If you switched from Droid to iPhone...

[ThereGoesJB]

what are your honest opinions on the iphone?
especially when it comes to:
-build quality
-reliability
-battery

some pros that arent often considered maybe?

when i first considered getting a smart phone i was 90% sure id get the iphone, now some time later im actually ready to buy one and there are some legit competitors im considering, such as the HTC one.
However there is still a part of me that wants to believe that the apple quality is worth any difference in specs.

galaxy s3(s4) is def just too big IMO so one of the biggest pros right now are the iphones form factor

 

[TsuaSai]

Seems reliable. Its restarted a few times on me but nothing that any of my android phones did.

Build quality seems good too. I didn't have any issues with the build of my androids. They are all solid phones.

Battery life is where the iPhone kicked the hell out of the other phones I had. Battery life is way better for me. I am just an average user.

I have had a lot of phones. I most switch cause I get bored with the look and feel of things. But here is a list of what I have had. So it's based of these phones I answered.

Android- OG droid, droid x, galaxy nexus and htc rezound.

iPhones- OG, 3G,4 and now 5.

Assuming you we're thinking of getting an iPhone 5.

 

[wxman2003]

The HTC One is going to be a great phone. Unfortunately for HTC, delays in production will have it out a few weeks after the GS4. This will hurt them big time, even though the HTC One looks to be of better quality than the GS4. I did have Android phones and previously the iPhone 4. The best android I had was the Razr Maxx, and the battery was awesome. No one comes close to matching the Razr Maxx or Razr Maxx HD battery life. However, I hated all the bloatware on android devices. Ridiculous. Too much fragmentation. The iPhone 5 integrates well with all my Apple devices. Since you haven't upgraded yet, I would give the HTC One a test drive to see what you think.

 

[thitiv]

I switched over from Samsung S3 after two years on Android. The problem is how the Android OS manges it's resources, ie, memory. If you install a lot of apps, they will eat up all of your memory and are loaded all at once, waiting to be unloaded at discretion of the OS. That hurts. You will see that all Androids come with double-sized RAM and beefed up processors every now and then.

 

[wxman2003]

Just saw the latest review and pics of the GS4 on CNET. What gawd ugly monstrosity. It has a lot of great features, but cant get past how ugly it looks with all it's glorious plastic. And the front face looks like some woodpecker punched all those holes in the top.

 

[sawah]

I've had alot of android phones and iPhones. I currently own an iPhone 5 which I've given to my mom to use and have a Galaxy Nexus and I love it. Don't plan on switching back to the iPhone.

 

[rMBP13]

for the iphone 5 users, getting the S4 would be a downgrade
- from premium aluminum feel to plastic feel
- from merely 7.6mm thin to 7.9mm thick
- from secure iOS to full of Malware viruses AndroidOS

 

[iRetired]

I have a Droid X that i use for watching movies and stream audio on WiFi. I like the larger screen but it really is awkward to hold for long periods of time. It used to be my daily driver but i switched carriers and use a 4S as my daily now. Motorola and Verizon both loaded the X with a ton of bloatware, which i eliminated when i put a custom ROM on it. No need to do that with my 4S (except that it is jail broken). I actually like the smaller screen on my iPhone and, overall, it just works. Did i mention the X also had the extended battery and still didn't last all day like the 4S with its stock battery? Additionally, i really like the build quality of the iPhone. I don't think i would ever buy a plastic phone. Nor do i have any intention of ever going back to Android. Just my personal opinion.

 

[Godf1st]

I also have had a lot of phones, due to being bored;

Android- htc hero, htc evo 4g, htc evo 3d, htc one x, gs3, note1 & 2, galaxy skyrocket

Apple- iPhone 4S & 3 iphone 5

I'm currently using the iphone 5 and couldn't be happier for the time being. I actually like the availability of apps and support via apple market and cydia. The build quality is above any other manufacture. Htc does give apple a run for its money in build quality. I'm finally getting that outstanding battery life I've heard crazed about with apple. My comparison of android and apple are like Xbox 360 and playstation 3. Apple being similar to xbox 360 and vice versa. Apple beat majority all the manufactures to the market with mobile innovation and with its exclusiveness, just like playstation 3 started late and loss it's exclusiveness. Though android has seen big improvements, and ios has seemed the same over years, the iphone just works 9/10. And if people need bigger screens they might as well get a tablet or a ultraportable laptop. 5" and 5.5" are nice in some aspects, but will never take the place of a tablet or pc.

