Posts tagged iphone

A funny thing happened recently. Last year, I got an iPad. And it’s great. I read comics on it, I use it for e-mail and general browsing, I do all kinds of stuff on it. I used to use my iPhone for that stuff when I’m at home. But why would I bother doing that now? Even gaming, which I never did a whole lot of on my iPhone, I do even less of after getting an iPad (same games, bigger screen). 

In short, I found myself using my iPhone mostly as…a phone. As in talking, checking e-mail and sending texts. Also as a general device for checking Twitter or reading Kindle books (when not in reach of my physical Kindle device). And you know what? The iPhone isn’t any better or worse at that kind of basic stuff than any other phone. 

Plus (and this is really the heart of the problem), I genuinely dislike the iPhone 4 design. It’s boxy, it has glass on all sides (which goes against my extremely clumsy lifestyle) and even if the screen has a gorgeous resolution, it’s physically tiny for someone with hands my size. I just don’t like the damn thing. I had hoped Apple would address these issues with a complete redesign, but the 4s is more of the same. No doubt the 5 will be the second coming, but I had the opportunity to get a new phone now, and decided to take it. 

So, much to my surprise, I started looking around at Android phones. And I ended up getting one, the unfortunately named Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket (no really, that’s the name).

Having used an iPhone for several years, getting adjusted to Android has been a bit of a shock. This thing is total chaos. It’s fairly simple to get started with an iPhone, but Android? That has a learning curve. I would never, ever, ever give this phone to someone not extremely comfortable with computers. This is not the phone you give to your parents, and I have no idea why anyone would think it would serve that purpose. There are preferences hidden within preferences. There’s a task manager (a task manager!). 

The great thing about Android (and what attracted me to it) is that it can do everything you want it to. You want a live weather report on your home screen? BAM, it’s done. You want one-touch access to your contacts? Done. A single wallpaper image across multiple screens? Done. Everything and more can be done. It just takes a while to figure out how to do it. And even then, chances are you’ll find a better way than your first attempt.

Which isn’t to say this phone is perfect. It’s definitely not. Battery life is abysmal. That’s not usually a problem for me, but no doubt it’s going to annoy me at some point. I guess I could carry around multiple batteries (a user-removable battery? Crazy) but that’s hardly a solution.

And after years of iPhone ownership, I had completely forgotten about the horror that is carrier bloatware. There’s all kinds of crap on this phone that AT&T installed that I can’t remove. Granted, I can bury it in a place I’ll never see it, but as an iPhone user, I had forgotten that such things existed. Apparently they still do.

But it’s cool. I like it. The Kindle app for Android is awesome - far, far superior to its iOS equivalent. And Twitter and Facebook are pretty great too. And I’ve been able to set it up so that I automatically upload my phone’s photos to my server when connected to my home WiFi network (neat!). Also phone quality is uniformly great. And that’s really all I want to do with this phone anyway. 

Now if only I could find an email client that works with both exchange and gmail that I really like…