Yeserday there was a neat thread about what phone OS users prefer. It seems there's a vocal number of Android users on the site (Yay, me too!)

Last week the IFA conference brought us the Galaxy Note 4 (and Note Edge), Huawei's Ascend Mate 7 (another phablet beastmode phone), Sony's Z3 and a bunch of killer hardware.

please forgive my single source. AC is one of my go-tos for generalized android news and I really like their reporting style. Although I really dig Android Police, DroidLife and Android Headlines.

Then Motorola announced their refreshed linup plus the Moto 360

I've been nerding out over all of these things.

But there's an elephant in the room: Apple is having an event later today to release their new iphone. It's been cluttering my tech news all week. It feels like for every couple of stories about IFA there was another "what I want to see in the iphone 6" or "new iphone 6 rumor!" type story being published.

Now, to be clear, Apple has an astounding phone and tablet line up. Their OS is mature, stable and a breeze to get along with. It is the most popular single phone out there. It revolutionized an industry back when the idea of high tech was a 2 inch display and half baked software. And no real touch input. Then the iphone came and we got abominations like this (which I suffered through for 2 years on a contract)

shudders at the resistive 3.2" touch screen.

So what do you think about the iPhone? Is it just right for you? Do you have some favorite tricks (like jailbraking!) or aps? Is it too restrictive? Are there any rumors you're hoping for? (NFC plzkthnx ghost of steve jobs!!)

Do be civil with each other. It's a phone, no need to be mean to each other over phone choice. Choice is good. If we didn't have a choice in mobile OS/hardware we'd be stuck with really lame palm treo 9000 now with monochrome display!

also, condolences for blackberry fans ;)

I'd rather Apple and all its crappy products off the face of the Earth. For the betterment of humanity.

At 9/9/14 02:47 AM, Jin wrote: I'd rather Apple and all its crappy products off the face of the Earth. For the betterment of humanity.

Like I said, choice is good. If not for Apple we wouldn't have the thriving smartphone and tablet market. There would be no "app" market at all - developers who now make a living by publishing phone apps wouldn't even have that job now.

And even if their new iphone is iterative me-too catch up like last years they still bring something to the table. They kickstarted chipmakers to begin a shift to 64bit processors. Sure the 5S doesn't utilize much of what that offers but at least ARM is releasing new reference architecture for NVidia and qualcomm to work with.

But you have the choice. I don't want to see Apple or the iPhone leave the space - that would give make the android and windows phone platforms plateau in features, hardware and apps. Why bother innovating if you have no competition challenging your hegemony?

At 9/9/14 02:35 AM, Malachy wrote: So what do you think about the iPhone?

They suck.

Is it just right for you?

Nope.

Do you have some favorite tricks (like jailbraking!) or aps?

I tried jailbreaking my iPod Touch and got it stuck in an Apple logo boot loop. I had to have it reset to the factory settings. Thankfully I wasn't an idiot and backed it up right before I tried jailbreaking it.

Is it too restrictive?

Oh fuck yes.

Are there any rumors you're hoping for? (NFC plzkthnx ghost of steve jobs!!)

I don't really care about any rumors because I'm going with Android as soon as I can.

Looking forward to see what the new iPhone offers. Hopefully they make a big leap with the camera/video technology. I'd welcome a larger screen with my aging eyes. :) I will see if it make sense to stick with Apple, or look elsewhere. I have no complaints with my iPhone 5, and it does what I want it to do and it has been very reliable. Even my iPhone 3G was reliable and I was doing things you couldn't do on Android until years later.

I've used both iphone and android and I have to say that the android os just feels amateur. The color schemes look like shit, it isn't as responsive as ios, and its UI is frustrating. The iphone is sleek, simple, but still powerful enough to do everything you need it to while still looking great.

My mother and I got matching iPhone's a few years ago, and after a month she dropped hers in the toilet. I gave her my iPhone after removing all of the porn, and then she dropped that one in the toilet after a couple of days.

That's all I have to say about the iPhone.

At 9/9/14 12:17 PM, Magical-Zorse wrote: I've used both iphone and android and I have to say that the android os just feels amateur. The color schemes look like shit, it isn't as responsive as ios, and its UI is frustrating.

One of the perceived problems with Android is stuff like this. With so much developer freedom, there's a big quality difference in Android phones, whereas iOS uses Apple's iPhone build, period. There's definitely Androids that run like shit and are a pain to use (I used one for a couple years), but if you look around and drop enough money on it the quality can certainly be on the same level as iPhones.

Apple had its time a number of years back... But now androids have become the far superior brother...

Apple only hangs on by people that dont feel the want to switch over to android because both have the ability to call or text or look up cooking recipes..

