Android vs IOS vs WP 8.1

Lament

Lament

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So a few weeks back i did a review (or rather gave my opinion) on Android vs IOS.
As some of you might know, i had a Apple which I swapped for a S4, my initial reaction to the switch was not good at all, besides for that, i had the S4 2 days before the screen cracked and i was left with a Lumia 800 for 2 weeks, in between i have got back my S4 and my work phone has also been upgraded to a Lumia 1320.

So the reason for this thread is probably to compare IOS vs Andorid vs WP 8.1 according to my experience, i will also give my opinions of the actual phone i used.

Android (S4)
Well, as some of you might know i was not happy with this phone or OS, some of my views and opinions have changed however.

The Good
• Large screen
• Vivid colors
• Has anyone put up the volume of this phone?, is farking loud and good.
• Lots of memory
• Good battery life
• ADH :D
• Huge selection of apps and games, i even downloaded Heroes of Might and Magic 2
• The power cable (believe it or not)

The bad
• Lags, this was initially my main issue, But Let me brutally honest, the longer you work with this phone, the less you notice it, at this stage it’s not bothering me at all, people going from one android phone to the next will not notice this at all, the lag is not really an issue, it was just kind of frustrating coming from a phone that is as smooth as apple.
• Touch sensitivity, this is now my main concern, im used to it by now, but the touch of the Apple and WP devices are superior to the S4/android, the IPhone with a much smaller screen, i was able to type twice as fast with half the mistyping errors.
• The phone remains plastic, but this has nothing to do with Android, i did however buy the phone a leather pouch, and it just feel so much more premium now, it’s like a different device.
• The whole OS still feels all over the place, i still sometimes get confused to where some of the settings are
• I keep accidentally pressing the “back button” on the bottom of the screen, this happens when i rotate the phone to type easier. (p1sses me of to a huge extend, WP has the same issue)

I like my S4, initially i was sorry i swopped my IPhone, but knowing what i know now, i would have probably still made the swop. The more you work on the phone, the more it grows on you, each day i figure out new things, and im like, wow that’s pretty sweet :P


IOS (Apple IPhone)
I must also mention i have an iPad as well, which i made the huge mistake of installing the most horrible POS called IOS 8, so my below experience is based on 7.1.2 and below.

The Good
• The Apps are better, i know a lot of people will argue, but that my feeling, the apps feel more rounded and complete
• The Phone is easier, you don’t have to search for things, this simplicity of the phone is probably its strongest point
• The touch sensitivity is in a other league
• Notifications remains the best between the 3

The bad
• I have noticed apps and updates are considerably bigger on IOS
• Small screen
• Useless battery
• Stupid lightning cable, in my 18 months i had 6 different cables as they just stop working.
• Have to bend over backwards to fix a known IPhone 5 defect (power button)


Windows phone 8.1 (Lumia 1320)
Im not even going to bother saying anything about my previous Lumia800 (WP7.8)

The good
• The build quality of any Lumia phone just seems to be superb
• This phone does not lag at all, its superfast
• Available games runs wonderfully
• The whole OS feels nice, even though im not a fan of windows 8, i do like WP 8.1
• I setup all my accounts, Exchange, Gmail and Yahoo mail in a breeze, Exchange did not even ask me our OWA server name, amazingly enough it detected it automatically
• Office suite preinstalled on the phone
• Nokia drive is also quite Nice
• The battery is freaken unbelievable, i worked on the phone intensely yesterday for about 8hours, that’s intense downloading, playing games, browsing, the battery was at 63% after that. My IOS and Android would have been dead
• The OS feels more professional than that Android and even IOS
• I Enjoy the live tiles
• Wifi is good

The bad
• Internet explorer does not display all the pages correctly
• No ABSA app.
• Apps in general feel inferior to the Android and IOS counterparts, Facebook being a prime example
• Copy and paste still does not work effectively
• Even though it is a huge improvement, the OS still has something missing. Perhaps a proper control panel, or maybe follow IOS and Android where you can flip through different pages.
• Lack of proper games
• Integration with Google seems to be non-existent (besides gmail)
• No dropbox, EVERYTHING i have is stored on dropbox.
I think WP has lots of potential, all there problems are app based which can be fixed in the near future.

