Android Army
Are you in the Android clan?
0 postsThe Verge
- 1 posts
- 113 comments
Forum Memberships
-
-
Apple Core
All things Apple
1 posts -
Microsoft Tribe
Let your Microsoft flag fly
0 posts -
The Lens
Calling all photo junkies
0 posts
Doctor Evil
On The Verge since Jan 31, 2013
-
Comment
Oh thanks, I keep forgetting it. I never have got the intention to write that much, but once I start writing, it turns out that I have got a lot on my mind.
-
Comment
Seriously, I’m really tired of it.
-
Comment
It’s not even about the “X-Phone”, but about how people act towards rumors and talk about things. After an event everybody is disappointed because they haven’t seen what they made up themselves. It’s starts with a few expectations and people decide to add details or they simply misunderstand something or tell it their friends with forgetting something or making something up because they don’t remember everything and this goes on and on and on.
Let’s take for example the “iWatch”. Apple is/was rumored to make a smartwatch and few days/weeks later Google, Samsung, LG (…) were rumored to make a smartwatch to compete. Then some tech geeks had nothing else to do than creating 3D models and user interfaces. The rumors went as far as “normal” news agencies started to report on smartwatches. Currently people are rumoring about a low cost iPhone and iOS 7. Unfortunately these rumors build up high expectations for some “First Day on the Internet Kids” and after an event they start bitching and crying about how horrible the company is. Some people tend to forgive that these are rumors, nothing more, nothing less. It’s all fun speculating and stuff, I do it myself, but some people take it too serious. Not to mention the idiots trolling around. I want to give an example, but please, please don’t get to mad about it. So some people really think that Apple is developing a cheap iPhone, but it’s unlikely in my view, because some people simply don’t understand the philosophy behind Apple. A lot of people think that iOS 7 is going to be a kind of “flat UI” and a major overhaul and a drastic change. People already created dozens of thread showing a Windows Phone like interface for the iPhone.> I’m like "really? -.". I know that we are in the Android Army section, excuse my more or less only Apple orientated examples. -
Comment
It is a matter of principle.
-
Comment
He should be holding a Nexus (if he believes in Google’s “pure” Android) or the HTC one, because it is the best android device ever build from a OEM, be it in build quality, “upgrades” to android and experience.
According to your opinion the HTC One is the best phone ever built. I think that Samsung puts much better features into their phones, which help to improve the experience. I’m not talking about AirWave or whatever it is called to view your pictures in the gallery for example, but I’m talking about for example the quick toggles they added into the notification center. Those little things.
Build quality you say? I can tell you that if you drop a HTC One and a Samsung Galaxy S4 10 times, the One is going to look worse with scratches and deformation. Don’t get me wrong, it is a solid phone, it doesn’t suddenly collapse in your hands or something, but there is a huge amount of HTC Ones which are built poorly. I couldn’t figure out how HTC created the term “zero gap technology”, when I saw the huge gaps of poorly finished HTC One in a store, which arrived one month after the release, while the S4 was in the store the same day it was officially released. HTC has a real problem to supply the demand like Apple did with the aluminium iPhone 5. (Well. Apple has problems supplying the demand on every iPhone.) Samsung would have troubles supplying the huge demand of a flagship phone with an aluminium construction, while they can mass produce plastic phones. That probably is a major reason, why they use plastic. You could also feel the drills of the front facing speakers on the One unlike people are used from a Macbook. I don’t know if you are supposed to feel the drills (it would be nice if somebody actually answers this). You could also feel the plastic stripes on the back (reply if it is normal). But you couldn’t feel/hardly feel the misplaced sleep/wake button and the volume rocker, because they are not really thick and I didn’t like the pressure point (you might get used to after a while). I could make pictures of the huge gap on the HTC One I saw in the store, if you want me to.
