• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

former iphone users, can we be frank?

S

southrncomfort

Lurker
Im currently an At&t iphone 3gs user. Im looking very hard at changing to Android this week. Not because I hate the actual phone, but because I cannot stand iTunes. iTunes requires too much of my attention and Im at my breaking point.
The iphone itself meets my needs, my at&t service has been completely adequate. In fact, Im still under contract with at&t so I will not be switching carriers.
I just find that I hate iTunes with a religious passion.
Im a social phone user, I have a few game apps for my kids but I mostly just use my phone for email, texting, FB, Kindle books, and safari.
I barely even use the phone for talking ironically. Maybe an 2-3 hours of talk time in a month? lol
Im looking at HTC Inspire or Motorola Atrix.
Is there anyone who gave up an iphone and came to miss any of the apps, ease of use etc? Im just moderately smartphone smart, so ease of use is important to me.

Are these phones good choices for a social user such as myself?
Leaning toward Inspire for personal reasons.

I'd appreciate any thoughts. Thanks :)
 
If you've been a long time iPhone user (like me), switching to Android will be a shock for the first few days.

I won't go back now.

Oh yeah, go HTC. Never Samsung.
 
If you could give us the top ten (or twenty or thirty) apps you use daily, it will really help. The biggest PITA is not having that one app that you find suits your needs.
 
lunatic59 said:
If you could give us the top ten (or twenty or thirty) apps you use daily, it will really help. The biggest PITA is not having that one app that you find suits your needs.
Click to expand...


That will be easy :o I use Kindle and Pandora oh and YouTube.
I have an occasional need for the SW airlines check in app but no love is lost
if that doesnt work out.

The rest of the apps on my phone are kids gaming apps.
Im assuming Droid has plenty of kiddie apps to amuse my kids while waiting
at the Dr office etc? My kids are ages 6,11 and 13.
I plan to keep rather then sell the iphone so it can be used as an itouch
where internet is available as well.
 
southrncomfort said:
That will be easy :o I use Kindle and Pandora oh and YouTube.
I have an occasional need for the SW airlines check in app but no love is lost
if that doesnt work out.

The rest of the apps on my phone are kids gaming apps.
Im assuming Droid has plenty of kiddie apps to amuse my kids while waiting
at the Dr office etc? My kids are ages 6,11 and 13.
I plan to keep rather then sell the iphone so it can be used as an itouch
where internet is available as well.
Click to expand...


Then you shouldn't have too much of an issue with Android. There will definitely be a learning curve to break some habits that you have been used to with the iPhone.

What about iTunes don't you like?

Either phone will do fine although I believe the Atrix to be the absolute top of the line right now. Your best bet is to go to the store and handle them both to see which fits you better.
 
southrncomfort said:
That will be easy :o I use Kindle and Pandora oh and YouTube.
I have an occasional need for the SW airlines check in app but no love is lost
if that doesnt work out.
Click to expand...

You should be good to go, then as those are all available in the market. If you haven't looked yet, you might want to take a quick look through the Android market to see what would be available. https://market.android.com/

The rest of the apps on my phone are kids gaming apps.
Im assuming Droid has plenty of kiddie apps to amuse my kids while waiting
at the Dr office etc? My kids are ages 6,11 and 13.
I plan to keep rather then sell the iphone so it can be used as an itouch
where internet is available as well.
Click to expand...

I'm sure there are some kid's games available, however, on of the places Android lags in respect to apps is in gaming, so you might want to carry the old iPhone to the waiting room.
 
I own an Evo. All of my experience in mobile devices has been with Android. Recently I got an iPad and finally got a taste of iOS. I was very frustrated. And most of it involves iTunes.

Upon opening the box and turning the ipad on, there was a symbol of a USB plug pointing to an iTunes icon. That was actually confusing to me, as I had no clue what a USB connector had to do with a piece of software. The iPad would do nothing but show me that image. If I want to use my ipad to browse the web, play games, watch videos, check email, why do I need iTunes? Why is the device already handicapped on it's initial power-on?

After playing a bit more, I got iTunes installed on a computer an connected the iPad to it. So it turns out iTunes' purpose is to sync media content to the ipad. Your music, videos, etc cannot be placed on the iPad without iTunes. No such luck plugging in the iPad and transferring it via drag/drop like a USB thumb drive. You MUST use iTunes.

iTunes requires you to have the contents you want on the iPad to be on the computer. If you delete something off the computer, it automatically removes it from the iPad. This is incredibly stupid. It claims to do this to ensure a "sync," but shouldn't it warn you first? Or allow you to sync to the iPad copy?

Next, I learned that there's no way to delete the files directly from the iPad. Basically you have to delete it from your hard drive. Then sync the change over.

