Random thoughts.... [Tech Edition]

All of the cases besides the Reflex line have a screen protector:

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Sweet! Thanks for the clarification :)

No case for my phone, I hate those things, also they mean you can't get your phone into a fitted holder anymore, which sucks. To me a phone is a consumable, it needs to last long enough to serve the contract it's on, and it's worthless after that anyways. Scuffs, scratches etc are like battle-scars to a phone. Laptop is usually carried in a laptop I got for free at the Duthc VMUG convention 2 years ago. Not really a laptop bag, but it has a bit of padding anyways. Besides, I don't move my laptop that much.

So over the years my oldest cellphones have had the least problems with scratching.

It wasn't until Berkeley when I got my first flip phone. I didn't abuse the damn thing but after 2 years or 3 years the dang thing split in 2. I had to hold the LCD screen and the keypad to talk on the phone. That phone was a uh... samsung somethingorother.

The second cellphone (LG VX5200)

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had a few scratches but the biggest problem was that the paint was like eroding from the inside. I was like wtf.

The last phone before I got my smart phone was a samsung gleam.

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That one only had a battery problem and otherwise it had so few scratches on it it, they were hardly noticeable. I still have that one in my desk drawer.

So after reading your statement I realized that it's just the electronics evolution itself. I've taken great care of all of my phones and yet somehow they get scratched up or erode by themselves. I can see then that the only remedy is to just replace and recycle. But I know that doing certain small things can help make the phone at least look good or last longer and prevent scratches that are accidental. I guess for that I should get the cover. I'll try the otterbox when I get my new phone I suppose.

Otterbox or CaseMate are the only cases I will buy.

I love my Vibrant's Casemate Case. It's saved me from harm numerous times. I do not use a screen protector and have no scratches on my screen even though i keep it in the same pocket with my cigar cutter and keys.

Another for otterbox! Huzzah, problem solved :D
 
I still use a phone like that LG. Mine has a teletubby on the inside screen. It happened when I was working and the extra keys I had to carry got inbetween and killed the pixels.

Will be getting a smart phone soon.
 
My life just got consumed by Tiny Tower. Anyone else?
 
I absolutely hate the Blackberry Pearl my company gave me. I've been coveting the iPhone, is it worth it? I was fiddling with the android phones too and I thought those were nice as well. Can some of you guys give me a couple thoughts on the good and bad points of each phone? Email work well on both? How about the camera quality?
 
Camera quality largely depends on the Android phone you'd like to get, the iPhone 4's camera is largely regarded as pretty good, some Androids are better, some are worse ;-)

As far as emails, I hugely prefer the iPhone's email client, I've had issues with Android's built-in email client not being compatible with my company's password encryption... (I'm not talking about the Gmail client though, that one's pretty good).

The rest you might want to consider is apps, I still find that iOS has a lot more useful apps and vastly better game catalog than Android.
 
I absolutely hate the Blackberry Pearl my company gave me. I've been coveting the iPhone, is it worth it? I was fiddling with the android phones too and I thought those were nice as well. Can some of you guys give me a couple thoughts on the good and bad points of each phone? Email work well on both? How about the camera quality?

I'm about to do something that might get me either praises or censures by simplifying android and iphone down.

Operating System
Android - More features, powered by google which isn't evil or fruity. Fairly stable, great upgrades, better map and navigation, more shiny buttons. Gingerbread is smooth like butter.
iOS - More user-friendly, great features (but not as many or as varied as Android), fewer abilities to tweak and twerk, less shiny buttons. Still smooth.

Camera
Android - Depends on the phone you get. The camera interface itself is simple to use and has lots of features. Same with videos.
iOS - pretty decent, video quality is aight as well. Interface is simple. Has ability to edit video.

Apps
Android - Is catching up with apple in terms of number of applications. Check the threads here for some really decent ones. Can easily make your own apps for free. Angry birds is free!
iOS - LOTS more apps and a better gaming selection. Angry birds costs money :(

Media
Android - Nice little built in video player. Can play most things, but not all. Get the VPlayer app to play .avi and .mov and stuff. Any file can just be dragged and dropped into the phone and viewed from the file navigator, media player, etc. No good playlist type thing like itunes.
iOS - fucking itunes man.