Reviewers like to talk about the built quality and rave about it, but nobody is really critical and don’t even notice the faults with their HTC One, if there are any faults. For example Lew from unboxtherapy shows his HTC One in close ups and you can clearly see the gaps. Pause the video at <a href=“http://youtu.be/mDNKfvKG3wA?t=5m57s”5:57 and 6:02. Now people are going to tell me that this is a hair thick gap and blah blah I shouldn’t care and I wouldn’t notice, but if you pay a certain amount of money for such a device, you have the right to expect superb build quality. You should expect superb build quality. And in those gaps dust is going to come in.
A friend of mine has bought the HTC One and I was really impressed when I first saw it, how thin it actually was. I also love the speakers, the best speakers on a phone up to date. When I checked his device for gap, it had a hair thick maybe on the bottom, but he told me that he dropped the device a couple times, so it’s hard to say it was on default. I forgot to check the speaker and the plastic striped on the back. By the way, for me the device looks to tall for the screen size like the iPhone 4 does to the iPhone 5, because of the huge bezels. The bottom bezel on the HTC One is bigger than the top bezel, which might influences it, too. Meh. I’m not saying that the HTC One is a bad device, but I can’t stand that the majority knocks down the S4 for only the bad design, because they don’t find anything else to criticize. The shape of the phone is really good, at least for me, but the thing I don’t like is the glossy plastic and now they added little points to the whole device, which make it look really cheap, at least the black one. If they used aluminium with the same shape as the S4 has, the phone would be gorgeous.
The most people also like to call the software features gimmicky, but how many of you have actually used the phone as a daily driver. Yet, how many actually used the phone at all in a shop or of a friend for five minutes? I think that some features, such as AirView, are really helpful. My experience is based on a Samsung Galaxy Note II. I have not really used Sense 5 and only got an impression in the store, but I didn’t really liked it. It was “okay” but they could have done a better job, I rather use TouchWiz. But from a little playing with the phone I can’t say too much about Sense.
-
Comment
-
Comment
Meanwhile in Germany they just started building the LTE network in a few cities.
-
Comment
We were just talking about the screen. The colors on the mini aren’t the same as on the Retina, it does not mean that they are bad and most people won’t notice though. But I don’t get why Apple doesn’t useGorilla Glas on their tablets, you can read about scratches from styluses on Amazon and it’s not always the fault of the stylus. The paint on the black iPad mini peels off like on the black iPhone 5. The speakers sound “okay”, but the sound comes only from a side. I didn’t thought that it would be a problem on such a small device, but it is.
-
Comment
Well I said that people enjoy AMOLED screens and provided you some opinions. The opinions don’t have to match yours. The only weakness of AMOLED screens is the brightness, but I like the way the colors are calibrated. My experience is from a Note 2, where I used the “Dynamic mode” (the most over-saturated), because I didn’t like the “Movie mode” which is supposed to bring the most precise colors, because they were more “greyish” compared to the dynamic mode.
Here is a quote of The Verge, where you spend some time according to your 16 posts and 8794 comments, about the S4’s AMOLED screen.
“The GS4’s 5-inch, 1920 × 1080 display is big, beautiful, and seriously eye-catching. The latter is partially a bad thing: the S4 uses a Super AMOLED panel like many of Samsung’s phones, and like many of Samsung’s phones it displays overly contrasted and vibrant colors. Those colors may not be accurate — reds and oranges absolutely explode off the screen, whether they should or not — but they certainly catch your eye. And with a ridiculous 441-pixels-per-inch, even the PenTile display matrix I usually loathe causes no problems. […] I tried to pick my favorite between the One’s display and the GS4’s, and wound up going back and forth a dozen times before giving up. Both are incredibly high-res, bright, and crystal clear; the One is slightly more accurate, but I still periodically forget my nitpicking and get lost in the GS4’s vibrant colors. You really can’t lose, and that’s pretty great.” – David Pierce, The Verge -
Comment
So you just said compared to a 3 year old device the iPad mini isn’t that bad. You have to compare it to todays standards.
-
Comment
Quoting myself.
