yes yes I the prodigal son returned home to his first love, Apple,
yeah I know you heard this story before, I try and try to leave apple to get
out of line with sheep but every time I think the grass is greener on the
other side, I realize that apple is the best there is! So as the flames begin,
continue to read if you’re not one of those fan boys that leave comments
like "As soon as I read.... I stop reading your crappy isheep
article".
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| me with my galaxy mega! |
So I grew bored with IOS 6 on my iPhone 5 and I became lured to
the large screen android smartphones I read about on google+. I decided to
first go with the S4 after the constant advertisements during the NBA
finals and popups, and YouTube ads, it was endless. I loved it initially, seeing
something different, I then began reading about how things could be so
much better without samcrap so I decided to go Nexus. The NEXUS 4 that was an
amazing phone but I found myself missing little goodies like ir remote I
used on Samsung, and multi-screen, so I decided, let’s go bigger. That leads me
to Samsung Galaxy Mega! Mega is the key word, because this thing was huge!
At that time, I was using the nexus 4 and 7. Toting two devices seem to be
cumbersome so I wanted to get a device to rule them all. The mega
satisfied my needs for a while until once again, I grew angry with the samcrap.
So naturally I went to CM11. CM11 was pretty cool but it was full of
quirky bugs, which is fun to work with. I used that to argue for android
before, the problem though came to when I needed it to work right away, ,,
ahh here comes that annoyingly true apple standout, motto "it just
works".
The design and those little UI things
began irritating me fairly early though I was able to ignore them. For example:
1. Snap to the top scrolling. - I was using
twitter when I first went back to android and I didn’t realize that it doesn’t
have snap to the top scrolling. When you began to scroll through your feed
on twitter and google+. Sometimes you want to go back to the top right away, on
android you have to begin rolling that finger! It speeds up but that’s the
best you can do! Google+ implemented this but the browser still makes me scroll
through reddit and xda etc.
2. Pull to refresh- listing to podcaster and
stitcher forces me to find the little widget to refresh my feed vs just pulling
down. On my mega, I was waiting for the green refresh arrow to pop up. It
is just much easier to pull "thinking pull in new content.
3. Quick settings from the bottom up -
ironically Apple actually seem to copy this feature from android but like apple
they steal or "gets inspiration" from others who mess up first and
clean it up to make it work. I know kitkat has the two finger gesture to separate
settings from notifications but I use the calculator and flashlight all
the time and I like being able to scroll up and get what I need. I also really
like how I get to my stitcher music controls from the bottom separate from
the notifications on the top, (because the top notifications still sucks!
)
4. Google apps - That was one of the nails in
my android owning coffin, the google apps looks so much better on iPhone, it’s
like they made it for the iPhone and just ported it on android, or made it
an afterthought. Hangouts is awesome on iPhone, the colors pop and options are
quick for things like hangout video etc. Google + scrolls nice, and the
notifications and everything get out of the way. Yes the feed is harder to see
on the small screen but wow! Apple even let my password load on all of my
google apps automatically. There was little difference between the sync of my
google account over the iOS apps like android apps. It is almost like I
never gave up what made android best, instead it feels like a visual change to
my android.
5. Print - iprint is so seamless, I was toting
google cloud print to others but the last
week of my android ownership came
when I was attempting to print out an emailed coupon. I found myself
struggling to connect for some odd reason and the button was inconsistently
popping up. I sent the email to my wife’s IPhone and she just tapped and
printed! WOW! I couldn’t believe how easy it was, she saw my expression and
smirked, "yeah it just works" ..
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| print right there!!!! |
6. I was laughing at how you never see the
apple community talk about how they are angry because they still are waiting
for the update to kit kat, Samsung just announced that 4.4 is coming to
the mega in the next month but the month after that Google will announce the
next version. When apple release an update we all get it! No wait, no matter
the carrier, it works! (there I go again)
7. Apps in general - I was so upset when I
was on my surface and mega trying to work with the WWE app on my chromecast and
I went through lag, quirks, freezes, and pixelization. I grew ill one day and
was regulated to the bedroom with an apple TV and it was a totally different
experience. Using my wife’s IPhone I was scrolling in beauty as the app loaded
up perfectly looking good. I tried PlayOn which was a lagggy nightmare, but
when I tried it on iOS, and it feel worth the lifetime membership I paid.
8. Contextual keyboard. - I didn’t really pay
too much attention but when it was in Instagram, I saw the @ and # sign in
the corner waiting for me, making it easier for me to bang a comment out
quickly. I see I type better too with less mistakes, my buddy +Alex
Glover always make fun saying "that’s that android keyboard"
when he get messages like "hty yoy kile that song? I have seen an
improvement in just a couple of days.
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| notice the keyboard icons in the corner? |
On Another note
No matter how much I enjoy the user
interface and beauty and solidness of hardware, I can’t ignore one MAJOR sore
point, this phone is Tiny! It wouldn’t be so glaringly small if I wasn’t coming
from a 6.3 inch screen but I am squinty my eyes trying to read the text on
websites, and google+. I soon was reminded of one of the biggest reasons why I
wanted to go android, a bigger screen. You can defend Apple using a plethora of
evidence but this is not one of them. There is no way you can argue that the
screen is perfect. With that being said I do like being able to use it with one
hand comfortably but I think you can go bigger without messing that comfort
up.
I also miss the easy sharing capabilities
with android. When I took a picture it was easy to share to any program I like
right from the camera app. I thought I remember doing this so if I am don’t criticize
me, criticize apple for not making intuitive enough to notice. Android let all
the apps talk to each other so I can share between google+ and Instagram easily.
I see I can’t do the same.
I miss my slide keyboard. It was pretty
cool sliding through the keys to type faster even though I ended with many
mistakes.
The notifications are horrible, its random
stuff, random things I don’t care about, stock, and it’s to transparent for my
old eyes to see differentiate what imp looking at in a glance
Conclusion
I came back and at least for now, I can
say I am going to stick with the IPhone! I have the option of upgrading in September
due to the pricing wars I wrote about in another article. I am hoping the
rumored 4.7 inch iPhone will solve the remaining angst I have about the iPhone.
I keep looking at that White and Gold beauty, holding the well-constructed
metal
and glass, opening up with my thumbprint and think to myself, what was I
thinking leaving you? ..haha GOD BLESS
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| Sorry!!! |
