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Foxer

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 22, 2003
1,274
30
Washington, DC
OK, can someone tell me why the Samsung phones are now considered (at least by some) to be superior to iPhone. I have no exposure to them - I've never touched a Samsung phone, I don't know anyone that uses one and I think I've seen one on the train to work, but I'm not sure. (Those aren't pejorative statements, just stating my situation.) I -think- the iPhone does everything I need it to do, i.e. there are no missing features or performance issues that scream out to me. That said, clearly there are additional features of the Samsung phones that people seem to think are missing from the iPhone. Can someone please tell me what those features/capabilities are? The only thing I've learned from their commercials are that I can wirelessly beam a playlist to someone. Trust me, no one want's my playlists.

I'm totally serious here. Not a set-up or a request to bash one platform over another. There just seem to be lots of people who are very passionate about Samsung's phone, and I'm curious why that is.
 

Hankster

macrumors 68020
Jan 30, 2008
2,475
440
Washington DC
If you're wondering about Samsung phones why not do a Google search on them? There are hundreds of videos, articles and reviews on all their phones. You can go to any number of tech sites and watch/read dozens of articles on their phones:

CNET
Engadget
BGR
AllThingsD

Why come to an Apple site and ask people to explain to you about Samsung phones?
 

sentinelsx

macrumors 68010
Feb 28, 2011
2,004
0
Do you go outside and ask people's opinions on many issues? Do you notice how they tend to favor one completely and trashing the other completely?

Same is happening here. Samsung galaxy is now the other choice against iPhone, and you have people using it say it kills the iPhone.

No it is not better. Similarly iPhone is not better. They are all not better.

If you are really curious, read up unbiased reviews from sites like anandtech, use the features if you can in a store, and see if a certain phone fits your lifestyle better.

There is no "better". It is all marketing.

Take it from the person who has used many android phones and iPhones, your best judge is YOU. No one else. Never buy something because people say something about it on the Internet. Sure actual user impressions are always good, but it is a GUIDE, not the reason to seal the deal.
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,682
43,740
Samsung is not better, its different.

The same way people choose to buy a Honda over a Toyota. One prefers what one manufacturer has to offer over the other.

Its personal preference and the choice allows consumers the ability to pick the phone that best suits their needs, and tastes.
 

Michael Goff

Suspended
Jul 5, 2012
13,329
7,422
Samsung has the best hardware for an Android phone, and they give the most "features".

They, technically, make the best Android phones.

It isn't necessarily better than the iPhone for everyone, though it is for some.
 

jrswizzle

macrumors 603
Aug 23, 2012
6,107
129
McKinney, TX
OK, can someone tell me why the Samsung phones are now considered (at least by some) to be superior to iPhone. I have no exposure to them - I've never touched a Samsung phone, I don't know anyone that uses one and I think I've seen one on the train to work, but I'm not sure. (Those aren't pejorative statements, just stating my situation.) I -think- the iPhone does everything I need it to do, i.e. there are no missing features or performance issues that scream out to me. That said, clearly there are additional features of the Samsung phones that people seem to think are missing from the iPhone. Can someone please tell me what those features/capabilities are? The only thing I've learned from their commercials are that I can wirelessly beam a playlist to someone. Trust me, no one want's my playlists.

I'm totally serious here. Not a set-up or a request to bash one platform over another. There just seem to be lots of people who are very passionate about Samsung's phone, and I'm curious why that is.

Marketing. They have created their own brand of iSheep - the "s-Sheep" if you will ;)

Seriously though, as others have posted, there is no better or worse for everyone. Its only a matter of what is better or worse for you. You personally may not care about Samsung's advertising, while I personally can't stand it. My 5 keys to a great smartphone experience also are probably very different from most everyone else's reasons why they choose one over the other.

All preference my friend. If you can't decide, there really isn't a bad option these days as far as flagship phones go.
 

Foxer

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 22, 2003
1,274
30
Washington, DC
Because there seem to be plenty of people here who seem to know quite a bit about the product and seem more than willing to voice their opinion. That, and since it is a "Alternatives to iOS and iOS Devices" thread, I thought it was OK.

Seriously, why does my post bother you?
 

Foxer

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 22, 2003
1,274
30
Washington, DC
Thanks for the opinions. I thought it might all be "subjective," and that seems to be (early) consensus. I just wondered if there was some killer feature or features that I had somehow missed.
 

