iPhone or Droid Incredible? In other words, is AT&T really so bad? (1 Viewer)

[Hanson]

A little update on the Fascinate: while it does not come pre-installed like it does on other Android phones, you can download Google Maps from the Marketplace which will in turn install Google Navigation. So it's ultimately a Google vs Bing default search engine issue. You can sideload Google search, but you have to somehow disable Bing from doing the same. Looks like you will have to root the phone to change this behavior. Or learn to live with Bing. But if you do, the terrorists win.

 

 

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

 

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo If I want a smartphone in large part so I can check/respond to emails (and type a post or three on HTF), I'm gonna need a physical keyboard. But of course, none of that extra stuff would be any good if I can't consistently get a good signal (or have enough battery power) when I actually need it...

 

_Man_

 

[DaveF]

 

Let me re-ask, because I still didn't quite get the simple yes/no answer I was hoping for Are you saying you have no interest in having a smartphone for general personal use (and don't use your BB for that, or would gladly give it up)? Or are you saying (to be a bit hyperbolic), "I'd never buy one of those crap automobiles, given their attendant limitations, needing fuel every week and so on. Granted, I do have a work-provided car."
 

 

I'm not trying to persuade you to buy an iPhone, or any other "smartphone". It's I'm curious about a guy that seems to need a smartphone for work but simultaneously disdains them for personal use. It's curious to me

 

Some more thoughts in the quote since breaking up a quotes is a PITA with Huddler.

Originally Posted by Man-Fai Wong

The iPhone would not suffice for the PIM stuff near as I can tell since I probably cannot synch it w/ my work PIM.
iPhone and Android and BB are MS Exchange savvy as well as working with normal web systems, like Google. Do you have something esoteric?

 

It also would not do for work emails either because of that, not that I'd really want to use it to write any emails

To each their own. But I merrily type out personal notes and short work emails on my iPhone. And Android phones have physical keyboards.

 

And the camera part also would not suffice (for still photos anyway)

My wife has her 10MP, 10x SuperZoom. The iPhone serves me well for my snapshots. It's nowhere near a DSLR. But for snapping shots of the cats, snakes in the grass, and family on vacation, it's the bees-knees. And as they say, the best camera is the one they have with you. I always have the iPhone. We only carry the "real" camera for specific trips.

 

At the end of the day (w/ all things considered), they are all first and foremost for-fun toys and do not really make regular, everyday life stuff all that much easier/better, if at all.

Again, we all have our personal tools. But as a long-time PDA user, the iPhone (and smartphones of its ilk) do make everyday life stuff all that much better. It's an awesome toy. But it's much more than that. In practical terms, it's replaced my MacBook Pro for 75% of "computer" usage at home. And having a portable calendar (synced to the household calendar), address book, phone and usable SMS device is great. And mobile web access is just amazing to me. A person could do all this with hardcopy calendars and address books and printed notes. But I prefer the digital solution.

 

As for battery life: that remains to be seen. I've generally had good performance with all my rechargeable devices, iPods, cellphone and PDAs. I expect the iPhone to be OK for the two years I have it. If not, $99 to replace the battery is, if not cheap, affordable.

 

 

[Sam Posten]

The battery on the 3GS sucked. The combination of the A4 chip and improved battery on the iPhone 4 is remarkable and I don't think any other smart phone comes close to outlasting it, and good on them if they do.

 

[Hanson]

Yes Dave, these are awesome, awesome toys. But as toys go, a very productive toy:

 

Not only do I have almost full Exchange sync (so far, Activesync doesn't do tasks and notes, but that's an MS thing), it's pushed form the server. But okay, you have a BB for that.

 

I can remote desktop into any of my company machines. Just yesterday, I got an urgent email for a report from the Director of Production as I was driving home. Rather than keep her waiting, and rather than doubling back to the office, I pulled over, remoted in, and emailed the report off in about as long as it would have taken if I were actually at my desk. I check on servers remotely all the time.

 

If I get attachments, I can view them quite easily, using pinch and zoom to make my way around the pdf or excel spreadsheet or whatnot. I find this to be a huge advantage over Blackberry (also an advantage -- 4.3" screen).

 

If I'm troubleshooting a computer at someone's desk, I use the phone to Google solutions. Very, very handy. Very, very productive.

 

My assistant now has an Evo, so we are starting to video conference via Fring when I'm in NJ and he's in NY. We've mostly just been testing, but I'm positive it will come in handy. Instead of trying to picture what he's describing me, he can just point the front facing camera and show me what he's looking at.
 

