Entering the World of Smartphones

I just picked up the SGS3 yesterday after having my old EVO4G for a couple years. Loving it so far! Rooted it and put a Jellybean ROM on it. It's lightning quick and Google Now has some really nice features.

I also have a Nexus 7 on the way. Really looking forward to playing with it. It will be my first tablet.

went and played with the S3 and the One X today. Now I'm really confused. The One X aesthetically is more enjoyable. The S3 seemed snappier, and the Note is just awesome to look at.

I do think I'd eventually get annoyed with the size of the Note though... I feel like I'd never put it in my pocket, I'd always have it in my backpack or something.

Really on the fence here... so I might just wait to see if that OneX+ turns out to be real.

They didn't have a Nexus to play with, so I'd like to try that one as well. And apparently there will be a Nexus Superior, so I think I'll wait a couple of months. The specs for the Note 2 are out, and it looks like a beast...

That's the downside of iPhone vs Android... if I knew I wanted an iPhone, there is basically one iPhone. With android, I have a lot more to compare and contrast, and I always take forever deciding on these types of things. I want a phone that Ill enjoy for the next 2 years at least.

For what it's worth, I have had a Nexus S (predecessor to the Galaxy Nexus, to clarify) for over a year now. The phone was pretty much a year old when I got it. I've been flashing Cyanogenmod on it and the recent CM10 nightly builds, while glitchy in some areas, are astronomically better than the original stock Gingerbread rom.

I don't think this is the sort of benefit that is immediately recognized but my phone is still comparable to most top of the line phones out today including - dare I say - the S3. It's just as quick and snappy and loaded with features. Haven't found any missing features outside of face recognition and that smart stay thing that detects if you're looking at the screen.

In contrast, my Dad bought a galaxy s2 which came out roughly 6 months after my phone and even the XDA developers have yet to port Jelly Bean over. If we're talking official OS updates then I'm even more ahead of the pack. My phone dropped the same time as the Galaxy S, and wow that thing is a piece of shit now compared to mine.

All this to say whether you're going to be nerdy and root or not you will probably notice huge benefits in the long term if you go with a Nexus as far as OS updates go, and no feature is worth the trade off of lack of OS updates.

Honestly my phone runs cm10 pretty much just as smoothly as a Galaxy Nexus does. I'm so fucking glad I went with the Nexus S. Should probably give a shout out to oscillik for the recommendation.

Oh, and on the topic of build quality, I've dropped my phone more times than I can count, and it's naked save for a screen protector. Aside from a few dings on the back and sides, it's perfectly fine. Drop an iPhone one time and it's pure glass body will shatter like a china plate.

Good news for those who wish to buy a Galaxy Nexus - the ban on selling those in the US has been lifted:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-11/samsung-can-sell-galaxy-nexus-during-appeal-court-rules

So, the Nexus 4 looks awesome. I'm going with that one!

agreed, i wish i wasn't locked into a contract, might be tempted to pick one up. the non-removable battery is a bummer though.

i kind of enjoy watching friends with iphones running around trying to find a power outlet while i just pop in my spare battery.

  On 11/8/2012 at 6:25 AM, Kcinsu said:

So, the Nexus 4 looks awesome. I'm going with that one!

It looks like a great phone, and the low price makes it really tempting, but I'm going to hold off for a while. My Galaxy Nexus does everything I need for the moment. With the MiNCO v5 ROM and Franco kernel it absolutely flies and I'm getting great battery life too.

I've been trying out some of the leaked Android 4.2 Google apps though. The Gmail app finally has pinch to zoom, which is something it's been missing for a looong time. Thank fuck for that. And you can now archive emails directly from the inbox with a swipe, which is a really useful feature.

The camera app is streamlined and much easier to use, and the photosphere thing is fun but basically a gimmick. Good for holiday snaps I suppose. There are a bunch of Instagram-style filters for the sort of wankers who are into that sort of thing.

The new desk clock is pretty swanky - the timer and stopwatch functions are slick - but it's still just a sodding clock.