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,370
8,952
a better place
Samsung is not better, its different.

The same way people choose to buy a Honda over a Toyota. One prefers what one manufacturer has to offer over the other.

Its personal preference and the choice allows consumers the ability to pick the phone that best suits their needs, and tastes.

exactly.


Thanks for the opinions. I thought it might all be "subjective," and that seems to be (early) consensus.


Yep. But sadly sometimes they will defend their subjective preferences by belittling those that think different to them. That's when it gets quite annoying.
 

sentinelsx

macrumors 68010
Feb 28, 2011
2,004
0
Thanks for the opinions. I thought it might all be "subjective," and that seems to be (early) consensus. I just wondered if there was some killer feature or features that I had somehow missed.

I doubt there is any "killer" feature in today's smartphones. They all function the same way and given how humans prefer uniformity overall, have no choice but to stay the course.

The last "killer" feature was a touchscreen which worked amazingly well with a natural pointing device, our fingers, the rest to me is just improvements over previous stuff or stuff that doesn't make me go "wow".

IMO, the next "killer" feature will be an autonomous self aware AI in our handsets if the current smartphone trend goes for another decade. Siri and google now are just small steps to it, nothing "killer".

Or, if the current trend changes, may be something awesome based on virtual reality or something that seamlessly integrates into our existing surroundings really well.

Or something I probably haven't looked at.

Since 2007, the only thing that genuinely "wowed" me has been that super accurate touch screen that doesn't need a stylus. Considering it is now in every flagship phone, the rest is just preference.
 

TheHateMachine

macrumors 6502a
Sep 18, 2012
846
1,354
OK, can someone tell me why the Samsung phones are now considered (at least by some) to be superior to iPhone. I have no exposure to them - I've never touched a Samsung phone, I don't know anyone that uses one and I think I've seen one on the train to work, but I'm not sure. (Those aren't pejorative statements, just stating my situation.) I -think- the iPhone does everything I need it to do, i.e. there are no missing features or performance issues that scream out to me. That said, clearly there are additional features of the Samsung phones that people seem to think are missing from the iPhone. Can someone please tell me what those features/capabilities are? The only thing I've learned from their commercials are that I can wirelessly beam a playlist to someone. Trust me, no one want's my playlists.

I'm totally serious here. Not a set-up or a request to bash one platform over another. There just seem to be lots of people who are very passionate about Samsung's phone, and I'm curious why that is.

Samsung makes large phones that feel nice, are snappy and have screens that pop. People seem to like over saturated colors for some reason. I mean if you walk into a store and look at the display models for TVs they all have vivid and bright colors in "display" mode. It just naturally attracts the eyes. They also cram a ton of features and while you might not like all of them there is bound to be something in there that you like. They also market heavily compared to everyone else and the lawsuit gave them a lot more exposure. There also might be some similar halo effect from their TVs.

Personally I still think Apple and some of the other OEM's make way better hardware. Not to say Samsung's design and build quality are horrid. Part of me prefers metals and sharp angles because of the feel to the device but the other part of me likes who I don't have to baby a plastic phone and curved edges for better ergonomics. What keeps me with Samsung is really the Note 2. I had a GS3 and it was a large improvement over my Droid X. The screen was nice and big but nothing was super outstanding about it outside of the screen size. I still think Moto makes the best phones. However the S-Pen and the Note 2's screen size is keeping me in the Note 2 line.

If Motorola would come out with a 5.5 inch phone with a good screen, a pressure sensitive stylus, clad in some sort of rubberized/soft touch metal (Like early Moto Android Phones), has Motorola's high cap batteries and not be doomed to be stuck on Verizon's network I would pick it up in a heart beat.
 

725032

Guest
Aug 5, 2012
724
0
You should check out the new S4

It puts the iphone 5 to shame and will answer this question very quickly.

Cheaper as well!!!
 

Foxer

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 22, 2003
1,274
30
Washington, DC
You should check out the new S4

It puts the iphone 5 to shame and will answer this question very quickly.

Cheaper as well!!!

So Samsung is cheaper than an iPhone. Apart from that, the post just sounds like opinion/boosterism.
 