During my bi-weekly train commute, I watch the TV shows that my wife isn't into. I saw all eight episodes of Pillars of the Earth on the train and during downtime waiting for the train. I watch Fringe. I watch Bones. It alleviates the boredom of the commute, and I don't have to buy newspapers of magazines to occupy my time. When I'm commuting by car, I listen to podcasts because I hate sitting through radio commercials, and most of the shows are blather. In both instances, those 7 hours a week are made much better by my phone.

 

We went over to my sister's house in Pennington on Sunday, and the next day, we drove to New Hope PA. I used Google Maps to find restaurants and ice cream parlors. I navigated back to our parking spot with Google Maps. And the pictures. I took tons of pictures of my daughters and then uploaded some of them to Facebook almost in real time. Now my mother in law can see pics and vids of her sweeties that aren't months old because I was too lazy to unload the media off the old point and shoot. My mother in law loves my phone, but she doesn't know it. It's the reason I'm on Facebook in the first place, and instead of a batch of 20 pictures in random chronological order covering the span of four months, she can see her babies day by day instead of quarter by quarter.

 

Of course, we used Google Navigation to direct us home. I surfed the net most of the way (FYI, my wife is the driver in the family) as the Evo played music that was occasionally interrupted by a turn command. Took a couple of pictures of the girls sleeping adorably in the backseat and shot 'em up to Facebook. All whilst traveling at 80 mph (my wife likes to drive fast).


 

So yeah, it's a great toy. I agree with you on that, Man. But as for your contention that it does "not really make regular, everyday life stuff all that much easier/better, if at all", I have to totally disagree.

 

[Hanson]

Just a quick note on battery life -- 5-6 hours from a full charge to empty isn't good any way you slice it.  But smartphone battery life has been steadily declining as the number of tasks it can do and the quality of execution.  My solution has been spare chargers and spare batteries.  In the past, extra batteries were expensive -- I remember paying $45 for an extra Treo 650 battery.  But the Evo has two things going for it -- first, it uses the same battery as the Hero, Incredible, and Touch Pro 2.  Second, there are numerous sources of cheap aftermarket batteries you can purchase off of Ebay.  So I bought a battery and charger for under $12 shipped.  This inexpensive option has rendered the battery issue moot for me, since I can now get through the day by charging the phone when I can, and then fall back on the spare if I neglect to do so.  I also have to luxury of using the phone non-stop during the weekend by charging one battery as I'm draining the other.  I know the iPhone 4 has better battery life than any Android phone, and Google has to create better optimizations to increase talk and standby time.  But for $12, I only have to charge the phone when I go to bed.

 

[DaveF]

I'm always intrigued by those that do "real" corporate work with their phones. I do work email with my iPhone but ... Our resident Mac nut was instructed by IT to never again connect to the network nor the exchange server with his iPad. And the sense is there will soon be a formal policy banning all iPhones from the network and for email. But I work in a conservative industry.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

 

Originally Posted by DaveF 4" is so small I can't even realistically use it w/ a basic text editor to do some coding, etc. -- remember, that 4" touchscreen on most of these devices has to work around the missing physical keyboard too, which comes w/ the 3" screen on a BB. I guess I could possibly make a simple change to a small config file or something for a web service or maybe a nearly trivial script for a batch job or something, but I probably wouldn't be able to figure out what needs changing (using the miniscule 4" view) before getting into the editor to make a quick change, and wouldn't easily be able to tell whether the quick change did the job (again using the tiny 4" view). The stuff I do just aren't designed to be accessible via such a tiny view -- and I honestly doubt most other people's work can realistically be done on those 4" touchscreens too outside of a few emails.

 

Anyhoo...

 

_Man_

 

[Hanson]

Gartner Says Android to Become No. 2 Worldwide Mobile Operating System in 2010

 

Current and future #1 isn't iOS. Nor is it BB.
 

It's Symbian! Maybe not a big surprise for a lot of you.

 

Gartner is very bullish on Android as they originally pegged Android as the #2 OS by 2012. They've revised it upward to the end of this year.

 

A lot of things can happen between now and 2015, but if you extrapolated another year, Android would be #1 by 2015.

 

Also, this pre-supposes that Gartner can tell the future.

 

[DaveF]

What is Symbian? Is it software that drives the zillions of non-smartphones that are free with contract?

 

[Hanson]

It's the Nokia OS for their smartphones. Their marketshare is in the US is under 3% (iOS, BB, Android, WM, and Palm combine for 97% of the market), but I know that in Europe, Symbian is HUGE. Huge enough that even though they have a minimum presence in the world's largest smartphone market, they're still the global leader by a lot.