 

[avanpelt]

I went from an iPhone 4 to a Droid X in 2010, back to the iPhone 4 a year later, and to the iPhone 5 in 2012.

In my experience, the iPhone 4 and 5 beat the Droid X in all the categories you mentioned hands down -- build quality, reliability, and battery life. I can't tell you how many times I would be in the middle of a call and the Droid X would just reboot. I've never had that issue with any iPhone.

Android has come a long way since 2010; but I still think the iPhone wins overall in terms of what I need from a phone. iOS 7 needs to be compelling enough to leapfrog Apple far ahead of Android, though.

 

[akasch]

I had a Galaxy Nexus and switched back to an iPhone 5. It's not that I didn't love Android: I thought it was great and better than iOS but I finally got fed up with some of the cons of the phone:

-horrible battery life (but the new Android phones have way better battery life and S3's keep up with the iPhone 5)
-glitchy at times: my location services wouldn't work sometimes so things like navigation failed. Also location for instagram never worked once
- I didn't feel comfortable relying on it. There was a couple times where it died or didn't connect to something so I was left in the middle of a new town and had to ask for directions.

Pros:
-I thought the plastic wasn't bad. People here like to hype up the metal but at least the plastic didn't scratch easily or look like crap once you dropped it
- The screen wouldn't scratch at all. Even with keys in my pocket
-I miss the connectivity between apps. BADLY. I cannot believe iOS can't even send a photo from gallery to a certain app.
-Notifications + light were way better.

 

[Gavzooka]

I've just come back from a HTC Desire HD followed by a Samsung S3. At first, the Desire was the best....then got the S3 and that was excellent at first....then I spotted a trend with both...over time, they became more and more unreliable. Battery life seemed to degrade, etc. I put it down to the use of apps as every time I hard reset, all was good again for a while. The HTC I rooted and that much improved the battery life but it was still glitchy. I basically got completely fed up with having to manage my phone...I don't have the time or desire for that, so I on my next upgrade got an iPhone 5 and don't regret it one bit!

Build wise, the iPhone is heads and shoulders above the HTC and Samsung offering. The new HTC might compete but it's still android and in time experience will degrade

Reliability...well...I've said it all above. I've had iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 in the past too and they were far more reliable and never needed restarts, etc....the iPhone 5 is going strong and I've not had a single instance of a lockup or slowness.

I love the variety of reliable Apps on the iPhone as well....android was always hit and miss and 9 times out of 10 apps had a bug somewhere in them. I've come across very few iPhone apps like that...

I know one thing, I won't be going back to Android. And as for the S4....well....innovation isn't it's strongest feature is it....seems very familiar to me...manufacturer comfortable with their user base (as Apple is) and they are taking it easy on the innovation side (as Apple has been doing).....

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

I switched a few months back from a Samsung Galaxy S3 to the iPhone 5. I couldn't be happier, much prefer the iOS experience.

 

[ZombiePete]

I've gone back-and-forth; since I bought my first iPhone in 2007 I've had every iPhone model (the 5 will be the first I've not owned) and on the Android side I've had the EVO, the EVO Shift, the Nexus S, the Galaxy Nexus, a Skyrocket, and the Nexus 4 which I recently sold and went back to using my iPhone 4 full-time (I sold my 4S over a year ago).

Good grief that's a lot of phones when you type it all out.

Anyway, as much as I like Android and the flexibility it gives you, there are drawbacks that keep pushing me back to iOS. For example, stock AOSP ROMs are in my opinion generally cleaner, better-looking, and smoother than the skin jobs that you get from non-Nexus OEMs like Samsung. The problem is that the stock Android OS is missing a lot of features and common sense stuff that a lot of ROM developers include in their ROMs, so you're tempted to flash. These ROMs invariably have other bugs or missing features (Google Wallet not working, for example) or are laggy or the developer dicked around with the color profiles and made the colors "more realistic" whatever the hell that means. That ROM also came with a customized kernel that's draining battery faster so you start looking for a better kernel but to really manage that kernel you have to buy an app and oh this version was undervolted too much so it's causing the phone to crash so you have to go into the bootloader and flash your last nandroid to get it back and find an updated kernel that's battery efficient and stable. By the way the sound profile in stock Android on the Nexus 4 is too damn quiet so now it's off to find a mod that will boost the audio because you can barely hear DAG doing his Teddy Pendergrass schtick on Adam Carolla even with the volume turned up full blast so you have flash a zip file in CWM but Google released an update that broke the volume boost feature so...

