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An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

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Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#71

Post by w0utert »

vacri wrote: post #43
w0utert wrote: post #6

I agree with what the article says about sharing data between applications, this really is one of the biggest pain points of iOS right now. Fortunately, it looks like Apple will finally address this in the future, iOS 6 already has infrastructure in place to allow for remote view controllers that (in theory) should allow any application to register itself to handle certain data and events. Right now seems to be only…

Oh and of course you can 'customize everything' and here you have 4 examples of the most ugly homescreens I have ever seen on a mobile phone. Good grief, you speak of personlisation like it's a bug and not a feature. I personally hate the iOS window-dressing. You have this sleek-looking bit of hardware, but the OS looks plastic and Fisher-Price, with safe and chunky buttons to give to your kid with no sharp edges. Th…

Chill out and take a deep breath, because you're missing the point entirely. I was talking about the arguments the article gives that supposedly show 'Android is better in almost every aspect', not about the merits of customization itself. No one is denying you anything, like I said: it seems to be more like personal preference than objective superiority. Sure enough Android wins on customizability, but that doesn't automatically mean everyone cares for this particular aspect of the OS.

I always find it amusing how fans of customizability seem to over-estimate the importance of dicking around with something the vast majority of people primarily use as a tool, a useful utility. If the defaults work well (which seems to be the case for iOS, even toddlers appear to be able to use it), that's already much, much better than something that sucks by default but can be customized to suck less.

That said, if you really care about customizability, you can always jailbreak your iPhone and do whatever you like, lots of customizations possible on jailbroken iPhones. Or just buy an Android phone if customizability is high on your list of priority features. Again, this is more about personal preference than anything else.

On a side note: Years ago when I was just starting to use Linux, I spent weeks customizing every aspect of the look & feel of the user interface. After a while I always got bored with what I had and started to get irritated by the various usability issues my customizations had introduced, so I started over. I went from FVWM to fluxbox, to Gnome, to KDE, back to Gnome, to XFCE and then back to Gnome again. The last time I switched to Gnome I stopped caring about customizations and simply stuck with the defaults, I had more interesting and important things going on in my life to spend time on, instead of wasting my time trying to be smarter than the people who designed the user interfaces I was using. I bought my first Mac running OS X and just used it the way Apple designed it, and never looked back. Since then I lost intereset in customizing my computers and phones altogether, realizing it's more like a hobby than actually making anything 'better', because 9 out of 10 times, you're only making things worse.

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#72

Post by niklas_a »

Can only agree with OP. I gave up my iPhone 4 for a Galaxy Nexus this summer and have never looked back.

I think Google can still work on the default look, but I find Android to be very "clean" and quick to work with. Android feels much more like a real operating system. iOS is so restricted and there are many work tasks that I cannot do (e.g. mailing a dropbox file to someone).

Google Now is also amazingly good. And the fact that mail search actually works is a "small" bonus :P

Samsung has also implemented some cool features in the SGS3, like that the screen stays on as long as you look at it. They are just much worse at marketing it. Can you imagine how much Apple would have hyped a similar feature?

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#73

Post by MichaelJW »

Cor wrote: post #68
w0utert wrote: post #6

I agree with what the article says about sharing data between applications, this really is one of the biggest pain points of iOS right now. Fortunately, it looks like Apple will finally address this in the future, iOS 6 already has infrastructure in place to allow for remote view controllers that (in theory) should allow any application to register itself to handle certain data and events. Right now seems to be only…

"Oh and of course you can 'customize everything' and here you have 4 examples of the most ugly homescreens I have ever seen on a mobile phone." Agreed. I really don't like the look of most Android customisations. I think default Android is pretty gorgeous, though. My homescreen currently looks like this - http://i1.minus.com/iidfIgCTZsXEX.png The only thing I've added is the widget: everything else is stock. I'm very…

What is that widget? It looks great!

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#74

Post by josteink »

lucian1900 wrote: post #33
josteink wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While Android still doesn’t give you bouncing lists and scroll views It used to be in Android until Apple made it a 1 billion dollar lawsuit and banned everyone else in the universe from implementing it. Those bouncing lists. 1 billion dollar. And Apple is not a patent-troll. No siree.

Really? I've never seen it in Android.

It may be a TouchWiz thing, but I've seen it on Samsung phones I've owned. That is until Apple decided to throw patent lawsuits around. A firmware-update later and gone it was.

These days most Android-phones have a "overflow" effect when reaching the end of a list. Specifically designed to avoid lawsuits.

