I am a big fan of the iphone, a skeptic won over by the quality of the ipod touch, then upgrading to the 4s. I was very happy.
IOS5 was the peak and it was downhill from there. IOS6 ruined several good things and then IOS7 was Apple saying "We're never going to let you have your old iphone experience back." Literally, the product is no longer available for sale. I can buy some crappy, flat-design monstrosity that's called an iphone but it ain't what I liked. Apple's curator attitude was also a mixed blessing. When it worked, you had a device that was put together intuitively with a snappy interface and no drama. When it didn't work, you had bad decisions rammed down your throat.
The shiny really wore off as familiarity allowed me to discover serious design oversights that were never addressed like random battery drains, mail accounts glitching for no reason requiring deleting and adding them back in again, the draconian shackling of all media inputs to the itunes bloatware, etc. I'm also not a fan of how the hardware eventually breaks due to design oversights. The damn charge port keeps shorting out cutting audio outputs. When they redesigned the port, they went with some proprietary crap instead of standardizing.
I've used android phones in the past and been mostly frustrated with them. Keyboards felt glitchy, interface seemed more obtuse, and the phone seems to get in the way of itself a lot more. Mostly I've seen Galaxies. Troubleshooting my girlfriend's two phones shows that the other manufacturers can give me just as many headaches as iphone.
I'm looking to buy a phone, not a religion. I've been told good things about the moto x but am not sure what a good Android for me would be. I don't care about chasing the latest features. I'd like a phone whose actual case is tough enough I don't need to go to Otterbox. I don't know if anyone makes a decent durable Android. Aside from that, I'm looking for a decent build quality so it won't break just sitting in my pocket, good battery life, a minimum of BS from the software end so I'm not stuck troubleshooting my stupid phone for hours on end, and zero bloatware forced upon me by the carrier. There's no bloatware on my 4S from Sprint but my girlfriend's android loaded a ton of crap from Boost when she activated it. Don't know if there's any way around that with other carriers. I would like it to be an unlocked phone so I have options. My 4S is locked and of course they don't drop the monthly fee after it's been "paid off" at the end of two years. I can get another phone and lock myself in for another two years but I'd much rather just run a phone for longer and not pay the extra.
I prize stability and reliability over glitz and bling. Cutting edge that doesn't work right isn't worth a damn. I'm looking at you, Siri. Wonderful idea but is still essentially half-broken and never got any better from the day it was launched. Works just well enough that you want to rely on it and just badly enough that you want to throw the phone through a wall.
Any recommendations?
IOS5 was the peak and it was downhill from there. IOS6 ruined several good things and then IOS7 was Apple saying "We're never going to let you have your old iphone experience back." Literally, the product is no longer available for sale. I can buy some crappy, flat-design monstrosity that's called an iphone but it ain't what I liked. Apple's curator attitude was also a mixed blessing. When it worked, you had a device that was put together intuitively with a snappy interface and no drama. When it didn't work, you had bad decisions rammed down your throat.
The shiny really wore off as familiarity allowed me to discover serious design oversights that were never addressed like random battery drains, mail accounts glitching for no reason requiring deleting and adding them back in again, the draconian shackling of all media inputs to the itunes bloatware, etc. I'm also not a fan of how the hardware eventually breaks due to design oversights. The damn charge port keeps shorting out cutting audio outputs. When they redesigned the port, they went with some proprietary crap instead of standardizing.
I've used android phones in the past and been mostly frustrated with them. Keyboards felt glitchy, interface seemed more obtuse, and the phone seems to get in the way of itself a lot more. Mostly I've seen Galaxies. Troubleshooting my girlfriend's two phones shows that the other manufacturers can give me just as many headaches as iphone.
I'm looking to buy a phone, not a religion. I've been told good things about the moto x but am not sure what a good Android for me would be. I don't care about chasing the latest features. I'd like a phone whose actual case is tough enough I don't need to go to Otterbox. I don't know if anyone makes a decent durable Android. Aside from that, I'm looking for a decent build quality so it won't break just sitting in my pocket, good battery life, a minimum of BS from the software end so I'm not stuck troubleshooting my stupid phone for hours on end, and zero bloatware forced upon me by the carrier. There's no bloatware on my 4S from Sprint but my girlfriend's android loaded a ton of crap from Boost when she activated it. Don't know if there's any way around that with other carriers. I would like it to be an unlocked phone so I have options. My 4S is locked and of course they don't drop the monthly fee after it's been "paid off" at the end of two years. I can get another phone and lock myself in for another two years but I'd much rather just run a phone for longer and not pay the extra.
I prize stability and reliability over glitz and bling. Cutting edge that doesn't work right isn't worth a damn. I'm looking at you, Siri. Wonderful idea but is still essentially half-broken and never got any better from the day it was launched. Works just well enough that you want to rely on it and just badly enough that you want to throw the phone through a wall.
Any recommendations?
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