Hi,
perhaps you can help me choose.
My iPhone 4S is dying (battery), and my 3 year contract is nearly up anyway.
I own a Macbook Pro. I'm considering switching to Samsung or another brand of Android phone. In Canada, the iPhone 6, 64GB, costs $375 with a 2 year contract.
The Samsung S5 costs only $200 + extra to upgrade the SD memory card. The Samsung is water resistant and apparently has good battery life. This means a lot because I'm a snowboarder, and sometimes I ride in the backcountry. A working phone could save my life.
I don't use Mac mail or the Mac calendar. I've used Gmail for years now, and sometimes use the Google Calendar.
I'm wondering what cross-functionality I'll lose if I go to Android. I do use the Notes and Reminders apps a little bit. They recently started popping up on my laptop. I guess that's cool. Maybe I'll start using that more.
The only other iCloud app that I hesitate to give up is the new iCloud Photos app, now in Beta. It forms a nice triangle with my iPhone photos and laptop photos.
With Samsung, I'd have to use Google+ for my mobile photos backup. But that wouldn't tie into my computer's iPhoto.
Any thought?
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And I'm not at my computer a whole lot. But it is also nice replying to text messages there in messages, rather than on my phone. So I guess I'd lose that as well.
Or is there an Android app i could install on Macbook that would do the same?
This feels almost like a no-brainer with Android's newest update....
Reasons to Go Android
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Notification light: The android has a notification light that lights up different colors (muted colors, not a random bright awkward flash) depending on if you get text, etc.
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Material Design - This new design philosophy has got Google in the perfect realm of "simplicity" and "beautiful interface". Apple went too far on the "making things look super real" with skeumorphic, then went "lets go super super simple and go opposite of making things look like real items"... Google took the opportunity and found the balance between the two.. "Material Design". Make things look simple, but make them function "like" things in real life.. i.e. cards.
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Email - It has squares with images or initials next to every email address. You only get "images" if you are using the 6+, and only in the contacts App, not mail app. You can't install Google's email app and expect to see what you see in android either. Its simple and sleek.
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Better Notes App - Look at Google Keep, google it. Today's newest update to it makes Apple's notes app look like Notepad compared to the latest text editors out there, you can shove images, and even checkboxes/reminders into it. The only bad thing about it is you have to sync notes to google to get them off your phone, unlike Apple that allows you to sync the notes to your computer without touching Apple's servers.
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Better Translate App - If your like me and need to translate foreign languages, with the Google App, you can take a picture of something with the foreign letters and translate the text using the Translate App. Google decided to leave this feature out of the iOS version, maybe to get people to go to the Google side.
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Better Usage Graphs - If you look at the usage details on android phone, you get pretty graphs of everything and can even set a data usage limit and have it warn you when your about to hit it. Apple only keeps track of the usage per charge and its just the one number. Nothing that shows a graph of what happens over time.
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Better Maps App - The maps app is much more solid in google and has street view, this seems to be a trend where Google leaves Apple versions of Google's Apps more limited...
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Updates - The android phone seems to get updates every week with some improvement here and there to one or more apps. I find it hard getting used to Apple's iOS8 where there are barely any updates to the suite of apps used.
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Face Unlock - This is so cool, patented by Google... you can unlock the phone with your face. Google uses image algorithms to recognize your face so that instead of punching in numbers or using your finger, the camera looks at your face and in a split second unlocks your phone. If it doesn't, you can unlock it with a backup pattern and you can train the phone to recognize your face in other situations where it can't.
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Contacts App - OMG. This is the coolest looking contacts app that Apple has not got. The pictures of your friends actually take up a decent amount of real estate on the screen and looks simple and easy to use unlike Apples "listing of all your contacts without any photos". If you have contacts on your phone that you sometimes can't remember what they look like, Android makes so much more sense.
Okay, before you go on thinking I might work for Google or am an Android fangirl, you may be thinking why anyone would want to go Apple?
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Privacy - You don't have to sync everything to Apple servers if you don't want to, and you can get Notes off of it without having to sync to Google.
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Better Camera - The camera is much more solid, takes better photos all around.
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Battery Life - The way Apple handles processes is better than android, which leaves background processes running and eat up battery much faster. GPS is a much faster drain on battery with the Google than the Apple. Though Google's "Project Volta" is supposed to change that.
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More Solid, Less Random Crashes - Everything works, the thing about Android phones is apps crash.. randomly, unexpectedly. With the iPhone 6, there have been 0 crashes, even with multiple apps open at the same time. Even though some Apps are not as full with functionality like Android's versions that actually look a lot nicer in some cases, you can be sure your going to have less negative randomness.
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Music to Wake Up To - This may sound crazy, but you can't set a song from your library to wake up to with Android, you have to pick its standard set of sounds it comes with. If you want to be able to set an alarm with your music, then you want to get the iPhone.
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Better Media Player/Unified Storage - I don't like microsd cards, its nice that everything is on the phone and you can store gigantic music collections onto it without any removable storage. Now this one could be a "plus" for android, but I like Apple's "one drive" solution, the media player also feels more slick and built for music.
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Facetime/Video Chat - This is one of the most amazing things EVER!!!! You can video chat or call without using the phone, but just on wifi or any cellular connection. Skype exists, but it is horrible on iOS and is not all that great on Android and consumes more bandwidth and is more prone to crashing. Facetime is integrated into the OS without an App and it just works.
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Health - The healthkit is pretty new, but you don't have to keep track of steps you walk without installing any third party apps, its built right into the OS! Android does have some nice apps that keep track of this stuff, but you have to install them 3rd party.
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Fingerprint Sensor - This is another Apple plus, other phones have fingerprint sensors, but the Apple one is the best, It. Just. Works.
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Lightning Cable - Even though this isnt part of the phone, it is neat to be able to plug in a cable without having to fidget with the direction or orientation your inserting it in your phone. MicroUSB is nice for the android phones, but you have to actually think about how you insert it.
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Appstore - The Appstore is just so much more complete than Google's and all apps are reviewed, so the Apps are generally of higher quality and caliber unlike Google's where anybody can put anything up there and it'll get approved.
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Siri - Talk to the phone, so many languages, its not Cortana, but its still pretty good. Sounds better than Google Now.
Everything said... I have an iPhone 6, I love it... but Android is doing a good job wooing me back to their newer devices.
