Going from Android to iOS...

[BlahBlahYouToo]

To sum up my thoughts on using an iphone 5 as my primary phone (forced on me by work), after using ICS/JB for the past year, in one word- difficult.

The two biggest adjustments I'm having difficulty with are the screen size and the keyboard.
I'm not even going to get into the customizations that are available with android.

I find myself barely using the thing because a 4" skinny screen is unbearably small. Coming from 4.8" devices (had the Gnex, N4 and One prior to this), I knew it would take getting used to. I didn't know it would be next to useless.
Browsing the web is a pain (at least chrome is available and it's very competent) because you have to constantly zoom and scroll.
And wtf is up with not being able to scroll in different axis without lifting your finger off the screen again?

The kb? Horribad. No punctuation without hitting the alt key. No long press for numbers. And because of the skinny screen, I'm finding myself constantly mistyping words. It doesn't seem to have a dictionary to remember my commonly used uncommon words.
Granted I'm used to swiftkey, but stock ICS kb was far better than this shit software kb.
Really hoping the swiftkey to iOS rumors are true.

Other minor things are no quick toggles, notification LED, and battery usage details.
Oh, and battery life is horrendous. I turned off LTE and I'm nearly dry by 6pm on the way home. I'm basically charging the thing twice a day.
I got to 10pm easily with the same usage patterns on my N4 and One.

The good?
Music player is better. The stock earphones are fantastic, even compared to my sennheisers.
And I get to imessage and facetime my gf and a few other iphone holdout friends.

iOS7 can't fix the screen size, but hopefully it will address the other software issues.

 

[tommigsr]

what's keeping you from going back to android? lol...i agree with you, the screen size is unbearable compared to other phones...i'm on a note2, anything below a 5.5" screen is just not up to par haha

 

[Oyeve]

I agree on all except the music player and earbuds. Granted, I use my S4 1000000% more than my ip5 and i use poweramp for music but even stock music player is loads better than ios player, imo. Still no real EQ in ios??? Kills it for me. And the earbuds are only good when compared to the original iphone packins. Not $30 good but adequate.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

what's keeping you from going back to android? lol...i agree with you, the screen size is unbearable compared to other phones...i'm on a note2, anything below a 5.5" screen is just not up to par haha

not wanting to carry 2 devices on me at all times.
trust me, I wish I could. I'd go back to a nearly 2 year old GNex if I could.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

I agree on all except the music player and earbuds. Granted, I use my S4 1000000% more than my ip5 and i use poweramp for music but even stock music player is loads better than ios player, imo. Still no real EQ in ios??? Kills it for me. And the earbuds are only good when compared to the original iphone packins. Not $30 good but adequate.

i didn't like that the stock android player couldn't [easily] sort music in certain ways. forgot if it was by artist or genre. it would always force it to album.

are there any android players that can access the music you uploaded on google cloud?

 

[poofyhairguy]

are there any android players that can access the music you uploaded on google cloud?

I use GMusicFS to get music into Poweramp.

 

[Oyeve]

i didn't like that the stock android player couldn't [easily] sort music in certain ways. forgot if it was by artist or genre. it would always force it to album.

are there any android players that can access the music you uploaded on google cloud?

I just use the google music manager program on my computer and download the music then just copy to my android device. If you download from the web you are limited to downloads only 2 times but if you use the music manager program its pretty much unlimited.

 

[dawheat]

Surprised you found the N4 to have better battery life than the 5. My wife's iPhone 5 stays with my Note 2 pretty well.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Surprised you found the N4 to have better battery life than the 5. My wife's iPhone 5 stays with my Note 2 pretty well.

i was told it has something to do with being linked to the company exchange server, and something about a bug too.
is hers setup for corporate email?

my n4 was rooted and undervolted via a custom kernel.
prior to that, it was pretty bad too.

 

[Oyeve]

i was told it has something to do with being linked to the company exchange server, and something about a bug too.
is hers setup for corporate email?

my n4 was rooted and undervolted via a custom kernel.
prior to that, it was pretty bad too.

That issue was supposedly fixed in 6.1.3 or 6.1.4. I still find the battery life no where near as long as apple claims it is and I barely use the 5.

 

[Spineshank]

i was told it has something to do with being linked to the company exchange server, and something about a bug too.
is hers setup for corporate email?

my n4 was rooted and undervolted via a custom kernel.
prior to that, it was pretty bad too.

There is a bug with one of the 6.1.x versions that causes it to constantly hit the Exchange server. You got something going on if your battery life is that bad.


Anyhow, most of the things you have issue with can be fixed via Cydia.

 

[Joe1986]

There is a bug with one of the 6.1.x versions that causes it to constantly hit the Exchange server. You got something going on if your battery life is that bad.


Anyhow, most of the things you have issue with can be fixed via Cydia.

Is there a jailbreak for 6.1.3/6.1.4?

 

[maevinj]

Other minor things are no quick toggles, notification LED, and battery usage details.
.

It's not quite the same, but under general and accessibility, under hearing you can use the led flash for alerts.

 

[ImDonly1]

Is there a jailbreak for 6.1.3/6.1.4?

