by I can in no way claim to be fully impartial, I’ve been with Android since the beginning of the smartphone age and with Nokia, Sony and Motorola prior. I’ve never even used a blackberry. This iPhone 4 is the first apple product I’ve owned since an ipod video almost a decade ago. I am not an Apple fanboi and I although I have at times tended to the rabid opposite. I no longer identify as such. iPad’s have finally received the upgrade that would have prompted me to buy their first generation in a heartbeat, their laptops and computers are rock solid (if limited when it comes to gaming) and their phones are undeniably sexy pieces of technology. All that aside I still fall firmly in the ‘if you can’t open it, you don’t own it camp’ for computers and phones alike.
I have also in truth not been giving the iPhone exclusive use, partially because it is very slow, partially because despite not functioning as a phone my Gs4 is still fully functional as a mini tablet loaded with my audiobooks, comics books and a superior camera. My stories and their bookmarks pretty much ensure I need to keep the Samsung with me. I am also aware that the iPhone 4 is a full generation older than the Gs4 and so not fairly comparable for performance and specs.
The Good
The parallax is very shiny.
The bottom swipe up app drawer is excellent.
The kind of perky, bouncy nature of everything in the OS is sweet, but not to my taste.
The top swipe notification tray does all that it should, though old hat on Android.
There are a number of iOS exclusive apps I’ve been enjoying. In particular ‘Camera +’ and the extra instagram apps ‘Boomerang’ and ‘Hyperlapse’ I have also tried out a whole bunch of other random crap that hasn’t made it over to android some good, some rubbish, some absurdly expensive.
Siri is cool and very comparable in accuracy to google equivalent, neither can do what hound can:
The Bad
So small, for dainty little hands maybe, this one gives me cramps.
Updating this phone, which had to be done, none of the google apps would even install without the update, has reduced its speed considerably. Is this an example of Apple deliberately slowing down an older product to encourage a new purchase or do they simply not care to tailor their software to the old architecture?
The home button on this phone is on its last legs, repeated presses are required for any action using it and I’m more likely to end up with siri than my home screen. I’ve resorted to using the onscreen home button to counter for this. It seems this was a really common problem with this generation which is a shame.
Lack of a physical back button drives me bananas. It would be all very well if there was some uniform system wide on screen action that would perform this function but even that isn’t present. Most but far from all apps include this function as an on screen button. I honestly do not understand how people put up with the lack of this feature. To those of you who are iOS lifers, Android phones, in addition to the power/lock, volume and home buttons typically have a back and a menu button on either side of the home. The menu button is falling out of fashion being replaced by system wide standard ‘swipe in from the left for menu’ function. But ‘Back’ is for now at least, here to stay. I have encountered and witnessed people being confused by the buttons behaviour. All it does is if possible go back to the previous screen or action. It can go back through a number of screens or actions this way usually depositing you back at the home screen after a couple of presses.
The phone doesn’t display the number you are calling, only the contact name.
iTunes is almost as bad as I remember on PC. It slides its tentacles in deep, cannot be removed from background operation completely and is generally a cumbersome and irritating program to use. By comparison the Gs4 behaves like an external hdd when plugged in and is fully accessible. Prior to rooting I could not write to the SD card this way without removing it and plugging it in separately to my computer thanks to a google mandated security update.
The Verdict
Really the bulk of my issues with iOs come down to customisability. My Gs4 always had Nova installed so even though a few months ago I finally got around to Rooting it and installing Cyanogen Mod installed it is functionally and visually identical to what it was before, with the exception that I have superuser write access allowing me to bypass a few of the annoying restrictions in Android.
These are my Gs4’s two home screens, current background image is the camera obscura image the lounge room curtain gap makes on the wall in the middle of the day. Everything I need is on my home page, all other apps live in the app draw which shares the button with Nova themes settings, red button bottom centre. My icons are a custom set, labels would normally be switched off, but I haven’t bothered since the factory reset done while trying to diagnose the sim problem. I use signal the crypto messenger as my default sms client with the added bonus that if both I and the recipient are using signal and on WiFi the messages are sent that way instead.
My iPhone looks exactly like everyone else’s. The icons aren’t customisable, the spacing grid alignment isn’t customisable, icons don’t expand to fit low volume folders, every installed app populates neverending visually indistinguishable homescreens. There are no widgets, seen below a clock and weather widget with custom skin and on the other homepage a custom skin for a calendar widget. Bloatware apple apps are irremovable.
Android wins for me for now at least.
Discovered this wonderful site via someone being effusive about Elon Musk. Very pleased to with this discovery.
This post has taken way longer than it ought. Back to work inking a card now.
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A photo posted by @liatach on