Ten... Androids to outshine the iPhone 4S Yes folks, it’s that time again when across the land otherwise rational and even sensible adults feel the need to whip themselves into a frenzy over the pending arrival of the latest iPhone. To be honest, I find the whole charade rather entertaining and have taken to sauntering over to the Trafford Centre come launch day, …
"To be honest, I find the whole charade rather entertaining and have taken to sauntering over to the Trafford Centre come launch day, grabbing a cup of coffee and a sticky bun, pulling up a chair and making fun of the twerps lined up outside the Apple Store opposite."
Queuing is a bit sad but going out of your way to watch people queuing - that's a whole new level.
I think we need an official term for this kind of silly writing[1]. Just as anyone who dates to contemplate buying an Apple product for any reason is labelled a "Fanboy", or more likely "Fanboi" by the terminally silly, we need a word for the people who hate all things Apple. Other than the obvious more vulgar ones, of course...
[1] Not to mention the lack of proofreading.
Buying an ipad on the first day is sad but being the first in the queue and then videoing the blue tshirts as they funnel your credit card to the tills is a whole new level. Fortunately though, it means we can get our fix of braindead consumerist sheeple without having to leave the house.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5ZAnPDHLY4
Nope, that one doesn´t work... Personally I dislike Google just as much as Apple (and their respective fanbases), and I know I'm far from being the only person who thinks that way.
I've found that, in many ways, the most raging Fanbois and Fandroids (the extreme ones) can be compared to religious extremists and annoying, self-righteous atheists, respectively.
Without any other sane options (WebOS is dead and Win Phone is Win Phone) I'll have to keep my aging Nokia alive well over its expiration date...
Be honest: A huge chunk of the people lined up to buy an iPhone would never consider buying any other phone, even if it were better both technically and aesthetically at the same price (which several, though by no means all, of the phones on this list are). It's that kind of blind devotion to a product that causes people to sneer at Apple cultists.
Don't get me wrong: some people have looked at several options and decided they like the iPhone best out of the ones they tried. I question thier judgement (mainly because I find IOS to be a pain in the arse to use compared to Android), but I don't put them in the same category as fanbois. But when you refuse to even look at other options because 'all the cool kids have this one', as many iPhone owners do, I am going to think less of you and I think I'm right to do so in that case.
Actually, I choose to stay with the iOS system, because the OS updates happen on the day they are released, it runs iOS5 which is the most developed for OS and all my apps just work, without the need to root the device, which is more hassle these days than I'm willing to do. None of the phones in the article tempt me for these reasons, and you make no mention of battery life, Camera quality or screen pixel density, (not to mention the giant leap forward for AI, Siri) none of which the iPhone 4S have zero competition in. The A5 CPU in the 4S eats the competition for breakfast, which will probably change by the time the iPhone5 is released, but by then I'll be ready to upgrade. Whilst the iPhone 4S is an evolution of the iPhone 4, considering it is running twice as fast, with 7 times as fast graphics (and iOS actually has games which will make use of this last point, unlike Android) it's a pretty big upgrade.
The only Android phone I could consider is the Nexus S, but considering the relative power of the iPhone 4S compared to it coupled with the poor battery life and display and the fact that the NFC doesn't even work in the UK, I'll pass thanks. Out of all the phones you selected to review, only the Experia Arc holds a candle to the design of the iPhone4 (they seem to have thought about design at least) but it has some rubbish overlay interface and you can't even update it!!
It's humorous writing. The guy doesn't actually spend his lunchtimes as described. You're supposed to chuckle at the image, in the same way as you're supposed to chuckle at the witty similes ("a bit like saying you’d rather date Beyoncé than Rihanna because she has the slightly better singing voice", "crisper than freshly picked lettuce that’s been dipped in liquid nitrogen", etc.)