 

http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2010/08/04/symbian-dwarfs-android-and-iphone-ships-298000-handsets-every-day/

 

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/09/comscore-android-grows-us-smartphone-market-share-as-all-others/2

 

[DaveF]

The nokia that is getting killed by the iPhone and android? That nokia is going to rule the global roost? Huh.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703597204575482902836750116.html

This reminds me of my earlier comments about companies with big marketshare but poor profit margins. Perhaps we'll see how that works out for Nokia.

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo

Here's my "real world" issue -- cell phone standby will take 40% of the battery. In these tests, the phone is turned off.

This is stuck to the back in the back of my mind, and I wanted to see again if you were serious about this value. I did a quick check last night: my iPhone drains about 5% in 9 hours in lock-mode, unused (overnight). A 40% drain would take about 72 hrs, or three days.

 

So is your "real-world" issue that you leave for your phone used for days at a time? Or that it actually drains 40% of the battery idling, an 8 hour day? Either you don't actually every use your Android phone or there's something woefully bad about Android's power management. (or you're using multitasking to run Folding@Home. Or you exaggerated for argument's sake

 

And I'm interpreting "turned off" as on, but screen-locked. If you in fact mean a 40% drain over an 8 hour day with the phone wholly powered off, then your phone is broken and should have it serviced and the battery replaced.

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by Hanson Yoo

Also, this pre-supposes that Gartner can tell the future.

They can't.
 

 

[DaveF]

Detailed and informative review of the various smartphone screens. Here's the summary if you don't want to read the whole article.

 

http://www.displaymate.com/Smartphone_ShootOut_1.htm

 

There is no decisive winner as each of the three “Super” displays significantly outperforms the others in more than one important area and significantly underperforms in other areas. The iPhone 4 by far has the brightest and sharpest display and is the most power efficient of the displays. The Motorola Droid by far has the best picture quality and accuracy. The Samsung Galaxy S by far has the lowest screen reflectance and largest Contrast for both bright and dark ambient lighting, and the best viewing angles. On the flip side, the iPhone 4 has a weak color gamut and viewing angles, the Motorola Droid has weak screen reflectance and viewing angles, and the Samsung Galaxy S has lower brightness, excessive color saturation, higher power consumption and some sharpness issues. Each of these “Super” displays is none-the-less impressive and deserves an award: the iPhone 4 performed better overall so it earned the DisplayMate Best Mobile Display Award, the Motorola Droid earned the Best Mobile Picture Quality Award, and the Samsung Galaxy S earned the Best New Mobile Display Technology Award. Each of these displays has lots of room for improvement and can leapfrog the others in their next iteration with appropriate action…

 

[Steve_Tk]

Seems like some people are more passionate about what they don't have and don't want then their own phone.

I've had AT&T for 5 years. Can't ever remember having a dropped call. Maybe one a year? Had an iPhone 3G for two years, full charge every night, battery was never an issue. Just got an iPhone 4, love it. I'm sure Verizon is great, I'm sure the Android is great, it's just not what I have.

 

[DaveF]

I'm convinced it's a NY / SF problem. AT&T has the real problems in these two cities, which happen to be where all the tech industries and major media are located. So it's blown wholly out of proportion. Those of us in mid-size cities with normal cell coverage find AT&T's about the same of every other carrier.

 

[DaveF]

According to Engadget, the 24-hour return policy on the Android Market is gone.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/11/android-market-update-streamlines-content-nukes-tabs-dismantle/


That's unfortunate, since it's a feature I'd hoped Apple would be forced, by competitive pressures, to adopt.

 

[Kazz]

Its really the location you are in with ATT phones as well as other phones. I live in NYC and i rarely have problems with dropped calls.

 

[DaveF]

I've recently experienced some of ATTs suckitide: no signal along some stretches of the highway, and bad signal in central Indiana (where immtold Verizon is perfect). Ah well. My dad has a new HTC android phone on Verizon. I spent a few minutes with it tonight. So, my demo with the original Droid left me with a loathing of Android. I was a terrible piece of hardware with cruelly unusable software. In sharp contrast, this current Android phone was immediately usable, easy to get around and had some nice features. I still prefer my iPhone, but now I would feel comfortable recommending an Android phone to someone who can't or won't get an iPhone. In particular, the use of different screens to show recent emails, SMS messages, and clock in addition to the apps was interesting. I like the consistency and was of use of the iPhones app-centric screens, but I see real value in a quick view of status and messages from home screens. I'd like to Apple take inspiration from that. I didnt understand the home, back, scroll-ball buttons. But if I "lived" in an android phone, I'm sure they would become apparent.