iOS to Android/S4 - Am I right to be disappointed?

Having had the phone a week I'm finding some of the quirks liveable but still a little disappointing for such an expensive phone. Nova Launcher was a great recommendation btw, it's much improved the customisation and feel of the phone for me.

Thinking about it objectively, if I'd paid the same price for an iPhone 5 I would have been disappointed to get that few cm of vertical screen space and nothing else. So then I think, why didn't I just stick with the iPhone 4 a little longer, but of course you can say that ad-infinitum all the while you have poorer quality pictures and suffer a slow phone most of the time.

Perhaps the HTC One was the better choice, a lot of reviews not just people here are putting it slightly ahead but I based my opinion on prior knowledge of HTC. I know people who were really disappointed with the old HTC Desire, it was crippled by low internal memory and didn't stand the test of time as well as the iPhone 4, until last week I was still using my 4, but I don't know anyone still with a Desire.

Probably some truth in this for most of us going iOS to Android:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6887456/new-iphones-are-like-new-girlfriends
 
All android phones back then were pretty crap when it came to performance, no company was any better really, the GS 1 for example would have suffered the same problems today. Also it wasn't so much because of the hardware but the software, not just the base of android itself but also the OEM skins that really ruined phones back then, that was when custom ROMs were 'needed'.

Samsung have a far worse history when it came to pretty much all their phones before the GS 1 and the new era of android flagship devices, as soon as devices hit the market, they were dead in terms of support and even worse, the software was so poorly optimised that some developers had to completely rewrite drivers etc. From scratch.

Android itself only reached iOS levels when ICS came and IMO it has now surpassed iOS, only thing left that needs to improve are the apps in terms of updating to the ICS guidelines so we have a unified feel/look.


I still know of a few people who have a desire :o Although performance etc. doesn't bother them.
 
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I've just bought an htc one yesterday upgrading from an iphone 4s. It's the first android phone I've wanted to own in a while (had an htc desire years ago).

tbh when I compared the S4 to One in the shops the S4 felt pretty cheap and Samsungs TouchWiz just wasn't as nice as sense ui. I preferred the One screen and front speakers as well, the screen looks more accurate and is really nice to look at and combined with the front facing stereo speakers it's really good for media and games.

The iphone is still a really solid phone but it's being left behind now in screen's and choice of core apps. Wonder what they will do for the next one.
 
Add another row of icons possibly???

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:p
 
Nexus18 said:
Add another row of icons possibly???
Click to expand...

:p

They're actually doing a full UI refresh so it will be interesting to see how that turns out. For your average person I don't think it really needs it, but I think it needs updating just for the sake of a change. There's plenty they can add to it, but they must ensure they don't start tacking on Android features as it has to remain simple and stable above all else.
 
Yeah, read about that, but will wait till they actually show it of before believing it! :p

Looking forward to seeing what they come up with though, imo it is long overdue, very dated and boring looking now imo, I hope they don't just do a refresh in the colour scheme/style but actually change some stuff around i.e. the homescreens and bring something new to it like widgets rather than just icons.

They can take the best stuff and keep it simple at the same time, main thing that might make android more complicated to use are all the settings especially with the likes of the GS 4/touchwiz.

Even if they took a fair bit from android, it should remain very stable, they only have a hand full of phones to cater for where as with android you have all different kinds of hardware configurations and then network involvements etc. Saying that I have personally found most android phones from the last year or two to be very stable, with my S, I pretty much never have to reboot etc.
 
It's definitely software optimization, heck my Nexus 4 runs stock android smooth as anything. Currently got a custom rom utilizing a GCC 4.9 Linaro optimized build and everything there's virtually no lags or stuttering on it at all.

Samsung need to brush up on getting the software to work with the hardware which they seem poor at. Like when I had the One X, out of the box it was poor, but with software updates HTC managed to get it working like it should. I think HTC devs know how to optimize their software compared to the Samsung devs!

Heck, devs at XDA do a better job at this than Samsung devs.

Oh and new kernel out for the HO which allows the HTC logo to be used as a capacitve button thus removing the 3 menu bar thing I think.

I love stock Android it just works like iOS in most parts, then you have HTC with some excellent features that enhance on this albeit running on an older version of Android, and then Samsung who just throw anything into their UI. But I like TouchWiz it offers some unique features compared to stock. All about preferences end of the day.
 
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