Moving from iPhone to Android is Painful

[Dwalls90]

Considering all the posts in this thread and your lock in to the Apple way, wouldn't it be best to give up at this point?

Android doesn't play nice with Apple services.
Google music lacks iTunes Match functionality and you're having issues uploading to Google Music. You don't want to use Amazon's iTunes Match like service.
Your car stereo won't let you plug in your Android handset and work.

Too many stumbling blocks to get around for it not to be a pain IMO.

My personal experiences going multi platform have been the complete opposite to yours but that doesn't help your poor experience out one bit sadly.

(In contrast for me)
Google services work perfectly on my windows Phone, iOS and Android devices I've used in the past and present.
Google Music has accepted my whole collection and is accessible on my iPad (gMusic app), Windows Phone 7 (Gooroovster) and natively on Android.
My car stereo has a2dp stereo Bluetooth support and works universally plus my car mount has a universal adapter for charging.

Its really hard to suggest anything but giving up at this point.

Agreed, which is why I am. Isn't it weird that Android is only bluetooth compatible with newer models? I don't have the newest car on the market, yet there are plenty of kits that enable native USB connection support through the iPod/iPhone/iPad for cars that were made in the early 90's! This is a major let down for me, but like you said, to each their own.

The moral of the story is: Apple locks you in and Microsoft/Google do not.

But yeah, you people should know this by now.

I would rather be locked in with a service that seamlessly works efficiently, then a half-baked solution with issues that is "open". iCloud contacts is far more reliable in terms of maintaining data and pictures and the same for calendar syncing IMO. If it's the best solution (at least for me), why would I care that it's closed?

What do you mean? Android syncs wirelessly with all vehicles that have those smart systems in them.

For instance, i used to work for Toyota. Androids are easy to set up with those and they work wirelessly with the music and Apps. The iPhone you have to use your usb cable because it wont work wirelessly with entune. Now it may with the music but it wont with the Apps. I can just use my car charger while it is playing if i need to so theres no ground breaking going on there. It actually works better with Android on those vehicles.

Now i havent worked there since February so maybe there has been a software update on Apples end to fix it. Or maybe it will be fixed in iOS 6.

I don't need to be enabling or messing with apps while driving, I would just like basic music/iPod functionality without the bluetooth portion.

 

[ChazUK]

Agreed, which is why I am. Isn't it weird that Android is only bluetooth compatible with newer models? I don't have the newest car on the market, yet there are plenty of kits that enable native USB connection support through the iPod/iPhone/iPad for cars that were made in the early 90's! This is a major let down for me, but like you said, to each their own.

A wise choice IMO.

I doubt most car stereos will support the plethora of audio formats the GSII supports.
Whereas the iPhone supports plenty of media formats, the S2 supports:

"FLAC, WAV, Vorbis, MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, MID, AC3, XMF."

Then there are the ways that phones mount. By default the S2 uses MTP to connect to a USB device but it can be mounted like a thumb drive if you change the mode.

You came. You saw. You didn't see what the fuss is about!

 

[Dwalls90]

A wise choice IMO.

I doubt most car stereos will support the plethora of audio formats the GSII supports.
Whereas the iPhone supports plenty of media formats, the S2 supports:

"FLAC, WAV, Vorbis, MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, MID, AC3, XMF."

Then there are the ways that phones mount. By default the S2 uses MTP to connect to a USB device but it can be mounted like a thumb drive if you change the mode.

You came. You saw. You didn't see what the fuss is about!

Yea I guess I just don't care for other music formats and I don't want to be hassled with entering my phone into MTP whenever I plug it into my car. iTunes easily converts to AAC, and I don't know where your music is "legally" coming from, but Apple supports mp3 and AAC.

 

[ChazUK]

iTunes easily converts to AAC, and I don't know where your music is "legally" coming from, but Apple supports mp3 and AAC.

Most of my collection is either FLAC (for lossless) or Vorbis (For lossy) CD rips created using Asunder on Linux.

http://littlesvr.ca/asunder/

Amazon MP3 for pretty much everything else. All legal I assure you!

 

[ixodes]

Out of pure curiosity to see if I was truly using the best platform for me, I bought a refurbished Galaxy S II. And after about a day, I came running back to iOS.

Sounds like it was either an impulse buy, or one that was done without thinking or researching your purchase.

It also sounds like you gave up very, very quickly.

If you had said you learned the OS thoroughly, and after a few weeks determined it was not for you, I would understand. But you didn't keep it long enough to learn it.