The keyboard has Swype-style gesture typing, and the word you're typing hovers by your finger so you can clearly see what it is before you drop it in place. That's an improvement on Swype as far as I'm concerned but gesture typing still annoys me. I much prefer the excellent predictive typing of SwiftKey (who are also bringing out their own Swype-alike soon).

All things considered Android 4.2 should be a fairly small, incremental update - but then Jelly Bean was pretty polished to start with. I'm looking forward to the Quick Setting toggles although a lot of ROMs already have that functionality.

Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a full leak before the official update. Because leaks are fun and I deserve nice things.

I do want to get the new Nexus. Unfortunately I've got until June for my contract to end.

Hopefully the cost of this phone will reduce more and more contracts becoming or staying at 24 months.

even though I've said I wouldn't get the Nexus 4....

yes, I'm gonna get it. Already got a buyer for my Galaxy Nexus.

Lock screen widgets are gonna be fucking awesome.

  On 11/8/2012 at 2:11 PM, oscillik said:

even though I've said I wouldn't get the Nexus 4....

 

yes, I'm gonna get it. Already got a buyer for my Galaxy Nexus.

 

Lock screen widgets are gonna be fucking awesome.

Have you tried the leaked Gapps yet?

  On 11/8/2012 at 4:50 PM, Iain C said:

  On 11/8/2012 at 2:11 PM, oscillik said:

even though I've said I wouldn't get the Nexus 4....

 

yes, I'm gonna get it. Already got a buyer for my Galaxy Nexus.

 

Lock screen widgets are gonna be fucking awesome.

 

Have you tried the leaked Gapps yet?

I've tried the keyboard, and while it doesn't quite look the same as it's supposedly going to look in 4.2 (the swipe trail is not stylised, and there is slight difference in the way it shows the prediction compared to what has been shown in videos) it works really well for me.

I'm looking forward to using the rest once I get my greedy mitts on the phone, hopefully next week.

I really like the new clock. It's just a clock, but - it's a REALLY nice clock.

lol yeah it is a nice looking clock, I'll never use it though since there's a clock in the top right hand corner of the screen that is always visible.

btw, if anyone is planning on getting this on release day, I would get prepared and sort out your microSIM, since your standard sized SIM will not fit unless you cut it down.

It's useful for me to have on my homescreen because you can just tap on it as a shortcut to your alarms - and I'm a heavy sleeper, so I need LOADS of alarms.

  On 11/8/2012 at 5:22 PM, Iain C said:

It's useful for me to have on my homescreen because you can just tap on it as a shortcut to your alarms - and I'm a heavy sleeper, so I need LOADS of alarms.

I am too, but I have the official dock for the Galaxy Nexus, which has a 3.5mm audio out jack, so I just plug in some speakers that are either side of my head on the bed-side tables, and then just wait for the alarm to go off at ridiculous sound levels.

I don't sleep through alarms (or calls for that matter).

  On 9/5/2012 at 4:13 AM, thehauntingsoul said:

In contrast, my Dad bought a galaxy s2 which came out roughly 6 months after my phone and even the XDA developers have yet to port Jelly Bean over. If we're talking official OS updates then I'm even more ahead of the pack. My phone dropped the same time as the Galaxy S, and wow that thing is a piece of shit now compared to mine.

Is the support for the sgs2 seriously that slow, lol? I´m running Jelly Bean on my 2-year old SGS just fine. (it´s been out for almost a month now)

  On 11/9/2012 at 1:03 PM, plstik said:

  On 9/5/2012 at 4:13 AM, thehauntingsoul said:

In contrast, my Dad bought a galaxy s2 which came out roughly 6 months after my phone and even the XDA developers have yet to port Jelly Bean over. If we're talking official OS updates then I'm even more ahead of the pack. My phone dropped the same time as the Galaxy S, and wow that thing is a piece of shit now compared to mine.

