Decent Android Phone??

[Rob®]

You might want to take it to apple then to get it checked out.

Well I'll be damned. Called Verizon to see about getting a repair claim going, and they suggested I try reinstalling the iOS first. The regular alarm now works even when the silent switch is flipped. One out of many annoyances fixed. Thanks!

[MiataMike]

I only read about half the threw this may have been stated already. Biggest con vs. Biggest pro for a Droid over an Idiot Phone I mean iPhone.

I can hook my droid up to my PC and or MAC as if it were a flash drive and copy and paste everything I want on my phone videos, music, photos ect. and not have to sync the whole freaking thing using a garbage software called craptunes, i mean iTunes. and not get locked down due to DRM imbedding in the Crapple software

Also if i'm really lazy and computer literate I can connect my phone via wifi and copy and paste music, photos, videos all through the wifi. Also with the WIFI and a DLNA enabled TV I can play any video, music, or picture on my TV without a cable instantly

Or if a friend has something that I want i can connect via bluetooth and get it. Apple can only connect a BT headset for talking.

Apple = Limitation
Droid = Freedoms and Liberation

VIVA AMERICA!!
Go Droid, unlike Apple It does whatever you want, not whatever they want you to have

[Rob®]

I can hook my droid up to my PC and or MAC as if it were a flash drive and copy and paste everything I want on my phone videos, music, photos ect. and not have to sync the whole freaking thing using a garbage software called craptunes, i mean iTunes. and not get locked down due to DRM imbedding in the Crapple software

^^ This ^^ One of the many reasons that I think the iPhone is great as a toy that just happens to be able to do some business/professional things, but sucks when thought of in a practical way. ""Oh, I have a report I need to save at work or school and bring home? Let me transfer it to my phone real quick"..nope.

So like I said originally, it really depends on what your main use will be if you're even thinking about an iPhone. My fiance loves hers. She gets annoyed by some of the little things (some I mentioned, some I didn't), but not enough that she can't shrug off. But she uses it as a fancy toy. All my 14 year old cousins love theirs. And when I use mine as just a cute little gadget, I love it as well.

[goofygrin]

My android phone is the only phone I've ever thrown in anger (Sprint Epic 4g).

I had one of my employees root it and it's been pretty smooth sailing first. We put on a "stripped down" rom, so it's got really nothing on it -- none of the sprint BS apps, the Carrier IQ etc. It also fixed some of my annoyances like if you volume all the way down it doesn't turn it to vibrate (rooting made that happen). Since rooting my battery life is far, far longer. I go off the wall at 7am and at midnight I'm typically at 5-20% battery left.

For me, there are two reasons to get a droid over an iphone:
- physical keyboard (must have for me, although I do a lot recently with the swype, but it has cut me responses way, way down from using the Blackberry keyboard where I'd type volumes)
- widgets -- I have my calendar on my "home" screen and it's very helpful for me to see what I've got going on right there rather than having to open applications up to do the same.

[Rob®]

Not to keep dragging this on, but you're comparing a rooted phone against a non-jailbroken phone at that point. If you jailbreak there are a few different apps you can get so your calender (and weather, facebook, twitter, yada yada yada) are all on the lock screen..which seems to defeat the purpose of a lock screen to me if you can actively hit buttons while it's "locked" but that's a different story. You can have the calender be on your normal home screen as well, many different ways if you jailbreak. And you don't need to hack an iPhone 4 to get great battery life. As much as I'd prefer a Droid over my iPhone, you have to at least be far when comparing hacked vs not.

The lack of volume down to vibrate only is one of my major fundamental issues with my iPhone. And I don't believe there is a fix for that, jailbroken or not.

[SirHustlerEsq]

This is going to be long and annoying.

This is what I don't get... it's a phone. What are you modding it for? What do you want it to do? The iPhone requires almost zero fiddling and cussing to get it up and running. Adding apps is easy, and there are plenty of cool ones. And I've had almost no trouble with mine. I think it's locked up on me once or twice in the last 2 years.

