Dear all,
I'd like to share my experience with both phones with you.
The IPhone 6S Plus has been my primary phone for the past 2 months. I bought it on launchday and jailbroke it after using it for a while (which unexpectedly turned out to be quite easy, took me a 2 hours to figure it all out) because I needed some additional features (such as f.lux, Twilight on Android, to 'warm' the colors of the screen when it gets dark - to put less strain on the the eyes).
The IPhone 6S Plus is just an amazing phone overall: amazing battery, never crashes, always smooth and almost never stutters, but 2 things bothered me: (1) boredom because of the limited customization abilities and (2) the screen quality seemed much better on the Note 5.
Luxury problems indeed very much!
So I decided to buy a Note 5 a week ago and how now used both phones extensively side-by-side for a week - spending the most of the weekend setting up the Note 5 with my IPhone 6s Plus in my other hand. I now have to decide what to do: return my Note 5 within the 14-days-return-policy or sell my IPhone 6s Plus.
The main differences I experienced:
- The screen of the Note 5 is beautiful with its vibrant colors, much better than the IPhone 6s Plus. The only thing that sucks of the Note 5 screen is the color white: white actually looks yellowish on AMOLED. I'm sure your eyes won't notice it anymore after a while, but having the IPhone 6 next to it you clearly see the difference: when I was scrolling through Google News pages which have a lot of white in it I felt like the screen of the Note 5 was a bit dirty all the time because of the yellowing (I tried change Adaptive display to cinema to basic etc., but the yellowish white is just inherent to AMOLED). Were I to pick between both screens, however, I would definately go for the Note 5.
- I love the customization possibilities of the Note 5 in comparison to the IPhone 6S Plus , being able to design your own homescreen and so on. I got bored of the IPhone 6S Plus, and jailibreaking can only very partly solve this. The Note 5 just blows the IPhone 6S Plus out of the water here. This also helps since the way the Note 5 came out of the box came across as really ugly to me. The cartoonish layout seems to be part of Lollipop and I hope they get rid of it (some of the features are built-in the core it seems and cannot really be changed).
- S-Pen versus 3D touch: the real unique features of each phone. I have hardly used 3D Touch over the past 2 months. I tried to get myself to use it more for peek-and-pop and so on, but found it simpler to just touch normally in the end. To me it only is useful for scrolling the cursor over text. The S-Pen seems much more appealing and allows for much more creativity. I just like the idea of pulling the pen out and do things with it to change things up a little - I never really got this feeling with 3D touch. Hence, I'd much prefer the Pen over 3D Touch.
- App quality: the IPhone 6S Plus is clearly better in this respect. Even apps from Google I found much better designed (visually and usability-wise) in iOS (compare the gmail app on Android to the gmail app on iOS and you'll clearly see the difference). The stock email from Android, the stock browser from Android, all much inferior to their counterparts by iOS. I have searched around on the Google Play Store for alternatives, but my impressions is the apps there simply can't beat the apps for iOS.
- The IPhone 6S Plus is much smoother than the Note 5 in scrolling, animations and so on . There have been many threads on scrolling problems on Android devices (I just read a huge thread on this from April 2015) and I find it embarassing that Android hasn't gotten this right yet. Sure, great hardware on paper, but just making scrolling smooth is impossible? I use my phone as an E-Reader, so I installed Kindle on the Note 5 and used it alongside my IPhone 6S Plus for the same book, and scrolling through pages just gave me a headache on the Note 5 after a while. Every time you turn a page on the Note 5 it hurts the eyes, and this not only holds for Kindle for also for other apps (the browser for instance - don't even get me started on using Chrome on the Note 5 which is installed by default). I tried fiddling with the developer options, changing the animation speeds, disabling them and so on, as well as factory resets, clearing caches, and many other things, but it just doesn't help much. Again, maybe you'll get used to it after a while, but put the phones side-by-side and you'll clearly notice the difference. The IPhone 6S Plus is just much easier on the eye overall in terms of smoothness than the Note 5.