But it's not that simple. If you delete some songs, iTunes will no longer be able to see them, and it DOESN'T HAVE THE SENSE TO RESCAN your drive to see if they got moved elsewhere. Instead, it just shows an exclamation mark icon next to the song. If you google this problem, you will see frustrated users dating back at least 7 years. Apparently that's an inconvenience Apple chose not to fix, because they want to push you to using iTunes as your one-stop source for music management, player, store, etc.

To get around the exclamation mark problem, you basically tell iTunes to rebuild your entire music catalog and let iTunes manage it exclusively. That means it duplicates all your music into its special media folder. If you don't want to use iTunes that way, then you can deal with the exclamation mark problem on your own. That's Apple's answer.

iTunes is a very unintuitive piece of software. Apple claims to be all about user friendliness and being so easy that a grandparent could use it. Completely false. The reality is that iTunes is a piece of software that feels like a ton of features were very roughly thrown together. Some videos can be synced as photos; others as movies. iTunes overwrites your music metadata without even warning you. I had my music sorted by my own Genres. During first sync, iTunes went online and replaced them all with whatever it found.

If I were to objectively rate iTunes as a piece of software, I would not recommend it to anyone. I'm a software developer by trade, and it's quite clear that polished iTunes is not. Given Apple's marketing message, I can't believe that this product comes from Apple at all.
 
For those of you who want to eliminate iTunes from the picture, I have a solution, although it's nowhere as nice as stock Android behavior.

Jailbreak the device. Look for untethered jailbreak for 4.2.1.

Once you've jailbroken and installed Cydia, get the iFile application. This is a file manager (like Root Explorer but less powerful) for your iDevice.

Next, install OpenSSHd. This will allow you to copy files to your iDevice wirelessly.

Now, you can create your own folder anywhere you want on the filesystem and SFTP/SCP to your iDevice to put your music and movies there. Then, you use iFile to browse those folders, and you can click on the files to play your movies/music.

The drawback is that iOS won't be able to access the folders you created manually. That means the iPod app can't see your music. The app was designed to only look in folders that iTunes created. And iTunes intentionally creates cryptic folders (F01, F02, F03, etc) and puts a handful of renamed files under them (FWLD.mp3, Q3R1.m4v, etc) so you have no chance to just copy your own music/movies into those locations.

There's clear evidence everywhere that iDevices are locked down and designed to be tamper-resistant. Even a jailbroken iDevice is not truly free, unfortunately.
 
southrncomfort said:
Im currently an At&t iphone 3gs user. Im looking very hard at changing to Android this week. Not because I hate the actual phone, but because I cannot stand iTunes. iTunes requires too much of my attention and Im at my breaking point.
The iphone itself meets my needs, my at&t service has been completely adequate. In fact, Im still under contract with at&t so I will not be switching carriers.
I just find that I hate iTunes with a religious passion.
Im a social phone user, I have a few game apps for my kids but I mostly just use my phone for email, texting, FB, Kindle books, and safari.
I barely even use the phone for talking ironically. Maybe an 2-3 hours of talk time in a month? lol
Im looking at HTC Inspire or Motorola Atrix.
Is there anyone who gave up an iphone and came to miss any of the apps, ease of use etc? Im just moderately smartphone smart, so ease of use is important to me.

Are these phones good choices for a social user such as myself?
Leaning toward Inspire for personal reasons.

I'd appreciate any thoughts. Thanks :)
Click to expand...

I wish I had my wife handy to answer for you. She's on AT&T. Got the iPhone 3G when it came out and upgraded to the iPhone 4 shortly after it was released. She actually likes iTunes, but she does have experience handling Android phones due to my 2nd job as a writer/reviewer.

In her experience, anything with the vanilla interface is garbage due to lack of ease of use (Motoblur falls into this category). She can tolerate Sense UI because it's well done and polished, but still no iPhone.

So, if you love your iPhone, minus iTunes, look into jailbreaking it. That should give you the best of both worlds (with restrictions, as noted by Novox above). Otherwise, if you really want to switch to Android, get a phone with Touchwiz (a ripoff of the iPhone UI to a degree) or Sense. Specs aren't as important as the experience.
 
Androids are tied to Google the way iPads are tied to iTunes.
Wait until you try to use email or some service that should "just work."
 
southrncomfort said:
Im currently an At&t iphone 3gs user. Im looking very hard at changing to Android this week. Not because I hate the actual phone, but because I cannot stand iTunes. iTunes requires too much of my attention and Im at my breaking point.
The iphone itself meets my needs, my at&t service has been completely adequate. In fact, Im still under contract with at&t so I will not be switching carriers.
I just find that I hate iTunes with a religious passion.
Im a social phone user, I have a few game apps for my kids but I mostly just use my phone for email, texting, FB, Kindle books, and safari.
I barely even use the phone for talking ironically. Maybe an 2-3 hours of talk time in a month? lol
Im looking at HTC Inspire or Motorola Atrix.
Is there anyone who gave up an iphone and came to miss any of the apps, ease of use etc? Im just moderately smartphone smart, so ease of use is important to me.