Downsides? The iPhone doesn't accept memory cards, so that sucks. But unless you're storing a bunch of music and video on it, it's a non-issue.

I wanted a "phone" until I got my EVO3D. Now, I'm addicted to a few things like AirDroid(turns computer into a terminal for the phone, full keyboard texting is nice too), Media Share is cool with media showing up as a wireless removable device, Chrome to Phone is awesome in general making it worth switching to Android on its own, the same for Google Music. I like how BT, Wifi, 4G, GPA, and Airplane can be turned on without searching the menus, and any other setting for that matter, I'm not sure if those are available on the iphone. Basically if you use Google cloud services or user-settings, Android integration is awesome. We also get the good dataloggers for the track.
I also get to specify which types of contacts show up in my phone. I have a few hundred contacts in my Google account, I only show the ones with phone numbers in the phone, unless I'm emailing and it references the full list.

If you're familiar with Android, you might as well stick with it.

The Mac/PC comparison is a good one. The biggest plus of the iPhone is that everything is intuitive. Also, only having one button means almost everything is touchscreen based and obvious. By comparison my Blackberry has five buttons (one of which is also a swipe pad) in addition to the touchscreen, and Blackberry's insitence on keeping "their" user interface means I spend half my time trying to remember which button to push to open the pop up menu that I have to scroll through to get to the function I want, when the funciton is right out front on the touchscreen on my iPhone.

Have I mentioned I hate Blackberry? I'd just forward my Blackberry to my old iPhone and never touch it again if there was a decent way to access Lotus Notes on an iPhone (yes, we are one of the three companies in the world still using Lotus Notes).

My brain is not wired for Apple products. When I synced my iPhone to the computer, I wasn't really sure which direction documents and contact lists were going, are my contacts from my phone overwriting the computer or vice-versa? One button is fine, but the 4 buttons on the Android phones have 4 distinct function used by all applications. I still use a Blackberry for work, how is that company still in business? Oh wait, 21% share with a 40% drop this year. I'm happy we're getting iPhones for work, I can't wait to trash the BB.

I think the iphone is superior for the average user who mainly makes calls, surfs the net occasionally, messages/sends pictures and uses common apps for simple tasks. It rarely has glitches, is easy to setup and use, is always backed up (if you use icloud or connect to your computer evey so often) and does everything pretty well.

If you are really into customizing your phone, running complex, user-definable apps or having open-source access to tons of apps/using flash, or want the biggest screen possible and 4G data rates, the Droids win.

Having used both (but being an admitted Apple-guy), the droid os pissed me off far too often. Its complex to use some features, but that can be learned. The reason I will not use android phones anytime soon is dismal battery life. Everyone I knwo who is honest about this stuff will tell you they have to recharge durign the day or risk a dead phone if they use their phone often, or even do a few data-intense tasks. 8 hours is VERY common battery life. Those giant screens are massive energy-hogs, and android is prone to letting apps run in the background and kill batteries. You will end-up using app-killer apps to try to control backround stuff, but even they are tricky to get right.

iPhone's, especially the discounter 3Gs and 4 models now that the 4S is out, are no longer overpriced, and they have a proven track record of long life, good battery life ( my 4 can go 2 days without a charge if I go easy on the interent) and reliability. My 2 cents.

Battery life is not as good as Apple, but it's manageable. If you want a big, pretty screen and incredibly fast processing, that's what you pay for. Apple code is supposed to be simpler and one reason it uses less battery. As for confusion, I just don't see it. I knew how to use my Android to the same degree as my iPhone on the first day. The only people who think Android phones are confusing and think the software is written by mushroom coders are people who buy $2500 white computers every three years to surf the internet and post on Gawker about the glory of the 99%. I have never once written a script, code, or struggled to get something to work on Gingerbread.
I had a 3gs previously, it cannot keep up with modern apps and its so god damn slow. Apple also has a tendency to make products obselete after 2-years with process laden iOS updates, you're supposed to buy a new phone annually. with iOS4 my phone became so slow that I went back to iOS3. I was on my 4th 3GS for hardware problems and the Apple store refused to warranty the wifi antenna failure of a 3-month old phone because I rolled back to the old OS. The new, flagship Android phones have fast dual core processors and more ram than you need. I assume they did this for Ice Cream Sandwich and future updates, Apple expects you to drop $500 on a new phone every time they update their OS.

