Gadgetory

welcome to day 30 of my I switch to Android blog I realized I haven't actually done as many updates as I did when I did my switch to Windows Phone 8 and there's a very good reason for this so I went from iOS to Windows Phone 8 back to iOS and now to Android and the reason I haven't really had much to say is I haven't really thought of anything to complain about and in my first two videos I really did cover most of what I thought was great about the platform as well as about the HTC One in particular so I've been kind of sitting here thinking what can I possibly say other than I'm switching to Android and this will likely be my permanent home for the foreseeable future now with that said there are some interesting competitors in the Android space this right here is the Galaxy s4 so I'm going to treat this video as my final thoughts on Android in general as well as some of the observations I've made about the HTC One while using it for 30 days and a little bit of comparison between the 1 and the s4 which I've now had my hands on for about 10 days so we'll start with the HTC One if I had to complain about something in Sense 5.0 it's the fact that five five plus or whatever they're calling it now it would be the inelegant implementation of the stock music player so the stock music player is media music the stock music player is well integrated with the OS but the navigation isn't that great and what I discovered myself doing because it doesn't have a built-in EQ is I found myself trying to find an alternative music player so the ones that I tried were whoops excuse me rocket player as well as winamp so these have the advantages of EQ settings but they don't integrate with the Sense 5.0 UI as well as the stock one does so for example with the stock one I can have a lock screen that has a music player whereas with the other ones I can't have that on the lock screen but I can implement it here but even there their integrations here aren't that great and they have some strange behaviors like for example if i plug in my headphones right now you're gonna see that it's just going to start playing music even though I don't necessary we want it to do that give it a second give it a second yeah it'll probably start doing that see there you go so I have to actually tell it to go away every time I plug something into the top of the device so I wish there was one that was as well integrated as the stock one but sounded a little better and had better navigation the market I wish it kind of had a convenient favourites list of apps and this one right here app backup and restore is really cool so what it does is it just creates a file that you dump on to your computer and then you copy that into the into the folder on another phone and what happens is as soon as you launch it you can restore and it'll install all the apps that you had installed on the device so I use this when I went from using the HTC one only to using the galaxy s4 as well because it allowed me to just load my entire app load out onto it now I remember in the tablet version of Android on honeycomb in the market you were able to just see all of the apps that you downloaded before and I wasn't able to find that but that doesn't mean it's not there and I found this was a little bit inelegant so I was getting I got prompted by every app are you sure yes are you sure do you agree yes yes so it took it took a long time to install all the apps even though I had the full list so that's something that I that I wish Android had because with iOS it's simple you backup your phone you restore your phone and everything's exactly the way you left it I did find the people app a little bit confusing so I'm I still I'm not really using the stock Android desktop and I'm not using blinkfeed I'm just using this list right here which is more like Gingerbread so I did find the people app I should probably turn that I did find the people app a little bit confusing a lot of the links that it suggested weren't right and it didn't pick up on a lot of the links that I ended up setting up manually but once I did set them all up manually it's it's great except that it doesn't really allow me to pick do I want to pull that person's Facebook picture do I want to use my own picture that I took of them speak so that I know who I'm talking to because not everyone uses a picture of themselves for Facebook so for example when my wife calls it's a picture of my baby because that's what she uses for a facebook picture I can't figure out how to change multitasking is still a highlight of the platform for me I love this I do not miss the hardware button in fact going to the s4 which is more like the button loadout that I'm used to where you've got your context menu button here you've got your hard home button here and then your soft back button here this is more like what I was used to with Android but I didn't miss it at all with the HTC One I found that back home and then multitask was really all I needed because that that context button has been replaced with these dots up here and I actually find it a little bit easier to press so I mean when I'm holding the device I hold it like this so when I'm gonna go back I can reach back okay that's fine it's a little bit of a stretch but I don't go back as much as I might want to access context because that's your your new tab your bookmarks although all those kinds of things which I actually like having on the right versus having on the bottom left like that so yeah I thought it was great the cameras still awesome on the HTC One I know I've talked about this before I I played around with Zoe's or Zoe's which are those sort of 3/4 second clips that you take and then you can take some pictures during it I used them a little bit at first but then I really found myself not really bothering with it and just using video a lot more because it's so quick you can go from you can go from lock screen to recording a video in that long and so what I just found myself doing is if I wanted a four second video clip all I'm gonna take a four second video clip that's what I'll do so the Zoe's didn't really I didn't really matter that much to me but I do think they're a better implementation than Samsung's thing with the still photo and the audio recording that goes with it I'd rather have the video and then I can capture a few still photos at the same time I do on the other hand find myself watching highlight reels of previous days it is so cool if we go into my photos I'm just gonna pick a random day such as for example this day I think we were we did a video shoot so let's just see what it comes up with on its own so here's me dressing up the cat here's our actor as well as our film crew hears me and diesel crammed into the back it's a really cool way to look back at a day of of events so here's that we did some behind-the-scenes footage of this particular shoot so that's what a lot of it is but yeah it's just it's a it's just really cool so yeah I do find myself using this but not not Zoe's at all the feeling of solidity with this phone is outstanding it's really unlike any other device other than an Apple device that I've ever seen so I want you to watch the pressure my thumb's are exerting on the phone here as hard as I might press I can't get the phone to flex which is I mean I kind of took it for granted a little bit going from iOS to this phone going from an iPhone 4 which is also a very solid device to this one I was like oh yeah well whatever no devices slice of course they do this is the Galaxy s4 and with this one you can probably see that Bend particularly on my right thumb I'm putting about the same amount of pressure on it is the s4 a solidly built device you know what probably it's better than the s3 it feels better to hold than the s3 with the