No smartphone, even the highly fawned over iPhone is for everyone.

I guess you found that out the hard way.

 

[batting1000]

Sounds like it was either an impulse buy, or one that was done without thinking or researching your purchase.

Why? Are you saying now that the GS3 is out, the GS2 is no longer good, cannot compete, and therefore should not be purchased by anyone?

 

[Vegastouch]

Most of my collection is either FLAC (for lossless) or Vorbis (For lossy) CD rips created using Asunder on Linux.

http://littlesvr.ca/asunder/

Amazon MP3 for pretty much everything else. All legal I assure you!

I have a handful that are in Quicktime Movie format. They are just songs and they play the same. I guess the music app i was using was doing that. Same size files as a MP3 though.

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Yea I guess I just don't care for other music formats and I don't want to be hassled with entering my phone into MTP whenever I plug it into my car. iTunes easily converts to AAC, and I don't know where your music is "legally" coming from, but Apple supports mp3 and AAC.

Maybe that GS2 being refurbished is your problem. Needs more refurbishing? I dont know, but i never buy a refurbished product.

 

[Dwalls90]

Sounds like it was either an impulse buy, or one that was done without thinking or researching your purchase.

It also sounds like you gave up very, very quickly.

If you had said you learned the OS thoroughly, and after a few weeks determined it was not for you, I would understand. But you didn't keep it long enough to learn it.

No smartphone, even the highly fawned over iPhone is for everyone.

I guess you found that out the hard way.

I'm not willing to sacrifice the reliability and basic functionality of contacts syncing (which, by the way, for 10.6.8+, google contacts won't sync contact photos to my Mac, yet ANOTHER hiccup in their cloud ecosystem), a cloud music solution, and in my experiences, more reliable calendar syncing. I don't care if Android is "prettier" or has bigger screens, I want something that is efficient and can perform basic needs. And iOS is plenty customizable with my jailbreak, so I don't find the "lock" placed by Apple to be an issue. I'm not going to give it the benefit of trying it for more than a few days, if it cannot easily match the seamlessness of iOS.

How can you tell me that for a Mac user:

Google Contacts is better than iCloud?
Google Music is better than iTunes Match?
Google Calendars has an advantage over iCloud?

Because none of these things are true. Don't forget iMessage which for me is also a huge advantage. You seem to be taking this argument personally. Maybe Android is better FOR YOU, but as an avid Mac user, I fail to see how Android offers more features than iOS in terms of a seamless experience.

I have a handful that are in Quicktime Movie format. They are just songs and they play the same. I guess the music app i was using was doing that. Same size files as a MP3 though.

Ok. I guess I like my music organized, and with that follows the same format and quality, thus either being MP3 or AAC. 320kbps MP3 is very high quality and for 99% of users not distinguishable by the user in terms of birthrate even over 256kbps, both of which iOS supports.

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Maybe that GS2 being refurbished is your problem. Needs more refurbishing? I dont know, but i never buy a refurbished product.

Do you even know what refurbished means? It's not "slower", or "inferior". It's the same quality of phone except lightly used. It is the 4S' competitor, thus it only seemed fair to compare the 4S to the S II and not the GS III. We can compare the S III to the iPhone 6.

Most of my collection is either FLAC (for lossless) or Vorbis (For lossy) CD rips created using Asunder on Linux.

http://littlesvr.ca/asunder/

Amazon MP3 for pretty much everything else. All legal I assure you!

Legality is none of my concern, I guess it's just very rare to come across someone that rips their music from CD's nowadays, versus using the common platform of m4a or AAC. But to each their own, I just don't need 30+ mb songs in FLAC format when my 320kbps mp3 or even 256kbps AAC are perfectly fine.

 

[Vegastouch]

Do you even know what refurbished means? It's not "slower", or "inferior". It's the same quality of phone except lightly used. It is the 4S' competitor, thus it only seemed fair to compare the 4S to the S II and not the GS III. We can compare the S III to the iPhone 6.

No.....it means there was a problem with it and it was fixed to normal specs. It could mean as little as the device got an update or restored but in many cases it was defective. You just dont know what the reason was and why i dont buy them. Im just saying it is possible you got one that still isnt quite right.

Maybe you need to learn more before you buy stuff. You can Read about it here

It is fine to compare the S2 to the 4S but get one that is working properly.

