Smartphones are for yesterday's cool kids.
Wearable computers is the next wave, google glass looks intriguing.
Samsung vs Apple: which smartphone do Reg readers prefer?
Reg readers feel strongly about their smartphones. This much was clear when Freeform Dynamics analysed the results of a recent research study looking at Reg readers' habits and activity with respect to smartphones, tablets, TV viewing and electronic gaming (discussed in a previous article), Altogether, 1122 respondents took …
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Wednesday 17th April 2013 18:06 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Smartphones are for yesterday's cool kids.
I'd argue they still do why else wear pita contacts or risk laser eye surgery?
Some people simply don't like the feel or inconvenience of glasses. (They get dirty, slide down when you're sweaty, fog up when you come in from the cold, etc.)
I wear glasses or contacts while I'm awake, and find both acceptable for most purposes. I don't think contacts are a pain; they don't bother me at all, and the only reasons I don't put them in every morning and wear them all day are 1) I'm too lazy to bother putting them in unless I have a reason to, and 2) I'm too lazy to want to go to the store any more often than I have to for cleaning supplies.
But I do wear my contacts if I'm going to be working on the house, so I can wear safety glasses or goggles; and I put them in if I think I'll want to wear sunglasses that day.
As for eye surgery, I wouldn't bother, but I have one friend who had it done so he could join a police force that required uncorrected 20/20 vision, and another who did it more or less for the hell of it. People get elective surgery for all sorts of reasons.
Finally, note that there are people who wear glasses as a fashion accessory, which would be a counterexample to your claim, if one were needed.
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Tuesday 23rd April 2013 19:34 GMT N13L5
Got tired of getting walled in and pushed around by Apple when iPhone 3 was new.
Now i just go for the best specced Android phone until Ubuntu comes out on high end hardware, which so far ends up meaning Samsung.
Sadly, Google is trying to force users into the cloud by removing SD-card slots from all recent products. But the cloud is not always fast, available or even reliable, unless you never leave your hometown.
I resent Google for this purely self-serving act.
For users its rather unhealthy in times of re-emerging fascism pushed on us with the poor excuse of needing to protect us against terrorists, when we really need protection from Banksters, Corporate interests and hijacked governments.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 13:51 GMT EddieD
When it comes time to change, I'll see what there is..
Apps are cheap enough to be disposable, so flipping ecosystems isn't hard - it's not like the massive investments we used to make in a software for a platform - a new copy of Angry Birds (or whatever is the current flavour of the month) is a few pennies, and there are enough free apps for most folk on any platform (including my WinPhone, and my office mate's blackberry).
Whatver looks nice will get the sale.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 13:53 GMT Mark Simon
Support
I’ve been in IT for a very long time, and know how to rough it. After a while, you just want something that does the job without fuss.
The thing that hooked me on the iPhone was not just that the phone did everything I wanted, but the after-sales support.
I had a model with faulty GPS. I walked into an apple retail store, had it checked, and 10 minutes later walked out with a brand new replacement. Restored my backup, and everything was fine. With my previous phone (a Nokia),I would have to wait 3 days before they even looked at it.
That’s the total package that convinced me.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 14:09 GMT Tezfair
Re: Support
I don't have an apple, and the nearest apple store is 60 miles away, but I use Windows Mobile based phones, HTC / Nokia etc. I have a business contract and when the phones started playing up TMobile replaced them the next day (usually battery related)
Had I lived within commuting distance of a TMobile store I too could have had a same day straight swap. So in some ways the apple store is not offering anything extraordinary.
Im guessing here the difference is apple replaces the phone regardless of contract whereas TMobile only offers instant replacement to businesses.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 15:13 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: @Tom
Nope. Android lives in the cloud, and has done since well before Apple joined the party. Swap phones, give it your Google account details, and everything is restored.
Geoff Campbell,
Are you sure? Do your texts and pictures migrate back to the phone. Does it restore and re-install all the apps, their settings and info? Does it also restore saved music and accounts for non-Google stuff (like Exchange / Dropbox)?
I know that you just bung your Google account back in, and addresses, calendars and emails you synch with Google go back on. But it didn't do that back in the days of Android 2.3, and that was years after Apple were selling phones.