Android does it better, faster, and with more power but because all systems are at a level now that they can all text and talk and look up cooking recipes, it really only matters to tech heads what the specks are or what the other details are about a phone...

Well, they're revealing it now. I still prefer to get the Galaxy S5 when my contract is up.

The new iPhones look pretty good. The A8 processor looks like a beast.

The Apple Watch looks pretty slick. Now they can sell everyone a new iPhone and new Apple Watch every couple years, lol.

If its new i want it. Whatever it is. Phone/watch/whatever.

At 9/9/14 02:15 PM, Luis wrote: If its new i want it. Whatever it is. Phone/watch/whatever.

Apple Watch users can draw each other little doodles, and share their heart beats.

At 9/9/14 02:41 PM, WadeFulp wrote:

At 9/9/14 02:15 PM, Luis wrote: If its new i want it. Whatever it is. Phone/watch/whatever.

Apple Watch users can draw each other little doodles, and share their heart beats.

Maybe instead of heart beats there's an app to share in someone else's liver.

At 9/9/14 02:41 PM, WadeFulp wrote:

At 9/9/14 02:15 PM, Luis wrote: If its new i want it. Whatever it is. Phone/watch/whatever.

Apple Watch users can draw each other little doodles, and share their heart beats.

That sounds unbelievably silly. The last thing I would want to know at any given time is how fast Wade Fulp's heart is beating.

At 9/9/14 03:35 PM, ZJ wrote: That sounds unbelievably silly. The last thing I would want to know at any given time is how fast Wade Fulp's heart is beating.

You could be like "Wade, what are you doing? Your heart rate is increasing!" or you could be like "Wade? WADE?!? Your heart stopped beating!!!! WADE!!!!!"

At 9/9/14 12:17 PM, Magical-Zorse wrote: I've used both iphone and android and I have to say that the android os just feels amateur. The color schemes look like shit, it isn't as responsive as ios, and its UI is frustrating. The iphone is sleek, simple, but still powerful enough to do everything you need it to while still looking great.

I think I recall you saying you have a Samsung phone. Their overlay, or "launcher" is not one of the best. The good news is that with Android you can change that and you don't even have to root ("Jailbreak"). I really like the Google Now Launcher on my Nexus 5. Also Google already has the next OS update in the pipeline and they have a developer preview. Their UI and color scheme is now going in the direction of a "material" design language. I always felt like the iPhone had a playskool feel to their UI, even with the flat design of iOS7.

At 9/9/14 01:58 PM, NuclearInfected wrote: Well, they're revealing it now. I still prefer to get the Galaxy S5 when my contract is up.

I'm glad that Apple finally moved up in size. A 4" iphone felt like a toy to me. I'm disappointed on the screen resolution of both. I really don't get why 720p is the go-to for 4.7" screens. Motorola did it with the Moto X last year and every mid-range phone launched since then has been 720p. But HTC, on the 2013 HTC One (M7) had 1080p on a 4.7" screen. Surely Apple could of done it - give it the best resolution in that mid-range class. Their actual resolution is weird too 800 something? Odd choice.

And the 6 Plus is 5.5" but only 1080p?? Come on Apple! LG and Samsung already have QHD screens on their phablets. You're killing me!

I'm not sold on the ipad UI on it. It's got a 16:9 aspect ratio and you're trying to make it act like your 4:3 ipads. There's a reason android phones don't have a tablet UI despite their size. The Nexus 7 UI is closer to a phone UI than a tablet UI because the aspect ratio and size make things look cramped in landscape (but at least they added landscape on homescreen for the Nexus 7).

The Apple Watch. I'm not sure about that. Lots of buttons on it. Why is Apple so obsessed with hardware buttons for functionality. Scrolling and clicking with a dial seems like a huge step backward for a company that makes such intuitive UX. Heartrate - unless they've learned how to get it to work continuously even when you're exercising it seems like the same useless add-on that the moto 360 and Samsung Gear watches have. You have to open the heartrate app and sit still and it can only take a small snapshot. Most of them use an infrared little reader that can't track heartbeat when the watch is jossling around but surely we can account for that by now? And the price is nuts. Of course it's apple. But when something 10X more elegant like the Moto 360 is selling for $100 less?

Apple Pay - Their partners includes McDonalds and I've been able to pay with NFC with Google Wallet at McDonalds for years on my nexus devices. I truly hope that MasterCard's paypass terminals are something the iPhone works with because that would finally bring NFC payment into the 21st century. If not and they only play well with specific terminals then fuck that. Paypass terminals are in 7/11, McDonalds, Macey's, CVS, T-Mobile and a few other national retailers.