 

[Dwalls90]

No.....it means there was a problem with it and it was fixed to normal specs. It could mean as little as the device got an update or restored but in many cases it was defective. You just dont know what the reason was and why i dont buy them. Im just saying it is possible you got one that still isnt quite right.

Maybe you need to learn more before you buy stuff. You can Read about it here

Sorry bud, ran diagnostics and ran side to side comparisons with my friends S II. Don't blame Android's shortcomings on the S II, the phone was fine, it was just lightly used. All of the issues I point out aren't even necessarily performance based, thus removing the issue of "refurb" out of the picture. The issues or shortcoming I encountered are justified by googling the problems themselves, I am not the only one experiencing them.

Refurbished products include returned or lightly used ones, per the vendor I bought mine from. And I prefer to go by the definition of refurb from the vendor I am purchasing from, not some no-name website that you provided.

 

[belvdr]

No.....it means there was a problem with it and it was fixed to normal specs. It could mean as little as the device got an update or restored but in many cases it was defective. You just dont know what the reason was and why i dont buy them. Im just saying it is possible you got one that still isnt quite right.

Maybe you need to learn more before you buy stuff. You can Read about it here

It is fine to compare the S2 to the 4S but get one that is working properly.

Some refurbished goods are also new products that were bought, opened, used, and then returned. The retailer cannot sell such items as new.

 

[Vegastouch]

Sorry bud, ran diagnostics and ran side to side comparisons with my friends S II. Don't blame Android's shortcomings on the S II, the phone was fine, it was just lightly used. All of the issues I point out aren't even necessarily performance based, thus removing the issue of "refurb" out of the picture. The issues or shortcoming I encountered are justified by googling the problems themselves, I am not the only one experiencing them.

Whoa there, i was just suggesting you may have got one that isnt right. Hell new ones arent right many times. Even iPhones have threads here that are messed up in some capacity. Its ok, was just saying.

Refurbished products include returned or lightly used ones, per the vendor I bought mine from. And I prefer to go by the definition of refurb from the vendor I am purchasing from, not some no-name website that you provided.

Well yeah...lol, they arent going to tell you there was a problem if they dont have to. They will say it was just lightly used...and it could of been. Is why i gave you a refurbished website to read and not something like Best Buy, but ...looks like you prefer a Best Buy instead. Whatever!

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Some refurbished goods are also new products that were bought, opened, used, and then returned. The retailer cannot sell such items as new.

Very true, but you never know which one your getting. The simple return or one that is defective and some lazy tech didnt fix it right.

 

[belvdr]

Very true, but you never know which one your getting.

Since you get the same warranty any way (always demand this), it makes no difference to me. It just means I save some cash. Apple, for example, always gives you the same warranty period as a new unit.

 

[Dwalls90]

Some refurbished goods are also new products that were bought, opened, used, and then returned. The retailer cannot sell such items as new.

Exactly my point.

Whoa there, i was just suggesting you may have got one that isnt right. Hell new ones arent right many times. Even iPhones have threads here that are messed up in some capacity. Its ok, was just saying.

Well yeah...lol, they arent going to tell you there was a problem if they dont have to. They will say it was just lightly used...and it could of been. Is why i gave you a refurbished website to read and not something like Best Buy, but ...looks like you prefer a Best Buy instead. Whatever!


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Very true, but you never know which one your getting. The simple return or one that is defective and some lazy tech didnt fix it right.

Are you nuts? What large vendor such as Apple, Samsung, AT&T or Verizon would sell "refurbished" handsets that are "secretly defective" when they are also offering warranty coverage? Not only is that horrible for their image as a premier company, but also will cost them as they have to cover repair and customer service costs. You are flat out wrong here, refurbished items are not defective from point of sale.

Again, don't blame Android by saying "your handset is faulty", because it's not. That's how it was built to function.

Since you get the same warranty any way (always demand this), it makes no difference to me. It just means I save some cash. Apple, for example, always gives you the same warranty period as a new unit.

Exactly! I've actually been buying everything refurbished from Apple that I possibly can, as they have always looked like new and reliability wise have been perfect! As long as one doesn't have the ego problem that they are buying a "non-new" product, refurbs are the way to go IMO.

 

[Calidude]

Not worth the hassle. Again, why would I DOWNGRADE from the ease of over the air live syncing of my contacts, to the wired manual transfer of .VCF?

What the hell are you talking about?

To move your contacts from iCloud to a Google account, you only have to do these easy steps.