squared corners but it befell the metal backing which Samsung sacrifices in order to get things like the optional wireless charging back cover as well as being able to integrate your cover like the front case cover with the back cover and have it all be one piece in order to give you that microSD upgrade as well as the removable battery these are the sacrifices Samsung has made in order to to bring you those those functionalities but I I like the feeling of this and the honestly the finish on the aluminum is one of the best ones I've encountered in spite of the fact that it's a phone it's still immaculate most brought even brushed or anodized aluminum surfaces every time you put them down on something solid like a table you doesn't want a table and make up they slide a little bit you go scratch dude I'm sure I just scratched it not with the one I really didn't get that impression at all she does get hot when she's under load my hand got a bit sweaty the other day when I was sitting in the car with navigation running in the background and I was watching a video on it so navigation was running so that the driver could hear the navigation things but I was sitting watching a video she got toasty whenever you whenever you share your wireless network with people it does get quite toasty but the flips that is at least it has the aluminum backing to help dissipate the heat so yeah it's more hot to my hand but that probably means my processors are actually running cooler you know what I actually hear something I should have mentioned when I said I didn't miss the the hard button here is Windows Phone probably helped a lot as a buffer to help me break that habit because I mean honestly the search button is pretty much useless I never used it the windows button is good and the back button is good so essentially I had two buttons I had home and back which home and back so it's quite possible then that was part of the learning experience there as well because I went from a platform with just a home button to a platform with a home button a useless button and a back button to this and I haven't really used the s for super extensively yet HTC actually had there's some leaked pictures that the HTC One in China is gonna have this back piece removable with a microSD slot you know what I already find myself wishing I had a microSD slot my 16 gig iPhone never used the whole thing never found that to be a problem this is 32 gigs I've already almost filled it and a big part of the reason for that is I'm shooting so much HD video with it so much 1080p video that I find myself filling it also it's so much of a bigger screen it's great for content so when I don't take something like a Seagate wireless plus out with me it's nice to be able to load some videos on here and with wireless AC I can transfer things to myself very quickly and there's all these good things about it that really mean I would love to be able to throw a 64 gig microSD in there so I I wish HTC would reconsider and do an HTC One Plus or something for other regions where they implement the micro sd but I really don't see it happening widgets are cool but honestly I am as a user who who sees pretty well and is used to the iOS experience and has this great multitasking interface where I can see the last nine things that I've done I didn't find myself really using any of them it comes with a lot of stock widgets that you can that you can add just by going down here and you can add a calendar and bookmarks and FM radio and all that kind of cool I just didn't find myself using it I prefer the density of this interface with folders where I can put almost everything I need and just put it here on one page and I'll just open up the app or and instead of going back to the home screen so you know like home screen home screen to get back to the Google one going like this to find my appropriate widget if I just go like this most of the things that I use a lot of the time like my Gmail my calendar are within the last nine things that I've used so there's very few situations where I would need a widget in order to make it quicker for me to access it so there you go oh oh and like compared to widgets I'd much rather have things implemented into the drop-down menu here like my power toggles I just realized I have my Wi-Fi off this I use all the time and this is a very natural way for me to access it compared to click click left left right right or whatever else I happen to be doing so this is something iOS users I'm sure will appreciate is how simple it is to set a song as your ringtone on Android I'm sure every other platform has been taking this for granted for ever but as a longtime iOS user I was like really I just like long click it and then set to be my ringtone holy crap that's the easiest thing ever so that was a really neat thing to to run into and I think at the end of the day here's what it comes down to after my 30-day trial yes I'm switching to Android I'm still gonna be open to trying new platforms such as Ubuntu phone or blackberry actually there's a blackberry in the mail so I might I might have to kind of cheat on my new my new love Android very very soon Skype integration was much better than Windows Phone similar to iOS so that's something that I realize I haven't talked about yet but there you go guys thanks for coming along for the ride oh right I just realized I never really did any of the talking about galaxy s4 other than the ruggedness of it so I think the thing that I find most strikingly different between TouchWiz and cents is that TouchWiz feels very very bubbly very happy you know it's all super bright colors and sort of big big friendly icons and sort of easy easy to easy to touch whereas Sense feels more a little more more elegant but maybe not as maybe not as easy to use like it's really cool the way TouchWiz already has this this implemented so you can switch things on and off I think the easy mode on TouchWiz makes it the kind of thing where I'm gonna see if I can find see if I can find easy mode I was playing around with it before and it's the kind of thing where I'd go okay yeah I'm gonna get an HTC one but if I was gonna get a phone for my mom then I would just give her the s4 because yeah I can't find it right now anyway so easy mode just basically consolidates Android down to like a few buttons s translates really cool I did find that smart stay worked for me and was very helpful the HTC One is sort of just like every other phone where if you're reading something for a long time it'll dim and it'll eventually turn off whereas that doesn't happen with the Samsung phone I personally didn't find the hovering above the screen and it detecting things very helpful at all in things like the browser it would just be zoomed in looking at stuff that I'm just trying to move my finger closer to the screen I just went no just let me touch the touchscreen and I'm good with that what were some of the other things that I found myself I found myself turning off the yeah those ones right away NFC is good gesturing was kind of cool but it's a very unnatural thing for me like for example gesture gesturing to take a call I was like oh well you just do it like this right that didn't work and it wasn't just one so you have to go back and forth kind of slow and I'm looking at it going okay so if I was driving and I had it in a cradle or something like that yeah that's very practical but in everyday use it's probably not the kind of thing that I would use unless I really wanted to use all the features that came with my new phone so thank you for checking this out don't forget to subscribe - tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos and the baby decided to join us because he woke up when we were filming and nobody was there to go get him sorry to say