From iPhone to Samsung's Galaxy S5

Samsung Galaxy S5

Impressions and experiences

I've been a long time iPhone user, from the iPhone 2G, to the 3GS, 4 and then the 5, I've been almost exclusively using iPhones for the past several years. For nearly all of this time an iPhone has been my only Apple product.

It's difficult to think back to a time before the iPhone. Smart phones had resistive touch screens, you had to push hard and use a stylus to get reasonable touch precision. PDAs typically didn't have Internet connectivity and data plans from cell carriers were expensive. Voicemail was something you dialed in to check. Apple's iPhone changed the definition of what it meant to be a smartphone. This was so disruptive that it basically drove Blackberry, Nokia, Ericsson and Sony out of the smart phone business.

I've been quite happy with the iPhone. It's simple, reliable and relatively extendable via apps.

Apple does restrict what you can do to the iPhone. You won't have full control over your iPhone unless it has been jailbroken. Music management is restricted to iTunes. By making choices for the end user in terms of what they can and can't do, Apple is presenting their vision of how to use their products. Contrast this with a PC where you can load any compatible operating system and program. Android phones are generally more open than iPhones, letting you install software from 3rd party repositories etc. There are tradeoffs from this software openness. The level of malware on Android is alarmingly high, 97% of all mobile malware is on Android, according to a Forbes article (2014-03-24).

A few years ago I picked up a Nexus 10 Android tablet. It works well for some small amount of writing blog posts and documents, browsing the web and reading and writing email. Gmail is my primary email service and Android synchronizes seamlessly with that and the other Google services. The first one I received had a minor issue with the backlight bleeding through. The replacement unit only took a few minutes to configure and resynchronize with my account, pulling down all of the applications I had downloaded as well as all of the settings that had been customized.

Having been happy with an Android tablet and an iPhone I decided to use my Verizon phone upgrade to switch from the iPhone 5 to the Samsung Galaxy S5.

Here are some thoughts about the S5.

Positives

• Google's swipe input on-screen keyboard. Much faster input than the individual letter approach of the iOS keyboard.
• The larger size fits well in my pocket. The smooth edges of the body help with making it feel small when walking around with it, although I don't use a phone case/cover.
• Fantastic screen, vibrant colors and resolution. The viewing angle is amazing. The larger screen makes the phone more comfortable to use. The iPhone 5 screen seems small now.
• Google services integration works well (more about this later)
• Photos taken with the phone automatically sync and are backed up to my Google account
• Palm swipe for screenshot. This is a neat idea and looks to be Samsung specific.

Negatives

Preinstalled software

The pre-installed Samsung and Verizon software is a disaster.  A short list of applications you probably don't want:

• VZNavigator (and service)
• This Verizon application appears to exist to trick customers into signing up for a monthly service at $4.99/month. Customers may believe they need this service in order to have navigation on their phones and may not be aware of the built-in Google Maps or the free applications like Waze.
• VZ Protect, Verizon email, NFC mobile, Verizon tones, Verizon Messenger and Verizon Cloud
• Maybe these are good applications but you won't get a choice to install them, and you can't uninstall them. I've hidden or disabled these.

  Apps I've disabled

  Apps I've hidden.

Siri vs Google now

Reminders

I liked using Siri for reminders. Siri was very good at natural language requests. Almost daily I would use Siri to add reminders on my drive home. With Siri you can add reminders by speaking in the form of: "remind me when I arrive home to do XXX" or "remind me at 8am to do XXX".

Google Now has a similar speech driven reminders feature. From the images below you can see Google Now understanding the words you spoke, but the service isn't able to turn that into an actual reminder. If you ask it to "remind me when I get to work to do XXX" Google Now will do a google search.

Google did a search instead of creating a reminder

Another search instead of a reminder...

Google figured out the simpler reminder request

You have to change the way you ask it to remind you and use the form like "remind me to do XXX". Then, when the service asks you "when" you can try to say "when I arrive at work". The speech to text looks solid, it got the correct words, but it just wasn't able to determine the meaning from the text.

No visual voicemail

• A fancy smartphone and I have to dial in and use the keypad to navigate my voicemail? Or I can pay $2.99/month. This is really a Verizon issue but AT&T has had visual voicemail included with the iPhone since the day it was released. 
• Want visual voicemail functionality without a monthly fee? Google voice can do that. It is pretty easy to configure and provides a feature that iPhone visual voicemail lacks, voice to text transcription, so you can read voicemails.

The out-of-the box setup experience

• Samsung wants you to setup some cloud thing, Verizon wants to do the same kinds of things. Most users might be tricked into signing up or setting up these services. It makes the initial device setup feel clunky.
• It took about 30 minutes to uninstall or hide all of the Samsung and Verizon trash applications.

Android is open (if there is root available for your device)

• Because Apple controls and locks the iPhone down so much I never really felt like my iPhone was mine.  Samsung has made this even more obvious with hourly Samsung security update reminders. You can't turn these off, the only option is to cancel each one and be reminded an hour or so later. Or you can accept automatic updates that won't let you know what they are updating.
• Since I started this post Geohot of iPhone jailbreaking fame, among other things, has released a root for the Verizon Galazy S5. It took a few months for this to come out and there isn't any reason to believe that it will be possible on all Android devices. Android manufacturers aren't making it easy for the owner of the phone to exercise full control over their devices. If this attitude changed it might be a valuable differentiator between Android and iPhone.

Google needs to do more to ensure that the Android experience is designed for the customer. Solidly designed devices and a great operating system have been made into a wasteland of overlapping and poorly written applications by both device manufacturers and cellular providers. Manufacturers and cellular providers are using these devices to push unnecessary services to their customers.

Apple has wisely kept the cellular providers out of the software area of the phone and it shows with a much cleaner user experience. Their devices are simple to setup and the stock applications are polished and useful.

Android may be winning the sales numbers but I suspect this is mostly driven by cost. Android smartphones are the new flip-phones.

Conclusion

I'm glad I tried out one of the leading Android smartphones. Its been several months since switching to the S5 and using it on a daily basis. I had been wondering if I was missing out on something by using only iPhones. If the iPhone 6 has a larger screen, like the S5, I'll be considering upgrading and selling the S5. The S5 has the potential to be a great device but its just too hard to get to the smooth and polished experience that Apple offers out-of-the box with the iPhone.

I'd recommend that anyone that is happy with their iPhone but interested in the S5's larger screen to consider waiting for the next iPhone to see what improvements it brings. If you use your phone as much as I do its not worth even a few hundred dollars to be stuck with a device you aren't happy with until your next upgrade cycle comes around.