LorPGDL

macrumors regular
Apr 23, 2011
139
0
Samsung smartphones are only better than the iphone because android is so much better than ios.

obviously my subjective opinion.
 

TheHateMachine

macrumors 6502a
Sep 18, 2012
846
1,354
I doubt there is any "killer" feature in today's smartphones. They all function the same way and given how humans prefer uniformity overall, have no choice but to stay the course.

The last "killer" feature was a touchscreen which worked amazingly well with a natural pointing device, our fingers, the rest to me is just improvements over previous stuff or stuff that doesn't make me go "wow".

IMO, the next "killer" feature will be an autonomous self aware AI in our handsets if the current smartphone trend goes for another decade. Siri and google now are just small steps to it, nothing "killer".

Or, if the current trend changes, may be something awesome based on virtual reality or something that seamlessly integrates into our existing surroundings really well.

Or something I probably haven't looked at.

Since 2007, the only thing that genuinely "wowed" me has been that super accurate touch screen that doesn't need a stylus. Considering it is now in every flagship phone, the rest is just preference.

I believe the next big thing is going to be a unified OS across all form factors with appropriated separate UIs. Only Microsoft seems to be heading in this direction. I think we are a long way from a truly seamless experience though.

I'm going to go all sci-fi here but I want smartphones to become so powerful and have enough energy to just be your Desktop, Phone, Laptop and Tablet. Your device will just stream the OS to all the Desktop, Laptop and Tablet thin clients that you will have. That is such a long way off though... one can dream!
 

LorPGDL

macrumors regular
Apr 23, 2011
139
0
I believe the next big thing is going to be a unified OS across all form factors with appropriated separate UIs. Only Microsoft seems to be heading in this direction. I think we are a long way from a truly seamless experience though.

I'm going to go all sci-fi here but I want smartphones to become so powerful and have enough energy to just be your Desktop, Phone, Laptop and Tablet. Your device will just stream the OS to all the Desktop, Laptop and Tablet thin clients that you will have. That is such a long way off though... one can dream!

i dont think thats as far off as you might think. remember the motorola atrix? the phones are already powerful enough to do all basic tasks 90 per cent of users do with their laptops, pcs. i can very well imagine a device a la asus padfone replacing my macbook and phone in the near future, without any loss of flexibility.
 

TheMTtakeover

macrumors 6502
Aug 3, 2011
470
7
I believe the next big thing is going to be a unified OS across all form factors with appropriated separate UIs. Only Microsoft seems to be heading in this direction. I think we are a long way from a truly seamless experience though.

I'm going to go all sci-fi here but I want smartphones to become so powerful and have enough energy to just be your Desktop, Phone, Laptop and Tablet. Your device will just stream the OS to all the Desktop, Laptop and Tablet thin clients that you will have. That is such a long way off though... one can dream!

I think you are on the right track. Reminds me of Ubuntu for Android.

http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android
 

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,370
8,952
a better place
So Samsung is cheaper than an iPhone. Apart from that, the post just sounds like opinion/boosterism.

+1 exactly.

Sadly when you ask for an objective answer to a general question - you get this exact type of subjective opinion proffered as 'definitive' fact for all.

But you only have to look at a posters recent history to see a recurring theme and where clear bias resides....
 
Last edited:

Stuntman06

macrumors 6502a
Sep 19, 2011
961
5
Metro Vancouver, B.C, Canada
OK, can someone tell me why the Samsung phones are now considered (at least by some) to be superior to iPhone. I have no exposure to them - I've never touched a Samsung phone, I don't know anyone that uses one and I think I've seen one on the train to work, but I'm not sure. (Those aren't pejorative statements, just stating my situation.) I -think- the iPhone does everything I need it to do, i.e. there are no missing features or performance issues that scream out to me.

As an iOS user and one who has not seen or used a Samsung phone, it will be difficult for you to really pick out features that are missing from the iPhone. The reason is that you don't know what you are missing if you don't know it can exist (on some other device you have not used).

That said, clearly there are additional features of the Samsung phones that people seem to think are missing from the iPhone. Can someone please tell me what those features/capabilities are? The only thing I've learned from their commercials are that I can wirelessly beam a playlist to someone. Trust me, no one want's my playlists.