My final thought,
I will probably stick with Android, The one thing which is a deal breaker for me is battery life, even-though Lumia is far superior, it still lacks to much apps, luckily the Samsung battery is not bad. If the Iphone 6 did a major improvement on their batteries the choice would have been Iphone6, no doubt.
I might still consider a Iphone6 Plus, but the initial reviews are not that great, and still not sure whats actually happening with all this "bending" siht. If its actually true, i'm not paying that amount for a phone which is going to bend. Iphone also better sort out IOS 8, its like the Vista of the Apple world
 
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What frustrates me about Android is that so many people think Samsung is Android. Ive even had an argument with someone who was under the impression that Samsung owned Android. Samsung's Touchwizz that runs on top of Android is Samsung's biggest problem. I'm really surprised that a phone like a S4/S5 with it's high specs can lag. Ive got a 2013 Moto X that is essentially a dual core with 2 other processors for other specific functions and 2gb of ram. It is on virtually stock Kitkat 4.4.4. The phone is yet to lag or stutter.
 
I'll agree with you that iOS apps are of better quality. The restrictive OS just never did it for me, not that is bad. I barely use my iPad anymore because...

I own a 7" Asus Android tablet. The OS is meh and I have no love for it. Other than that it is a fantastic experience using it but I'm afraid it has more to do with the device and it's size though.

Personally, I prefer WP 8.1. We are getting more and more apps and the mainstream apps like Facebook, CNN, Evernote etc. are AWESOME. Most of the indie apps though are ****! My 729's battery life is awesome, build quality as you say is superb and the OS itself feels very polished.

So since I own all three what will I do next?

I'll replace my phone with another WP and depending on the Windows app store at the time I'll either get a 7" win tablet next or an Android (as much as I'm not an Android fan I loath using my iPad :/ )
 
Hamster said:
I'll agree with you that iOS apps are of better quality. The restrictive OS just never did it for me, not that is bad. I barely use my iPad anymore because...

I own a 7" Asus Android tablet. The OS is meh and I have no love for it. Other than that it is a fantastic experience using it but I'm afraid it has more to do with the device and it's size though.

Personally, I prefer WP 8.1. We are getting more and more apps and the mainstream apps like Facebook, CNN, Evernote etc. are AWESOME. Most of the indie apps though are ****! My 729's battery life is awesome, build quality as you say is superb and the OS itself feels very polished.

So since I own all three what will I do next?

I'll replace my phone with another WP and depending on the Windows app store at the time I'll either get a 7" win tablet next or an Android (as much as I'm not an Android fan I loath using my iPad :/ )
Click to expand...

I do believe WP has the most potential, if more people had experience with WP8.1 I'm sure a HUGE number of people would migrate, specially the professionals and directors, WP is a real business phone.

That said the OS needs a few small tweeks, I'm typing this with the 1320, and say for instance I want to change a sentence or edit a word, its not as easy as just clicking next to to word and pressing backspace, you have to click a hundred times before the small circle appears for me to edit... maybe I'm doing it wrong, but it is a little frustrating, other pages you simply cannot copy and paste, But it can only get better, everything runs so smooth and nothing has even hinted to crash.

I can honestly see WP being a major threat for IOS and Android in the near future.
All and all, the phone and the OS is greatly underrated. The Lumia 1320 specifically, you will not get a better phone for R3000
 
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You're comparing a lot of the hardware not the software....

The Google problem on WP is from Google not MS so you can't hold WP responsible same applies for the Absa app. There's a 3rd party app for Dropbox on WP although you might not be comfortable with that.

Most of your Android problems are hardware specific or have to deal with touch wiz not Android itself.
 
Who needs Dropbox on WP8.1 when you can get Pocket File Manager. This one file manager supports phone & SD folders, OneDrive, Dropbox, box and Google Drive. All in on easy-to-use place.
 
Arthur said:
Who needs Dropbox on WP8.1 when you can get Pocket File Manager. This one file manager supports phone & SD folders, OneDrive, Dropbox, box and Google Drive. All in on easy-to-use place.
Click to expand...

i installed this last night, its cool but not really ideal, no auto backup & Synching.
 