The bad things about my phone:
The first one had a hardware problem, aparently about 30% of HTC phones do. It seems that once you get one that works out of the box, it works forever.
You learn to live with the battery life, but it's not that bad.

Android and iPhone are both really good and showcase modern tech so no matter what you pick, you'll be happy. I suggest you wait for the Galaxy Nexus and pick a provider offering Google wallett. If you go with an iPhone, I guess you'll get whatever you're told to buy from Apple.

[MiataMike]

Mr. BRG inadvertently reminded me of another thing that the droid does brett in contacts. You can create profiles for your phone. Example, work profile standard ring tones, accept calls from your boss. Home and or weekend profiles, send bosses calls strait to voice mail, and let the custom ring tones you want to use be used without worrying about getting in yes trouble ast work for offending someone

[Rob®]

Are Droid contacts set up in alphabetical order by last name (second word) but list the first name/word first?

For instance, if I want to find my friend Jim V, I need to search under V. But when in the V section, his name is listed as Jim V. Or if I want to search for my fiance's info, I need to remember to search under "S" for her last name, instead of "C" for her first name. Even when emailing, I need to spell out practically her entire first name before it will give me the option to select her. Use her last name though, it will find it in two letters. Totally intuitive :rollseyes:

[SirHustlerEsq]

Are Droid contacts set up in alphabetical order by last name (second word) but list the first name/word first?

For instance, if I want to find my friend Jim V, I need to search under V. But when in the V section, his name is listed as Jim V. Or if I want to search for my fiance's info, I need to remember to search under "S" for her last name, instead of "C" for her first name. Even when emailing, I need to spell out practically her entire first name before it will give me the option to select her. Use her last name though, it will find it in two letters. Totally intuitive :rollseyes:

You can pick first or last name sorting, and it sorts on wild-card or whatever. If I type in "joh" It will bring up "John Smith" and "Steve Johnson".

When you hold the phone in landscape it will autocomplete as you type, in portrait it drops down a list to pick from on my EVO3D.

[MiataMike]

You can pick first or last name sorting, and it sorts on wild-card or whatever. If I type in "joh" It will bring up "John Smith" and "Steve Johnson".

When you hold the phone in landscape it will autocomplete as you type, in portrait it drops down a list to pick from on my EVO3D.

I couldn't have said it more eloquently myself..

[Rob®]

Figured. That's how all my past phones were too. Makes it fun when searching for a forum member that you don't know the last name of. I guess I could redo those contacts and my way of doing it (first name then screenname), but it's usually much easier to change a setting than a habit. Like if I had you, Trey, in my contact list I would put you in as Trey mr brg. To search for you, I'd need to look under M. Otherwise I could type out Trey and it will get to you eventually, but just typing T will not bring you up quickly at all.

If the iPhone 4 is capable of searching like that, it goes right back to it not being intuitive for anyone that is not used to Apple products. Wifey gets tripped up by that all the time too, so it's not just me. And it will autocomplete as you type too, but it goes by the last name...which I generally don't start typing to email/text/call someone.

[OZMDD]

I can hook my droid up to my PC and or MAC as if it were a flash drive and copy and paste everything I want on my phone videos, music, photos ect. and not have to sync the whole freaking thing using a garbage software called craptunes, i mean iTunes. and not get locked down due to DRM imbedding in the Crapple software

Also if i'm really lazy and computer literate I can connect my phone via wifi and copy and paste music, photos, videos all through the wifi. Also with the WIFI and a DLNA enabled TV I can play any video, music, or picture on my TV without a cable instantly

Hmm, I own a television. Excellent for watching TV. Flash drive is excellent as a flash drive. My ipod is really good as an ipod. Laptop is a fantastic computer.