Samsung makes a variety of phones. They make Windows Phone devices as well as Android. I have a Galaxy S3 which run Android. I will describe a few things I do on my phone which may not be possible on an iPhone (especially without jailbreaking). I also do not root my phone. I just use features that are stock or available via the Play Store.

First of all, I can choose which apps are the default apps on my phone. I do not use the browser that came with my phone. I downloaded a Chrome and set that as the default. When I tap on a link in any app, it will launch Chrome instead of the stock browser that came with the phone. I do the same with my mapping app. I use Waze, so when I tap on an address in my Contacts app, it will launch Waze instead of the default (Google Maps).

I use a third party app launcher. On the iPhone home screen, you will find an app dock on the bottom that has some apps docked to it. When you switch to a different page on your home screen, all of your icons move off the screen and the ones on the next page come on with the exception of the apps in the dock. I personally don't like the dock, so I replace it with another row of icons. When I swipe the screen, the entire screen of icons and objects move over and a new screen of icons and object replace it entirely. I also have the option of adding more rows and columns for icons.

I use various widgets on my phone. Widgets are not available on iOS. (I hear that jailbreaking will enable such features.) What widgets do are many things. Some display information. For instance, I have a weather widget that display the current conditions and forecast for the next 2 days. This is what people commonly think of when talking about widgets, but widgets can do a lot more.

Some widgets are shortcuts to app functions. For instance, I have the SoundHound app that I use to recognise songs. Normally, I have to launch SoundHound then tap on the button to recognise the song. SoundHound has a shortcut that with a single tap will recognise the song. There are also shortcuts for other apps like Google Maps where the shortcut will start the navigation to the destination with a single tap.

When I go to bed, I want all of my notification sounds to be turned off. However, I still want my ringer to sound as well as my alarm. I have a widget that with a single tap can turn off notification sounds, but not the ringer or alarm. When I wake up, I tap the widget again and all sounds are back to normal.

Anther thing I find with Android that is handy is the app integration between apps. When Apple announced in the last few version of iOS that they were getting Twitter integration and the later Facebook integration, I was kinda confused as these seem to be basic functions that should be there. I later understood that iOS does not allow a lot of this integration. On Android, when you want to say, share a web page, you get a list of all of the apps that you can use to share. My messaging, email, FB, Twitter, Google+, and many more apps are on the list.

This may or may not be important to you. I find that some of these features are very convenient to me. There are many others and it is difficult to go through them all. I'm sure others will have their own lists.
 

Vegastouch

macrumors 603
Jul 12, 2008
6,185
992
Las Vegas, NV
OK, can someone tell me why the Samsung phones are now considered (at least by some) to be superior to iPhone. I have no exposure to them - I've never touched a Samsung phone, I don't know anyone that uses one and I think I've seen one on the train to work, but I'm not sure. (Those aren't pejorative statements, just stating my situation.) I -think- the iPhone does everything I need it to do, i.e. there are no missing features or performance issues that scream out to me. That said, clearly there are additional features of the Samsung phones that people seem to think are missing from the iPhone. Can someone please tell me what those features/capabilities are? The only thing I've learned from their commercials are that I can wirelessly beam a playlist to someone. Trust me, no one want's my playlists.

I'm totally serious here. Not a set-up or a request to bash one platform over another. There just seem to be lots of people who are very passionate about Samsung's phone, and I'm curious why that is.

There are numerous topics in here that cover this very thing.
 

OceanView

macrumors 65816
Sep 16, 2005
1,094
39
Like someone else mentioned, it's like cars, everyone has a reason they prefer one brand/model over another. It's really a personal choice.
But as a consumer that has experienced both ecosystems and use the best phone available on the market, I choose a Samsung.

You will just have to do some research and take a chance to see if you like android or not. Until then, you will never really get it.
 

lordofthereef

macrumors G5
Nov 29, 2011
13,161
3,721
Boston, MA
Some common themes are android (there are dozens of reasons why people prefer android over any alternate, you need only read a blog on this), screen size, generally removable/expandable storage and batteries on their phones, that's all I have off the top of my head.

I have a tough time believing that you don't have access to a galaxy phone in a mall, Best Buy, or someplace. You take the train, which I am assuming is on a work commute, so you must live in a decent sized city. If you are truly interested, go take a look. Form your own opinions. It's the best way to decide whether you like or dislike a product.
 
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