- The Note 5 is much worse on battery than the IPhone 6s Plus . I have fiddled with both phones for hours straight on whilst holding each phone in 1 hand, doing the same tasks, running the same apps, running the same videos, and the IPhone absolutely outperforms here. And this is while my IPhone was fully configured and had a lot of apps running in the background (three apps fetching emails on push for instance) while the Note 5 came fresh out of the box. Given that the battery size of the Note 5 is even larger than the IPhone 6s Plus (3000 mAh versus 2750 mAh) it shouldn't perform so bad in comparison, it just reflects bad programming on the side of Android in comparison to iOS. Of course the Note 5 has fast charging but still this definately shouldn't be necessary.
- The IPhone 6S Plus has much better memory management than the Note 5 . The Note 5 has twice as much memory as the IPhone 6s Plus (4 versus 2 gig of RAM) but again, like the battery, this was not reflected whilst using the phone. Particularly when watching a video, going to other apps, and then going back to the video, 7 out of 10 times the Note 5 had to reload the video from the beginning again, whereas this was almost never the case with the IPhone 6s Plus, even when the latter had much more apps running. Again, this just reflects bad programming on the side of Android in comparison to iOS.
So these issues related to stuttery scrolling/animations, battery and RAM leave a really bad taste in my mouth. The Note 5 is such a superior phone on paper hardware-wise, but do I really have to hand it to the IPhone 6S Plus here simply because its software is much better aligned with its hardware?
So I tried fixing these issues on the Note 5. I have spent days going through threads and carrying out the steps below. They did help to some extent, but the IPhone 6S Plus still blows the Note 5 out of the water in these areas.
- The Note 5 apparently comes with a lot of unnecessary garbage that affects battery life and memory . I have followed the now-famous guide by rlsrouf debloating the Note 5 and disabled 178 system apps and bloatware (178 is the lower end of the spectrum of bloatware to disable). However, this also made many features disappear (e.g. the ability to put an Action Note on the homescreen wit the S Pen, having the calendar as a Widget), so I had to go through each of these 178 to figure out why I couldn't do certain things anymore. This took me longer than actually figuring out how to jailbreak the IPhone 6S Plus, and I have not figured out most of it yet.
And the worst thing of this is, having disabled these 178 things I don't know the features that I am missing now since they just disappear from the phone (for instance, I noted by incident on youtube that there was a function to put an Action Note on the Home screen and only then figured out that I had disabled it as one of these 178 things). Having to disable such an amount of garbage to increase memory performance is really bad.
- Relatedly, many threads have been posted about the 'Cell Standy battery drain' (particularly affecting Verizon Phones, but have also read about bad AT&T experiences). I have gone through countless of threads, disabling voice-over-LTE/HQ calling, disabling wifi when the phone is asleep, and so on and so forth, but the Cell Standby still drains much battery. In many threads there seems now the be a concensus that this is a bug that has not been fixed yet. Seriously? After 3 months this huge drain bug is still unfixed and as far as I know has not even been acknowledged by Android/Samsung/providers? Very bad.
So now I am hesitating which phone to keep :
- Keep the Note 5 which has a superior screen (despite the yellowish white) and allows for much more creativity through its customization options and the Pen but having to deal with with bad software integration with worse battery + worse memory management + less smooth scrolling and animations + worse apps?
- Or keep the IPhone 6S Plus, which just works perfectly all around and gets me through the day easily, does everything I want smoothly, but which allows for very little creativity and bores me. I am leaning towards the IPhone 6S Plus now, especially since I like reading on my phone and tend to get a headache from going through stuttery animations/scrolling all the time. My brain says IPhone 6S Plus, but my heart says Note 5. Maybe I should just stick to the Note 5 and hope my eyes get adjusted to less smoothness, which they probably will, but I'm afraid it'll have me longing back to the IPhone 6S Plus after awhile.