All very nice handsets, but there is one thing that stops me buying an Android handset: Android upgradability. A vast number of handsets are locked down by the manufacturer and cannot be upgraded to the latest/greatest version of Android (whatever the current flavour may be) or cannot be upgraded because they are too slow.. In contrast, the wife's iPhone 3G (yes, a 2nd gen unit) is currently running iOS 4 (4.21 IIRC).. Okay, no iOS 5, but still the unit is ancient in phone terms and yet still works beautifully with this OS. Any Android phones around that can boast the same thing?
I think the point he's making is the manufacturer supporting the update rather than having to hack his phone. I have read plenty of complaints on these very forums from users complaining that the manufacturer won't be updating their handset from 2.1 or 2.2 to 2.3 etc. This isn't an Android problem per se but a manufacturer one. However it doesn't help sell the phones to those on the fence.
The problem with having to 'hack' a handset is that 99% of people have no idea how to and hence don't.
Upgradability 'is' Androids biggest weakness - unless you have a Google Nexus (I do) you are likely to be left with an outdated OS sooner rather than later. The manufacturers only get cash for selling handsets they have no reason to want to upgrade the phone OS only the phone. Apple mean while get a healthy profit from selling apps so they have a reason to upgrade old handsets.
I'm still running the first generation Android handset on Android 2.3 and apart from the odd slowdown, it is faster than it was when new.
Admittedly the upgrades beyond 1.6 were nothing to do with either the hardware manufacturers or T-Mobile and Cyanogen is no longer supporting it (though there are still some modders who are).
While the mobile operators continue to butcher the phones they offer on their networks, the upgrades are at the mercy of both the hardware manufacturer releasing an update and then the network operators 'customising' and releasing that update, we won't see much in the way of updates unless they come from the custom ROM community. That is why the Nexus phones (which run vanilla Android) and presumably the Jesus phones too, will always have better upgrade prospects.
CyanogenMod 7.03 works better on the ZTE Blade (600Mhz) than the rubbish bloatware Orange released on the handset.
Post the incorrect memory configuration on the HTC Desire, most phones with unlocked boot-loaders will run the latest version of Android 2.3.x very comfortably and unless Sandwich suddenly requires a minimum quad-core 2Ghz processor with 2GB of RAM, many current devices would be capable of running it and may end up doing so, if Google return to open sourcing the code if it is any good, but that is a big IF.
These same phones will continue to be upgraded by the developer community for a long time just to show that it can be done if nothing else, whereas users will get bored of their 3G's and want to move on, if they don't just use them as a phone, but there is no denying they had a good run.
Well, that's you. Well done. The real question is: "It it more or less difficult than opening iTunes and clicking on update?" Expecting the general population to have a degree in CS (or even the interest) to be able to update their phone in this way when Apple has been making it look easy since 2007 is living in crazy land. These are probably the same people who couldn't understand why everybody else didn't love Symbian and Wimo. As HTC's recent problem around security have proven, the ability for everyone to update when a new threat is found is really critical, and something that Android currently doesn't possess barring those that bought Nexuses. With iOS5 looking particularly strong and filling in the features that have been missing like Delta, OTA upgrades, WiFi sync and notification centre, I can't see why you wouldn't go iOS if you didn't just want to tinker with your phone.
That was actually their way of saying it hadn't won, but they couldn't vote against the provider of the challenge sponsorship money. Things like that only influence people who aren't in the know... unlike the rest of us who only watch that show to win the prizes for sell on eBay.
"But to be honest, none of these phones can compete in price with the cheapest version of the new iPhone 4S."
I've no flag to wave for any side, and don't particularly care about mobile phones, however the Apple UK store lists the starting price of the 4S as £ 499 - more expensive than all the phones listed here for which a price is given.
You can't actually see the Apple store from a coffee shop in the Trafford Center (the gf works there so I'm more familiar with that temple to consumerism than I really want to be) so I think that's a statement for effect rather than a literal truth.
Every time there is an Apple launch you will see local hacks or news crews taking pics etc and I guess the Reg's man goes along for the same reason.
It's still a fair comment though, I walked past that same store on the day of the iPad2 launch and the saw the queue and my only thought was "cretins". I mean seriously what kind of grown man stands in line to buy a gadget?
