougars at the martini bar into thinking I have money , stuff like that.

More on Sprint:

The evidence continues to pile up that Sprint will be the next carrier to offer the iPhone in the U.S. Unfortunately some of the provider's better customer service policies are getting the ax because of it.

Sprint announced on its blog today that they would be discontinuing their Premier upgrade plan. The plan allowed customers to upgrade their phones every year. In the post Sprint played its best PR card in trying to justify its decision to nix the program.

This isn't the only change Sprint has made to some common customer service courtesies it extends to subscribers. They've already increased the early-termination fee from $200 to $350 and cut their return-policy in more than half from 30 days to 14 days. Thankfully Sprint still plans to offer unlimited data plans and will continue to practice its policy of not throttling bandwidth for top tier users. These policy changes might not be deal breakers for many consumers, but they do align with what the other iPhone carriers offer.

Hopefully Sprint will maintain its unlimited data plan independence as well as their non-existent bandwidth throttling policy. Someone has to look out for the consumer, and in a telecom world where picking a provider is akin to picking which devil to dance with, it'd be unfortunate if Sprint turns itself into the ugliest of the bunch.

I just pre-ordered a new Not-iPhone recently in the form of a Nokia Lumia 900 from Rogers up here in Canada.

http://www.nokia.com/us-en/products/phone/lumia900/

I still love Windows Phone and Nokia is putting together great hardware and they're including a great suite of Nokia specific software. Nokia is also supporting it's Windows Phone hardware a lot better than the LG's, Samsungs and HTC's.

I was going to get the 800 originally but I really can't stand anything with a screen smaller than at least 4" now (The 900 is a 4.3" screen). LTE connection and the front facing camera are mostly icing on the cake.

If you have a chance to see a live demo unit of the 800, the blacks that Nokia is getting on those is unreal. You've hard-pressed when looking straight on it to make out where the screen ends and the bezel starts.

Here's a nice shot from Pocket-Lint.com of the 800 and the 900 side by side taken at CES.

A friend of mine has an iPhone for work, so he bought a Windows phone for his personal use. He really likes his Windows phone. No complaints from him at all. I hate the fact that he can play games on his Windows phone and get achievements for his XBL account. Fucking bullshit.

The unfortunate thing is that you pay a bit of a premium for those cheevos. 2.99 being the base price for Angry Birds. And we don't get all the levels available in iOS either. There are some great games though. The quality of the XBL and non-XBL titles has been increasing quite a bit recently.

My wife switched from iphone to a Lumia 800 a few weeks ago and she really likes it... except for the fact that everyone who sees it wants to ask her a million questions about it.

The Nokia Lumia 900 looks sweet. The only thing I don't like about the Window 7/8 is that on phones, the icons don't use the whole screen. I hate that black space on the right side. Seems like a waste of space when using smaller display devices. I don't see the reason for it. Either bigger icons or three rows. Symmetry feels off when I look at it.

I haven't played around with a windows 7 phone yet but I've been impressed with Windows 8 on a PC. Microsoft seems to have their shit together a little more than Google.

I've been due for an upgrade for a couple of months now but have not been impresed with much out there in the way of android. They are fast LTE phones but suck a shitton of juice. I have a droid 1 and it's odd being that it's older but my screen looks better than most and the thing is built like a tank. I just don't understand why any phone would have a pentile display as it really makes the screen look like a bag of pixilated shit, regardless of resolution. If it wasn't for the pathetic amount of app space I would not even consider being in the martket right now. As it turns out, Verizon only has one old HTC windows phone which is a shame as I would definitely consider it.
Assuming I continue to hold out until version 8 phones come, I'm hoping Verizon finally works with MS to get a couple of competitive models.

Ever since the KIN debacle, Verizon's been pretty cold about Microsoft in general as far as I've been reading

I fucking hate release dates and staged events for the purpose of marketing.

No phone yet. =/

Animalor wrote:I fucking hate release dates and staged events for the purpose of marketing.

No phone yet. =/

Ok, here's one of the things I like about Apple that they've done the last 3ish years I've been buying and paying attention to their stuff:

"Here's our new shit. Btw, you can preorder it at the end of the day and it will be in your hands in 2 weeks. Oh yeah, here's a cool little program that will blow your mind (Garage Band last year, iPhoto this year), you can buy this shit right now."

I wish EVERYONE did this. Waiting months or even years for announced products and such is annoying as fuck.

Well the phone is coming out on the 8th for AT&T and the entry period for the contest Rogers is running for pre-orders of the Lumia 900 ends on April 10th. Here's to hoping that I will have the thing by then.

Here's a rundown of everything that's been happening with the Lumia 900 recently in a few posts.

First the reviews.
http://gdgt.com/nokia/lumia/900/

The reviews are mostly good with some mixed opinions.

Highs
- Fantastic Hardware
- Great Price
- Beautiful Screen
- LTE is amazing

Mixed
- Camera performance. Not as good as iOS, on part or better than a lot of Android phones.

Low
- Availability of iOS and Android favorite apps on the platform
- Lower screen resolution than the latest android devices (Windows Phone 7.5 has a max resolution of 800x480)

I've had the phone for a few days now and I agree with most of the points. The apps situation isn't a big problem for me. The platform has the apps that I use so I'm happy. The screen is absolutely glorious, form factor is really comfortable and the LTE is damn fast. (I've tested 11Mbps down and 6 up). I also have internet tethering on it.

Looks like a solid phone from the stats.

Wait, isn't this the same phone that $100 rebates were being given for due to issues with it not even being able to connect to networks?

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/a ... faces.html

That was the second part that I was going to post but work interrupted earlier.

They discovered a memory leak in what people suspect are the Nokia drivers. There's a software update coming next Monday (Apr 16th) to resolve that says Nokia.

To make amends for this, You can either go to your local store and immediately replace your phone(apparently not all phones have this issue) or wait and get the credit.
Everyone who's bought the Lumia 900 will get the credit whether they've been affected or not.

The day after they made the announcement in the US, Nokia/Rogers made the same announcement for Canada.

I, personally, haven't been affected by this issue.

For anyone interested, the update for the 900 went live for AT&T customers last night, a whole 3 days early.

I caved and picked up a 900 yesterday.