I'd like to share my experience with both phones with you.
The IPhone 6S Plus has been my primary phone for the past 2 months. I bought it on launchday and jailbroke it after using it for a while (which unexpectedly turned out to be quite easy, took me a 2 hours to figure it all out) because I needed some additional features (such as f.lux, Twilight on Android, to 'warm' the colors of the screen when it gets dark - to put less strain on the the eyes).
The IPhone 6S Plus is just an amazing phone overall: amazing battery, never crashes, always smooth and almost never stutters, but 2 things bothered me: (1) boredom because of the limited customization abilities and (2) the screen quality seemed much better on the Note 5.
Luxury problems indeed very much!
So I decided to buy a Note 5 a week ago and how now used both phones extensively side-by-side for a week - spending the most of the weekend setting up the Note 5 with my IPhone 6s Plus in my other hand. I now have to decide what to do: return my Note 5 within the 14-days-return-policy or sell my IPhone 6s Plus.
The main differences I experienced:
- The screen of the Note 5 is beautiful with its vibrant colors, much better than the IPhone 6s Plus. The only thing that sucks of the Note 5 screen is the color white: white actually looks yellowish on AMOLED. I'm sure your eyes won't notice it anymore after a while, but having the IPhone 6 next to it you clearly see the difference: when I was scrolling through Google News pages which have a lot of white in it I felt like the screen of the Note 5 was a bit dirty all the time because of the yellowing (I tried change Adaptive display to cinema to basic etc., but the yellowish white is just inherent to AMOLED). Were I to pick between both screens, however, I would definately go for the Note 5.
- I love the customization possibilities of the Note 5 in comparison to the IPhone 6S Plus , being able to design your own homescreen and so on. I got bored of the IPhone 6S Plus, and jailibreaking can only very partly solve this. The Note 5 just blows the IPhone 6S Plus out of the water here. This also helps since the way the Note 5 came out of the box came across as really ugly to me. The cartoonish layout seems to be part of Lollipop and I hope they get rid of it (some of the features are built-in the core it seems and cannot really be changed).
- S-Pen versus 3D touch: the real unique features of each phone. I have hardly used 3D Touch over the past 2 months. I tried to get myself to use it more for peek-and-pop and so on, but found it simpler to just touch normally in the end. To me it only is useful for scrolling the cursor over text. The S-Pen seems much more appealing and allows for much more creativity. I just like the idea of pulling the pen out and do things with it to change things up a little - I never really got this feeling with 3D touch. Hence, I'd much prefer the Pen over 3D Touch.
- App quality: the IPhone 6S Plus is clearly better in this respect. Even apps from Google I found much better designed (visually and usability-wise) in iOS (compare the gmail app on Android to the gmail app on iOS and you'll clearly see the difference). The stock email from Android, the stock browser from Android, all much inferior to their counterparts by iOS. I have searched around on the Google Play Store for alternatives, but my impressions is the apps there simply can't beat the apps for iOS.
- The IPhone 6S Plus is much smoother than the Note 5 in scrolling, animations and so on . There have been many threads on scrolling problems on Android devices (I just read a huge thread on this from April 2015) and I find it embarassing that Android hasn't gotten this right yet. Sure, great hardware on paper, but just making scrolling smooth is impossible? I use my phone as an E-Reader, so I installed Kindle on the Note 5 and used it alongside my IPhone 6S Plus for the same book, and scrolling through pages just gave me a headache on the Note 5 after a while. Every time you turn a page on the Note 5 it hurts the eyes, and this not only holds for Kindle for also for other apps (the browser for instance - don't even get me started on using Chrome on the Note 5 which is installed by default). I tried fiddling with the developer options, changing the animation speeds, disabling them and so on, as well as factory resets, clearing caches, and many other things, but it just doesn't help much. Again, maybe you'll get used to it after a while, but put the phones side-by-side and you'll clearly notice the difference. The IPhone 6S Plus is just much easier on the eye overall in terms of smoothness than the Note 5.