I stood in line at an HMV to buy the Joshua Tree LP many moons ago but I was only 14 at the time!
As a fresh faced 21 year old I queued up outside HMV on Market Street when the Stone Roses "The Second Coming" was released. That was a mistake.
As for grown men being sad for queueing to buy newly released tech, it's their money and their time, you might not like it, but who are you to judge? You complain about it on a 'forum' (of sorts) that is squarely aimed at geeks and nerds who spend their evenings debating the benefits of rooting their phone and trolling each other! When all things are considered, it's downright pathetic. Hey, I'm just as sad. I'm here too, chiding you for doing it instead of just ignoring you all...
Icon is for me.
...and I despise the apple love/apple hate commenttards but this article does nothing to boost the profile of Android
If it had been headed 'A list of nearly-but-not-quite droid phones and also the ZTE' it would have been more accurate.
Why list a number of phones that are the same price as an iPhone but don't compare, and say they are missing x, y or z otherwise they would be great.
I like the Monte Carlo though...thats a totally fair suggestion for people who want a smartphone but dont want to pay Apple prices, ditto the Wildfire, assuming its not unusably slow for angry birds etc
Not trying to be an Apple apologist, but that was a pretty crappy list. Quite a few of them aren't even vaguely iPhone competitors, and many are referred to in the list as being "underpowered" or "makes the text look blurry"...
Personally, I think that Apple could have done a lot more to temper the loony expectations of the media and tecchies, as the media reactions have been entirely predictable. Had - for no particularly good reason - Apple introduced exactly the same phone, but with more iPad 2-like tapered sides and somehow-different back, and called it the iPhone 5, then most of the pundits would have been pretty happy with that.
The fact that they followed the pattern of the 3GS, kept a perfectly good form factor (as they do in all their products when they get to it) - which means you don't need to buy new sets of accessories, docks, etc. - and produced a phone that won't alienate people who've bought the iPhone 4 recently (but will be a huge step up for the 3GS owners coming to the end of their 2-year contracts) seems to have been taken as a sign of weakness.
As more considered voices have been saying for a long time now, it's the ecosystem that matters, not the individual devices. In the past, handset makers didn't upgrade the SW on their existing products - they wanted you to buy a new device every year. Apple is happy for you to buy a new device every 2 years, and keeps updating it as they go along.
its size and shape ... TOO boxy .. not curvy enough (it does not feel comfortable to hold for any length of time) and the screen (whilst very detailed and sharp etc) is not physically big enough for my old eyes.
So its not enough for me to part with cash for an upgrade ... now the afore-rumoured iphone 5 specs (curvy back ... much bigger screen) sounded much better for me .. Apple really need a new physical design and another spec bump to creep ahead of the crowded 'droid collection ... software ecosystem even with iCloud won't be enough to stop a market percentage decline (even with relative price cuts and 3 different handset ranges). Actual sales will obviously go up and up anyway because the whole market is growing as smartphones become the standard phone to buy (or get "free").
The OS and support is sh1te.
I tried an HTC desire before I went iphone.
Had an issue, went to Vodafone, speak to HTC, HTC, not us google, google said, we don't support it except via groups...
Compare that, to one call to Apple.
Android could make me a coffee in the morning, run me a shower, warm the car up and drive me to work, but until they fix the broken support model, it's always going to be second place behind a unified support model with everyone pointing the other way, I want to like android, I really do but when it doesn't work, then someone needs to step up. At the moment the networks, manufactureres and google won't. So comparing one closed phone OS with another, I'll go with the one with the best support.
Plus there is the small factor of it suffering from the Porsche Boxster Syndrome, it's ok but everyone knew you had it because you were too cheap to buy a 911, Android everyone knows that the only reason you bought one, was you were too cheap to buy an Iphone....
I was almost agreeing with you, up until your preposterous 'mine is more expensive, thus both it and I are better than you and yours' last paragraph.
And, now I think, I'll counter your original point with - when I had an issue with my Desire, the network provider were unsurprisingly useless, but the HTC UK support and service people were the nicest, most useful bunch of tech-support people I have ever dealt with.