Internetwebs
Android - Much faster browsing. Flash capability, which = p0rn capability. Youtube compatibility and navigation and whatnot is mo betta. Can download other browsers.
iOS - has currently no flash support and may never have flash support. Browser is aight, but slower than most android phones from what I've seen. Pretty sure you can't dl other browsers.

I have an ipod touch AND an android phone. I prefer the android phone for the OS, simply because I'm a dork and plus it's excellent. When pitted against my mentor's iphone when it came to finding our way around San Jose and to the observatory, my phone won easily. It was faster to find the directions, simpler to navigate and quicker to change directions when my mentor moved around. The interface is far superior and as a result I became sort of the official navigazionater. I prefer the ipod for my media and gaming.


Anyone else please feel free to add or detract from the list. I might be out of touch a little bit with what the latest trends and things are, especially with the iOS.
 
to me it's always been even simpler than that

Android: You can tweak almost anything, it's for the person who does know how many seconds he wants this license plate light to stay on after he's left the car, the person who tweaks every little thing just because he can

iPhone: Also customizeable but much broader strokes, you dont have to look through every detail to find something comfortable, but there are more options than you'd think.
 
LP summed up most of the top points right.

As a rule, I think iOS is geared toward those who don't want to mess with their phone, and just want it to work. Period. It's a solid OS, but I prefer to tinker more and do more than just a jailbreak. I think most people could use Android w/out tinkering as well...but the moment you want to, Android gives you a lot more freedom.

I'd throw Windows Phone 7 into the mix as well. It's very much like iOS in that it's very polished but not geared toward the "tinkerer" set, but like Android gives you a variety of device types to choose from.
 
Neat, how does email work on these phones? If I'm getting these phones for work, it's got to work with email. I'm not sure who the provider is.
 
Neat, how does email work on these phones? If I'm getting these phones for work, it's got to work with email. I'm not sure who the provider is.

Chances are, your work uses Exchange for e-mail. Check with your IT department to be sure (they get these requests all the time these days, so they should have no problem telling you what they use and how to set it up once you get your new phone) but that's usually the case.

In any case, if your work uses Exchange, all three major platforms (Windows Phone, Android and iOS) support Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. That means that as soon as an email lands in your Exchange inbox, you get it. No sync schedule needed. That's called push email. Ditto calendar syncing and contacts if you want.

If your work doesn't use Exchange, then there's still a 99% chance that all three platform's email clients will work. You'd just need to, again, ask your IT department for guidance and help getting things set up. You'll likely end up having your phone "check" for messages every so often, but the end result is still the same: e-mail on your phone.

Some people report having issues with Exchange on some Android phones, although there are third party clients like TouchDown that can help with that. I've had no issues with Exchange email on stock Gingerbread (the latest version of Android) so take that for what you will.
 
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Internetwebs
Android - Much faster browsing. Flash capability, which = p0rn capability. Youtube compatibility and navigation and whatnot is mo betta. Can download other browsers.
iOS - has currently no flash support and may never have flash support. Browser is aight, but slower than most android phones from what I've seen. Pretty sure you can't dl other browsers.
Most big p0rn sites work on iOS as well (RedTube, YouPorn for sure) You can get Opera Mini on iOS and I think Skyfire browser but in my experience Safari works better (and obviously much better integrated).
Some people report having issues with Exchange on some Android phones, although there are third party clients like TouchDown that can help with that. I've had no issues with Exchange email on stock Gingerbread (the latest version of Android) so take that for what you will.
Exchange is a bit spotty, there is a general issue where your e-mails can get stuck in the outbox and nothing else will send. I personally had issues with two Captivates (Galaxy S for ATT) where changing the password (something required by IT policy from time to time) broke e-mail sync even though new password was entered into the phone. My co-workers that had same phones were having similar issues. I use my personal iPhone 4 for work e-mails and such and it never breaks Exchange like the Android does.