- The Note 5 is much worse on battery than the IPhone 6s Plus . I have fiddled with both phones for hours straight on whilst holding each phone in 1 hand, doing the same tasks, running the same apps, running the same videos, and the IPhone absolutely outperforms here. And this is while my IPhone was fully configured and had a lot of apps running in the background (three apps fetching emails on push for instance) while the Note 5 came fresh out of the box. Given that the battery size of the Note 5 is even larger than the IPhone 6s Plus (3000 mAh versus 2750 mAh) it shouldn't perform so bad in comparison, it just reflects bad programming on the side of Android in comparison to iOS. Of course the Note 5 has fast charging but still this definately shouldn't be necessary.
- The IPhone 6S Plus has much better memory management than the Note 5 . The Note 5 has twice as much memory as the IPhone 6s Plus (4 versus 2 gig of RAM) but again, like the battery, this was not reflected whilst using the phone. Particularly when watching a video, going to other apps, and then going back to the video, 7 out of 10 times the Note 5 had to reload the video from the beginning again, whereas this was almost never the case with the IPhone 6s Plus, even when the latter had much more apps running. Again, this just reflects bad programming on the side of Android in comparison to iOS.
So these issues related to stuttery scrolling/animations, battery and RAM leave a really bad taste in my mouth. The Note 5 is such a superior phone on paper hardware-wise, but do I really have to hand it to the IPhone 6S Plus here simply because its software is much better aligned with its hardware?
So I tried fixing these issues on the Note 5. I have spent days going through threads and carrying out the steps below. They did help to some extent, but the IPhone 6S Plus still blows the Note 5 out of the water in these areas.
- The Note 5 apparently comes with a lot of unnecessary garbage that affects battery life and memory . I have followed the now-famous guide by rlsrouf debloating the Note 5 and disabled 178 system apps and bloatware (178 is the lower end of the spectrum of bloatware to disable). However, this also made many features disappear (e.g. the ability to put an Action Note on the homescreen wit the S Pen, having the calendar as a Widget), so I had to go through each of these 178 to figure out why I couldn't do certain things anymore. This took me longer than actually figuring out how to jailbreak the IPhone 6S Plus, and I have not figured out most of it yet.
And the worst thing of this is, having disabled these 178 things I don't know the features that I am missing now since they just disappear from the phone (for instance, I noted by incident on youtube that there was a function to put an Action Note on the Home screen and only then figured out that I had disabled it as one of these 178 things). Having to disable such an amount of garbage to increase memory performance is really bad.
- Relatedly, many threads have been posted about the 'Cell Standy battery drain' (particularly affecting Verizon Phones, but have also read about bad AT&T experiences). I have gone through countless of threads, disabling voice-over-LTE/HQ calling, disabling wifi when the phone is asleep, and so on and so forth, but the Cell Standby still drains much battery. In many threads there seems now the be a concensus that this is a bug that has not been fixed yet. Seriously? After 3 months this huge drain bug is still unfixed and as far as I know has not even been acknowledged by Android/Samsung/providers? Very bad.
So now I am hesitating which phone to keep :
- Keep the Note 5 which has a superior screen (despite the yellowish white) and allows for much more creativity through its customization options and the Pen but having to deal with with bad software integration with worse battery + worse memory management + less smooth scrolling and animations + worse apps?
- Or keep the IPhone 6S Plus, which just works perfectly all around and gets me through the day easily, does everything I want smoothly, but which allows for very little creativity and bores me. I am leaning towards the IPhone 6S Plus now, especially since I like reading on my phone and tend to get a headache from going through stuttery animations/scrolling all the time. My brain says IPhone 6S Plus, but my heart says Note 5. Maybe I should just stick to the Note 5 and hope my eyes get adjusted to less smoothness, which they probably will, but I'm afraid it'll have me longing back to the IPhone 6S Plus after awhile.
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