I have never been a mobile user as such. I have had a mobile phone for many years and went Blackberry as soon as the revolution started and since then have either had more Blackberry's or an iPhone. I loved the Blackberry but was totally indifferent to the iPhone. I didn't like itunes or the way that Apple controlled the number of devices that can be sync'd to it. I didn't like the fact that they took it upon themselves to limit the number of devices that I could download a song onto. Infact it was iTunes that drove me to Spotify, a far fairer and not so controlling app and it is safe to say that it was my indifferent attitude to Apple that has driven me into the arms of Android.
My phone was due for an upgrade and it just so happened that the night before I saw an advert for the Samsung Galaxy Note. It looked huge, unwieldy and different. I thought what the hell let's take a chance and what a chance it was.
It is massive. The screen size means that it isn't ideal to take or make calls on although it does come with a headset and that is really needed. I have to say that taking calls with that screen size is the downside to the Note experience but the screen size is also the upside. Infact the screen size changes everything and I am not sure exactly why. My daughters laughed at it but are now converts. My youngest daughter claims the phone off me the moment I walk through the door in the evening. Her birthday is coming up and she wants the Samsung Galaxy Nexus as her main present.
I am a convert to the Android OS. It slays IOS with its ability to be so totally customised and its lack of an iTunes type application, reaffirms my faith in the technical folk that are currently running our lives. Infact I can send music and data to the phone across my wireless network from a standard web browser on my PC. I can back it up to dropbox or skydrive automatically. I change the homescreens to the way that I want them to look using several different applications that enable a complete custom look to the screens. It is just so far beyond the mediocre hardware and software that Apple provide that I am absolutely gobsmacked. I love the look of the iPhone, I think it is stylish and I think the Samsung hardware looks cheap but once they are all encased in protectors it all becomes irrelevant, it is the user experience that counts.
This rant comes about because I had to back my wife's iPhone up and the pain that iTunes put me through is stupid. All kind of errors, things failing and nothing was clear. I tried to download the latest firmware and it told me that it recommended downloading and running the firmware from the PC first as the phone would or could be wiped but once the firmware was downloaded it gave no more instructions so I spent 30 minutes trying to work out what the stupid software meant. I was foaming at the mouth, a rabid ihater full of bile for the morons that tied a phone so closely to an application that the two become one, the phone dictated by the lowest common denominator, the crap software.
Why would you put yourself through the endless frustration of badly written code when my android phone automatically updates, no need for software or user intervention. Apple apparently have iCloud that I suppose is something similar to dropbox or any other cloud based application for mobile devices, the downside to that, in my humble opinion, is that it is yet another way to tie you to an Apple based product that will cost you money at somepoint and limit the things you can do straight away. Apple keeps you in a box, Android opens the windows to let the breeze blow through. Apple is indifferent, Android is pure fun.
If you want to change the way you do things, maybe change them to a way that suits you using software that you choose to use and applications that have been designed with you in mind, go Android, think outside the fruity box.
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