“I wasn’t terribly vocal about this fact but since June I have been using an Android phone exclusively as my smartphone. Which has been by far the longest I have ever used an Android smartphone for any length of time. I get sent a lot of Android devices and often I pop my SIM into them to use them as my primary phone,” Ben Bajarin writes for TechPinions. “This is the only way I feel I can get a true sense of a product and form an opinion, by fully integrating it into my life. Most Android devices I try never last a full week before I have to go back to the iPhone.”
“The device I used was the Galaxy Nexus running the latest Android OS Jelly Bean. I tried the Galaxy Note 5.3 and the Galaxy SIII for a short time as well but both only lasted a week or so,” Bajarin writes. “I much preferred Jelly Bean over the customized versions Samsung put on the Note and the SIII. I was surprised at a number of things I thought were pretty good about Jelly Bean.”
MacDailyNews Take: How many Apple patents had to be infringed to make you feel that way?
Bajarin writes, “The temptation was always there to go back to the iPhone but I committed to trying Android until the iPhone 5 came out and I am glad I did, if for nothing else but to be able to speak more intelligently about that platform’s strengths and weaknesses.”
“Then I got my iPhone 5, synced it, got it set up with all my stuff and all of a sudden it felt like I just came home from a long trip. There is just something about iOS that makes me feel comfortable,” Bajarin writes. “Interestingly, I have run into a number of people in my social circles who had the same experience. They took the opportunity to take a break from the iPhone to try some of more popular Android devices. Just about everyone of them switched back to the iPhone 5 and had the same comfortable return and have not looked back.”
Much more in the full article here.
Duuh!
I had this same experience back in 2007 when after years of crap phones i got my iPhone (on day one, woot) and it was like an epiphany. The iPhone just felt right.
I havent tried an Android phone at all, but when something just feels right… why change it?
Had the exact same thing… I was on a gs3, absolutely love my i5
For lack of a better place on MDN to post this question, I posted it here. How long would you give it before Apple comes out with a retina display external monitor?
Making it economically is the question. I give it another 2-3 years. Just my opinion. Doubtful it’ll be Samsung making it though… 🙂
The “retina” nature of the display is actually based on the estimate of angular resolution for a representative human eye. A person typically sits a bit further away from a large display than a small one, so the pixels can be larger and, yet, still remain indiscernible as individual graphic elements. Most people hold cell phones like the iPhone fairly close to their eyes – perhaps a foot. iPads are often held 18″ or so away from the eyes. I typically sit about 2.5 feet away from my 24″ Apple LED Cinema Display. So the total number of pixels in a display do not need to scale proportional to area to maintain “retina” status.
In addition, it is important to consider the cost and utility of a large, high resolution display and the associated graphics card. The majority of existing consumer media content works quite well within the HDTV 1080P (1920×1080 pixel) format. Pro users (media, science, design, engineering, etc.) are glad to have the extra pixels and are willing to pay a premium for them. Relatively few consumers are willing to shoulder the cost.
Even though I was expecting it, it still gave me a thrill when the new iPad was released with a 2048-by-1536 pixel resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi). It made sense from the standpoint of pixel doubling from the previous iPad design, but for an older guy who started on an Interact computer with four lines of 17 characters each on a B&W television, it was hard to internalize that a highly affordable and portable device could house the horsepower to smoothly drive such a display, much less provide hours of battery life. My kids take that functionality for granted…
I remember extending the RAM in my Performa from 2 MB to 4 MB. 😎
I have a question now – why the hell is Apple down around $50!? I mean selling as many iPhone 5’s as they can make and the iPad Mini coming and quarterly blowout coming – wassup widdat?
This may help.
http://www.valuewalk.com/2012/10/apple-inc-aapls-stumble-leaves-market-betting-the-other-way/
Value Walk is written by people for whom English is a second language (I suspect Koreans). They rarely understand what they are talking about, but they are pushed on an unsuspecting world by Google Finance. Glad I stopped using Google for anything.
Look, The reality is that the near future is not particularly glittering for any company. The whole market swings radically daily because no one really knows anything, yet there is hope that there is hope. Pretty pathetic actually. AAPL often just goes for a ride.
Pathetic is the word. “No one really knows anything”. Yet the “wisdom” of the markets guides the destiny of a planet.
In my humble opinion, the economists have sold everybody down the river.
Ben went on a walkabout. Found that home was better. The grass not necessarily greener on the other side of the hill, even if it was made of Astroturf.
iPhone has deservedly reached critical mass on its ecosystem.
Its functions and functionality just feels like “the norm.”
I did the exact same thing, and feel exactly the same way about it. I switched to a galaxy note at the end of May, and switched back for the iPhone 5.
What I liked about my galaxy note:
I absolutely loved the large screen. I also loved the Samsung browser’s option to always zoom in on a double tap with what was essentially a MINIMUM FONT SIZE. And I loved profiles in general and tasker specifically, and made lots of really valuable tasker scripts.
Why I’m so happy to be back on the iphone:
Aside from the specifics I just mentioned above, just about every other of my apps, either, IS way better on the iphone, or just FEELS way better to me. So many of my apps perform so much better for me, and the entire experience is so pleasurable.
Examples:
Outlining: no outliner felt anywhere NEAR as good as the iphone’s cabonFin outliner
Tivo App: Always connects up to my Tivos right away, android’s app always took forever
Checkbook: Nothing app I could find on android felt close to daybank on the iphone, with its autofill and auto completion of the entire form.
DUE beats anything I’ve tried on android big time.
I could go on and on with specific apps, but I’m really happy to be back.
6 years of Blackberries (with Touch and iPad at home) and finally moved to iPhone. Never looking back…
Ouch!!!
That sounds very painful. Your total recovery from such mental anguish will come from spending as much time on your iPhone – eventually your tortured past will fade into nothingness.
Well, I’ll admit to trying Windows for a couple of years when I had a laptop and my Mac died. PLus I needed to know it before work. But unlike the Mac-bashers I worked with, I was familiar with both platforms, while they barely knew how to turn a Mac on. To this day, I can’t believe that some people willingly use Windows. Or Android.
A ‘droid’ is a ‘droid’ is a ‘droid’. For those who own one and insist on owning one, ‘So be it’! One day you will ‘learn’ and you will ‘see’ but until then ‘suffer’ and ‘stew’ at leisure.
The gazillion and one Android devices out there have served their purpose – converting the public to the idea of smartphones. In reality, iPhone has the most appeal and (barring disasters) in the long-run will suck the oxygen out of this market as it has with iPod, iPad, and ultra-thin laptops .. (written a 13″ MBA).
The other advantage Apple has is that in terms of OS it’s only competing against itself. There are certain customers who will never change to a different OS, and it’s not worth the effort to appeal to such a specific demographic. Yes, there are untapped markets out there, and yes companies are competing on hardware and software for those customers, but in terms of existing customers Apple are in a very strong position. As long as iOS didn’t fall massively behind, or not have some absolutely fundamental feature that just blew it away, then they pretty much know that iPhone users will upgrade at some point. It may be every release, every other release, or whatever, but it will happen largely because there are no alternatives. Samsung, etc are fighting amongst themselves for the same customers because they run the same OS. Yes they may tart it up with their own custom stuff, but the apps will be the same. What reason does a customer have to stick with Samsung if Motorola come out with a better option? None, so it’s a constant churn. Personally, as much as I love Apple for the raw qualities of their hardware and software, it’s equally that I really can’t be bothered to change and deal with the hassle of learning something new. I have other things to do with my time.
Can’t see myself using an android phone.
I will probably try Windows Phone at some point but iOS will always be home.