Originally Posted by ganjavih
I'm gonna go for a smart phone this summer. It's probably between the iPhone 4 and the Samsung Galaxy S... both at Bell. Any thoughts on these two? Anything better than them out there?
I'm in love with my Galaxy S. The phone can be a little slow when you launch a memory intensive app but that's been the only drawback and there is a software update coming soon to help that (along with Android 2.2 support!). The display is just beautiful. The Iphone boosts a higher res display, but at 3.5" there's really no benefit to squeezing more pixels onto the screen. Samsung's super amoled 4" screen is hands down the most beautiful screen you'll see on such a device.
I don't know if Bell will do this, but in Korea my Galaxy S came with a second battery and a charger to charge the second battery by itself. If you're going to use your smartphone for wifi, apps, music or video this is huge as the batteries on these things tend to drain quite quickly. The lack of a replaceable battery and expandable memory on the Iphone are deal breakers for me.
Reasons why I went Android over Iphone were:
- expandable memory (huge advantage!)
- functions as USB mass storage device (I can use the app market, samsung software, micro SD card or use it as a USB device to transfer apps/media etc, with Apple if you don't like Itunes or it doesn't work you're SOL unless you jailbreak)
- screen real estate (huge advantage if your'e browsing)
- plays media without converting (just download and transfer)
- replaceable battery (as mentioned)
The Iphone is a sexy device and it does what it's supposed to do pretty well. However, if you were to put Android 2.1+ on it and try to sell it against the latest Samsung, HTC and Motorolla phones someone would have to be crazy to buy it unless it were free or severely discounted. The hardware has too many shortcomings (albeit deliberate ones on Apple's part - slowly these features will be added and touted as Apple innovations such as the front facing camera even though the competition has been doing this for years). The Android app market is exploding as well, Apple's advantage there is almost dead. Interestingly enough, Apple liked Samsung's CPU so much they decided to use it in their phone and bought out the company that Samsung partnered with to make the GPU for the Galaxy S so they could include that into their phone as well. Then they bought the screen technology from Samsung's main rival in Korea LG (rumour has it that Samsung wasn't willing to let Apple use their super amoled tech as their production capacity is low and they wouldn't be able to use it on their own phones, LG is now facing this problem with the retina displays in the Iphone 4 they're supplying). There's very little difference in terms of what's under the hood in an Iphone4 or Galaxy S.
Then again, if you like things to just simply work and aren't the least bit tech savvy, Apple's watered down approach might work best.
Previous smartphones I've owned btw: Iphone (second gen), LG Eve, BB Bold and now Galaxy S (hands down the best of them all).
Another added bonus - although the camera doesn't have a flash, it has an excellent night shot mode that captures low-light pictures brilliantly. The audio and video quality on 720p videos taken with it is damn impressive as well!