At first it's fun customizing your phone like that but, as I've gotten older and less interested in tinkering with my phone and just want to use it for stuff I've come to the conclusion that the iPhone is a polished, fully-functional device that I am happy to use without dicking around with it right out of the box; an experience I never had with an Android device, even the Nexus devices which frankly are like beta devices for Google to play around with on my dime. With my iPhone I don't worry about whether an app is going to hang around in the background with a rogue process sapping my battery (a constant issue in Android and the old Facebook app, for example, which drained 50% of my battery in two hours one day with the phone sitting on my desk untouched). I don't worry about whether this ROM/Kernel combination is going to give me the best battery life or best features or best looks. I don't worry over whether or not an app is optimized for my handset/OS version despite the myriad others out there.

I don't worry with iOS. Plain and simple. And that's the point I'm at today.

 

[mattopotamus]

for the iphone 5 users, getting the S4 would be a downgrade
- from premium aluminum feel to plastic feel
- from merely 7.6mm thin to 7.9mm thick
- from secure iOS to full of Malware viruses AndroidOS

This is laughable. I have known exactly zero people to ever get a virus on their mobile phone.

 

[Browns2212]

I had Android forever. Had a Droid X for 3 years and then an HTC Thunderbolt for about 6 months prior to the iPhone 5 launch.

I just made a decision to try an iPhone mostly because I had bought an iPad 2 back in March of 2012 right after the 3 came out b/c it dropped the price down to $399. I loved the iPad 2 immediately. So I waited for the iPhone 5.

I couldn't be happier. I love the iPhone 5.

To be honest, I like the look of the Samsung S3 and S4. Not sure how much I would like that 5" screen in my pocket when I'm out, etc.

I have a feeling I would be happy with most any of the "new" phones. I loved my Droid X for about the first 2 years then it started to become really slow, etc.

My family now has 2 i5's, 2 iPads and an iPod 4th gen. We also have a 1st gen iPod that we got used, but it's pretty worthless b/c you can't download half the apps now and the iOS won't update either.

But I like the ecosystem.

Very happy with my switch, but I honestly think I would also like some of the Android phones available. I just really enjoy technology and the phones of today are amazing. I don't really understand the Android vs. Apple war and how some people just go absolutely insane defending one or the other. I mean, I read CNET.com quite a bit and it's amazing the hate that those commenters have for Apple. I'm like, "WOW, it's just a phone." If it works for you and you like it, who cares if it's an Apple or an Android.

 

[balzmcfearson]

some of the reasons i came back to the iphone from htc one x

battery life
device size and form factor
availability of software updates
airplay
icloud

 

[macMD]

I have owned both Android and iOS devices and recently switched from a GS3 & Nexus 7 to a new iP5 and iPad 4 LTE.

I actually enjoy both OS's equally, and there were reasons for my migration to iOS which was work related. I will admit one key benefit of iOS is the fact that you can get full OS updates at time of release for at least 2 years. I say 2 years since after that point you may get some features removed on future OS versions based on the devices abilities.

Android does suffer from Carrier interference and OEM skins and modification. If Google had more input control, sway then it would be better.

What I do like about Android that iOS (Apple) will never be able to do is offer more device options across many budgets and needs. Now I did like my GS3 screen size and miss it a lot and find the 4" iOS screen to be too small for my daily needs, but again it was work related needs that put me on iOS again.

If I could get what I need from Cisco equally on Android I would have to way more specific choices to decide but the OS updates are a big draw for me.

I will likely get the iP5S this summer unless the specs are truly not that big of a deal and just wait for the next one in 2014.

They both perform very well and achieve my tasks equally, but one issue I noticed on my GS3 was even in airplane mode the media server app was running all night and used 18% battery life in 8 hours. Why is it running all day and using the battery.

 

[nedkoff]

for the iphone 5 users, getting the S4 would be a downgrade
- from premium aluminum feel to plastic feel
- from merely 7.6mm thin to 7.9mm thick
- from secure iOS to full of Malware viruses AndroidOS

Very big difference: 7.6 mm compaired to 7.9 mm !