VS
For a week I decided I would try out an iPhone since someone wanted to trade my old android for their iPhone 4. Although I have a really nice Samsung Galaxy S3 I thought I would give it a shot. This is the first apple iPhone I have ever used for a daily device.
When picking up the device the guy is wearing boots and does government cnc work in Cleveland. He repeatedly says how he is looking forward to the android phone because it is more open and flexible. The stiff rules that apple has in place seem to stifle his creativity. He does not have ambitions to tinker or program but likes the idea of Android more. He has had an android before and really wants to get back to it. The only positive he gave was the quality of the apps on the iPhone but that was quickly followed by a dislike for the strictness of the ecosystem.
Upon first inspection of the phone it was in great shape and concealed in an otter box case with a screen protector. The screen seems quite small and pressing the keyboard buttons makes me a little nervous that I pressed the right one. It took me until I got home to be able to log into the apple login because of the stringent new apple password requirement. I can’t fault them there, security is important but this much was a hindrance to me using the device. When trying to reset the password I kept hitting done since next was not highlighted and I couldn’t reset the password. Once I was able to reset the password it was sent to my email which I couldn’t setup yet.
We met at the Mall and went to Verizon to swap phones and get them both activated. They assumed we were on the same account (which we are not). I can only assume this sort of thing does not happen often. The gentleman I was buying from was really nice and proud of the company he worked for in Cleveland. Once the phones were swapped after about 10 minutes we shook hands and parted ways.
While we were out there we devided we should get some food. At this point I still canot log into apple id but I can make phone calls. I realize that the reset device option I choose kept all his email and settings still on it. Time for another wipe. After this wipe I did not get any signal. I was a little worried at this point that the phone was broken but I would check more when we got home. Once at the restaurant I had to check it out more and I could not get any coverage in the place. My old android phone had 3 bars and the iPhone had no service, I picture had to be taken.
Once home after charging for a while and resetting the apple id on the computer I was able to finally log into apple id on the phone and set it up. I was a little confused what they wanted me to do with the apple cloud and if it would be costing me money. I said I wanted to use it anyways hoping it would alert me if there was a cost.
There is yet to be any music on the device but I decided I wanted to try the Apple iOS 6 Beta 3 on the phone. There were many articles saying how to “hack” the phone to install it. On the android I would assume there would be some command line parameters, changing security, replacing files, etc. The big hack was to hold shift in itunes when looking for iPhone updates. It will prompt you to browse for the update file. Big hack yeah, it is just a manual override. I also read there was a need to save some blobs (SHSHs) using tinyumbrella but I didn’t know what it was for. Either way I did it anyways. I thought I had to enter some recover/dfu menu to do this but later learn that was unnecessary. These SHSHs seem to be more for jailbreaking the device. This is something I may do later on, I just want to try the new beta. The process for saving the blob was quite simple (just press save SHSH) and I was done.
Out of curiosity I wondered if I did jailbreak the device (I keep typing root and having to delete it) how I would return it back to factory. After googling for a little while I see answers saying just go to iTunes and hit restore, that’s it. This seems too simple but I keep going through these “advanced jailbreaking guides” and this is all they say. I later decide it is really this easy. It is almost like apple wants people to jailbreak and run unsanctioned betas. Again the process was so simple I was not expecting it.
After installing the new iOS 6 beta 3 the phone setup process went much smoother since I did it already this night and knew my password. The interface on the beta seemed very much like the old version. It looks like they added a do not disturb, replaced google maps, updated spellchecker, and added the pass program. All in all I don’t see what the big fuss is about iOS 6 just yet. The beta ran smooth and most programs did not have any problems. Facebook commonly wouldn’t load my latest updates and spotify wouldn’t load the new radio stations. Besides that everything ran smooth.
When comparing iOS 6 to Andorid 4.0 they seemed to quite similar. I didn’t see anything revolutionary in IOS6 that was not yet in last years Android build. I have yet to play around with Android Jelly Bean 4.1which just came out a month or so ago. From what I can tell iOS 6 is almost like last years android build. Unfortunately many Android phones are still awaiting for this update so Ice Cream Sandwhich is still relavant.
Some things I noticed that were nice in iOS were the notifcications, app designs, settings centralization. The nofitications show up right on the screen. Most of the apps that I tried were a little different than android but had the same functionality usually. It was nice to know that settings was right there in one central spot for system settings an apps.
Some of the dislikes so far are the price of apps, lack of widgets, newsstand app, and default email reply. The apps I am used to getting for free that are ad supported cost money on iOS. There are some small widgets that I use that are just not there and makes the os feel more static than dynamic. The newsstand app is very annoying because it cannot be hidden, deleted, or put in another folder. After using it for a moment seeing multiple magazines that look free but then learning there is in app purchases required was a let down and the last call for that app. Also today when responding back to an email from family the email address used was different than they sending to me. The default email is the sending email address by default and not the one the sender sent the email to me to if that makes sense. If someone sends me an email to my Hotmail account I should by default be sending a response back from Hotmail, not my gmail account.
Some similarities between OS are the apps, battery life, and general usage. The apps between devices are very similar and it was not that hard to switch. When using the iPhone the battery drained really fast (down 50% in 2 hours) and when not in use it sipped battery much like my android. Generally to get things done it took the same amount of time and had similar though processes to accomplish it.