I guess I don't do enough things on my phone that I can do better with the device that was intended to do them to appreciate the Droid. Damn kids today...

[Majik]

For my iphone contacts, if there is somone I don't know their last name, but I want an indication of who they are I put MME or their screen name in the company field. That way they show up as just their first name, but if I search for MME it will find those people. Also searching my contacts for Joh brings up people with first name John and people with last name Johnson.

[Rob®]

Ah, the company part is the trick then. But I'd hardly say that's intuitive.

[Majik]

You can also just fill in the first name field and it will use the first letter. For example I have ADT security as a contact. I put "ADT security" as the first name and it is listed under A.

[SirHustlerEsq]

Hmm, I own a television. Excellent for watching TV. Flash drive is excellent as a flash drive. My ipod is really good as an ipod. Laptop is a fantastic computer.

I guess I don't do enough things on my phone that I can do better with the device that was intended to do them to appreciate the Droid. Damn kids today...

This is not your father's Oldsmobile. NFC will change the game. I started drinking the Google Kool-AIDS, hopefully they spare my flesh in the revolution.

[trickyrix]

For instance, if I want to find my friend Jim V, I need to search under V. But when in the V section, his name is listed as Jim V. Or if I want to search for my fiance's info, I need to remember to search under "S" for her last name, instead of "C" for her first name. Even when emailing, I need to spell out practically her entire first name before it will give me the option to select her. Use her last name though, it will find it in two letters. Totally intuitive :rollseyes:

Really? That's odd. My iPhone sorts my contacts alphabetically by first name, but I can change how it sorts and displays in Settings. If I want to find someone I just start typing in the search bar and it works just like brg's Droid - it just looks for the string of characters you type, regardless of where it occurs within the contacts' names.

Anyhow, at this point it's all just splitting c-hairs...

[Rob®]

Really? That's odd. My iPhone sorts my contacts alphabetically by first name

Totally serious. I am looking at my V entries right now: Gary Valxxx, Todd Vanxxx, Jim Velxxx. In that order, bolded just as I have them. It searches only by the bolded last names. If I try to search or enter their first names, I will have to write out their entire first name and start their last name before it will autofill or even give me the option to select them. It is back to whatever search default the phone was set to, but I have tried every different way I saw "intuitively" in settings. EDIT: Played with settings before I reinstalled the iOS earlier today, so for all I know that got sorted out too.

And I agree, it is just splitting hairs. But it's a major annoyance to people, so could very well be relevant to making a decision.

[SirHustlerEsq]

Really? That's odd. My iPhone sorts my contacts alphabetically by first name, but I can change how it sorts and displays in Settings. If I want to find someone I just start typing in the search bar and it works just like brg's Droid - it just looks for the string of characters you type, regardless of where it occurs within the contacts' names.

Anyhow, at this point it's all just splitting c-hairs...

Bro, your shit is "different". Come at me.

[boisking]

I hate to take this thread back to topic...

POS, I have a sprint LG Optimus. It is OK, but has a few demons. Most of them went away when banana-nut-pudding-with-chocolate-fudge-and-whipped-cream-and-sprinkles updated. There is not much internal storage, but there is a memory card slot. I am weary of clouds, since I like to listen to my music even when I am out of service areas... like camping, driving cross-country, etc. This is a plus for having memory card slot in my opinion.

Size: smaller than an iPhone or Evo. Just as waterproof as anything inside of a sandwich baggie is. Touch-screen works through the sandwich baggie. My fingers are too fat to text quickly even without the sandwich baggie.

In summation, this is my first smart phone ever so I like it. If I had been willing to spend more, I would have bought a more expensive one.