The iPhone Challenge - Post 1 (Initial Thoughts)

I now have the device in hand, reset to factory defaults, and ready to go. Before we begin though, I wanted to talk a little bit about the device itself.

1. PROS
1. External Design is nice, it feels comfortable in my hand
2. CONS
1. Glass exterier seems like an accident waiting to happen
2. No removable battery
3. No removable memory (i.e. MicroSD card)

I turned it on for the first time, and was immediately asked to set up my wi-fi connection. After I did so it demanded that I sign in with the same Apple account as the previous user (my wife) because she had Find My iPhone turned on. Apparently if I were a thief, I wouldn't be able to use it even after resetting it! I thought this was a pretty nice feature, although I assume people have already figured out how to get around it since it requires an internet connection to verify the device ID.

1. PROS
1. External Design is nice, it feels comfortable in my hand
2. Theft protection out of the box
2. CONS
1. Glass exterier seems like an accident waiting to happen
2. No removable battery
3. No removable memory

My wife signed in, removed her Apple account, and we reset it again. This time I had no problems and created a new Apple ID and set up the phone. This gave me my first impressions of the iPhone's keyboard. The way it types is definitely better than my Droid, even with the Google Keyboard, and the autocorrect is a lot more intelligent than my Droid's. That being said, it annoys me beyond belief that the period and comma aren't on the main page, and you also can't access alternate keys by tapping-and-holding. So I'd call that one on both sides.

1. PROS
1. External Design is nice, it feels comfortable in my hand
2. Theft protection out of the box
3. Keyboard has nice feel and autocorrect
2. CONS
1. Glass exterier seems like an accident waiting to happen
2. No removable battery
3. No removable memory
4. Keyboard requires accessing secondary menu too much

Being the techie I am, the first place I go when I get a new phone is to the settings menu. On my Droid I do that by hitting the menu button and selecting settings, but the only button on the iPhone is the home button. This was definitely frustrating, and kept throwing me off. Some settings can be accessed by scrolling up from the bottom, but any other settings get annoying fast. While we're at it, I’m really starting to miss my widgets. I have my Droid set up with widgets and shortcuts that let me access most of what I need extremely easily and without spending too much time, but the Apple home screen only lists the apps. Now, the way that they display the apps is a lot nicer than the Android app drawer. I find the dynamic icons extremely helpful, it's really nice knowing how many emails, etc. I have without opening the app, and it seems to work more smoothly than any 3rd party widgets I've seen for Android. Scrolling through the home screens is also a lot smoother than on my Droid Incredible, which I have no doubt is because of the uniformity of the icons. There's one thing that still troubles me though. For a phone which is supposed to be user-friendly and intuitive, how is there no option to organize the apps alphabetically? I get how "cool" it is to sort them by folders, etc. but you'd think there would at least be an option to sort them automatically. 

PROS

1. External Design is nice, it feels comfortable in my hand
2. Theft protection out of the box
3. Keyboard has nice feel and autocorrect
4. Dynamic app icons
5. Smooth scrolling
6. Bottom-up quick-settings

CONS

1. Glass exterier seems like an accident waiting to happen
2. No removable battery
3. No removable memory
4. Keyboard requires accessing secondary menu too much
5. No easy way to access settings
6. No widgets
7. No auto-sort of apps

So I didn't even get to the settings menu this time, we'll keep that on tap for a different post. What did you think about this first look? Is there a feature I missed? Thanks for reading!

The iPhone Challenge - Part 0 (Introduction)

As anyone who knows me knows, I am squarely an Android fan. I have been since I first heard about its open-source architecture, and even more so after I started using the OS. I've never been a fan of Apple's entire product-concept since I feel they usually take ideas that already exist and try to pretend like they invented them.

All that being said, a few months ago I sent out a challenge. I posted on my Facebook wall that if anyone were to give or lend me a modern-ish iPhone, I would use it as my primary phone for six months with an open mind. I would delve as completely into their ecosystem as I'm now invested in Google's, and at the end of the six months I would make an honest decision which I felt was better, and why. It wasn't meant to be serious, just a statement that I wasn't a "sheep," but would be willing to test both out equally.

Well, it looks like I (or more importantly, you) will be getting that chance. Someone has lent me an iPhone, however the circumstances aren't exactly perfect for a full six-month test. Here are the specs:

• iPhone 4S, white
• Running iOS 7.1.2
• Broken power button (phone is put to sleep via the AssistaveTouch accessibility feature)
• Slight crack on glass (underlying display is unaffected)

I feel like it would be really annoying to not have a power button for too long, and the 4S's age might not be fully compatible with modern-day apps. For that reason I've decided to make this a two month test- it should give me enough time to make a decision without driving me nuts.

So here's the deal:

• I will post my thoughts as much as I can. I haven't decided whether or not I'll do it Twitter-style (i.e. posting as I find things) or daily/weekly posts. I'll probably do a combination of the above as I see fit at the time.
• My current phone is an HTC Droid Incredible 4G (July '12) so I haven't had experience with the newer Android OS's and apps. The 4S is from October '11 but runs the latest iOS version (something I'll bring up in my first post) so some features may be on the 4S that isn't on my Droid, but is available on newer Droids.
• While I will be using iCloud, I'll still be using Google for my contacts and calendar, simply because that's where they already are, and it would be too much of a pain to try to set up an entirely new interface without creating duplicates. It seems easy enough to sync my Google account with the iPhone, but if there's anything different about the iCloud versions than I won't be seeing them.

I look forward to this challenge, and we'll see how the next two months go! Comments on anything I've missed (on either side of the debate) would be appreciated, but let's please not devolve into the usual flame war. I want this to be as open-minded as possible.

So let's begin!

Intro

I don't blog, nor do I intend to begin. That being said, sometimes blogging is good for some things, so this will be where I do it! I call it "Techie Talks" only because I assume most of my sporadic posts will be tech-related, so if they're not, I apologize now.