The front is alright, but the back…
By the way, did you have a S3 or Note 2? When I was in the shop the homebutton on the S4 did not feel like I was used to on my Note 2. The homebutton on the S4 was tight and perfectly processed, but you could tell the difference. -
Comment
According to studies people with a tablet spend the most time surfing the web and I can tell you, I can see the pixelation of the text when I’m surfing on my mini. I’m sorry for you if you have bad eyes.
-
Comment
I recommend to get the Nexus 4, because you get stock experience, updates directly from Google and smooth performance. I can tell you that stock Android is always a little bit snappier, but maybe that’s just meh. The HTC One comes shipped with a one year old software (Android 4.1.2) while Google I/O is around the corner and Android 5.0 will be released.
-
Comment
This is sad. You probably did not even saw the phone in person and you haven’t used it for a few weeks to call it a “shitty phone”. Why is it a shitty phone? The hardware is top notch. You probably reduce the phone to the design, because the rest is perfect.
-
Comment
This was the first time I saw it in person. Coming from a Galaxy S3, based on the pictures all over the internet, I expected it to feel and look just like my S3. It doesn’t. In person, you can see how much nicer in looks and feels. It really does look nicer. The smaller bezels make it look classier, just like the chrome rim going around the screen on the top (which I couldn’t see in pictures). It’s nicer to hold than the S3 because of the flattened sides, and the home button is easier to push.
Everybody complains about the design and I thought it would be “okay”, but when I saw the black version in the store a few days ago, it looked really, really, really bad. The front is alright, but the back… The S3 compared to the S4 is a premium design. The shape of the phone itself is really nice, but what the fuck have they done to the back with these little points? It doesn’t even look like real black, it is more grey. I wasn’t expecting anything special, but I still got disappointed.
-
Comment
“AMOLED panels are generally more saturated in color than their LCD counterparts, but we were a little surprised to see the level of color toned down from the GS3; so much, in fact, that most images we viewed matched the natural color reproduction we enjoyed on the One. […] Yes, the world of 1080p smartphone displays is a nitpicker’s heaven, but unless you have an aversion to AMOLED panels, you’ll be amazingly happy with the crisp text and vibrant visuals.” – Engadget
“Carrying on its fine tradition, the Galaxy S4’s HD AMOLED display nails it with color saturation and contrast, sharply defined edges and details. Articles are easy to read, gameplay looks good, and photos and videos look terrific.” – CNET
“The Samsung Galaxy S4’s 5-inch, 1080p Super AMOLED screen offers some of the most bold and colorful images we’ve seen on any smartphone. When we played a full HD trailer for “The Avengers” on a Galaxy S4 and compared it with the HTC One and iPhone 5, every color from the green on the Hulk’s skin to the glowing blue device in Tony Stark’s chest and the red in Thor’s cape was much more alive on the S4. Even the green that appeared on the “Preview notice” screen of the trailer seemed much deeper on Samsung’s AMOLED display." – Laptop
“The Galaxy S4 isn’t the first phone to sport a 5-inch 1080p display, but it still feels like the very first time when I look down into its Super AMOLED wonders. You can’t really argue with a pixel density of 440ppi. Text is crisp and clear, app icons are sharp, and it’s hard to find a reason to complain.” – TechCrunch
“Make no mistake about it, the Galaxy S4 is a great phone, and easily one of the best you can buy right now. You get an amazing Android experience on a big, beautiful display.” – Business Insider
Just some opinions on the SAMOLED display on the S4, I did not include other phones using AMOLED displays.
-
Comment
I’m not smoking, but I have the freedom to decide if I like to smoke or not. Why do you care if I harm my body? I can do whatever I want to, as long as I’m not limiting your freedom. Why do you care so much about other people? The OP said that you should not given the choice between a SAMILED display and other displays, because he said SAMOLEDS are bad for your body. You should learn to read properly. If we ban everything that is harmful, where does it stop? Think about it.