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#75

Post by josteink »

obituary_latte wrote: post #51

What are people's experience dealing with the migration of music from iOS to android? As an iOS user with an itch to checkout android again (had one of the first HTC "google phones"), this is one of my bigger concerns.

Upload to Google Music. Tag the music you want on the device as "available offline", on your phone, when you have internet connectivity.

No cables. No sync. No fucking iTunes. No computer required. Just internet. Done.

If you feel old-fashioned, you can also just copy files to your device as a standard MTP or mass-storage device using USB-cables, or copy to SD-cards.

As long as the music files are properly tagged you should have everything auto-discovered on the device.

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#76

Post by josteink »

bobfunk wrote: post #64
morphyn wrote: post #17

I've been using my Nexus 4 for one week now and I obviously love it. I think the feature that impressed me the most is the 'gesture typing', which compensates for my apparent inability to type correctly on a virtual keyboard. And it works surprisingly well in French too.

Love the gesture typing as well, it's really impressive how well it works. I've only been using it in english so far, and feel crippled as soon as I have to write a message in other languages. Is there any way to quickly toggle between different languages?

If you have multiple languages enabled (as opposed to the default, system-language only), you can just point-hold the space-bar and a language selector will be opened.

You can also enable a language-cycling button which will appear left of the space-bar if you so please.

Both are definitely quick enough for my fancy.

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#77

Post by pithon »

buster wrote: post #30
w0utert wrote: post #6

I agree with what the article says about sharing data between applications, this really is one of the biggest pain points of iOS right now. Fortunately, it looks like Apple will finally address this in the future, iOS 6 already has infrastructure in place to allow for remote view controllers that (in theory) should allow any application to register itself to handle certain data and events. Right now seems to be only…

Well, there are quite beautiful homescreens and widgets for android. You don't have to use them but i would say that iPhone users are just missing out on something. Sure, you are used to just take what Apple gives you and praise that but i couldn't.. I want high customizability and i love to change the entire phone setup when i get bored by the current setup.. or try out a new home screen once in a while. It's painle…

Also: http://www.reddit.com/r/androidthemes/

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#78

Post by Cor »

MichaelJW wrote: post #73
Cor wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Oh and of course you can 'customize everything' and here you have 4 examples of the most ugly homescreens I have ever seen on a mobile phone." Agreed. I really don't like the look of most Android customisations. I think default Android is pretty gorgeous, though. My homescreen currently looks like this - http://i1.minus.com/iidfIgCTZsXEX.png The only thing I've added is the widget: everything else is stock. I'm very…

What is that widget? It looks great!

You can get it here - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.pooley.beta....

You'll also need to install the 'Ultimate Clock Widget' app from here - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.vineetsiroh....

Enjoy!

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#79

Post by desas »

mattquiros wrote: post #5

Been an Android user for a year (Galaxy Tab 8.9) and was going to get an iPhone 5 last Christmas just to try out a different device. I changed my mind and am getting a Nexus 4 instead. I was able to use one of our test iPhones at work for a primary phone and here are just 3 things I don't like about iOS: 1. Toggling settings can be difficult. In Android, you have a pull-up/pull-down menu right from the home screen wh…

1. Is Samsung specific I think. On my Nexus S pulling the notification drawer down has a button that launches the Settings app but doesn't have the settings right there. My wifes Samsung S3 does however.

Re: An iPhone lover’s confession: I switched to the Nexus 4

#80

Post by ebiester »

vacri wrote: post #43
w0utert wrote: post #6

I agree with what the article says about sharing data between applications, this really is one of the biggest pain points of iOS right now. Fortunately, it looks like Apple will finally address this in the future, iOS 6 already has infrastructure in place to allow for remote view controllers that (in theory) should allow any application to register itself to handle certain data and events. Right now seems to be only…

Oh and of course you can 'customize everything' and here you have 4 examples of the most ugly homescreens I have ever seen on a mobile phone. Good grief, you speak of personlisation like it's a bug and not a feature. I personally hate the iOS window-dressing. You have this sleek-looking bit of hardware, but the OS looks plastic and Fisher-Price, with safe and chunky buttons to give to your kid with no sharp edges. Th…

I Just changed to Android yesterday. The first thing I missed was the polish of the iOS.

I looked up how to switch applications and all I got was "10 best task switcher apps." I don't have time to evaluate three, much less ten task switcher apps! All I've been able to find is if you hold down the main button and then scroll to task manager, you can get to one.

I like customization, but Apple's defaults were better for me, at least. You say Fisher-Price, I say well conceived and 1960's Braun.

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