Android features that the iPhone should have

[Photogdave]

Well, that only happened to one device you had. So it could've been defected or something.

Maybe, but really it was more than one.
The factory card really doesn't cut it. Yes it works.....but the user experience
is bad. You can feel it when going through picture gallery, deleting etc.
Its slow and you can feel the bottle neck.
So knowing this(I'm a photographer) and how cards work etc, I went to Best Buy and bought the best card they had, a PNY 16G Class 10
Yes, the speed was better. But about a month in, I tried to access a PDF and got an error message card unavailable, needed to be formatted for use.
That card never worked again.

On one of the other Android phones I tried to replace the fascinate with, also I noticed the card just wasn't up to snuff.
I never bought another card for it, due to other non related issues, I was returning it anyway because I didn't like it, too many other issues.

Point being, the Micro card is NOT ideal due to size, but rather a necessary evil for expandable storage wanted buy users. All 16gb storage is NOT created equal.
And Micro cards, while great for size, they're not ideal for many situations.

So yes you are right in that, I had one device while trying different cards, I noticed it in others too. It will work, but not great.
And that's where Apple wont give go ahead. Internal is always better for long term, strenuous use.
As a photographer. Id never work off a USB2.0 external HD for editing large images.
Yes I use one....but for storage and things not accessed very often.
For things Im gonna access a lot, and need to edit, I always work with in the internal HD, its much faster and stable.

And there's really not a great work around for it. I later went on to do a lot of research on Class 10 cards, knowing how rare it is for flash cards to fail....IT IS RARE.
But what I found was many research has shown that the Class 10 cards have high failure rates due to stress and work requests on such a card.
So its like a race car......running an engine on the extreme edge of performance will work to benefit, but not practical for long term use.

Its these little things that add up to make Apple products like iPhone, MB, iMacs feel so much better than other devices.

 

[mrochester]

Maybe, but really it was more than one.
The factory card really doesn't cut it. Yes it works.....but the user experience
is bad. You can feel it when going through picture gallery, deleting etc.
Its slow and you can feel the bottle neck.
So knowing this(I'm a photographer) and how cards work etc, I went to Best Buy and bought the best card they had, a PNY 16G Class 10
Yes, the speed was better. But about a month in, I tried to access a PDF and got an error message card unavailable, needed to be formatted for use.
That card never worked again.

On one of the other Android phones I tried to replace the fascinate with, also I noticed the card just wasn't up to snuff.
I never bought another card for it, due to other non related issues, I was returning it anyway because I didn't like it, too many other issues.

Point being, the Micro card is NOT ideal due to size, but rather a necessary evil for expandable storage wanted buy users. All 16gb storage is NOT created equal.
And Micro cards, while great for size, they're not ideal for many situations.

So yes you are right in that, I had one device while trying different cards, I noticed it in others too. It will work, but not great.
And that's where Apple wont give go ahead. Internal is always better for long term, strenuous use.
As a photographer. Id never work off a USB2.0 external HD for editing large images.
Yes I use one....but for storage and things not accessed very often.
For things Im gonna access a lot, and need to edit, I always work with in the internal HD, its much faster and stable.

And there's really not a great work around for it. I later went on to do a lot of research on Class 10 cards, knowing how rare it is for flash cards to fail....IT IS RARE.
But what I found was many research has shown that the Class 10 cards have high failure rates due to stress and work requests on such a card.
So its like a race car......running an engine on the extreme edge of performance will work to benefit, but not practical for long term use.

Its these little things that add up to make Apple products like iPhone, MB, iMacs feel so much better than other devices.

I too have suffered from a corrupted micro SD card in an Android phone. It was randomly after a reboot that it failed. It took some doing to get it working again. The guys over at The Phones Show Chat occasionally comment on how Android devices sometimes corrupt memory cards so it seems to be a bit of an issue. I guess coupled with speed and piracy concerns, this is precisely why Apple don't have removable storage in the iPhone.

 

[Photogdave]

I too have suffered from a corrupted micro SD card in an Android phone. It was randomly after a reboot that it failed. It took some doing to get it working again. The guys over at The Phones Show Chat occasionally comment on how Android devices sometimes corrupt memory cards so it seems to be a bit of an issue. I guess coupled with speed and piracy concerns, this is precisely why Apple don't have removable storage in the iPhone.

I always attributed it to quality and speed.
But many like you have mentioned piracy here in the forums
Whats the deal with the piracy stuff. I remember years ago Steve Jobs taking a stand on it.
But I'm not sure I understand how the internal storage vs removable stops this?
Is it something in iTunes etc.......Im very new to how Apple and iTunes

 

[mrochester]

I always attributed it to quality and speed.
But many like you have mentioned piracy here in the forums
Whats the deal with the piracy stuff. I remember years ago Steve Jobs taking a stand on it.
But I'm not sure I understand how the internal storage vs removable stops this?
Is it something in iTunes etc.......Im very new to how Apple and iTunes

I think it's probably less of a concern now given that all iTunes music is now DRM free. I'd say that speed and reliability are probably the two biggest factors now.