You're saying you spent more on an iPhone than you could have on an Android handset.
Last time I checked every Android handset can do all of that, too.
It's fine that your iPhone can do it, but this whole "I'm better than you because I spent more money to do the same thing" attitude is what is not helping your point.
FFS. If someone buys a Porsche Boxter I assume and hope they feel duly delighted with the object, and with themselves they've had sufficient material success to buy it. Either you don't appreciate the difficulty most people have making that kind of money, and you're out of touch, and/or you're just not happy with stuff per se, there always being better stuff, and probably people too - and I think you think both.
It's our lives' work in a sense to be happy with what we can get - telephony and combustion propulsion are miracles themselves, let alone smart telephony and Porsches. Don't diss that. Unless you're talking about a Nokia 5230 in which case, fine.
Incidentally - OED: "cheap": N. Amer. collog. stingy.
Boxster Syndrome? Oh bless.
You really think that spending an extra hundred quid on a phone is in any way comparable to spending an extra forty or fifty grand on a car? Really?
Apple products are quite often lovely, but to imagine that buying them marks you out as a big shot is hilarious. It's the technodweeb equivalent of bragging about how much you paid for your Adidas sneakers.
On the HTC twitter feed you can see in real time the thoughts of the beaten down failures who constitute HTC's customer base, as they express their distain for the worthless piece of junk they have the misfortune to own on account of their being less successful in every aspect of life than the many admin assistants I see flashing their iphones in the pub. Look closely and you'll notice the many occasions on which HTC passes the buck on support calls (ignore the link to their support centre in their bio section).
https://twitter.com/#!/HTC
Admin assistants with iPhones in pubs? Aren't they suppose to be in bars?
Not being funny, but the many iPhone users I know, don't actually become vocal about their phones until they've had a few to drink, then it is laughable to hear the issues they have day in, day out which other phones just don't have.
No, I don't know how to reset it. No, I don't have a paperclip handy. No, I'm not interested in a product you bought just because you saw everyone else with one and believed their lies. No, you can't use Ping to contact your BB friends, who told you that?
isn't that like buying an iphone 4 instead of a 4s?
anyway all these phones have pro's and con's that make it right for some not others. I've never had to ask for support with any phone I've owned, and I do kind of wonder what kind of problems people hit that get them on the phone/email/blog/twit/socialcrap/face-to-face with someone to help. honestly if you expect the good old 5 nines uptime on a phone and won't restart it when it does some stupid crap then maybe you need to get your head examined. i'm somewhat sick of this current trend of don't think just have a whinge, i'm unsurprised tech support dumbs down to power cycling equipment when whinger 10^9+5 rings up about the obvious. doubtless there exists people who don't get it and well I'd give a hall pass in regard to seeking tech support for basic problems, but they are the elderly, and thats about it.
yes things don't just magically keep running perfectly, yes you might need to use your noggin to get the most out of your purchase, yes if you want it to be better than you bought it you need to pay for it.
a perfect synonym for it is your 911
yes cars need to be serviced to keep working, yes you need a big pair of brass balls to push the car as fast as it can go on the track, and yes if you want a better tune, better seats, a different coat of paint you will pay for it.
and most 911 owners lack the brass balls to get the most out of their car, another fact that shows that people buy shit they can't use because of the cool factor.
oh and lastly, what about unimog syndrome, last i checked they were more than your porsche, could drive over it and generally drive most anywhere. or be really silly and say everyone that doesn't by a Komatsu PC8000 (or maybe a CAT 793c?) for their travel needs are obviously buying inferior products. pff
price isn't a particularly good way of judging things at all and people who care how much you pay for something come across as shallow... style over substance and all that guff
Google already know too much about me and the mandatory Google log in and massive additional information release to them puts me off. Leaking it to Apple isn't much better but they don't know as much about what I do off the phone.
I'm assuming that Google ID is mandatory I've never set up an Android phone, it was on the Google TVs that I played with.
