I just switched from iPhone 3GS to Android (Galaxy S). My first impression is that it's not as polished as the iPhone, but the overall gain in functionality is worth the switch.
IMO the biggest pros (that iPhone lacks):
- Micro SD card storage
- Mount the phone as a USB drive or as a modem (hallelujah, why did it take so long for phones to get this?!)
- Swype (reminds me of T9 on non-smart phones, sweet, although useless in foreign languages)
- Task management, like the OP said
- Sweet AMOLED screen
- Widgets, surprisingly useful
- Mail client allows multiple attachments (why the iPhone doesn't have this is beyond me), that aren't just pictures or videos
- Access to filesystem (yay!)
Some cons (as compared to iPhone):
- Apps and the OS sometimes appear to hang when loading or when pressing buttons (it would be nice to add "loading..." screens)
- CRAPWARE - why can't I remove useless AT&T apps I will never use? This is where Apple has a definite edge. Plus they all get loaded during boot, which is a major PITA
- Lack of decent headphones (Samsung Galaxy S specific, I think).
- Power button on the side (just a minor annoyance)
- Android Market not as organized as the App Store.
I'm very close to switching from an iPhone 3G to the Galaxy S (captivate), so I'm glad to see someone confirming what I thought would be my impression: not so smooth but more functionality. Not sure if I should wait a few months though for an Android 3.0 lineup.
Rooting your phone just to remove ads is like removing an engine from your car just to get rid of hubcaps -- they should just snap right off.
But seriously, a new iPhone costs $199 with 2 year contract. My Galaxy S (Captivate) cost $229 with 2 year contract. You would think that for a higher price than the iPhone -- which is heralded as the end-all-be-all of smartphones, and which doesn't have ANY bloatware whatsoever -- Samsung could afford to not preload an otherwise awesome phone with so much crap.
I agree, I don't like the AT&T pre-installing crapware either, and it should be easy to uninstall. Your gripe on that point is caused by AT&T, not Samsung though (as coderdude mentioned).
I think on Verizon the Galaxy S doesn't have as much bloatware.
By the way, if you buy online from AT&T the Captivate costs $150 instead.
Ah, didn't know about the online price. I couldn't wait for it to ship anyway, I needed pretty much the same day (for travel). Still, I guess don't get it at Best Buy ;)
It sounds like some of your issues are specific to your Android device and carrier (power button on the side and AT&T apps). Verizon + Droid has been an amazing experience for me.
i just recently went from iPhone 2G to Samsung Captivate and i can not stress enough just how easy navigating around android is. the back button, the search button, and the notification bar are the killer features.
this author fails to find use of the search button, but for me this is an essential item. you can be in any app (contacts, im, mail, etc.) and hitting search will search that currently open app. if you hit the search button again, you can search the whole phone. i don't think i could ever go to a device that did not have this functionality.
holding the home button for a second pulls up a sort of task switcher of open/recent apps - once I discovered this a few weeks ago on my Droid Incredible, I've been using it nonstop
The Mail reader that ships with Froyo is actually useful. k9 never seemed much better than the useless junk that took up space in 1.5/1.6. With the exception of not being able to move a message to a different folder, it's actually a useful piece of software.
Despite all the furor about iOS needing multitasking, this detail is glossed over: on Verizon you can't look up something requiring data while you're on a call.
This isn't an Android vs iPhone issue: on AT&T my HTC Aria can handle a call while checking for directions on Google Maps just fine.
It's interesting how total failure to support the most common smartphone multitasking scenario is glossed over as a "niggle".
I'm not sure if it's the most common smartphone multitasking scenario.
Considerably more common than that,I want to leave an application and come back to it without navigating from the beginning. For example, if I'm in twitter and I go to a link in the browser, I can come back to where I was in twitter. And I can do this with the back button.
Do you really check for directions while on phone calls often? Perhaps it's just me, but people don't call me for directions that much.
I do agree that the author's word choice of "niggle" is troubling and slightly outdated, especially if you look up it's etymology.
> "niggle" is troubling and slightly outdated, especially if you look up it's etymology.
Could you expand on this? I can't find anything other than it dating to the 1500/1600s, probably from Norwegian "Nigla" (to be penurious) or cognate with "Niggardly". As with "niggardly" I don't think there's any racial connotation to the term other than its sound?
The word "niggardly" and it's cognates are not preferred language not just due to their phonetic similarity to a word which unfortunately has awful connotation, but also because sophomoric racists have unfortunately appropriated these terms to have this sort of racial meaning. I should have said "recent etymology" above.
I might be dating myself here, but "niggardly" and "niggle" used to be used quite often to imply racial meaning even if none technically exists. Perhaps we shouldn't avoid the term just b/c some ignorant folks used them in racist ways, but in this case I don't see the harm in avoiding it considering there are so many other ways to say the same thing. Unfortunately, once racists use these words to mean something other than their dictionary definitions, you run the risk of raising eyebrows amongst people who may have experienced these terms in these secondary contexts.
In England, this is likely a different story.
And would you really use "niggardly" to describe something in America in 2010? Really?