1. Go to iCloud.com ---> Contacts
2. Export them to VCF
3. Go to Gmail contacts in your Google account and import them
4. That's it, Google now has all your contacts and syncs them with your phone 24/7.

Why do you keep talking about this like its some kind of chore? It's even easier than putting your contacts from a dumbphone into an iPhone. You don't even have to touch both phones. You just literally sit at your computer and do it all in 2 mins with your web browser.

 

[Dwalls90]

What the hell are you talking about?

To move your contacts from iCloud to a Google account, you only have to do these easy steps.

1. Go to iCloud.com ---> Contacts
2. Export them to VCF
3. Go to Gmail contacts in your Google account and import them
4. That's it, Google now has all your contacts and syncs them with your phone 24/7.

Why do you keep talking about this like its some kind of chore? It's even easier than putting your contacts from a dumbphone into an iPhone. You don't even have to touch both phones. You just literally sit at your computer and do it all in 2 mins with your web browser.

Yep, and that's nice and easy to put your contacts into Google. Until you enable Google sync through OSX, which then proceeds to remove the photos, links and other information from the contact card. Note: This is Google's fault, as this behavior was not caused by a change to OSX:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?fromgroup******opic/gmail/WE8mnELao-w[1-25]

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3888102?start=0&tstart=0

So again, iCloud trumps Google for contact syncing through iOS AND OSX.

 

[Calidude]

So again, iCloud trumps Google for contact syncing through iOS AND OSX.

Why would you think otherwise? Google sync is web-based, not something tied to an OS like Windows, Linux or OSX. You need to use a web browser, Android or Chrome OS.

 

[Dwalls90]

Why would you think otherwise? Google sync is web-based, not something tied to an OS like Windows, Linux or OSX. You need to use a web browser, Android or Chrome OS.

I did. In fact I used Chrome and enabled it across all devices. Is Chrome going to sync my iPad or Mac's contacts like iCloud can? No.

Chrome will let you sync your tabs and history, not your calendars, contacts or music.

And using native apps is way more reliable let alone faster than web-based apps.

 

[matttye]

Exactly my point. So either you have the proper solution which works with iOS, or a half-baked lazy solution on Android. I know which I'll be using.

iTunes doesn't have several of the albums I have on my PC, so iTunes Match isn't perfect nor does it work outside of the US (although Google Music doesn't either, yet.)

 

[Dwalls90]

iTunes doesn't have several of the albums I have on my PC, so iTunes Match isn't perfect nor does it work outside of the US (although Google Music doesn't either, yet.)

It seems that iTunes has all studio albums with the exception of a handful of artists.

But it will just upload those manually then. I don't mind manually uploading a few albums, as a few of mine didn't match either, but you're talking maybe a couple hundred versus a couple thousand.

 

[matttye]

It seems that iTunes has all studio albums with the exception of a handful of artists.

But it will just upload those manually then. I don't mind manually uploading a few albums, as a few of mine didn't match either, but you're talking maybe a couple hundred versus a couple thousand.

I didn't realise iTunes Match would upload them if it couldn't find them.

Cool

 

[Dwalls90]

I didn't realise iTunes Match would upload them if it couldn't find them.

Cool

Helpful fall back feature for sure.

 

[Calidude]

I did. In fact I used Chrome and enabled it across all devices. Is Chrome going to sync my iPad or Mac's contacts like iCloud can? No.

Chrome will let you sync your tabs and history, not your calendars, contacts or music.

And using native apps is way more reliable let alone faster than web-based apps.

I'm trying to tell you that Google isn't very compatible with things like the sync functions on OSX or Windows. It's web-based stuff meant to be controlled from a browser. If you want perfect sync with a Mac, you need an iPhone. That's just how it is. You should only go with Google if you are comfortable with doing all the work via a web browser.

 

[cynics]

This seems like a strange debate. Android devices sync very easily to other Android devices, iOS device sync very easily to other iOS devices. If they don't sync very well with each other then blame the company that doesn't play ball, which ever that is.

 

[Calidude]

This seems like a strange debate. Android devices sync very easily to other Android devices, iOS device sync very easily to other iOS devices. If they don't sync very well with each other then blame the company that doesn't play ball, which ever that is.

Apple is the company that doesn't play ball, but I don't blame them. They're a business. They're trying to get everybody to use only their hardware.

Google just wants you to put whatever data you have into their cloud and they don't care how it happens, so that's why their stuff works better on other devices.