 

[Photogdave]

I think it's probably less of a concern now given that all iTunes music is now DRM free. I'd say that speed and reliability are probably the two biggest factors now.

I didn't know they were DRM free now.
So let me understand. Originally, iTunes used DRM and this was what all my friends complained about that when they bought music from iTunes, it was only available on that device. They really didn't buy a physical copy of the song, but rather the rights to play it on there device synced with iTunes....correct.
Example: it didn't download on the PC as a mp3 file that could then be accessed and copied to any device.....essentially uncontrollable by owner.

But now DRM free, once I buy that song per se, its mine and I could also put it on my mp3 player, other computers in house etc?

 

[mrochester]

I didn't know they were DRM free now.
So let me understand. Originally, iTunes used DRM and this was what all my friends complained about that when they bought music from iTunes, it was only available on that device. They really didn't buy a physical copy of the song, but rather the rights to play it on there device synced with iTunes....correct.
Example: it didn't download on the PC as a mp3 file that could then be accessed and copied to any device.....essentially uncontrollable by owner.

But now DRM free, once I buy that song per se, its mine and I could also put it on my mp3 player, other computers in house etc?

Yep, Apple eventually managed to wangle a deal with the music labels to offer the full catalogue DRM free. You can do whatever you like with the music once you've paid for it. Although of course, you're only supposed to use it for your own personal use and not give it to anyone else.

 

[Photogdave]

Yep, Apple eventually managed to wangle a deal with the music labels to offer the full catalogue DRM free. You can do whatever you like with the music once you've paid for it. Although of course, you're only supposed to use it for your own person use and not give it to anyone else.

Cool, I thought that's the way it was now.
And should be.
Im slowly getting the iTunes/Apple thing now.
Leave it up to me to be responsible with what I do with the music.
I bought the song, but if I go around selling it in Gas Stations to people, then the Artist can deal with me directly.
But now Im ok to put it on all my devices.

 

[phpmaven]

Native integrated sat nav app like google navigation.

probably need their own map app to do this though.

+1

I love how on my Galaxy S2 I can just say "Navigate to 123 Main Street" and boom, it launches full turn by turn voice directions in Google Maps. That's something missing from IOS that makes Siri much less useful than it could be.

 

[matttye]

Well, having had several Micro card issues, I see why they dont.
The Fascinate's factory card 16g Class 2 card was too slow for bigger files.
I bought a Class 10 PNY....it crashed and I lost everything....never PNY again.
So I see their reason for internal only.
I wish they'd just offer the 32 at the price of 16 and allow 64gb for upgrade if you want.
You'd spend $100 for a good, name brand high end class 10 32gb card to add on to get to 64......and even then, at Class 10, it still wouldn't be as fast as internal.
So, I don't know, its a big deal to some, but Ive weighed the differences and its no big deal to me.
I bought the 16GB.....only because the 32 wasn't available for another month. I looked at the price difference....$100. Well the Class 10 high end micros were $60. So for $100, Id get 32 and way faster. But they didnt have one.
And I wanted out from under my Android BAD. I had no issue with 16 before, so I'll live with it now.

Classes represent minimum read and write speed, not maximum, so a class two could beat a class ten. I read lots of reviews and eventually bought a Samsung Ultra class 4 8GB card. I get 16MB/s read and write with this thing, very fast.

I'd never pay for a class ten when lower classes outdo them a lot of the time.

----------

+1

I love how on my Galaxy S2 I can just say "Navigate to 123 Main Street" and boom, it launches full turn by turn voice directions in Google Maps. That's something missing from IOS that makes Siri much less useful than it could be.

I just wish it had offline mapping. Im not sure why, but 3G speeds seem to be slower than Edge on my sgs2. Hsdpa is plenty fast enough.

But yeah, I prefer google navigation to my tomtom and having it connected to the Internet and integrated with the phone and apps is incredibly useful

 

[nfl46]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Free Google Maps with turn by turn. This would be awesome for the iPhone.

 

[Photogdave]

Classes represent minimum read and write speed, not maximum, so a class two could beat a class ten. I read lots of reviews and eventually bought a Samsung Ultra class 4 8GB card. I get 16MB/s read and write with this thing, very fast.

I'd never pay for a class ten when lower classes outdo them a lot of the time.