-
Comment
Why? It sounds as dumb as his example. If people like SAMOLED screens, which he says are bad, why don’t you let them decide whatever they want the screen or not? Cigarettes are bad, but you have the freedom to decide to smoke or not to smoke. Why shouldn’t you have this option? Should we ban everything that is bad for the humans? Then we would have to start being more serious about some animals, the environment….. I’m still waiting for the article that says SAMOLED screena hurt the human eye. Bright displays hurt the human eye, but of course he doesn’t mention it at all.
-
Comment
The iPhone has not to compete with other phones, the iPhone revolutionized the industry, so other OEMs compete with Apple. 1467×825 is not a 16:9 aspect ratio and not a 3:2 either. Now to the iPhone mini, first off Apple would never ever give such a bad name to any phone. If you think that Apple aims at other markets, you are wrong, you simply don’t get Apple’s philosophy. You should do some research on it, if you don’t get it by thinking. A lot of people on the forums can tell you the philosophy behind Apple. With a 300 pixel density, Apple said that you can’t see each individual pixel anymore, they/I never said that humans see in pixels. Why should Apple even produce a product which has a small profit margin, people who can barely afford an iPhond can harldy buy applications. It would harm Apple like the iPad mini did. There is already the iPhone 4 with 8GB unlocked for 400€ here in Vermany.
APPLE’S PHILOSOPHY. -
Comment
I agree with you, that for some people design is everything, but for me it is not. Calling all software features gimmicky is not right, maybe they are not useful for you, but for Derp they are, that’s what’s going on here. People reduce the S4 to only the design, because obviously it isn’t the nicest, but you should not forget the hardware components, which are top notch on the S4. Maybe people reduce the S4 to the design, because the rest is perfect and they don’t see any flaws.
-
Comment
Provide sources please. Most reviewers like SAMOLED screens.
-
Comment
Smoking hurts the body, but cigarettes are being sold everywhere. Same goes for alcohol.
-
Comment
I’m using my phone for everything else than phone calling. I’m like 4 hours a day on mobile data, the rest of the day on WiFi.
-
Comment
Hovering your finger over the display to use Air View, especially while web browsing is actually a useful feature. I agree that for example multiple S4s as speakers or wave over the display to go to the next picture are gimmicky. But the S4 is a pretty good phone in generell by the specs and performance.
-
Comment
First off, I own several Apple devices, I’m not a fanboy, I try to argue with proven facts and you can clearly read when I mention my personal opinion.
Let’s take a look at the original post.
“Android is more about compromise than choice” – He mentions Android, so to my brain come competitors of Android, the biggest obviously iOS. With iOS I associate Apple, because it is the developer of iOS.
“Android tablet” – So the OP mentions Android. Android – iOS. And then tablets, the #1 selling tablet is the iPad, right? Sorry that I associate Apple with tablets.
“Retina” quality screen" – Retina display is a marketing term of Apple, so once again I associate Apple.
“Android OEM” – Oh once again Android. Android > iOS. Samsung, Sony, LG, HTC, ZTE, Huawei some Android OEMs. OEMs of phones? Nokia, BlackBerry and Apple.
“8 inches” – Apple just pushed out a 7.9 inch tablet. Well Samsung pushed out a 8 inch tablet, but I still have a stronger connection with 8 inches to the iPad mini.
“4:3 aspect ratio (far better for tablets)” – 4:3 aspect ratio is what Apple is using for their tablets, I don’t even know any other OEM which uses this format.
“32 GB Storage” – 32GB storage is a option of iPads.
At this point I was like that Apple products would much better fit into his needs.
“I didn’t include things like design quality or battery life either.” – Design. A lot of people like Apple products for their design and the battery life on iPhones, iPads, Macbooks is superb.
“On the phone side I very much prefer hardware buttons over software ones yet the only option for me is the Galaxy S series which is unfortunately made of cheap plastic.” – Hardware buttons, which Apple uses.
“If I want a stock experience I can ONLY choose the Nexus series (oh and the HTC First).” – Apple only has stock experience on their products, because iOS is developed by them.