DA-LION-619 said:
You're comparing a lot of the hardware not the software....

The Google problem on WP is from Google not MS so you can't hold WP responsible same applies for the Absa app. There's a 3rd party app for Dropbox on WP although you might not be comfortable with that.

Most of your Android problems are hardware specific or have to deal with touch wiz not Android itself.
Click to expand...

I know, that's why i said i'll give my opinion about the actual phones as well.
But i agree with what you are saying.
 
Lament said:
i installed this last night, its cool but not really ideal, no auto backup & Synching.
Click to expand...
Ok. The last thing I want is sync Dropbox and OneDrive to the phone - I have about 170GB in the cloud. The phone camera auto-uploads to OneDrive, so pix are safe.

All cloud files are easily accessible.
 
Arthur said:
Ok. The last thing I want is sync Dropbox and OneDrive to the phone - I have about 170GB in the cloud. The phone camera auto-uploads to OneDrive, so pix are safe.

All cloud files are easily accessible.
Click to expand...
My dropbox is not that big, basically my phones photo's gets synced and a few important docs, about 1GB give or take, but it has to be accessible everywhere. Pocket File manager will work, its just a work around and an actual app would have been a little more convenient.
 
Lament said:
My dropbox is not that big, basically my phones photo's gets synced and a few important docs, about 1GB give or take, but it has to be accessible everywhere. Pocket File manager will work, its just a work around and an actual app would have been a little more convenient.
Click to expand...

You can use an app called CloudSix. It's a DropBox app (not official) that should meet most if not all your requirements.

I agree with alot of what you have said - I recently got my first Android phone and coming from WP, its a big and nnot always better change. I will also add, the Android keyboards are very bad compared to WP - WordFlow from WP is still the best out there (I am excluding BB10, havent used that)
 
stixx said:
You can use an app called CloudSix. It's a DropBox app (not official) that should meet most if not all your requirements.

I agree with alot of what you have said - I recently got my first Android phone and coming from WP, its a big and nnot always better change. I will also add, the Android keyboards are very bad compared to WP - WordFlow from WP is still the best out there (I am excluding BB10, havent used that)
Click to expand...
I'd say the WP keyboard is better than Swiftkey as it can detect typing errors and correct them automatically.
 
stixx said:
You can use an app called CloudSix. It's a DropBox app (not official) that should meet most if not all your requirements.

I agree with alot of what you have said - I recently got my first Android phone and coming from WP, its a big and nnot always better change. I will also add, the Android keyboards are very bad compared to WP - WordFlow from WP is still the best out there (I am excluding BB10, havent used that)
Click to expand...

CloudSix looks pretty good, will update on how it works for me.

WP keyboard is very good, i still believe its rather the touch sensitivity of the phone self, it just feels so much more responsive and accurate than that of the S4, perhaps this is better on other android devices, i simply don't know. (HTC Desire was not better)
 
Lament said:
CloudSix looks pretty good, will update on how it works for me.

WP keyboard is very good, i still believe its rather the touch sensitivity of the phone self, it just feels so much more responsive and accurate than that of the S4, perhaps this is better on other android devices, i simply don't know. (HTC Desire was not better)
Click to expand...
Were you using the default Android keyboard? Also what version of Android were you on?
 
DA-LION-619 said:
Were you using the default Android keyboard? Also what version of Android were you on?
Click to expand...

Back on the HTC Desire?, was version 2.3 i think?
On the S4 i have 4.4.2, and i downloaded the Apple keyboard to see if it does not make a difference, but it doesn't.

But this clearly hardware and not software, the screen is simply not as responsive as that of WP or Apple, but you do get use to it.
Working intensively on the WP the last 3 days just reminded me again of how good a keyboard can actually be.
 
Lament said:
Back on the HTC Desire?, was version 2.3 i think?
On the S4 i have 4.4.2, and i downloaded the Apple keyboard to see if it does not make a difference, but it doesn't.

But this clearly hardware and not software, the screen is simply not as responsive as that of WP or Apple.
Click to expand...
Apple keyboard?
 
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