Yes, I understand that. But clearly Class 10's are designed for more data transfer and faster.
Class 10 cards are faster than Class 2. So that's why I bought class 10. It was faster, but because they are pushed to extremes, they aren't as reliable as lower class cards.
In no way is a class 2 card supposed to be faster than a Class 10, unless the company making the card falsified its rating, at that point there is nothing we can do. Other than buying different brands.
Im making these numbers up, I dont know the exact numbers, but for simplification purposes....
If a Class 2 is supposed to be 2MB/s "minimum" supported, but can beat a Class 10 in speed, which should be 10MB/s "minimum" supported.
Then why wouldn't it be rated at a higher class for more $$$.
If its able to write at 10MB/s, then it can support a higher minimum than its rated 2. Doesnt make sense
Its rated a Class 2 because it doesn't have the capability of supporting the "minimum" data write speeds for said device.
So the argument of faster supported speeds than a Class 10 card isn't logical.

Source for Class ratings
https://www.sdcard.org/consumers/speed/speed_class/
I cant control if the company rated it Class 10 when its a 2.
But a real Class 10 card will beat a Class 2 every time.
I experienced a nice speed increase when I upgraded. I just didn't know at the time that the faster Class 10 cards had a reputation for higher failure due to being pushed to extreme.
Many sites had done tests and all reported a noted increase in failure of these extreme Class 10 cards.
They all reported yes faster, but chance of failure a good be higher.
I should have researched that part before purchasing. If I had, I may have bought Sandisk Class 8 or something that had notable speed increase but great reliability too.
I never skimp on flash cards. I try to buy best available. Becasue of what I do for a living, Ive seen the difference in cheap cards vs good high end cards such as Sandisk and Lexar.
Best Buy doesn't sell a Sandisk Class 10 or Lexar. PNY was it.

But my main argument is, Apple doesn't want to deal with any of that garbage. That's a Standard they cant control to ensure reliability and great speed for everyone.
So they don't. They keep it internal....which without a doubt is the best way.
Why the need for expandable storage....Just buy the bigger storage phone and dont worry about it.
You cant buy a 32gb micro sd card with the quality and speed of their internal 32 for $100.
I just don't see the point.

----------

Expandable storage makes as much sense these days as having a floppy disc drive...

Agree.
Where's the Screen Name from. Must be heavy into Astronomy.
Noticed it this am. Kept thinking......wait a minute, I know who that is.
Didnt he die in the later 90's?

 

[matttye]

Yes, I understand that. But clearly Class 10's are designed for more data transfer and faster.
Class 10 cards are faster than Class 2. So that's why I bought class 10. It was faster, but because they are pushed to extremes, they aren't as reliable as lower class cards.
In no way is a class 2 card supposed to be faster than a Class 10, unless the company making the card falsified its rating, at that point there is nothing we can do. Other than buying different brands.
Im making these numbers up, I dont know the exact numbers, but for simplification purposes....
If a Class 2 is supposed to be 2MB/s "minimum" supported, but can beat a Class 10 in speed, which should be 10MB/s "minimum" supported.
Then why wouldn't it be rated at a higher class for more $$$.
If its able to write at 10MB/s, then it can support a higher minimum than its rated 2. Doesnt make sense
Its rated a Class 2 because it doesn't have the capability of supporting the "minimum" data write speeds for said device.
So the argument of faster supported speeds than a Class 10 card isn't logical.

Source for Class ratings
https://www.sdcard.org/consumers/speed/speed_class/
I cant control if the company rated it Class 10 when its a 2.
But a real Class 10 card will beat a Class 2 every time.
I experienced a nice speed increase when I upgraded. I just didn't know at the time that the faster Class 10 cards had a reputation for higher failure due to being pushed to extreme.
Many sites had done tests and all reported a noted increase in failure of these extreme Class 10 cards.
They all reported yes faster, but chance of failure a good be higher.
I should have researched that part before purchasing. If I had, I may have bought Sandisk Class 8 or something that had notable speed increase but great reliability too.
I never skimp on flash cards. I try to buy best available. Becasue of what I do for a living, Ive seen the difference in cheap cards vs good high end cards such as Sandisk and Lexar.
Best Buy doesn't sell a Sandisk Class 10 or Lexar. PNY was it.

But my main argument is, Apple doesn't want to deal with any of that garbage. That's a Standard they cant control to ensure reliability and great speed for everyone.
So they don't. They keep it internal....which without a doubt is the best way.
Why the need for expandable storage....Just buy the bigger storage phone and dont worry about it.
You cant buy a 32gb micro sd card with the quality and speed of their internal 32 for $100.
I just don't see the point.

It's probably because they can't support the minimum read/write speed for sustained periods of time. A lot of things can burst transfer and then slow down as time goes on. I don't know this for sure, but theres obviously a reason why a class 4 card that can read and write at 16MBps is still a class 4. What would be the point in a class 4 calling itself a class 4 if it could call itself a class 10? There's clearly a reason.

 

[dccorona]

Some good ideas in some of these. However, as for these 3...

