What's strange to me is that everything Samsung does to try and differentiate themselves just makes me like their phones less. Their hardware design is plastic and cheap feeling and I hate the touchwiz layer they put on top of android with their gimmicky features (camera based gesture controls? - who cares?).
I think Apple, Nokia and even HTC make much nicer hardware (although HTC still puts its Sense on top of android). I really wished Nokia had partnered with google to make the nexus phones instead of joining up with microsoft - then we would have had awesome hardware and a solid vanilla android phone.
I have a Nokia Lumia 920 and other than battery life I am extremely happy with it. WP8 might prove to be a nice middle ground between iOS and Android. If only more people would give it a chance, it's a really stellar experience.
I actually switched to iPhone 5 after a couple months of Lumia 920 usage. Bought it right after release, with the wireless charger and stuff. I really liked the device.
My problem was the fucked up regional annoyances. If you are not in USA, good luck! No full size skydrive photo uploads for you! No Xbox online.. No album covers in music app. A lot of missing apps in store. No this, no that. Well, I have no such problems with iPhone and Android.
BTW: After I switched, I sold my Lumia to a friend and used factory reset before handing the phone. Guess what? There is a known bug in factory reset that bricks the phone and it was apparently not fixed in 2 firmware upgrades that I got during that time :)
Are you in China? Yes, the regional annoyances on the 920 suck. Ironically, they are only an issue on the Nokia phones; the HTC phones (like the HD8) allow you to change to the American app store very easily.
iPhone 5 has a few that are not obvious, even if it does allow me to easily switch to the American app store. Chinese versions of Android are a complete pain, but the devices are easily rooted.
At least it is only software-regional. I've bought the One X in Taiwan when it was brand-new and now I have an Android 4.0 phone that only supports the following languages: Chinese, Simplified Chinese and English (I'm still too scared of Buyer's Remorse to check what else is different).
...that was a pretty cryptic post, what I meant is that it only supports these three languages no matter where I am (different hardware/OS per country). It's like buying a movie on a vacation and then finding out about DVD regions.
I think this is overstated. I switched from a Galaxy S3 to a Nexus 4 recently, and there are several ways in which I find the Nexus to be inferior.
Hardware:
- The Galaxy S3 is noticeable thinner and easier to hold.
- The hardware buttons lead to a more efficient use of space. The GS3 effectively has a larger screen, although the Nexus is roughly the same size as it has an empty, useless space where the S3's buttons are.
- I've never really felt/cared that plastic "looks cheap". It is highly light and durable, and doesn't slide in the hand and on surfaces like the glass Nexus.
Software:
- Samsung's settings toggle notification widget is very convenient, easier to use and with more options than the vanilla equivalent.
- Notifications are clearly separated into sticky and clearable sections, and clearable ones are chronologically ordered. I haven't yet figured out how stock Android organises its notifications, but so far it's been confusing.
- The camera app has several useful features like rapid-fire shooting.
Yes Samsung throws a lot of features at the wall, but they're largely inconsequential, and some of their changes are legitimate improvements.
I've had an S3 (currently an iPhone 5) running both stock TouchWiz and CyanogenMod10.1, which is the closest to stock Android I can get.
The hardware button didn't make sense to me because it made the back and menu buttons much closer to the edge, which lead to accidental presses of those buttons and there was also less space to hold the phone with. I disabled the hardware buttons and had on-screen buttons like the Nexus 4's. The multitasking button made me much faster at switching apps.
The plastic got greasy fast, that's my major complaint. As for thinness, I found an Otterboxed iPhone 5 easier to hold because of the depth. I don't understand this race to thinness because at some point (we may have already hit it), thinner phones are just harder to hold (my opinion). I also wish that phones could be a bit thicker with a bigger battery.
The notification widget is possibly the dumbest thing Samsung did with TouchWiz. No matter what position you were at in the widget (left, middle, far right, whatever), the widget would start to the right and then scroll back to the furthest left. Not only is this annoying, it was completely unnecessary and happened every single time you pulled down the notification shade.
Stock Android also has this widget, by the way. It's called Quick Settings and has more toggles than Samsung (at least in the S3. haven't played with S4 yet) and is customizable. It was also easily accessible by pulling down on the user-specified part of the screen (may have been CM10.1 specific).
Notifications in stock Android can also be easily swiped away, same as S3. I don't see how anyone can't figure out which ones are swipable or not. Use your phone, swipe, if it doesn't swipe, then it won't swipe in the future. It's usually things like voicemail or persistent processes that you started.
Stock Android should have burst mode as well for the camera.
If some of these features don't exist, I apologize. The Cyanogen team may have implemented some of these features on their own, but even so, I hated TouchWiz with every fiber of my being. A refreshed interface comes along with the release of Android 4.0 and Samsung decides to keep the look dated with a Gingerbread-era settings menu. Or the menu button, which should be extinct by now.
I'm testing iOS right now, but when I come back to Android, it will be either an HTC running CyanogenMod or Nexus phone for me.
I think Apple, Nokia and even HTC make much nicer hardware (although HTC still puts its Sense on top of android). I really wished Nokia had partnered with google to make the nexus phones instead of joining up with microsoft - then we would have had awesome hardware and a solid vanilla android phone.