 

Is the support for the sgs2 seriously that slow, lol? I´m running Jelly Bean on my 2-year old SGS just fine. (it´s been out for almost a month now)

Nah, I just took a look at XDA and there are quite a few Jelly Bean ROMs: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1529173

S2 is a good, but my partner has one and I can't bear Samsung's bloatware and crappy interface overlay. Stock Android is a million times nicer - especially JB.

can someone put windows 8/JB on iphone 5 already ?!

just look at this shit:

http://www.anandtech...ormance-preview

http://www.iphoneinc...d-by-anandtech/

I've just received the new iP5 a week ago and the performance really is impressive. The difference with the battery-life compared to my previous iP4 is unbelievable. It feels like I could go a week without recharging on a iP5. It works like a charm.

Nexus 4 first impressions -

Screen is nice, but the viewing angles are no-where near as good as on the Galaxy Nexus (particularly evident when the phone is laid on a desk in front of you and you're looking at it from your chair)

USB port is so fucking flimsy feeling - I'll definitely be using the wireless charging thing, since I've already had one Galaxy Nexus USB port fail on me.

The phone gets pretty warm when being used. This may or may not be normal. I'll have to see.

my contract is up in february and i can get a new phone, had iphones for the last 4 years and currently rocking a 4S, but really not sure if i want an iphone 5....they're a bit meh. basically the same as what i've got already (and the 4S is basically the same as the 4 in everyday use - my GF's got my old 4 and when you use them side-by-side for normal phoney things, they're identical pretty much). so yeah, might wait it out for a 5S or even make the big break away from apple and get something else only trouble is i've got an imac and use itunes and obviously the iphone syncs with that really nice plus iCloud etc so if i do break from apple and get something else, maybe i'll lose a lot of funtionality? anyone else using a non-apple phone with a mac computer?

  On 11/13/2012 at 8:10 PM, BCM said:

my contract is up in february and i can get a new phone, had iphones for the last 4 years and currently rocking a 4S, but really not sure if i want an iphone 5....they're a bit meh. basically the same as what i've got already (and the 4S is basically the same as the 4 in everyday use - my GF's got my old 4 and when you use them side-by-side for normal phoney things, they're identical pretty much). so yeah, might wait it out for a 5S or even make the big break away from apple and get something else only trouble is i've got an imac and use itunes and obviously the iphone syncs with that really nice plus iCloud etc so if i do break from apple and get something else, maybe i'll lose a lot of funtionality? anyone else using a non-apple phone with a mac computer?

i was an iphone user since the first, and just made the switch from iphone 4 to an htc one x. i was looking for more from the 5 (and ios6), and yeah, it was a bit meh.

i've got a macbook and an imac, and i'm connecting my phone as a hd via usb, then dragging and dropping music and video, and it works fine to me. syncing via itunes was one of the things i was never happy with on my iphones, so it's been refreshing not dealing with it. i did try the official android mac sync application, but every time i ended up fighting to get my mac to recognize the phone in the correct mode (hd, file transfer, sync, etc.)

i'm enjoying android quite a bit, the flexibility is amazing to me. i'd say there are things about it i don't like compared to ios, but mostly it compares very favorably. the turn by turn in maps is quite nice.

any essential android apps anyone can recommend?

Damn, the Nexus 4 sold out in 15 mins.

Will have to wait for the next stock. :(

anybody here try one of the ~$600-700 windows 8 tablets yet with the optional keyboard option? I'm very curious how those perform. If one can use say a program like Abelton or Audition with a touch screen in a usable manner it seems like a pretty good tool

  On 11/13/2012 at 10:37 PM, Awepittance said:

anybody here try one of the ~$600-700 windows 8 tablets yet with the optional keyboard option? I'm very curious how those perform. If one can use say a program like Abelton or Audition with a touch screen in a usable manner it seems like a pretty good tool

it's sort of discussed in the windows 8 thread. the only one near 700$ i know of is this one: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-ATIV-Smart-PC-500T/dp/B0098O9TB0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352842909&sr=8-1&keywords=ativ+smart+pc and it's getting very good feedback, i have no idea if its hardware is enough to handle abelton and the like. another batch of win 8 tablet/laptop hybrids that's slowly coming out features i5 processors and genrally better hardware all around, and there are a lot to choose from but they cost around 1000-1200$

p.s, fuck you.