Anonymous because sometimes that's what I want to be.
And I just skip it entirely, install a custom notROM (currently CM7 nightly as the CM7 stable suffers from a most annoying hard-lock when charging on the Blade) without all the Google spyware muck and have done. There are plenty of .apks outside of the market to keep you busy, including some gems (ATide) that you can't get from Ogle.
Note well that there is currently no unlock solution for the Skate/Monte Carlo aside from those silly X-SIM adaptors that don't work very well with USIMs. The Blade/SanFran is still the budget phone to get if you want a half-decent system, some major de-Oglage and SIM-freedom and its absence here is a serious oversight.
The only frenzy over the arrival of the latest iPhone seems to be that of the electronic media!
Must be a slow news month or something, if it wasn't for the Fruit Co. Phone there would be a lot less to write about...
As an [HTC] Android handset owner, I am more interested in how HTC are going to fix these backdoor data leaks that you've recently reported
Again the media uses Apple to promote Android handsets. Why? Is it the fact people will click and read articles that relate to the already over publicised Apple handsets? So, why not compare Androids to Androids and stop using Apple as the yardstick come beating stick?
How can you recommend the LG Optimus 2X when it is well known to be an utter lemon?! There's a good reason why Expansys, Amazon etc. are knocking this phone out for under three hundred notes, its because the return rates on this unit are through the roof!
Head over to xda-developers.com and read 150+ pages of O2X owners complaining of constant crashes, freezes, reboots and the Sleep of Death. Then read another 100 pages of O2X owners complaining about the promised Gingerbread update that never came, and never will come.
I had one for a month, never again will I buy an LG mobile.
I think you've missed the point.
No-one uses these handsets to make phone calls, anyone with any shred of dignity will immediately replace the factory firmware with something off the interwebs, install all of their development, diagnostic and system admin tools on it and use it as a very mobile, but inconveniently small terminal to administer the big iron they look after or hack into networks with.
Make phone calls? The very idea!
I have an iPhone 4 as my work phone and I genuinely can't see what all the fuss is about (I think its a bit boring to be honest and the single button thing just irritates me). The missus has a Galaxy SII and its just orders of magnitude more desirable.
If I was buying for myself, the Galaxy (for the screen), the HTC (for the UI) or the Xperia Arc (for the external design) would all be in front of the 4S for my hard-earned.
, I find the whole charade rather entertaining and have taken to sauntering over to the Trafford Centre come launch day, grabbing a cup of coffee and a sticky bun, pulling up a chair and making fun of the twerps lined up outside the Apple Store opposite.
Yes, I know it’s wrong,"
-- but it feels SO right..
People don't choose smartphones because of a minor improvement in specs. There are some people who will always buy Apple, some who never will, but many who see their friends with a phone and say "what's it like?"
This is where Apple wins. Simply put, people like using their gadgets. Top of the JD Power smartphone customer satisfaction survey for the 6th year running.
It's not about GHz or GB. It's about enjoying the whole package
... and so I bought it. Along with it, I have been buying apps for a few years now, meaning that it's just not an option for me to switch to Android, I have too much money invested in apps to have to buy them all over again (assuming they're available).
That said, I do like the iPhone and unless Apple screw it up I have no real reason to switch. I did use a Nexus One (got it for free at a Google dev conf) for a few months when I lost my 3GS while waiting to buy a new iPhone, and I must say it wasn't very pleasant, especially regarding music: the fidelity of sound reproduction was just not on par with that on the iPhone.
I would be willing to try again with HTC this time, since they usually get rave reviews, but I really can't afford to buy all my apps again :(
You paid for some content and are now locked into their eco-system for ever.
The longer you leave it, the worse it's gonna get. Ditto for Kindle....
The sooner you leave that locked in ecosystem, the sooner you can buy your Android apps once and have them work on all your Android devices, regardless of who makes it, now and for the future.
By delaying the move, you are only causing yourself more hurt in the future, Android is now the number one priority for devs, so expect your apps to arrive later on IOS.
