Is there any Hubski consensus on phones? I've been using iPhones for all but two weeks where I had a Samsung Galaxy Nexus that I loathed. I went back to iPhone. I'm currently using my four year old iPhone 5. The battery is waning but manageable. But every time Apple changes something, I can't help but feel it made my experience worse. Is it any better on Android? I know lots of people like Android, but I can't help but feel they're just managing like I am on iOS. My current, primary complaint is my phone seems to forget my music playlist. Like, as the phone runs low on memory, it dumps the playlist to free up space. Then I go to music and hit play, and something different pops up. I like listening to full albums. I like resuming where I was. Are there any good options out there for someone who wants basic functions to be flawless before adding advanced functions? I've had to correct at least a half dozen bad autocorrects while typing this. "Be" became "Ben." "Can't" became "can tell." These things don't feel like getting old and resisting change. They feel like genuine flaws. Am I off base?
We just switched my wife over to Android. I've been on Android for two years now. iOS, OS X, Android and Linux are all versions of Unix. It's the shell that changes. Android is closer, in my opinion, to OS X than it is to iOS. It also takes a lot of configuration to get happy. NOT running a cell carrier's bullshit ROM helps a bunch - garden variety Android, or Cyanogen, or any of the cleansed/purged ROMS are a radically better experience. The Play Store will still be a wretched den of scum and villainy and the Emojis will still suck, but it's manageable. Swiftkey is radically better for autocorrect and predictive behavior than the iOS keyboard. Even the stock Android keyboard is better now. For music I currently use Google Music. That will probably change to Plex once I switch to Fi because Fi will hit me for bandwidth, but we'll see. I can't really complain about Google Music, especially since I'm not paying for it. I have 200GB of music and it's all semi-instantly accessible. I've been running a OnePlus One for two and a half years now. In a few weeks I'll be on a Pixel. I don't like paying the price but having run jailbroken Oxygen for two years I'm ready for some updates and compatibility. Adblock is nice but...
Excellent reply, thank you. This and the replies that followed will give me things to research further.
A friend of mine just switched his 5 out for an SE and is quite content with it, so there's that option, although it seems like it might become the last compact phone Apple will ever make. The big advantage to Android is that you can change most of what you see, with the downside that you won't always get the latest features unless you're in the Google phone branch. I think of all Android phones, Samsung has the most refined OS. It might be a good idea to just go into a store and try the S7 out. If you want to look into a wide range of devices, I highly recommend MKBHD's reviews, they're always on point. I've bought my three latest phones and a bunch of other tech mostly based on his reviews.
I decided to switch to Pixel too, but I'm currently on a verizon plan (Mom works for Verizon, so bills are violently cheaper). I heard some obvious negatives about buying through verizon, but it is significantly cheaper that way(For me at least). I'm still looking forward to what google produces with this line of phones though.
I have a Nexus 6 and Google Fi. Pay for the phone up front, then I'm averaging 25-30 bux a month, and no overage charges. If you use more than the 2GB of data (and with the way they connect to wifi I doubt you ever will) its 20 more a month. They refund you based on how much of that initial 2GB you use. The piggy back off of TMobile and ATT, so if those signals are poor in your city, keep that in mind. The good news about that is that the way Fi works, if there is an open WiFi hotspot, the phone connects and creates a VPN tunnel that acts as your cell tower. The phone is big, but I use it less for a phone and more for data anyway, and I have giant hands so the phone feels more 'normal' sized for me. The Pixel phones look decent in the reviews I've watched so far.