What phone to go for iPhone 4s , Android , Windows Phone or BlackBerry

thegoodman

Pinkypants wrote: »

Is it really about the phones? Or is it about the apps?

Cause lets face it, the phones on their own don't do a lot. So it's all about which app will I use the most from which system.

100% agree. Its all about apps and functions. The with iphone all apps work with all devices excluding old one such as first iphone and 3G.
One phone may have the most powerful CPU, 160GB memory, SD Card, 4.5inc screen, all open source but whats the point if nothing or much is available for it. The geek may find it useful but most people want.

DUTR

thegoodman wrote: »

100% agree. Its all about apps and functions. The with iphone all apps work with all devices excluding old one such as first iphone and 3G.
One phone may have the most powerful CPU, 160GB memory, SD Card, 4.5inc screen, all open source but whats the point if nothing or much is available for it. The geek may find it useful but most people want.

It's called being future proof, what is it that a 4s does that a 3gs cannot?

thegoodman

no such a thing as future proof. You can only base it on what you need vs what is available. for example if you buy the phone as I said above, the next model will have even more memory etc. Most phones have a life cycle of 2 years before most people start changing to newer model.
If you still want to find the device which is future proof than look at the retention, how many people perfer to stick to the device / comapny. Higher the rate better product.
More can be found at:
http://www.mobilebloom.com/apple-has-high-retention-rate-while-rim-users-not-as-loyal/224847/

DUTR

thegoodman wrote: »

no such a thing as future proof. You can only base it on what you need vs what is available. for example if you buy the phone as I said above, the next model will have even more memory etc. Most phones have a life cycle of 2 years before most people start changing to newer model.
If you still want to find the device which is future proof than look at the retention, how many people perfer to stick to the device / comapny. Higher the rate better product.
More can be found at:
http://www.mobilebloom.com/apple-has-high-retention-rate-while-rim-users-not-as-loyal/224847/

That's because they are often tied into a 2yr contract, they used to change every year in the past.

thegoodman

DUTR wrote: »

That's because they are often tied into a 2yr contract, they used to change every year in the past.

Thanks for the reason. The statement is still true most people change the phone within two years.

N20Y1D

Iphone of Android? Given the name of this website there can only be one answer.

Android.

grumbler

Even MSE Towers don't understand this and keep promoting iPhone.

Cash-Strapped.T32

I'm always naturally suspicious of any divides like this seems to be becoming (AMD/Intel, ati/nvidia, win 95/98, pc/console, pc/mac, pc/gone mad, whatever..)

Someone's mentioned Windows above, up to 6.5 I'd probably have agreed with him that as a standalone OS, it probably could have provided everything the smartphone market could have wanted without the need for competitor products such as Android or iOS, especially as it stuck so closely to the familiar Windows structure that let's face it, already does everything the home pc & office-based market needs).

Now since it's transformation into Vista-mobile I've dropped that opinion.


That just leaves Android really. Ok, Android *could* be argued to be harder to use, in that there's more menues to use, it's use over several different brands & types of phone means it's inherently more configurable (it has to be, to be viable on different types of handset).

You might argue that those scrolling home-screens, the way the status bar holds info that a new user might know to look for, the difference between widgets & shortcuts, etc.. might confuse a new user & make him think he's using a far more complicated device than he really is..

..But to any such argument, I'd put this; Any version of Android is only as complex as the writer (or company) wishes it to be.

Take for example companies such as Orange, who even bundle the phone running a version of Android that they have "Oranged-up".

In that instance they've made the interface more clunky, complex & busy, with little menues here, toggles there etc..
But there's nothing in the world stopping another company, let's call them Borange, from releasing a version that hides everything from the user except a few core programs like Calls, Texts, Apps-Menu, Browser, etc..
One program per screen let's say, just like a classic dumb-phone menue - Oh, and you can only exit the program by closing it, and if 2 programs happen to be open then the oldest one auto-closes.

If you so wanted, you could release an iPhone-a-like handset, and have it running a version of Android running an Apple theme, and modified such that the user would hardly know they're not using iOS.

Things that "just work" are what any programmer dreams of. If a coder knows exactly what a user is going to enter into his program, or how their fingers will wrap around any-one of a variety of touch-screens, if a device driver programmer knows precisely what kind of gear the user is going to plug into his machine, and if coders of simple phone-apps know the exact configuration of everyone's handset (or if they're all identical), then everything in the world "would just work".

No one is stopping anyone else from releasing a range of Android phones just as locked-down as iOS, that only runs on this one type of phone, will only interface with this one program to allow phone->pc communication, will only run programs compiled in this certain way, etc..
You could probably mirror the iOS user-experience just using a themed version of Android, and would it probably need modifying little more than the version that Orange release with the OSF phone.

And everything would be guaranteed to just work, because the devs would already know of every variable.
So the "virtue" of everything just working, isn't really a virtue; It's just logic in action.

By preventing effective multi-tasking the devs can reduce the risk of user-inputs causing conflicts - By locking users out of what people like me would consider important functions, the Apple devs can reduce almost all the risk of unknown variables creeping in, and it's the unkowns that will create bugs, cause crashes, instability and generally make things "not work".

(And if I was a !!!!!! I'd make a comment here about how you get little crime in a totalitarian state but that would be pushing an already stretched metaphor too far..:o)


Damn, reading all that back it makes me look like a right little android fan. Tbh I'm not, I just appreciate the fact that what is actually a weakness in iOS is seen as a strength, and the reverse for Android.

Yolina

just adding some fuel to the flames :rotfl: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20125189-37/android-overtakes-ios-in-mobile-app-downloads/

thegoodman

Yolina wrote: »

just adding some fuel to the flames :rotfl: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20125189-37/android-overtakes-ios-in-mobile-app-downloads/

This is not like for like compare. The android phones are made by many companies, apple is one. You can compare apple vs nokia or htc or samsung not all put together unless one feel that apple can take over all mobile phones. This is like comparing samsung tv sell against all other tv sell.