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Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#51

Post by shiftF »

Throughout my last 3 years I've used (in order): BlackBerry 9000, iPhone 3GS, Samsung Focus (WP7). Each one for almost exactly a year.

A year ago I made the hard decision between Android & WP7 and eventually went with WP7 for 3 simple reasons:

1) I love the UI. Clean, simple, to the point.

2) Responsiveness of UI. Every Android phone I'd played with (a year ago) didn't feel great. It felt slow, and clunky - almost as if smartphone CPU speed couldn't handle all that Android. WP7 felt fast, and I'm an impatient guy.

3) Effortless Social integration. BlackBerry had none. iPhone - I felt I needed to spend too much time looking for apps to get all the features I wanted. Ex: I had to download 3 different apps to: a) post quick facebook updates, b) sync fb contacts to my address book, c) view my friend's facebook updates. As soon as I set up my WP7, all my Google Contacts and FB contacts synced automatically, linked common data together, and I could see their FB updates all in one spot! I did nothing, and I had John Smith on Gmail & FB linked with email, phone, birthday, fb wall, and so on. Little things like this make me smile.

BlackBerry did my business well, but lacked quality apps and wasn't very fun.

iPhone did my business well enough, and was entertaining - but managing all those apps felt like a chore.

WP7 already did 90% the things I wanted to do, so I only needed a few more apps to handle minor things.

As Elop said - it's a battle of ecosystems, and with great dev tools & the XBOX Live brand, I took a bet that good apps/games would eventually come. So far - I'm still happy (probably because I'm running Mango).

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#52

Post by nhebb »

gsivil wrote: post #4

Obviously I do not belong to the "early-adopting crowd": I do not own a smartphone. Why? Because I find the 80 dollars per month too high price to pay for something(access to the internet) that I have almost everywhere I spent my time: work, home, bookstores. Even though I am seriously tempted everyday to get an iPhone.

I'm basically the same way with the added point that I don't really like talking on the phone. I'm not asocial - I'm just not a chatty guy.

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#53

Post by tortilla »

gsivil wrote: post #36
masterj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be with you, but Virgin got me on their $25 / month unlimited data, 300 minutes plan. I hardly talk on my phone, but being able to tether from anywhere has been a big win. Now I think they charge $35 / month for the same plan.

May I ask you, how is this possible?

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-...

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#54

Post by redthrowaway »

shiftF wrote: post #51

Throughout my last 3 years I've used (in order): BlackBerry 9000, iPhone 3GS, Samsung Focus (WP7). Each one for almost exactly a year. A year ago I made the hard decision between Android & WP7 and eventually went with WP7 for 3 simple reasons: 1) I love the UI. Clean, simple, to the point. 2) Responsiveness of UI. Every Android phone I'd played with (a year ago) didn't feel great. It felt slow, and clunky - almost as…

>Every Android phone I'd played with didn't feel great. It felt slow, and clunky - almost as if smartphone CPU speed couldn't handle all that Android.

My roommate has a Galaxy S. While I haven't played with it too much, my initial reaction was quite positive. It felt as smooth and quick as an iPhone 4.

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#55

Post by sandipc »

ricardobeat wrote: post #34

Had an Android (1.6) for a year. After the initial excitement wore out (a week), I could barely answer a phone call since the interface bugged out everytime. The battery wouldn't last for a work day, and every app froze/crashed randomly (including contacts, phone app, and other system apps). The only good experience was MotoBlur syncing perfectly all my profiles, yet it's interface was just as crappy. I already had a…

I think you'll find Android 2.2+ to be a very, very different experience from 1.6 - Google has really worked out many of the silly problems that you mentioned (that certainly plagued early versions of the platform, I agree) .

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#56

Post by msg »

Android. I wanted physical keyboards and hackable, and strongly disliked (and still dislike) Apple's policies governing iOS development and their dick moves toward Flash, compilers, in-app price matching, etc.

And more nebulously, I felt like Android was onto something and I wanted to go to there.

I put CyanogenMod on my phones. Response and battery life went way up.

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#57

Post by duncan_bayne »

I owned an iPhone 3G; ended up giving it away after buying myself an HTC Desire (and, later, my wife an HTC Aria). I absolutely hated the Apple walled-garden experience; emotionally, the experience was like using a borrowed phone that I couldn't set up the way I wanted to.

Switching to Android felt like being back in late 90s when I started using GNU/Linux seriously ... not quite as polished, but so much more pleasant to use.

Android + Samba server + MediaMonkey + Bigpond Music is a much nicer solution than iOS + iTunes for buying, storing and organizing music too.

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#58

Post by shiftF »

redthrowaway wrote: post #54
shiftF wrote: post #51

Throughout my last 3 years I've used (in order): BlackBerry 9000, iPhone 3GS, Samsung Focus (WP7). Each one for almost exactly a year. A year ago I made the hard decision between Android & WP7 and eventually went with WP7 for 3 simple reasons: 1) I love the UI. Clean, simple, to the point. 2) Responsiveness of UI. Every Android phone I'd played with (a year ago) didn't feel great. It felt slow, and clunky - almost as…

>Every Android phone I'd played with didn't feel great. It felt slow, and clunky - almost as if smartphone CPU speed couldn't handle all that Android. My roommate has a Galaxy S. While I haven't played with it too much, my initial reaction was quite positive. It felt as smooth and quick as an iPhone 4.

I have no clue on the state of Android responsiveness nowadays - but when I played with a few a year ago, I believe the browser responsiveness was still lacking. I realize the Galaxy S is an old phone, but you might have played with one running a newer OS.

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#59

Post by blinkingled »

I settled with Moto Atrix after going through Nexus One and Epic 4g . I am quite happy with it after the 2.3.4 update. GTalk video/audio chat works , I happen to use and like the various mods Moto makes to Android, it is extremely snappy and stable. Here is the kicker - battery life is awesome as in 2 days of moderate and 1 day of heavy usage.

Re: Poll: Which smartphone platform do you own and use mainly?

#60

Post by azakai »

KeithMajhor wrote: post #6

I have an Android phone and recently bought an iPad. After experiencing both platforms I think I'll be buying an iPhone 5 next. If I we're going to do android again I'd get a phone where I could install stock android (like the Nexus S). Oh also, I really hope WP7 doesn't take off. The new wave of smart phones run webkit almost exclusively right now and I'd like it to stay that way.

> Oh also, I really hope WP7 doesn't take off. The new wave of smart phones run webkit almost exclusively right now and I'd like it to stay that way.

Why would you want there to be a single web browser engine in the mobile space?

I'm no fan of WP7 myself, but having a single web browser engine isn't a good thing. We need some diversity.

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