Whatever happened with that Apple Wallet app where you keep your gift cards and loyalty cards and things? Last year everyone was saying it was going to change the whole world of retail and...I haven't heard anything about it since. Tech blogs are spazzing about how Apple is going to revolutionize payments with their NFC but if it's as unpopular as a few of their services it might fizzle. It's a great add-on for the iPhone but if they are going to require retailers to remove existing terminals in order to play nice with 2 devices when they used to have all Android phones with NFC (like Samsung's Galaxy series) why would they do that just for Apple? It's not a feature that anyone with a 5S or below is going to be using so you aren't exactly supporting all those iphone users. I hope they work with existing terminal systems so anyone with NFC payment can use it (especially with Verizon and AT&T being retards with their ISIS payment system that they had the change the name on because of the terrorist group).

I'm an Android guy, I actually wanted the Apple watch to be good, as the Android one's haven't quite done if for me yet.
I was at least expecting a beautiful slick thin device. But my good god these couldn't look any worse.

Looking at the Apple Pay section of their site it looks like, thank cthulu, they are using existing NFC payment terminals. As you can see on Google Wallet's website the logo for tap-and-pay is the same and the retail partners are pretty much the same as well

This makes me very happy. Apple, though playing catch up, does have a lot of clout with consumers and retailers. I hope that as they add new partners that they utilize the same technology for Apple Pay.

Now if they would only allow you to share contacts, pictuers and music between an iPhone and an Android phone via NFC....

At 9/9/14 03:57 PM, WadeFulp wrote: "Wade? WADE?!? Your heart stopped beating!!!! WADE!!!!!"

Wade? ...WADE?! WAAAAADE!

Oh noes!

Looks like when Apple updated their product pages they quietly killed off the iPod Classic

An iphone was my first smart phone - I upgraded from a flip phone in early 2009 to an iphone 4, and I'm still using it to this day (I'm typing this post on it right now). Any piece of technology that lasts 5+ years and still has everything I need on it is great in my book.

I'm excited for the iphone 6 release because that means the price for the 4s and 5 will drop - and I'm due for an upgrade.

At 9/9/14 07:13 PM, Malachy wrote: Oh noes!

Looks like when Apple updated their product pages they quietly killed off the iPod Classic

Well we all knew that was coming.

At 9/9/14 07:48 PM, Timmy wrote: I'm excited for the iphone 6 release because that means the price for the 4s and 5 will drop - and I'm due for an upgrade.

The iPhone 5C is now free on contract so if you've got an upgrade to burn you are in luck. Even the 5S is only $99 on contract.

If you're buying off contract full price then you're screwed. Apple is asking for $1000 for the highest storage iPhone 6 Plus! They're nuts!

There are some very solid alternatives if you choose to switch operating systems. The Moto X from last year is selling around $350 and so is the Nexus 5 (and likely the next Nexus phone as well when it drops in November). The Moto G is $200 contract free. Then Nokia has a couple of Lumias running Windows Phone 8 for reasonable off contract prices. The best bang for your buck, in my opinion, would be a Nexus 5. It has LTE, works on Sprint, T Mobile or AT&T, a 5" 1080p HD screen and all kinds of other awesome goodies plus stock Android and it's straight from Google so you'll get the L release as soon as it's available.

At 9/9/14 07:58 PM, NuclearInfected wrote: Well we all knew that was coming.

I was expecting it in 2012 honestly. I'm surprised they held on to it this long

I have the first Moto X, and coming from a Samsung Galaxy S3, it was the best phone I've ever had. I'm looking forward to owning the newer Moto X (2014). I mean, leather backs! How snazzy! I have a bit of a wait ahead of me tho, because I'm with Republic Wireless.

Google loves to release things while the news is busy with Apple.

Google Voice is finally integrated with Google Hangouts. Took long enough

At 9/10/14 02:40 AM, Conal wrote: iPhones are great. I wouldn't personally buy them, my iPhones were given to me. I want a Samsung Galaxy or something like that. I want more manual control over themes & music for personalisation.

I think you'll really like the iOS 8 upgrade - you'll finally be getting more granular control over things like themes, widgets and music.

I just hope these other phones have apps for Remote Desktop, Wake-on-LAN & network mapping.

Google chrome has a remote desktop extension that can be used via your phone. Even microsoft's own remote desktop app didn't work for me because they locked it down to WIndows 8 business whereas I had home edition. Chrome remote desktop works great. As long as you have it set up so chrome runs in the background (great for gmail, google now and hangouts extensions) and the app on your phone you can do pretty much whatever on your PC.

At 9/10/14 01:52 AM, Malachy wrote: Google loves to release things while the news is busy with Apple.

Google Voice is finally integrated with Google Hangouts. Took long enough

I saw that when the app update came up. Pretty cool. We should test it out.

Those iPhone 6 Plus's sold out fast on the Apple store. I bet Apple will sell more than they were expecting. Seems like a lot of people want the 6 Plus over the 6.