The fact that you got down voted and he has 12 up votes (currently) has really kind of changed how I see the hacker news community. Socially I always knew i didn't "fit in" with the people on this site but the one thing that connected us all was learning about technology and a love for sharing what we learn. Because of that I thought that there was enough general respect amongst us all not to use a word like "niggle" or "niggardly" and certainly not to defend it's use. I know you all wont agree with me but lets be honest for a minute; I am a black male and if you were in a conversation with me face to face you would not use that term because if you did we would have a problem.
Yeah, same sort of amazement here that people are upset at me for pointing out the controversy (and that you're getting down-voted as well). I am a brown male who grew up in Jamaica, Queens and then New Jersey and saw a lot of interesting mixtures of culture growing up. It was mostly good but I realize that I've seen more racism up close than most of my friends.
I honestly don't blame them though -- they are right by the books and I understand this stance if you've never seen or experienced the words used in that way.
Though the definition has nothing to do with race, but once you know racists have associated the two, what I don't get is why would you get upset at the person that tells you and shows you that racists are doing this?
Check out the dude below -- he's all worked up and offended that I pointed out that people are doing this. And he's offended at me for saying it's troubling and wise to steer clear of that mess. At least he agrees that they are morons.
And yeah this is definitely a bit disturbing. I don't think it's outlandish at all to avoid certain language once racists start using it to hurt people. If he's fine using word that we've experienced racists use to describe African American babies, that's his call. I don't understand why anyone would be offended or flabbergasted that the word itself has some controversy around it. It's not like there aren't other words to use.
Avoiding "niggardly" is far from a sign of respect. I'm taking a precaution against a listener flying off the handle in ignorance, so it's actually a critique of their education and emotional stability as I perceive them. And it never would have occurred to me that we now have the same problem with "niggle" until reading this.
It just blows my mind that there exist people who would discourage the use of the word 'niggle' because of the fact that it is etymologically related to a word that sounds a bit like a derogatory term.
> Do you really check for directions while on phone calls often? Perhaps it's just me, but people don't call me for directions that much.
No, but people do call me and ask me for feedback on an email they just sent, and I'm able to look at it. They call me and ask me how a stream looks. And I'm able to play it. They call me and ask me if a web page is suitable to share with a client. I check and say it is.
I work online. People call me about things that are online. If I'm at my desk, I'm using a landline. If I'm away from my desk, I'm not by a computer.
So yes, my most common multitasking use case on my mobile phone is to look at something online while on the phone.
While I can do that on Android on AT&T, I can't do that on Verizon.
Is that the full standalone Safari or an embedded Safari within the twitter client? It looks like an embedded browser within the twitter client.
On my iPod touch, if I left my twitter client to go to Safari, I could not come back to exactly where I was in tweetdeck. But I have not tried 4.0 in this regard.
It's a fully functional browser that loads from the app, yes. All developers have this at their disposal. This isn't a problem precisely because apps rarely need to "leave" to display a browser. One just comes in modally, displays the content of a page, and that's that. If you were using a Twitter client that yanked you out of Twitter to show a site, you were using a bad client.
Then I want to email the link to that page, so I have to open the full Safari, then do the email link which opens my mail client, then close the mail client which goes to my home screen, go find my twitter app and open back up to pick up where I left off!
I like my iPhone but it has it's flaws just like any other device.
Calling it "the most common smartphone multitasking scenario" seems like pretty extreme hyperbole. I don't even know if my phone (N900) can do this, because it's never occurred to me to try.
I imagine that would be an annoying limitation. Although like you said, that's carrier specific, not OS. On my TMobile N1 I've got no problems using my data connection while talking on the phone... I do it pretty frequently actually to send and receive emails while sitting on conference calls for work.
I have an Incredible and have used an Evo in person - I haven't seen the X yet. I would say go check out the size of the Evo/X in person and see if that size of a phone is too big... it was for me. The pixel density of the Evo screen was also lacking a bit, and I understand the Droid X is similar in resolution and screen size. I hear the X has the best battery life of the three though.
related question for those who have experience: what do you think is the best phone and carrier combo on the market right now (or that will be on the market soon)? i'm about to be a free agent and i want to get myself into the best of whatever is out there.
IMO the biggest pros (that iPhone lacks):
- Micro SD card storage
- Mount the phone as a USB drive or as a modem (hallelujah, why did it take so long for phones to get this?!)
- Swype (reminds me of T9 on non-smart phones, sweet, although useless in foreign languages)
- Task management, like the OP said
- Sweet AMOLED screen
- Widgets, surprisingly useful
- Mail client allows multiple attachments (why the iPhone doesn't have this is beyond me), that aren't just pictures or videos
- Access to filesystem (yay!)
Some cons (as compared to iPhone): - Apps and the OS sometimes appear to hang when loading or when pressing buttons (it would be nice to add "loading..." screens)
- CRAPWARE - why can't I remove useless AT&T apps I will never use? This is where Apple has a definite edge. Plus they all get loaded during boot, which is a major PITA
- Lack of decent headphones (Samsung Galaxy S specific, I think).
- Power button on the side (just a minor annoyance)
- Android Market not as organized as the App Store.