Interesting article - not sure they are all iPhone 4S beaters per se, but there are some very decent phones there. Moved away from 3 years of iPhone (3g and 3gs) use 3-4 months ago to android and the Galaxy S2, and couldn't be happier.
I moved after some spectacular fails on the part of Apple service (I got robbed on the iStore and they utterly failed to do anything about it - refused to reverse the transactions, refused to even say whether or not they'd help the police in a trivial prosecution, and avoided answering any question, instead using boilerplate text designed to get me to go away).
My first iPhone (3g) had suffered a hardware failure after 15 months forcing me into another iPhone (3gs) contract (particularly if I wanted to retrieve my contact data and not pay another £120 unwanted airtime), and when the glass screen of the new one cracked the apple shop wanted to replace it for a 'very generous' refurbished phone price of £249. The internet provided me with the solution to that for £13 and about 20 minutes of my time with a hair dryer.
I loved the iPhone and iOS a lot and recognised that (from the 3g onwards) it was a real game changer. My early adopter friends with android were singing it's praises and so I periodically got to play with their phones. In my own opinion the UI overtook iOS about 18 months ago, and when my contract expired I moved over to android.
It took me a weekend to de-iTunes my computer (re-encoding my music to normal formats - not entirely necessary - but cathartic), a couple of abortive efforts to buy a 32gb class 10 microsd card from eBay for small money proved annoying, but easily resolved by moving to class 4 (there's only music on there so it was irrelevant). After that it was plain sailing - I bought the Galaxy S2 outright, sold off the old 3gs, moved to giffgaff, and will have repaid the TCO difference within 10 months - so I'm no longer trapped to a contract after a phone has run out of warranty, and if giffgaff ever give me trouble I'll immediately move, at a loss of, at most, a tenner. It also has a 3 year accident and spills warranty purchased for £49 via Amazon - considerably cheaper, longer lasting and wider ranging than Apple's warranty offering. If you have the initial cost of the phone available it's something of a no-brainer to stay out of a contract.
Android isn't entirely perfect - the native music player's shoddy and pod-casting is handled poorly generally, but the market place solved those pretty cheaply. I've had no problems with the market place and, since android outsells iOS 3-1 (approx) at the moment, there are more than enough apps (usually free) to keep me happy, and I suspect that won't change. I also invested another tenner in a couple of spare (Samsung branded) batteries and a wall charger for them, meaning my phone never needs to be tethered to the wall for any length of time. I'd love the android phone community to place a sufficient capacitor in their next generation of phones to make the batteries hot-swappable.
I can't speak for the other phones but have to say the Samsung Galaxy S2 is far and away (for it's time) the best phone I've ever owned (including my old beloved SE T28). After a few months it's never felt flimsy (a complaint I often see bandied about it) and always felt light with plenty of screen space for not much bulk.
I also can't believe that Apple seems to be getting away with claiming it's twice as fast for internet because they finally support hsdpa. That's some brass neck.
Cheers for reading this far - I hope that was an honest depiction of how a former fanboi found happiness elsewhere... I still have lots of friends who rave about their iPhones and more power to them, but I reckon I've found the greener grass.
I Have the LG 3D
It is a damn good phone and yes the 3d part is a gimmick but it is still a good gimmick.
I had the choice to buy it a X2 or a 3D and they are basically identical but 1 has an extra feature.
And in my hohnest opinion the 3D option is well worth it.
Shame on you for disregarding something just because its not fun for you.
All the various features of the Android devices is all well and good... if you have good eyesight. If you don't, then you're in big trouble because Android is basically piss poor when it comes to accessibility. I've owned a HTC desire, and there was pretty much no accessibility settings in the version of Android that that handset supported. Even something as simple as changing the font size wasn't included!
Apple, for all their faults, pay a huge amount of attention to detail when it comes to accessibility in their products, with full screen zooming, voice over and all sorts of other touches that make a device with a screen as small as a smartphone's usable to people who wouldn't be able to manage otherwise.