Apple may have been later to the cloud party than Google. But they've had full synch of everything to your PC since they started with iPhones.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 15:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @Tom
>"Are you sure? Do your texts and pictures migrate back to the phone. Does it restore and re-install all the apps, their settings and info? Does it also restore saved music and accounts for non-Google stuff (like Exchange / Dropbox)?"
So -- you gave Apple your passwords to DropBox and Exchange? Does your corporate IT dept know about this?
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Wednesday 17th April 2013 08:50 GMT t.est
Re: @Tom
Nope you did not give the password to Apple. Stop babbeling andy prough of things you don't understand.
Still dropbox exchange etc don't need to be set up again. Behold the magic of iPhone backups. Android doesn't have a proper backup system, nor does winphones. Nobody gives away the password of those services to anyone.
Funny how the anti-apple fanboys always seem to technically inadequate, while always boasting of how much smarter they are. So fun so fun.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 15:37 GMT reno79
Re: @Tom
Are you sure? Do your texts and pictures migrate back to the phone. Does it restore and re-install all the apps, their settings and info? Does it also restore saved music and accounts for non-Google stuff (like Exchange / Dropbox)?
Music, no (but by god that would take years on 3G for my 40Gb of music on my S3) but everything else, yes. I've done it several times. All my music is stored on SD card anyway. How is your SD card in your iPho..... oh sorry.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 15:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @Tom
>"Music, no (but by god that would take years on 3G for my 40Gb of music on my S3) but everything else, yes. I've done it several times. All my music is stored on SD card anyway."
You might want to check out Google Play Music. Its a fantastic way to get a couple GB of music files off your phone.
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Wednesday 17th April 2013 09:00 GMT t.est
Re: @Tom
Yeah music lives in the cloud too if your happy with that crap...
I've tested out the sound quality from different sources, all streaming services like spotify have noticeable low sound quality even compared to iTunes Purchased songs. With other words you need not to compare the songs on a HiFi system to notice the difference. It's quite shocking how much better a song purchased from Apple is than compared too what you get from streaming services. I'ts huge.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 15:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @Tom
And give Google all your data.
Haven't they got enough information on you already?
I'm starting to feel that google is pretty untrustworthy. They seem to want to know everything there is about everyone of us. Sorry, but I'm an old git and I don't want all this 'targetted marketing' shite thank you very much.
Frankly, I'd like to shoot all the advertisers who won't take 'no, I don't want your effing product' for an answer.
Virgin Media is at the top of that list.
I really value my privacy. If you search for me on the internet (with Google or Bing) you won't find me and I intend to keep it that way.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 16:45 GMT Furbian
Re: @Tom
No it is not, it won't get back game saves, text messages, list goes one. If you use multiple app stores, I use Amazon as well as Play (they banned me from paying for apps, long story, http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html ), then you can spend a good amount of time working out which apps that you had purchased (even if free) were installed and which ones weren't. SMS backup and restore will do your texts, Sony's PC Companion was happily telling me it was backing up my texts, when all it did was store an empty XML template for one, buried in its so called multi-gb 'backup'. Oh then use iSyncr to sync your Music library.
Or you can root your phone and run one of the many backup programs, but root your phone and your providers firmware updates will refuse to install, so it's the backup, flash your own firmware, root new firmware, restore...
With my iPhone this was a ONE step process, sync with iTunes, ALL done. Android syncing is a total mess.
But I'll stick with my Xperia-T, got it a month old for half the price of an equivalent iPhone, larger screen and Swype.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 17:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @Tom
>"No it is not, it won't get back game saves, text messages, list goes one. If you use multiple app stores, I use Amazon as well as Play (they banned me from paying for apps, long story, http://furbian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-google-walletplaycheckoutwhatever.html ), then you can spend a good amount of time working out which apps that you had purchased (even if free) were installed and which ones weren't."
So -- basically, for those of us who have NOT been banned from Google's Play Store, syncing across devices is a one step process. For Furbian, not so simple.
Got it. So your message is - don't get banned like Furbian?
