Smartphones

Facebook on Android is pretty nice now that they've made "Home"... Unfortunately it's a custom launcher, so it takes over your phone/tablet.

For those on the fence about the HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4:

I've been in the cell phone business for 4 years. I've seen the S4 and One in action. I currently have a Note 2 and had no intentions of buying an S4 or One. After seeing the One and spending a few hours with it I still had no intentions of replacing my phone. After spending an hour with the S4 I will be replacing my Note 2 with one.

It's really hard to put into words just how in awe I was of the S4. Almost everything was superior on the S4 except build quality. However, if I have to choose plastic over metal to get an SD slot and a removable battery, I'll choose plastic every single time.

The screens were great but the high resolution of both phones allows the Samsung OLED to win since the biggest issue with large pixels on the Samsung OLED screens are not present. From someone who deals with phone returns I'll take Samsung Touchwiz over HTC Sense every time. Less buggy in every way and doesn't remove basic Android functions like Sense has in the past (they are improving every phone though).

Performance is really moot at this point. Nothing really supports quad cores and both phones make any app their bitch currently. OS fluidity has become a software thing where their overlay controls how fluid they feel and both do an excellent job of making the experience smooth and near flawless.

The cameras were just odd. The Samsung took pictures that were overall superior to the iPhone 5 and Nokia phones (the top 2 currently). HTC took amazing low light pictures, better than anything I have ever seen on a phone camera. The normal/high light pics were another story and were inferior to the iPhone and Nokia shots. If they can fix this with software then the HTC will win hands down.

Overall both are great phones and the hardware is superior to anything else out, although only slightly vs the Note 2, IMO. The thing that really caught my eye were the new motion control features of the Samsung. Being able to answer with a leather cover over the face, being able to use the phone through normal gloves, control screen switching or ebook reading with just your eyes. These were all features I would use and really liked. Sadly Samsung denied any of this going into the Note 2 updates so I'll be selling mine to get them on the S4.

Unplugged at 7 am, hour long conference call, various gaming through the day, blink feed and Gmail updating all day, few short calls, took and uploaded a 2 minute video to Facebook, used the phone to track a run. Had Pandora and nine run app, gps and data, for 30 minutes. Now 10:30 and I've got 45%

Got an e-mail today saying my S4 would be shipped early, on the 25th instead of the 30th. Girlfriend had her friend, who works for an ATT store, tell her that the store will be getting the phones in tomorrow and supposedly selling her one then.

After mild use this morning and not charging over night, 25% let now

The HTC One in a similar use pattern to my Galaxy S3 seems to have a longer life span. It's consuming roughly 2.4%/hr over a 24 hour period with about a half hour of talk time and a couple hours of youtube videos over 4G and some mild web surfing. I plugged it in this morning at work at 1 day 26mins of use and it had 40% left. Comparably my S3 would have about 25-30% left with the same amount of use. The battery more than meets my needs.

Lenas_sl said:

Facebook on Android is pretty nice now that they've made "Home"... Unfortunately it's a custom launcher, so it takes over your phone/tablet.

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With the latest update, even the Facebook Android app is 100% better than it used to be. I can actually view my events, business pages and groups now. And the news feed finally actually syncs up with what I would see on my computer. For my phone, I actually use the app all the time now. I still go to the website on my tablet. The app is much improved.

Also the new Facebook Messenger Android app just added free voice calls (been available for iOS for a couple of months now). Tested it out, works pretty well. Not as well as my actual cell service, but it will be handy when I travel to places that I don't have great cell coverage, but have access to WiFi.

If you post battery stats posting your screen on time is helpful since that should be far and away the biggest draw. % on wifi vs 4g is also nice to know as is any 4g streaming.

Heavy, medium and light usage mean different things to different people.

For my same usage pattern, battery life on the One absolutely blows away the iPhone 5 and the EVO LTE isn't even in the same universe.

anyone w/ the One have issues linking contacts? i'ts not linking my google contacts w/ facebook. so anyone in my "people" app that has a pic, doesn't have a phone number. any contact w/ a phone number doesn't have a pic. very annoying.

Anyone have any suggestions on a cheap plan for an iPhone 5?

I have an ATT iPhone 5 from work and they let me keep it when I quit. Since I already own the phone I figured I could get boost/cricket/straight talk or something and pay 1/2 of what I'd pay at ATT. Anyone use any non major carrier?

Contact management between Outlook and Google/Android has been the one thing with moving to Nexus devices that I haven't been able to pin down well. Before with a Blackberry I just used BB's software to sync between my phone and my home/office computers, and all three were perfect. I haven't spent much time on it, but I'm haven't really figured out the best way to sync between Outlook, Google, and my Nexus. Between Google and Nexus works fine, but I haven't found an automatic way between Google and Outlook that works well. Unless I'm missing something obvious. And no I'm not on exchange.

Eomer_sl said:

Contact management between Outlook and Google/Android has been the one thing with moving to Nexus devices that I haven't been able to pin down well. Before with a Blackberry I just used BB's software to sync between my phone and my home/office computers, and all three were perfect. I haven't spent much time on it, but I'm haven't really figured out the best way to sync between Outlook, Google, and my Nexus. Between Google and Nexus works fine, but I haven't found an automatic way between Google and Outlook that works well. Unless I'm missing something obvious. And no I'm not on exchange.

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can you use google apps for work email?

I hate the size of this stupid otterbox, but goddamn I just did one of those juggling acts with my phone where it ended up going 30 feet across the room onto a concrete floor without even a scratch.

I've never used a case on my iPhone. I've been lucky because I've dropped it more than a few times on a variety of surfaces and have never had it shatter or crack.

A few scratches here and there on the back, but the front screen is pretty decent still.

bho_sl said:

can you use google apps for work email?

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Yeah, our work email is through Google Apps. Actually, can I use Exchange for my contacts then I wonder? I need to get some IT guys in here to figure that shit out for me.