Note: This is not intended as either fanboyism, or trolling of Android. There's plenty about Android to like and conversely plenty about Apple to dislike, but as a partially sighted user I doubt I'd ever use an android device again until the accessibility situation improves drastically.
Yes some of the specs may impress an 8 year old, but it is a bit pointless as all of them still use tinker toy Android on it. There just isn't a comparison, google still screws up your contact photos, still can't deal with peoples names containing prefixes, spaces, hyphenation and post fixes. It just isn't production quality stuff.
Move on nothing to see here other than the boring guy in the pub who insists on listing the spec difference between the ford focus he drives. Nice if you are the mundane person but for the rest of us nah....
So I'll continue to sweat my 'original' iPhone 3GS asset but I'll go for the free iOS5 update (the 3 -> 4 upgrade made a big difference and stopped me replacing it so 5 will probably do the same especially with the cloudy synchronization and usable notifications .. still miss androidic homepage widgets though 8-) .. and I've just ordered a £3 replacement (and 30% more mAh) battery and £7 for a new coloured back shell to give it a 'hardware' refresh.
Maybe next year if the 3GS gives up ... the mythical iphone 5 might actually be out and then there will be more choices from Samsung as well. Not interested in speed of games/graphics but I am interested in good camera optics and ready-to-shoot speed as I'm more likely to be carrying a phone than a DSLR or Bridge camera.
With tablets getting smaller and phones getting bigger I'm probably looking for a 5 inch tablet with 3G and skype/google talk ... rather than strictly a phone (as I spend < £5 year on calls 8-) and my main use is for mobile internet access.
'Samsung’s Mk. 2 Galaxy S is, depending on whose numbers you read and believe, the best-selling smartphone of 2011'
Hmm, I think you meant that to say 'the best selling smartphone released in 2011', because the way it's worded currently makes it seem like it's sold the most units in 2011, and that's just not true - as I'm sure you're aware.
Not quite a good analogy because they are both Porsches. That's more like buying the 8gb rather than the 32gb version of the Apple product.
On the other hand, you might want a Land Rover. Not as fast, but better over rough ground, carries more people and happens to be slightly cheaper than the 911 too. It isn't better or worse, its just different.
Of course, if you are buying a phone as a status symbol, you will want the iphone purely because it costs more, so the Porsche analogy works well there. However, some people want a phone for what it can do for them. Horses for courses.
Despite (due to?) having an iphone in the family, I actually prefer my samsung. It isn't as pretty as the iphone 4, but it does more of what I need it to do and it does it in an easier fashion.
Errmmm is it me or is there a distinct lack of evidence to support the headline of this article? None of your reviews give any point-by-point comparison between the review model and the upcoming iPhone 4S, nor the new software features available for it, iOS5.
Not only that, how on earth could you actually do a real life comparison since the iPhone4s has not yet been released?
I'm surprised The Register prints this sort of garbage.
"Errmmm is it me or is there a distinct lack of evidence to support the headline of this article? None of your reviews give any point-by-point comparison between the review model and the upcoming iPhone 4S, nor the new software features available for it, iOS5.
Not only that, how on earth could you actually do a real life comparison since the iPhone4s has not yet been released?
I'm surprised The Register prints this sort of garbage."
I suspect this is how it works. Reg sees iPhone announce date, thinks, "Ah, good excuse to do a round-up of the main competition from the only real competitive OS".
Random hack is told to knock out 150 wds per phone - which kinda rules out any forensic point-by-point comparison - and give it a gently anti-Apple spin in the interests of getting the brand fanatics frothing at the mouth (again).
Job done I'd say.
Of course there is always some tit who takes it far, far too seriously.
If I were Androidist, I'll be saving my pennies for the next size up - the 6.9 inch, or the super 8.5" Galaxy phone - or maybe the one after that - the 10.5 incher.
Of course it will mean either growing larger hands or using both to hold the darn thing to my ear.
Seriously though, all these phones have one thing or another going for them, but sadly none have the whole lot, and most have nasty flaws.
End-user satisfaction ratings are the best clue to which phone works in real life, and which is just a feature-box-ticker.
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