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Wednesday 17th April 2013 14:06 GMT Furbian
Re: @Tom
Oh great a Fandriod ...
"syncing across devices is a one step process", Play store buying ban or not, it is not a "once step process", it just gets your Play store apps back and few other things, like contacts, no notes, not even Google Gmail notes, no game saves, no application data of any sort. Google won't cloud save them for you, you have to make sure that your app provider is cloud storing the data, or you back it up yourself locally. Maybe you don't care about note taking or rely on someone like Evernote (hacked a few weeks back) etc. Oh I'll mention SMS messages again, because Google won't cloud save those either, but apparently some don't care for them, fair enough you just the phone for gaming and not work or any form of productivity, oh but then you'll value your game saves, oh what's that you don't use it for work or gaming?
For the record, apart form SMS messages, Sony's PC companion actually does quite a good job of preserving app data.
The banning from Play store is only for PAID apps, I can still get free ones, was because I refused to send them a copy of my passport in response to e-mails form Google that looked like fraudulent phishing attempts, simply because I updated my expired credit card. Perhaps you send copies of your passport off to any who ask for one the web happily, especially to a company that illegally collected everyone's router wi-fi credentials using it's mapping cars. According to some who added their comments to my blog, sending them your passport, license etc. still might not get your ban lifted. Besides Amazon's App store gives a paid app free everyday, and many offered have been good commercially successful titles. Yes my Amazon, Apple, Steam, eBay, Paypal etc. accounts are all in good standing, no problem with any of them.
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Wednesday 17th April 2013 10:51 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Wrong when it comes to Nokia (WP8) too. Cloud backup restores text messages, settings & apps. Photos are generally auto uploaded but I don't think it pulls them automatically.
GBL Initialiser,
That's good. I was specific when I said WP7, which didn't do any kind of proper back-up. So it's nice to see they put it in the new version.
Not that I care about texts particularly, but my sister-in-law had about 100 un-backed-up MMS messages with pictures of their kids. A decent OS ought to have a way of backing those up. Android 2.2 didn't. And even most of the apps which claimed you could save them didn't work.
I'm interested to see comments that modern versions of Android now do proper backup. I'm certain that there was nothing available in Android 2.2/2.3, which is what I put in my post and got all the downvotes for. There have always been individual ways of doing stuff, synch the photos with Picassa, use GMail etc. But I'm positive there was no way to do it before. Unless it was in stock Android, but removed by HTC Sense.
Anyway Apple got this one right from the start. Even if they did force you to use iTunes until iOS 5, when you could back-up to iCloud. And I don't think Android or Microsoft did - though I'm glad to be told they've now corrected themselves. I don't know about Blackberry, it's the one OS I've not used.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 15:08 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Support
I don't have an apple, and the nearest apple store is 60 miles away, but I use Windows Mobile based phones, HTC / Nokia etc. I have a business contract and when the phones started playing up TMobile replaced them the next day (usually battery related)
Had I lived within commuting distance of a TMobile store I too could have had a same day straight swap. So in some ways the apple store is not offering anything extraordinary.
Tezfair,
There is a big difference here though. The service might be the same, although probably only through the carriers. If you'd bought direct from Nokia, or SIM-free, you'd probably have to send the thing off, and I've heard similar bad reports of Samsung and HTC. Who knows what Google do with Nexus devices now? But when they sold the first one, they didn't even bother having a returns/repairs department - and I think they ended up farming it out to HTC with the G1.
But I've now owned 3 of the OSes. When I broke my Nokia Lumia (WinPho7) I pretty much had to set the new phone up from scratch. Even though the old one was backed up on the PC, this mostly seemed to just be media. I also seem to remember I had to manually back up photos, and there was no method to back up texts (though I didn't bother looking for an app to do so).
When swapped my sister-in-law's Android (HTC Wildfire), to replace her broken one, it took 2 hours to replicate the data. Admittedly that was Android 2.2 - although the phone was only 1 year old at the time - so I don't know if the latest 'Droids are better. But at the time you had to manually find the old apps (I think the Play store has a tab for this now), it took ten minutes to find an app to copy the texts, but half an hour to find one that would back up the picture messages (most didn't work), plus piccies and music and the settings manually.