6.1.2 is last one to be JB'd
http://evasi0n.com/

There is a tethered JB for 6.1.3+ I think, but if you want to reboot the phone you will have to plug it into your PC again.

 

[Joe1986]

6.1.2 is last one to be JB'd
http://evasi0n.com/

There is a tethered JB for 6.1.3+ I think, but if you want to reboot the phone you will have to plug it into your PC again.

That's what I thought.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

It's not quite the same, but under general and accessibility, under hearing you can use the led flash for alerts.

yeah, i saw that but it ends up lighting up the entire room.
i was getting messages while in a public area and the check across from me probably thought i was snapping pics of her.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Disagree on the keyboard. The keyboard may be small, but as Anandtech's iPhone 2G review said, you really just gotta trust it. It will correct amazingly. I think half the time I may not hit the button well because they're so small yet the iPhone registers.

I can't say the same for the Nexus 4 stock keyboard. Sure the buttons are bigger, but it's not very intelligent in catching obvious misspells or mispresses. Maybe Swiftkey does a better job, but Google's stock keyboard is terrible. If we were to normalize the two screens, I'm almost confident the iPhone keyboard would win out in accuracy in typing.

Even today, I find myself swyping 2-3 times on the Nexus 4 to really exaggerate the swypes so that it picks up what I'm typing. It's just meh.

 

[tvdang7]

Let me know how you got to 10pm on a N4 please....im still trying to figure that out on mine lol. Maybe if it were on wifi all day then yea thats possible.

 

[gorcorps]

Do you mean the music player on the iphone is just better to use, or better sounding? If better to use, I agree (except for itunes, bleh). But if you mean better sounding then I strongly disagree and I doubt you ever used PowerAmp with DVC (direct volume control) enabled. PowerAmp has by far the best sound quality of any of the music players I tried on Android. It also has a proper EQ and not the preset limitations the iphones have (not sure if that's changed, I stopped at the iphone 4). IMO the iphone sounded like garbage and I still carried around a Cowon mp3 player because it sounded so much better. After finding PowerAmp on my phone I could finally be comfortable not having a separate high quality mp3 player.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Disagree on the keyboard. The keyboard may be small, but as Anandtech's iPhone 2G review said, you really just gotta trust it. It will correct amazingly. I think half the time I may not hit the button well because they're so small yet the iPhone registers.

I can't say the same for the Nexus 4 stock keyboard. Sure the buttons are bigger, but it's not very intelligent in catching obvious misspells or mispresses. Maybe Swiftkey does a better job, but Google's stock keyboard is terrible. If we were to normalize the two screens, I'm almost confident the iPhone keyboard would win out in accuracy in typing.

Even today, I find myself swyping 2-3 times on the Nexus 4 to really exaggerate the swypes so that it picks up what I'm typing. It's just meh.

what about my other points regarding the kb?
no punctuation/longpress?

have you used swiftkey before?

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Let me know how you got to 10pm on a N4 please....im still trying to figure that out on mine lol. Maybe if it were on wifi all day then yea thats possible.

undervolt and underclock. use a custom kernel (franco's).
check out android forums like xda. some people get almost 2 days of usage and 4-5 hours of OST.

but yes, on a typical workday, i have wifi for all but 2-3 hours during my commute.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Do you mean the music player on the iphone is just better to use, or better sounding? If better to use, I agree (except for itunes, bleh). But if you mean better sounding then I strongly disagree and I doubt you ever used PowerAmp with DVC (direct volume control) enabled. PowerAmp has by far the best sound quality of any of the music players I tried on Android. It also has a proper EQ and not the preset limitations the iphones have (not sure if that's changed, I stopped at the iphone 4). IMO the iphone sounded like garbage and I still carried around a Cowon mp3 player because it sounded so much better. After finding PowerAmp on my phone I could finally be comfortable not having a separate high quality mp3 player.

easier to use.
i really hate the way the stock google player organizes music.

and don't exaggerate. the iphone doesn't sound like garbage.

 

[ControlD]

what about my other points regarding the kb?
no punctuation/longpress?

have you used swiftkey before?

I think it just comes down to personal preference. I used the iOS keyboard for two years and I pretty much hated every minute of it. I find the Google keyboard to be far superior, to the point where I don't feel the need for Swiftkey at all. Then again, many prefer thumb tapping on the iPhone. It just comes down to which keyboard fits your style.

 

[gorcorps]

easier to use.
i really hate the way the stock google player organizes music.

and don't exaggerate. the iphone doesn't sound like garbage.

Everyone's ears are different, but I had both the iphone 3g and 4 and they sounded terrible TO ME. You don't get to tell me how I felt it sounded. Usually I can get around that via equalizer, but they don't have custom EQs and only had presets. EQ presets are never set up right for me (not iphone specific) so none of them helped. It sounded bad enough that I decided to carry an entire extra device just for music. That's not an exaggeration, it's the truth. It may have been an overreaction, but it still happened. I did the same thing with my android phones until I found the music app that gave decent sound quality. The UI for it is pretty bad, but I can live with that for what else it provides.

 

[luv2liv]

no wonder Apple stock is going down the drain. Without Jobs, people are no longer suckered.
people need to realize companies must make what we want, not cram crap and expect us to chew