Are these phones good choices for a social user such as myself?
Leaning toward Inspire for personal reasons.

I'd appreciate any thoughts. Thanks :)
Click to expand...

Both those phones you mention are good phones, the Atrix might be a little more powerful. I think a lot of what you ask can be done with Android,I would go play with both phones and get a feel of what you like and don't like with both devices. Like someone mention, go to the market and search for the games your kids like on the iphone and see if the Android market has it as well. When it's all said and done the choice will be yours, yes a little learning will be needed coming to Android or anyone going to a different OS but it's nothing complicated. This forum provides you with any help you might need and a lot of folks here are very helpful .
 
AngryHatter said:
Androids are tied to Google the way iPads are tied to iTunes.
Wait until you try to use email or some service that should "just work."
Click to expand...

Geez, I don't know what troubles you're having on your Moto Droid, but we're using stock Mail app from HTC on two phones - to manage multiple accounts, including MobileMe - and it does just work.

To the OP - the thing with the HTC phone is there are several suggested setups, right out of the box that will make you 99% successful right away - and a setup wizard for when you first get started.

And there's no required s/w to put on your computer with an HTC phone. There's a PC Sync tool, but it's entirely optional.

So - it's not at all like having iTunes - it's like having nothing extra to gripe your PC.
 
hi all,

i did the move from iphone 3g to htc desire about 5 months ago - was surprised at how much of a shock it was actually - especially as ive used different platforms previously - i think ios dumbs you down cause it is so easy to use - BUT, i wouldnt go back to ios now :) android is much better if you like to change stuff to suit your likes

good luck

cheers
dan
 
I went from the Iphone 3GS to the Atrix the only thing I'll miss from the Iphone is the screen shot option.

The OS with the Atrix should take you a few hours to get a grip on how it works, lot of tutorials out there to help you with. My biggest concern was deleting and editing contacts but once I figured it out it's a breeze. The more I use it and find out new things the more I like it.
 
Went from a 3G to a Captivate. I want hardware / software that lets me do what I want, when I want, on my terms... Apple seems to frown on that for some reason :confused:

About half my friends made the jump as well and none regret it. They were the ones that had issues with the phone, the restrictions, the simplicity, itunes, and most of all Apple. Like a previous poster said ios definitely dumbs you down so to speak. They try to take all the complication out of it, and most of the benefits that go with it. Some people are fine with that. I however was not...

Having a taste of freedom from Apple, I will never go back. :D
 
Former iphone user, I had an htc hero and now a galaxy s showcase. Im 44, and im a techie, a geek. I work on networks and program phone systems, but I am not a software dev. Android does present a jailbroken experience right out of the box. Un bound and untethered. Very true. Apple is a sytem, an enviroment. closed but still a system, it all works seamlessly with a mac and an airport, apple tv...it's fast and reliable but not very customizable. both have advantages and disadvantages. The 2 things i dislike most about android is the , wait for it, fragmentation. an app will work on one phone with a certain level of software but maybe not completely or even at all on another and reading app reviews is a tale...so many problems with one app maybe working partially for some or none at all, hardware differences via handset maker, os level and carrier customizations play havoc with compatibilities as well as delay upgrades.Face it, these expensive mini pc's are far too expensive to buy new every year or even two. no reason not to expect some upgrades. yes evenutally software does outpace hardware, thats a given, but far too many phones get abandoned too quickly.

next is too little memory and the apps residing on internal memory and not the storage. totally and utterly ridiculous. I found out the galaxy s is made with 512mb of ram our carrier has it down to 325mb. why? even with apps to sd in 2.2 which i may never see on my carrier unless i want to root, it takes too much resources that are so precious to the phone.

Im busy during the day, i use my phone all day, it needs to be fast, reliable and not lag and be intuitive. I have not seen an android work like an iphone or ipad or ipod even. sorry. honestly i have not. I have played with many. not all but many. I dont care to tweak my phone to turn my clock into words, have oppulent wallpapers, live wallpapers, customizing is nice i guess for kids, but no one sees my phone but me any way. my phone is just a tool. so yea the boring part of apple was not a problem for me, and it's fine if people have the time for all those nice customizations i actually enjoy seeing what others can do. I just dont care about that aspect. i miss the seamlessness of Apple products. Now i have a mish mash of equipment in my home to try to have that ease of use and it works, it's clunky at times but it works.

I gave up my iphone because my company pays for my service on a carrier that does not offer iphone. I just buy the phone. thats why i switched. Wish i could go back, but not feasable for me.

sorry so long but, most people do not seem to miss the iphone, just wanted to give another point of view.
 
sorry it was not a home run for you... but that is why there are choices.

can you get verizon with your work? they got the iphone.
 