“But they have compromises too like a lack of LTE or a top tier camera.” – iPhones have a really good camera quality (for phones).
“Hopefully one day Android will really about choice but as of now its just about compromise.” Android → iOS.
“And for the record it’s the same, if not worse, with Windows 8” – Windows 8 → Mac OS X.-—
My thoughts: Well, I think Apple products fit much better his needs and he probably owns Apple products, because his needs are covered by Apple. That was “ok” analyse of his original post. I could have done a better job and going into detail, but I didn’t want to overwhelm your brain.-—
Now you start to talk bullshit. He posted this in Android Army, what did he expect of the replies?
“Do you always do this when someone criticizes something?” – Yes I analyze texts, especially when somebody puts the effort to make a post about something. I criticize everything myself. EVERYTHING.
Then I read your dumb example. My original post probably sounded as dumb as your post sounds to me right now. I don’t even have to analyze your example.
Sorry for the bad grammar, I’m not a native speaker. -
Comment
A lot of bullshit in a single post. I’m not even sure if this is a serious post or just a troll.
- First you think that there will be two devices, including a premium iPhone and a low cost iPhone, which is totally against Apple’s philosophy.
- They just jumped from a 3.5 inch screen to a 4 inch screen, so there will not be a bigger screen, atleast for the next 2 generations of iPhones, I guess.
- 1467×825 with a 375ppi? Where did you pull that resolution out of? Apple wants to screw over the developers once again in a short period?
- 12 Megapixel? It would be much easier to put in a sensor capable of shooting 13MP pictures.
- 64GB? Not as a standard configuration. Storage is one of the parts where the manufacturer makes the most profit. Consumers pay the extra for storage and accept the price, because they are used to it.
- Apple logo glowing on the back? Cough. Battery life.
- “LTE, GPS, Barometre, other nifty specs” – that is just branch standard.
Anyways let’s move on to the “iPhone mini”.- iPhone mini is probably the worst name ever created by idiots.
- Once again: where did you just pulled “907×510 with a 297ppi” out of? That is almost retina resolution. You hardly are going to see a single pixel with your eye, because Apple just created the 300ppi limit where the human eye can’t see each individual pixel. And do you want to screw the developers over?
- Premium polycarbonate unibody? How is polycarbonate even premium?
- Several color choices with all these rainbow colors? Is Apple in serious business or for kids? These colors are going to make the iPhone a kid toy and it is going to look like one, too.
-
Comment
It is just wrong to give users a bad, over-saturated screen if they like it.
I’ve read this sentence multiple times to be sure, but did you really just said that users who would like to have “a bad, over-saturated screen” should not be given that screen?
I like to have over-saturated colors that look really nice to me. Why do youwantneed to have 100% the colors the content creator wanted you to have? Are you going to edit professional pictures and movies on your phone? -
Comment
Well there is not really any lag, but sometimes you see that the phone can’t keep up when you for example close an app, are on the homescreen and quickly open the app drawer. The average user might not notice, because it is a delay of maybe a second? You have to be really picky as I am to notice. Just these little lags, but not the lag you notice on old devices. Maybe some bad animations are responsible for the “lag”/delay, but you can deactivate the animations in the developer settings, which I highly recommend for old phones.
-
Comment
I have had a Samsung Galaxy Note II and I used it heavily, watching hours of videos on YouTube and browsing the net. I used the device as a tablet and I can tell you, I had to charge the phone every single day. I never got 3 days of battery life, that’s a dream, even with “moderate” use I was forced to charge it after 1 1/2 days.
-
Comment
But they have compromises too like a lack of LTE or a top tier camera.
Whenever I read something like this, I’m asking myself, what do you do with your phone camera? Do you make professionell photo shoots? Are you recording movies for Hollywood? Do you print them out as large posters or wallpapers for your home?
By the way, iOS is more about compromise, because only Apple is the manufacturer, you have to go with what they produce and have not any other option.