It's hard to give a good advice on Android vs iPhone mostly because there is a lot of variation in Android camp. For instance I would NOT suggest Galaxy S or Droid Incredible(y shitty) but I have friends with Moto Droid and Evo X who absolutely love them. On average iPhone has a better battery life than Android though, mostly due to the fact that it doesn't run shit in background but "pauses" it.
 
It's hard to give a good advice on Android vs iPhone mostly because there is a lot of variation in Android camp. For instance I would NOT suggest Galaxy S or Droid Incredible(y shitty) but I have friends with Moto Droid and Evo X who absolutely love them. On average iPhone has a better battery life than Android though, mostly due to the fact that it doesn't run shit in background but "pauses" it.

The Droid Incredible isn't a bad phone IMO. It just suffers from poor battery life, same could be said for it's Nexus One cousin IIRC. The Droid Incredible 2 is a lot better though.

Galaxy S II isn't out yet on carriers (so frustrating...) , but thus far is getting rave reviews. It also supports the most Exchange policies of any Android phone IIRC. I will say that Samsung's decision to use RFS on the first Galaxy S was idiotic at best. The stuttery laggy mess that caused pretty much ensured that my stepmom won't buy another samsung.
 
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The Droid Incredible isn't a bad phone IMO.
I have very different experience from you then... I know 3 people who have one 2 of them hate it and have no end of troubles, to the point where one of them had to have it exchanged and the other is just waiting out for the contract to be over.
Examples of issues:
Freezes when taking pictures, does so fairly randomly no way to reproduce that I found.
Buttons light up at odd intervals, whether the phone is doing anything or not, not critical but annoying.
Battery life is at most half a day with very little crap running (and that's with the 1500mah extended).
TS not working when receiving calls (i.e. can't pick up the phone)
Alarm randomly resets itself or plain doesn't work.
Widgets crashing (same thing on the Galaxy S)
SMS/MMS randomly stops being received, restart helps sometimes.
Despite being on VZ with excellent VZ coverage phone calls randomly don't go through, won't even ring, same for IMs/Emails.
That's just off the top of my head.
 
I have very different experience from you then... I know 3 people who have one 2 of them hate it and have no end of troubles, to the point where one of them had to have it exchanged and the other is just waiting out for the contract to be over.
Examples of issues:
Freezes when taking pictures, does so fairly randomly no way to reproduce that I found.
Buttons light up at odd intervals, whether the phone is doing anything or not, not critical but annoying.
Battery life is at most half a day with very little crap running (and that's with the 1500mah extended).
TS not working when receiving calls (i.e. can't pick up the phone)
Alarm randomly resets itself or plain doesn't work.
Widgets crashing (same thing on the Galaxy S)
SMS/MMS randomly stops being received, restart helps sometimes.
Despite being on VZ with excellent VZ coverage phone calls randomly don't go through, won't even ring, same for IMs/Emails.
That's just off the top of my head.

Dang. My Dad's not exactly smartphone savvy "there's Wi-Fi on this?" but seems to do just fine with it....beside's the battery life. It's just woefully, unacceptably, bad. My phone's able to last a day and a half with moderate use, that's with it overclocked and undervolted.

I will agree that the Galaxy S was flawed from the start. Rooted and with RFS removed, it's a screamer of a phone, however most people expect a great device out of the box, as it should be.

I've had the touchscreen issue with the "incoming call" screen but that's because I'm running custom rom's and stuff. I never experienced it on my phone running stock Android that was pushed to the device. I should note that, on MIUI, I haven't had this issue so far...but i'm having other issues like the phone losing responsiveness overtime that has never occurred on another rom. It's a shame because this ROM is one of the smoothest, most refined Android experiences I've used. Sure it's iOSesque if you dont theme it, but you really feel like the details have truly been sweated, from the widget adding process, to the kinetic scrolling.
 
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