I keep various iPod Touches since 2007. I got four gigs of apps, nearly two grand worth of music. I could have bought an iPhone. No. Instead I got a whole bevy of Android devices. Guess why?

The limitations on iOS means its piss poor to the simplest things that Android does. If I open a link from Twitter to the system browser, why the heck when quiting the main browser, it does not return me to my Twitter app?

If I have a photo in Photos, why can't I send it to Facebook or Flickr straight from Photos?

If I liked a webpage why can't I send it straight to Evernote for storage?

If I have multiple notifications on screen, why do I have to click each of them down before I can get to the main UI to actually do something?

Why is my screen festered with red dots? Can you put all the notifications into one single list?

Why do I freaking need to open apps just to read the email, find out the weather of today?

Frankly, I don't use an iPhone because for me, it fails as a tool. The radio is crap, voice quality is crap, when you drop the phone it breaks easily. If you run out of battery, you can't replace the battery and worst yet, you can't use a standard micro USB cable to charge off anywhere. If you're charging you can't receive phone calls unless you got that special Iphone charger, not the charger good for iPods. That's BS. I can charge an Android phone with a micro USB using an iPod charger and still receive calls and text.

Its still great as an entertainment, which is why I still carry an iPod Touch everyday. Its upgraded to iOS 4.2 even.
 
Novox77 sums it perfectly. I had a iPod Touch for a while and couldn't stand it. It wasn't the UI on it, or the battery, or the sound quality. It was dealing with iTunes. With most modern MP3 players designed around a simple drag-and-drop method, the whole syncing thing just made things more complicated.

Also, I noticed that when charging the iPod would sync without my say so. Wouldn't this just wear down the flash memory faster? Built in obsolescence much?
 
EarlyMon said:
Geez, I don't know what troubles you're having on your Moto Droid, but we're using stock Mail app from HTC on two phones - to manage multiple accounts, including MobileMe - and it does just work.
Click to expand...
My wife has a Droid 2 and hers 'just works' too.

I use the stock email app on a Droid X and it just works too.
Even push email from my work account works.

When I dabbled in the iPhone world I had a computer that I did not mind trashing that had iTunes on it.
iTunes is like a virus..... it messes with things... :eek:

Now that I am free of the Apple shackles I think I am better off.
 
bbrosen said:
Im busy during the day, i use my phone all day, it needs to be fast, reliable and not lag and be intuitive. I have not seen an android work like an iphone or ipad or ipod even. sorry. honestly i have not. I have played with many. not all but many. I dont care to tweak my phone to turn my clock into words, have oppulent wallpapers, live wallpapers, customizing is nice i guess for kids, but no one sees my phone but me any way. my phone is just a tool. so yea the boring part of apple was not a problem for me, and it's fine if people have the time for all those nice customizations i actually enjoy seeing what others can do. I just dont care about that aspect. i miss the seamlessness of Apple products. Now i have a mish mash of equipment in my home to try to have that ease of use and it works, it's clunky at times but it works.

I gave up my iphone because my company pays for my service on a carrier that does not offer iphone. I just buy the phone. thats why i switched. Wish i could go back, but not feasable for me.

sorry so long but, most people do not seem to miss the iphone, just wanted to give another point of view.
Click to expand...

Be careful with the stereotypes :) You'll find a significant percentage of non-"kids" using Android. And when fandroids tout "customization," it doesn't necessarily mean aesthetics or flashing custom ROMs.

Apple's mentality is that too many "settings" is confusing to the average user. So the OS and many stock apps are very watered down. To a more advanced user, even though these elements "just work," they just work only barely. The end result is that every piece of software you interact with feels like crippleware. There was so much potential, but features and settings were eliminated for the sake of simplicity.

And let's not fall in line with Apple's marketers so easily. Not everything just works, and their hardware and software is not flawless.

People seem to have forgotten how poorly the original iPods were built, or how short-lived the hardwired batteries were.

Remember last year's admission that somehow, they missed a bug where their reception bar algorithm was overestimating the signal strength for every iPhone model ever built?? And their solution was to make the graphical bars taller to make it seem like you have more reception. WTF.

Then there's AntennaGate. Fanboys turned a blind eye to this one mainly because AT&T fails so much it's hard to tell when the phone is failing or the carrier is failing. It's just life as usual in their garden.

And the bug in iOS that caused alarms and calendar events to fail during the switch from Daylight time to Standard time. Fortunately (sarcasm) it only screwed businesspeople, who are in the minority of iPhone ownership.

The only real advantage I cede to Apple is that their aesthetics are top notch. Clean hardware design, retina display, amazingly smooth framerate, etc. It all gives the appearance of polish, and in that respect only, they are often imitated. Take that away, and you really have a crippled piece of technology that costs more and does less.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom