CNN: The Android that could crush the iPhone

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I've had it with iphones, next phone I get will be an android. I heard that "clarity" song on the radio today and I asked Siri to google search it (while driving), 5 times in a row it google searched for bipolarity, not even kidding.
 
You cannot 'wipe them out'. You can use a launcher though that will change everything to look like stock android.

..

Well, I suppose you can wipe it out and replace it with CM Mod which is pretty much stock Android, but that requires rooting. Its not difficult to do, but you would want to set aside 30 minutes to root and install CM. If you want a phone that comes with stock Android from the start though, grab a Nexus 4.

I figured this would be the case. I think I'll just stick with what I have until the Nexus 5 comes out, which I think is later this year, right?
 
apps are so overrated anyway. All the apps you would actually use are everywhere.

The only apps I use on my iphone are facebook, google maps and flipboard. I download games and never play them. Web browsing is what I use the most.

Yea, pretty much.

Chrome is the most used thing on my S3, and there's only like 2-3 games I've ever played on it ever.

It's pretty much why I prefer the bigger screen to the iPhone's smaller screens. I just use my shit for surfing the web, and Youtube.
 
And Android is a little TOO open. All these shitty interfaces like TouchWiz and Sense just annoy the shit out of me. Thank god for Nexus phones, they're the only reason I ever stuck around a little longer. Still wouldn't trade my iPhone for one until battery life and stability of these Android phones improve.

iPhone 5 has shit battery life, well, at least my friends i5's do.

Not that I have much to brag about, the S3 has terrible batter life when I leave my house.

Once I'm off Wifi and on 4G, it's downhill from there.
 
I need a new phone badly... i'm off contract and ready. But a part of me really hopes apple hits it out of the park with the next iphone and os7 because if not they have a big problem on their hands as people are being enticed more and more by android (I know I am)

but once you've invested in the itunes and the app store you get a little hesitant to jump so fast. maybe the i just have to bite the bullet, get an ipad for all that stuff and use an android as my phone. That seems to be the approach many are taking.

sick of all these battery life issues with phones. they need to get that crap worked out :/
 
Rdio is already in Canada ;)

Them's fighting words!

They actually just beat Spotify with their Australian launch by a few months but I like the Spotify app a bit more. Either way though, streaming services kill iTunes as far as I'm concerned, and I haven't found many iTunes users who don't stop buying stuff from there once they get a taste of that all-you-can-eat goodness =D
 
Can anybody tell me whether or not 1080p on a screen this size is a noticeable improvement? It seems like overkill to me.

1920x1080 screens are definitely noticeably better. I have seen a DNA (5" 1080P) and a HTC OneX (4.7" 720P) (last years model) side by side. There is a difference, and it is noticeable. But I haven't held a One yet, so here are what reviews have to say about it so far.


Anandtech:
Subjectively, I find the HTC One display nothing short of amazing. The DNA already was incredibly high resolution, the One is even better. That level of resolution definitely exceeds my visual acuity, and is a sight to behold. When it comes to viewing angles, they’re excellent indoors and just about the same as every phone outdoors. There’s hardly any gap between surface and display with the One at all, it’s brilliant indoors and out. To say that 1080p on mobile devices has spoiled me is putting it lightly. In addition, 4.7 inches seems to be a nice middle ground in terms of display size — it’s close enough to 5 to not seem small, and not absurdly huge.

Verge
Once you turn it on, the One gets even prettier. Its 4.7-inch, 1920 x 1080 display (that’s 468 ppi) is the sharpest I’ve ever seen. Whether you want to call it "Retina" or something else — I’m sort of surprised HTC doesn’t have a goofy name for it — the fact remains that the screen is tack-sharp, colors are fantastic, blacks are impressively deep, and it looks great from any angle. It’s not notably better than a device like the Droid DNA, but that’s not a bad thing — phone screens are getting really, really good, and the One’s display measures up in every way. Well, every way but one: oddly, the screen doesn’t get very bright, and it can be hard to see outdoors in sunlight. But I’m a master of the shield-your-phone-from-the-sun move, so that didn’t bother me too much.

GSMArena:
The 300+ ppi screens of last year's flagships are pretty close to the limit, but the jump to 400+ ppi isn't about individual pixels - it was already pretty hard to see jagged edges on 720p screens but the 400+ ppi displays look smoother still. The difference between the 469ppi of the HTC One and the other 1080p screen out there (even the 401ppi LG Optimus G Pro) isn't the kind that can be easily seen. Anyway, we assume HTC were driven by a screen size they considered most usable, rather than trying to top some pointless pixel density charts.

HTC has been putting out some excellent screens recently and the One's display is just another example of this. The contrast is impressive and the viewing angles are extremely wide - there's no shift in colors and only a slight contrast loss at extreme angles.

Phone Arena
HTC is known for making some of the best screens out there. Last year’s HTC One X set a gold standard for screens in Android land with a bright and vivid 720 x 1280 display, and this year the bar was high.

With the HTC One we can safely say that the company meets the expectations. The device features a 4.7 inches Super LCD 3 display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels.

The screen is extremely detailed, sharp, and for the tech geeks - pixel density comes at the whopping 468ppi.

Colors are stunning, they just out at you with deep blacks, vivid reds and blues, and a great contrast. Viewing angles are also amazing.

ABC News:
Even if you end up hiding that beautiful silver hardware in a case, one of the most stunning parts of the phone will still be visible. The 4.7-inch, 1080p edge-to-edge glass screen is one of the sharpest and clearest displays on any phone to date. Colors don't only pop and look true to life, but HD videos and text just look sharper than they do on other phones I've tested, including the Nexus 4 and the iPhone 5.

Engadget
To be honest, the display is the area in which we feel the most nitpicky, because the 1080p panels we've seen on other flagships so far feature simply jaw-dropping quality. And to pick up on minute differences between these incredible displays, you'd have to really start splitting hairs. In particular, 1080p displays don't offer nearly as noticeable a difference over 720p as we saw with 720p over qHD. Given how far we've come in terms of resolution and pixel density, the only way for screens to stand out above the crowd is to offer the best color, viewing angles, brightness and readability in daylight.

The One's display does very well in all four areas. It's slightly brighter than the DNA's and significantly better than the One X+'s S-LCD2; the darks are sufficient, though still not as rich as what you'd find on an AMOLED; the other colors are incredibly close to fully natural; viewing angles are just as good as the One X+ and DNA, because it's difficult to get any better; and we could see the display without a problem in the direct sunlight. Movies look amazing on the One, and if we want to get exceedingly picky, the text on the One is slightly more crisp than on the DNA -- but this is something that's only noticeable when you view the two side by side. Tiny details aside, the One's display is the most gorgeous we've seen thus far.

I reckon once I grab my next phone, I won't ever want to go back to a 720p device.


I figured this would be the case. I think I'll just stick with what I have until the Nexus 5 comes out, which I think is later this year, right?

Yep Quarter 4 of this year.
 
I had an iPhone for a long time. And recently switched to the Nexus 4. After a couple of months, I jumped back to the iPhone 5.

Maybe I'm just a simple man, but when it comes to phones, I just want it to be very basic (inb4 Jitterbug joke). I only text, browse the internet, and sometimes watch videos on it. Whenever I've had an Android device, I've always found it to be too busy for a phone. It's cool you can do all these things, but 90% of what it does, I don't want.

I'm not an apple fan boi either. In fact, my very first smart phone what an HTC Hero (I mean the original one with the track ball), then the HTC EVO 4g. I also tried every phone you can imagine, from the Palm Pre (loved the OS, hated the battery life) to Blackberry - and a multitude in between.

But I always found myself coming back to the iPhone. Decent battery life, and it does what I need it to do. The build of the phone also feels much more quality than the other devices I've owned. Admittedly, I've always had bad luck with Anroid phones, and picking models that had worse battery than the iPhone. I know there are a couple models out right now that stomp it. So I figured I would make that note.
 
All existing cell phones use the 3G network for voice calls. Voice Over LTE is supposedly coming late this year or early 2014 but right now when you make a phone call on an LTE device, you're using the legacy 3G network.
Not completely accurate. MetroPCS has already deployed voice over LTE.
 
I've had it with iphones, next phone I get will be an android. I heard that "clarity" song on the radio today and I asked Siri to google search it (while driving), 5 times in a row it google searched for bipolarity, not even kidding.

I got that song free on itunes when it was available. good song.


I just asked Siri to search the internet for the song, Clarity and she found it.
 
If only Android had better apps.

Are we talking about games or apps? Cuz if it's apps, can we please list the landslide list of apps that aren't available or have something equivalent on Android? Before taking the risk of switching, I went through every app on my phone and found 99% of them to be available on Android. I'm sure that last 1% has something that will do the same job.
 
Are we talking about games or apps? Cuz if it's apps, can we please list the landslide list of apps that aren't available or have something equivalent on Android? Before taking the risk of switching, I went through every app on my phone and found 99% of them to be available on Android. I'm sure that last 1% has something that will do the same job.

The only notable thing I've found absent lately is the Verizon FIOS streaming app for tablets, which is still iPad exclusive. Other than that it seems to come down to games. A lot of popular apps like WhatsApp and Facebook are actually faster and more feature packed on Android now, it's night and day compared with a few years ago.
 
Behind in what exactly? App selection?
App selection and most importantly QUALITY. I swear to god that a simple thing as a agenda app was utter shit in android. Only thing that i heard from people is that i should use the stock app from google. That is no excuse. The best one in playstore looked like something from windows 95 days. I had the impression that the developers were extremely lazy.

To clarify myself. As a OS android is at this moment much much better than iOS but lets be realistic. Its all about the apps.
 
App selection and most importantly QUALITY. I swear to god that a simple thing as a agenda app was utter shit in android. Only thing that i heard from people is that i should use the stock app from google. That is no excuse. The best one in playstore looked like something from windows 95 days. I had the impression that the developers were extremely lazy.

To clarify myself. As a OS android is at this moment much much better than iOS but lets be realistic. Its all about the apps.

It's subjective. iOS has it's own design language and most apps are designed for that. For me, that design language itself looks very outdated. That said, I've yet to encounter an Android app that I use a lot that I think looks bad. I rather have a few of my apps that don't look as good as they could be than have a whole OS that looks old.
 
Does Android allow you to install apps from outside the Google store? Or is it like iPhone in that, if you want to do anything fun with your phone (like play with emulators) you gotta jailbreak it?
 
The top of the line Android phones are already better than the iPhone (hardware wise), I don't see the point of this CNN article (like many news articles). Hardware for the most part is irrelevant anyway, in this day and age it's more of if you prefer iOS to Android or vice-versa.

I'd love to upgrade from my GN to the M7, but it's unfortunately like $700 unlocked. Me no likey really expensive unlocked phones. Waiting for the next Nexus and hoping it's no more than $400 unlocked.
 
App selection and most importantly QUALITY. I swear to god that a simple thing as a agenda app was utter shit in android. Only thing that i heard from people is that i should use the stock app from google. That is no excuse. The best one in playstore looked like something from windows 95 days. I had the impression that the developers were extremely lazy.

To clarify myself. As a OS android is at this moment much much better than iOS but lets be realistic. Its all about the apps.

Calendar apps are poor on the Play store because Google Calendar is really good, so nobody bothers except a couple of devs. That's not an excuse, it's an explanation.
 
Calendar apps are poor on the Play store because Google Calendar is really good, so nobody bothers except a couple of devs. That's not an excuse, it's an explanation.

Indeed. I have tried some of the maps apps too, and they are also pretty laughable (On both iOS and Android) but thats likely more because GMaps is just so good that there's very little space there to compete, sadly.
 
Yep, just plug in and drag and drop. Uses folders and standard familiar file structures. Movies, music, photos, whatever.

It's a little funky though. I had to manage a Q Zero or whatever it's called from Verizon for someone and it wanted you to use a mediaserver connection before even seeing the music folder in the external hard-drive option for the USB. So weird.
 
Calendar apps are poor on the Play store because Google Calendar is really good, so nobody bothers except a couple of devs. That's not an excuse, it's an explanation.

right but iOS is a mature marketplace with a bunch of people willing to pay for stuff, and that's why you'll see lots of interesting, well-designed alternative solutions like fantastical. android may have everything covered in terms of functionality, but apps on iOS tend to be a lot more attractive and interesting.

it's not like the stock iphone calendar app is terrible (though it's pretty gross on ipad).
 
Can anybody tell me whether or not 1080p on a screen this size is a noticeable improvement? It seems like overkill to me.

Possibly text. I think 1080p on 5 inch is really stretching it. I couldn't see the Xperia Z's pixels, but in something that's AA'd I can't see them on my 544p Vita either. Rendering 1080p games with today's phone's memory bandwidth is also very limiting. The two MacBook Retinas both struggle with frame rate drops when scrolling certain webpages.

I love screen res, but it's just silly at this point. I'm sitting in front of a 23inch 1080p display and the text would maybe be the size of pixels on the original iPhone if it was 5 inches.
 
Man this phone isn't even going to stomp the S4, let alone the Iphone. It's having it's 2 weeks in the sun before the S4 marketing campaign completely drowns it out of public perception. And then 3 months down the line HTC will come up with another flagship, like they always do and this one will be almost forgotten by the end of the year.
 
I had an iPhone for a long time. And recently switched to the Nexus 4. After a couple of months, I jumped back to the iPhone 5.

Maybe I'm just a simple man, but when it comes to phones, I just want it to be very basic (inb4 Jitterbug joke). I only text, browse the internet, and sometimes watch videos on it. Whenever I've had an Android device, I've always found it to be too busy for a phone. It's cool you can do all these things, but 90% of what it does, I don't want.

I'm not an apple fan boi either. In fact, my very first smart phone what an HTC Hero (I mean the original one with the track ball), then the HTC EVO 4g. I also tried every phone you can imagine, from the Palm Pre (loved the OS, hated the battery life) to Blackberry - and a multitude in between.

But I always found myself coming back to the iPhone. Decent battery life, and it does what I need it to do. The build of the phone also feels much more quality than the other devices I've owned. Admittedly, I've always had bad luck with Anroid phones, and picking models that had worse battery than the iPhone. I know there are a couple models out right now that stomp it. So I figured I would make that note.
I swore off the iPhone when I switched to an Xperia S after my 4, but I'm back on iOS now. I seriously just want my phone to WORK without any weird workarounds or bugs.

Xperia screen was so nice size-wise. Battery life was amazing. LOVE Android and what it offers, it's so far ahead of iOS in functionality (but behind in polish, imo). Too many annoying bugs on the Sony though, it drove me nuts.

Doesn't help that Sony seem to have forgotten their 'flagship' even exists anymore. Still waiting on a JB update. I read recently that they've released FIFTEEN new phones this year, no wonder their support sucks ass.
 
Indeed. I have tried some of the maps apps too, and they are also pretty laughable (On both iOS and Android) but thats likely more because GMaps is just so good that there's very little space there to compete, sadly.

Definitely, as a user I feel sated but as a developer I find it difficult to find a good niche to fill.

right but iOS is a mature marketplace with a bunch of people willing to pay for stuff, and that's why you'll see lots of interesting, well-designed alternative solutions like fantastical. android may have everything covered in terms of functionality, but apps on iOS tend to be a lot more attractive and interesting.

it's not like the stock iphone calendar app is terrible (though it's pretty gross on ipad).

Honestly if you look at the top grossing apps on each now the crossover rate is like 95%. The Play users and App Store users are basically the same people, and the vast majority of apps look the same on both but have better functionality on Android because of the more flexible OS.

To be frank, the calendar app on iOS is great if you use a Mac, less great otherwise. Mrs Bongs is always complaining about her struggles with getting her phone calendar and work calendar properly synced, whereas it's a breeze with Google. Obviously Exchange (ewwwww) is the main culprit there, but it's still frustrating that it only seems to handle one way sync except very occasionally when it works right for no apparent reason.
 
Does Android allow you to install apps from outside the Google store? Or is it like iPhone in that, if you want to do anything fun with your phone (like play with emulators) you gotta jailbreak it?

like 99% of devices do. there are a few that don't like some older (mid 2011 and earlier) AT&T Android handsets, though some of them were updated to allow it and some have workarounds...



Calendar apps are poor on the Play store because Google Calendar is really good, so nobody bothers except a couple of devs. That's not an excuse, it's an explanation.

i thought everyone RAVED about Business Calendar...



It's a little funky though. I had to manage a Q Zero or whatever it's called from Verizon for someone and it wanted you to use a mediaserver connection before even seeing the music folder in the external hard-drive option for the USB. So weird.
URL?



Man this phone isn't even going to stomp the S4, let alone the Iphone. It's having it's 2 weeks in the sun before the S4 marketing campaign completely drowns it out of public perception. And then 3 months down the line HTC will come up with another flagship, like they always do and this one will be almost forgotten by the end of the year.

HTC 1+1




I swore off the iPhone when I switched to an Xperia S after my 4, but I'm back on iOS now. I seriously just want my phone to WORK without any weird workarounds or bugs.

Xperia screen was so nice size-wise. Battery life was amazing. LOVE Android and what it offers, it's so far ahead of iOS in functionality (but behind in polish, imo). Too many annoying bugs on the Sony though, it drove me nuts.

Doesn't help that Sony seem to have forgotten their 'flagship' even exists anymore. Still waiting on a JB update. I read recently that they've released FIFTEEN new phones this year, no wonder their support sucks ass.

that's no excuse, Samsung releases like 50 models a year and somehow they manage to update their flagships, even in the USA!
 
that's no excuse, Samsung releases like 50 models a year and somehow they manage to update their flagships, even in the USA!
Yeah, I meant it more as 'they obviously don't have the know how to devote themselves to all those models'.

It sucks as I really, really love the design of the phone and nearly everything about it but it just had a heap of annoying bugs. I'm actually playing around with some JB roms for it now, may as well see what I can do :p
 
I still haven't found a smoother browsing experience than on iOS; especially with the iPhone 5. Pinch to zoom and scrolling just seem much more consistent on the iPhone versus what I've seen on a variety of Droid phones and the GS3. The Nokia 920 with WP is much closer to matching the experience, IMO. However, I'm not a huge fan of the text rendering on that device.
 
I still haven't found a smoother browsing experience than on iOS; especially with the iPhone 5. Pinch to zoom and scrolling just seem much more consistent on the iPhone versus what I've seen on a variety of Droid phones and the GS3. The Nokia 920 with WP is much closer to matching the experience, IMO. However, I'm not a huge fan of the text rendering on that device.
I know what you mean. The smoothness of iOS is something that has always been something I felt was the bar that people should be hitting. So far from my brief hands on I think the HTC One might fit the bill due to the faster CPU combined with the emphasis Google put into Jelly Bean for a smooth experience. It certainly hasn't been met from other Android phones I've seen.
 
iOS definitely still has the edge when it comes to ui responsiveness in general, no arguments there. I have no idea what the limitation is on Android devices. My N7 has a quad core Tegra in it but my iPad classic and Mrs Bongs' iPhone 5 destroy it on smooth zoom and scroll, and even just basic feedback when you launch an app or switch between them.
 
I still haven't found a smoother browsing experience than on iOS; especially with the iPhone 5. Pinch to zoom and scrolling just seem much more consistent on the iPhone versus what I've seen on a variety of Droid phones and the GS3. The Nokia 920 with WP is much closer to matching the experience, IMO. However, I'm not a huge fan of the text rendering on that device.

The Nexus 4 is by far the smoothest Android phone that I've used, but it still hitches and drops frames very occasionally. It happens very rarely, though, and I doubt that most people would be able to notice it.
 
Yeah, it's noticeable regardless of the power under the hood. Heck, as long as you're not on a picture-heavy page, I feel an iPhone 4 can compete against a 2012 Android handset if we're talking exclusively about pinch-to-zoom, rotate, and scrolling in Safari.

Which is a shame, as I really do love a lot of the things other OSes are bringing to the game. No doubt, iOS could really use some significant improvements - more integration (I hate using an app to upload to Flickr), non-static widgets (why does the weather app not show the current temp), and a more customizable lock-screen. But Apple consistently wins in regard to general smoothness (absolutely crucial to the experience) and build quality/components. The HTC One seems to have finally caught up on the latter - if it could catch up on the former, I could very well see myself giving it a shot.
 
I've had it with iphones, next phone I get will be an android. I heard that "clarity" song on the radio today and I asked Siri to google search it (while driving), 5 times in a row it google searched for bipolarity, not even kidding.
Engine noise can interfere.
 
Yeah, it's noticeable regardless of the power under the hood. Heck, as long as you're not on a picture-heavy page, I feel an iPhone 4 can compete against a 2012 Android handset if we're talking exclusively about pinch-to-zoom, rotate, and scrolling in Safari.

Which is a shame, as I really do love a lot of the things other OSes are bringing to the game. No doubt, iOS could really use some significant improvements - more integration (I hate using an app to upload to Flickr), non-static widgets (why does the weather app not show the current temp), and a more customizable lock-screen. But Apple consistently wins in regard to general smoothness (absolutely crucial to the experience) and build quality/components. The HTC One seems to have finally caught up on the latter - if it could catch up on the former, I could very well see myself giving it a shot.

Like I said, the Nexus 4 does hitch slightly, but it's not detrimental to the experience at all. It feels way smoother than an iPhone 4, for example, and I'd judge it to be close to a 4s in terms of general fluidity.

In regards to software, I think the biggest problem with ios is the Notification Center. It's an incredibly poor substitute for Android's excellent Notification Drawer. Apple desperately needs to overhaul it for the next ios release.

Edit - I'm not sure who said this, but I think it's pretty true.

"Google is getting better at what Apple does best faster than Apple is getting better at what Google does best"

The Nexus 4 was the first phone that, in my opinion, could rival the iPhone in terms of build quality, design, and software. The HTC One is the second phone. I think, going forwards, we'll be seeing more phones and more tablets that are able to compete with Apple's offerings. I really hope this competition stirs Apple and encourages them to improve their products.
 
Though the one has fantastic build quality and looks incredible, I feel that I shouldn't fall into the trap of basing my purchase solely on that, especially if I'm going to be using a case. That's what is making this decision hard for me. I know that down the road, it will be about what gives me the most consistent performance and battery life along with developer support. I previously thought that the iPhone 5 had some of best hardware design, but I've been fine not having something to that level of design.
 
This was the best alternative to google agenda. Look at it. Look at how ugly it is. Look how expensive it is. Same app would cost less more in app store and look much better with same functions. I have the feeling these lazy ass developers have no competition on android and sell crap apps in playstore.

Fantastical for iOS is $5 (yet with no free version and no trial unlike Business Calendar)

Agenda Calendar is $2 (same price as the iOS version)
 
I still haven't found a smoother browsing experience than on iOS; especially with the iPhone 5. Pinch to zoom and scrolling just seem much more consistent on the iPhone versus what I've seen on a variety of Droid phones and the GS3. The Nokia 920 with WP is much closer to matching the experience, IMO. However, I'm not a huge fan of the text rendering on that device.

The HTC One default browser is fucking amazing. Desktop user agent, flash that works for everything, PIE controls, default text reflow and SMOOOOOTTTHHHHH!

Chrome is quite frankly an embarrassment at the side of it.
 
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