A non-technical user couldn't have done that Android switch, and that was on 2 identical handsets with the same version of the software.
I've upgraded several iPhones, and this even works when updating the model. You simply plug in the new one to iTunes (that abomination unto the Gods of software), tell it to restore from the old one, and it's done - you just leave the 'pooter to send the data across. You then need to put in a couple of passwords, and it's done. And Apple bother to back up your texts, which all the others seem to abandon.
In comparison, WinPho and Android are shockingly bad.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 15:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Support
"Who knows what Google do with Nexus devices now? But when they sold the first one, they didn't even bother having a returns/repairs department - and I think they ended up farming it out to HTC with the G1."
Actually, I do. I phoned the support phone number at 10:30 at night. Got through to a real person (American, *extremely* charming though, even to my flinty British heart). A couple of days later, a new Nexus 7 was waiting on my desk, complete with a TNT bag to ship the old once back, at their expense.
I'm reasonably happy with that. Rooted the new one. Let it sync my Google account up, and I was good to go.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 14:19 GMT Brenda McViking
Re: Support
And this is exactly why I still reccomend apple products to my friends, even though I'd never buy one myself as I don't wish to bear the exorbitant cost of this level of service.
Me? I want a well specc'd device which I don't have to compromise on. I've had a camera on my phone since they came out, GPS since it came out, I require a removable battery, expandable memory, and a charge that lasts a full day of moderate use (though preferrably a week...) I like a phone with a party piece too - my current one does 3D without glasses for instance, but above all, my biggest gripe is that I do NOT want to wait for months for software upgrades as they come out.
Apple is completely out as you can't share stuff device to device and the restrictions drive me nuts. I have an ipod touch which I won in a raffle- it's nice, I understand the "just works" mentality, but I'm not sold.
HTC (HD2) wasn't bad, until they broke software upgrade promises (that and Windows phone 6.5- never WinPhone EVER again)
LG (Optimus 3D) have been utterly atrocious. Great design, loads of promise, let down by a company who half implements a UI and then runs off 1 month after it's released to work on something new. Then releases an "upgrade" (a year late) to gingerbread which sometimes PREVENTS THE PHONE FROM RECIEVING A CALL PROPERLY. I mean, seriously guys - lets look at the first rule in the book, shall we? No? okay. good luck ever seeing me as a customer again.
So what next? Apple out, HTC in the bad books, LG never going to recieve another penny from me as long as I live - the answer would appear to be Samsung. Contract just up and the S4 announced - what is not to like? I would have considered a Nexus, before it tried to copy the worst design features of the iphone - i.e. the battery & microSD slot. Or rather the lack thereof.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 14:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Support
"exorbitant cost of this level of service"
Really. Friend had a Samsung - went faulty - they needed it back for so long (almost a month) he had to buy a replacement - THAT is expensive. My iPhone also got a fault (albeit after I dropped it) - 20 minutes in the Apple Store and it was fixed - no hassle.
Another friend has an iPhone - lives too far away from a store. Apple sent out packaging for it to be returned - they got it the next day - fixed it same day and back in the post so he received it the next day. Can't really argue with that.
So yes an iPhone 5 is on the face of it slightly more than some of it's competitors but over the life of the phone what are we talking - couple of pounds per month for better security and better service.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 15:11 GMT skipper
Re: Support
Support can be vary whatever devices you might have...
I bricked my Samsung phone a while back, took it into Carphone Warehouse, and within a few hours I had my phone back in my hand, working, with everything synced back as it was.
In comparison my wife's Apple 4S's screen shattered, had to pay a £60 excess for a replacement, and then it took several nights fighting with iTunes to get most of data back.
I've never bricked my SG2 again, my wife's Apple screen has cracked again.
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Tuesday 16th April 2013 15:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Support @AC
seriously? that sounds crazy, where did they buy it from? i've had faulty phones and at most it was a few days away while they checked it, but usually its new phone in the post, please return the old one in the pre-paid baggie we are sending you.. Samsung themselves have always been great when I've spoken to them, UK based call centers and they worked with me on the problem, and these were software related! oh and that was for a UK retail customer, not business!
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