- the ability to access numbers and symbols more easily by long pressing on keys.

- some kind of gesture to access a menu with advanced options in some apps. The browser for example. There's no "find on page" options or anything like that, which can make browsing awkward. I'm not suggesting that iOS should become more menu based, just that menus are sometimes useful for less used options.

- being able to mount the iPhone as a hard drive and add your music/images/etc that way. There's no reason this can't work alongside the current implementation.

Long presses on keys bring up alternate versions of that letter. It would be nice to have it extended to numbers, though, for those who don't need foreign symbols

typing into the google search bar brings up a "find on page" option towards the bottom of the list that appears when typing

Apple won't allow this because they don't want you to be able to get the music files off an iPhone and onto your computer (for example, from a friends phone). This may be a constraint put on them by record companies...who knows. It would be nice to be able to use the iPhone as a flash drive however

 

[dontwalkhand]

Apple won't allow this because they don't want you to be able to get the music files off an iPhone and onto your computer (for example, from a friends phone). This may be a constraint put on them by record companies...who knows. It would be nice to be able to use the iPhone as a flash drive however

There is an option to "Transfer Purchases" but that only applies to what was PURCHASED from Apple on the phone, rather than What you have put on there yourself. For that, there is always iRip and Senuti for Mac

 

[stickybuns]

Apple won't allow this because they don't want you to be able to get the music files off an iPhone and onto your computer (for example, from a friends phone). This may be a constraint put on them by record companies...who knows. It would be nice to be able to use the iPhone as a flash drive however

Third party software exists that will allow you to transfer files. I had a hard drive fail on me a couple years back and was able to use one of these programs (sorry, I have forgotten the name) to recover my music files from my iPod Touch.

Of course, it was even easier waaaaay back when you could put your iPod into "disk mode" and directly work with the individual files.

ETA: Senuti! That's what I used.

 

[sentinelsx]

I want expandable storage.

Not an "android feature".

 

[dccorona]

Third party software exists that will allow you to transfer files. I had a hard drive fail on me a couple years back and was able to use one of these programs (sorry, I have forgotten the name) to recover my music files from my iPod Touch.

Of course, it was even easier waaaaay back when you could put your iPod into "disk mode" and directly work with the individual files.

ETA: Senuti! That's what I used.

well yes, I'm aware of that. But my point is its not something Apple would ever allow natively

 

[wikus]

It took Apple two decades to have a two button mouse. Apple's either too stubborn or too stupid to care about consumer wants.

iOS is a gimped Android OS.

 

[onthecouchagain]

Mother of god... Apple, please add this!

Why is the jailbreak community figuring out a better iOS so much faster than Apple?

 

[F123D]

If apple didn't make it so damn difficult to jailbreak an iPhone, I'd probably still be using one right now. I've just lost my patience of waiting and having to deal with updating/upgrading and having to use stock iOS that it's not worth the hassle anymore. Three months in and no sign of a jailbreak for the iPhone 5.

 

[Fed]

FILE MANAGER. Less crapTunes.

 

[markg61326]

If apple didn't make it so damn difficult to jailbreak an iPhone, I'd probably still be using one right now. I've just lost my patience of waiting and having to deal with updating/upgrading and having to use stock iOS that it's not worth the hassle anymore. Three months in and no sign of a jailbreak for the iPhone 5.

100% agree with this. With a jailbroken iPhone I can customize it to do all the things I need in a device. Stock iOS is just too limited and I lost patience waiting for a jailbreak for the iPhone5 and just ended up getting rid of it.

 

[b166er]

I think that iOS would/could be infinitely better if apple would simply ease some restrictions on the developers. Make some more areas of the OS accessible. Really it's the tweaks that I feel makes android good.

I realize android is more open to attack but there is no reason apple couldn't allow devs some more territory and still screen the apps to determin they are not harmful. Honestly I think apple is too cheap to pay out for the extra screeners.

 

[Beeplance]

I think that iOS would/could be infinitely better if apple would simply ease some restrictions on the developers. Make some more areas of the OS accessible. Really it's the tweaks that I feel makes android good.

I realize android is more open to attack but there is no reason apple couldn't allow devs some more territory and still screen the apps to determin they are not harmful. Honestly I think apple is too cheap to pay out for the extra screeners.

Sometimes I think the openness of the OS itself is what differentiates iOS from Android.

However, I think Apple really needs to do this to keep up though.

 

[zbarvian]

Mother of god... Apple, please add this!

YouTube: video

Why is the jailbreak community figuring out a better iOS so much faster than Apple?

I think what's bothersome to me is that these tweaks are so obvious and would be so simple for Apple to implement. For some reason, they are very resistant to change.

But to be fair, the Android community often figures things out quicker than Google (JIT, Quick Toggles, Swype, Lockscreen widgets, multitouch).