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Android questions from an apple guy

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drstein2004

Lurker
Hello all,

I recently sold my old mp3 player, so I was thinking in buying a new player. I was also interested in an electronic agenda, so I first thought of an ipod touch...but since I previously had one and was not very happy with it, I thought of adding a bit more and geting a ipod touch equivalent in android. Of this category I have only seen the archos small tablet and chinese knock-offs...which I am not interested. So I thought of buying a low-end android phone instead. For a similar price of the touch I could buy a wildfire, legend...or the Desire (this last one being a bit more expensive, though)

I am mostly going to use it as an MP3 player and as a digital agenda (reading mails, quick answering, taking notes, ...). If the battery starts being an issue I will probably put the phone in airplane mode to consume less battery.

Ok, after my introduction I get to ask the questions ;)

-All the reviews I've found mostly test these phones ...as phones. None comment on the output quality or ease of usage as an MP3 player. Anyone can give me feedback on how good they are?

-Will I be able to slap a 32Gb memory card to my phone and fill it with music? Or for that I should buy ultra-quick memory cards? if it will help if I get the Desire (since it has a faster CPU?)

-How about as agendas/mail software/calendar/dictionary? I guess they all can perform with the correct app, right?

-I heard that the wi-fi reception of the legend is quite bad. Is it true? that seems like quite an issue for me

Any other comment you can add will help me decide :D
 
I would go with the Desire for the larger screen.

Calendar syncs with Google Calendar and there are several free apps and widgets that can present the information to your liking. You can then use Google Calendar Sync on your PC then your phone and PC will stay synced via the cloud.

Use of the media player will be similar on each as they are using essentially the same software. If you don't like the media players in use there are plenty more available in the Market. PowerAmp is a good one to try if you don't like the stock one.

Gmail pushes to the handset if you have an open internet connection.

Other mail is dealt with by a separate email app. K9 Mail is very popular and is available on the Market.

Dictionary? There are lots of them in the Market. I have ColorDict and Free Dictionary.
 
You are probably going to, at the least, have a media experience as good as that on an iPhone or iPod touch on any brand name android device (I say brand name because you mention chinese knock-offs). In many cases the internals that do the audio processing are actually of higher quality in android phones than they are in the ipod/iphone lines. Some of these phones are even marketed as media player replacements. On top of that, there is a plethora of choices available to you in the form of media player apps. I personally use the stock HTC one on my EVO because I am happy with it, but I do plan to play around with others, namely for widgets.

Now, on a personal preference level, I enjoy the media capabilities of my android device over my iPhone 4 largely because of widgets (don't have to go in and out of the app while it is running to change songs, etc.) I also never EVER liked iTunes. It was merely something I put up with all the years I owned an iPhone. Being able to drag and drop media is like a godsend. Android is also able to play just about every media file format under the sun, whereas the idevices are limited to just a few formats. This didn't really pose problems for me too often, but it is nice to have the option of playing many different types of files.
 
Agree about iTunes. I hate it. It bogs down my system with 4 GB RAM. I try to avoid launching it.

I've maxed out the space on my iPod Touch / iPhones, with 8GB of apps, and 8GB of media. With Android I can swap out the SD cards at will, so have virtually unlimited space for media.

16 / 32GB just ain't that much these days. And transfers via iTunes to the iPod Touch / iPhone is brutally slow. Transfers via drag / drop to SD card is much much much faster.
 
Hello again

Thanks all for the quick replies. It seems that the MP3 part of it is no problem. Also I agree that having an sD slot is waaay better that the built in memory of the ipod family....and yes, getting rid of itunes is even better :D

However, I am still undecided on which one to get.

Anyone has a Legend and can comment me on the wi-fi signal issues?

As for the wildfire/desire...I really don't wanna spend the extra money unless it is really necessary. I heard that many applications are not accessible for wildfire due to the screen resolution. Is that true? if so, that would be a point for desire.

Also, what about CPU speed? of course 1Ghz is more than 600Ghz, but is it significant? or only when you are doing some games that need heavy computation?

Again thanks for your input :D
 
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