Wish me luck! Switching from iPhone to Android.

I am less that impressed with the iPhone 4S, and my iPhone 3GS is getting long in the tooth.

I am now due for an upgrade, and either tonight or tomorrow I intend to get the AT&T Samsung Galaxy SII Skyrocket.

Pretty much I spent 30 minutes playing with one at the AT&T store today, and I sorta fell in love. ()

Any last words to encourage or talk me out of it, or even just give me good general "moving from iPhone to Android" advice?

Thanks!

Ask the salesborg if they let you install apps from 3rd party vendors (AT&T sometimes blocks this feature on phones). If they don't, then head on over to the Android Central forums and XDA forums to see how easy it is to root your phone. You will want to do this, because of Amazon's App Store. They give away a free app every day (good apps, too, not shitty ones), and additionally, they have an emulator feature which allows you to play with an app before you buy it or install it on your phone.

Generally, you should be able to find the same apps for Android that exist on iOS (though not always), most of them will be identical to the iOS version (but again, not always).

Verizon has a lot of good free apps.

I wish you luck - honestly. I like my iPhone 4, but it's just a phone.

Honestly, I hope other companies continually 1-up apple. We'll get much better phones that way.

Good luck. Watch out for malware apps. They be aplenty on droid.

You make me embarassed to be an Apple customer.

Got it today.

This is going to sound extreme, but if Steve Jobs were still alive I would want to kill him for robbing me of what a mini-computer cell phone should and could be.

Fuck, I LOVE this phone!

AT&T's bloatware seems to be ever expanding, so rooting and removing is a good idea.

Its on a phone-by-phone basis that AT&T allows it. It was originally blocked on my phone, AT&T pushed out an update to allow you to install third party apps, not only was it a bitch to get working on my phone, but when I did get it working, it killed MMS on my phone, so I was forced to do a factory reset to get MMS back, and I lost the ability to install third party apps.

Also, check out the Android Central, Android Buffet, and All About Android podcasts. Not only will they give you reviews of apps, but they'll also alert you to issues with Android or your phone that AT&T can't be arsed to do. Don't bother with the podcast by the Podnutz guys, they're Scientologists.

Meh, there's probably less than 100 out there, and Google's good about killing them when they're discovered. (Note the piece which claimed a 400+% increase in Android malware didn't bother saying how many apps there actually were. This tells me that the actual number of apps is really low.)

So, how much do you want for your iPhone?

I've only ever had my one Andriod phone, but I've been able to get it to do about 95% of what I've wanted it to do. I mostly use it for Internet browsing, and it's decently fast and crashes far less often than browsers on my laptop.

It used to load YouTube videos very slowly, to the point that if it wasn't a 15-second cat video it wasn't worth trying to watch it on the phone. Couldn't listen to a 3-minute music video without lots of starts and stops. And other videos just wouldn't load at all. No biggie, because it's not like I have to watch videos on my little phone all the time.

But it recently went through a round of updates, and now this phone (that I've had now for about 1.5 years) loads many different kinds of videos astonishingly rapidly! Yay!

Sorry, I'm keeping it as a solid backup.

Ok, if that's how you feel. I'm afraid I've no choice but to sic the Podnutz guys on you.

I got my first Android phone a few months back.

I can't live without it now. It positively rocks. I've also got Verizon's 4G service, so if I'm in an area covered by the 4G network (and, being in Silicon Valley, I almost always am), the download speeds are pretty awesome.

Consumer Reports just top recommended the Android Bionic for Verizon.

I [-]won't[/-] don't have Verizon.

Ok, silly question... is there an easy way "check for updates" for my Apps like on the iPhone in the iTunes store? Or do I just wait til the notifications doohickey tells me there's an update and react accordingly?

Sort of. Download and install AppBrain (its free, BTW), its basically a more logical skin for the Android Market, and it'll allow you to easily see if you need to update any apps. Its also easier to find apps in AppBrain than the Android Market.

Just click the ap store on the iphone and hit the update tab...

Hmmmm... I said "like on the iPhone", not "on the iPhone".

If Samsung and Google get it right, Ice Cream Sandwich + SG SII =

^^^ The hardest thing for me is remembering to hit the hard menu button for additional settings and stuff. I have to get in the habit of checking out what's available through that sucker.

For example, I downloaded Winamp, intending to use that as my default music player, but I couldn't find the "Shuffle" feature for my playlists, and I thought, "wow this sucks!"

I was on the verge of uninstalling it when I thought, "hey, let's see what THIS button bring up!" and of course, there it was.

Hard to get used to, that (virtually) buttonless iPhone I had for two and a half years, but I'm loving the Android experience anyway.

I won't debate personal preference and I'm happy you're happy. But, and this is an honest question, what can your Android phone do that my iPhone 3GS cannot (with the obvious exception of 4G)?

I'm due for my two year upgrade next week and I'll consider it if Android can wow me. So far, it has not. For instance, I keep hearing about this third party Android e-mail client. Why? The native iPhone client does everything I want for both work and personal e-mail.

It's hard to explain... it's not so much a what can it do, but more like how can it do what it does?

With the iPhone, pretty much everything you can do has been hand-picked for you by Apple.

With Android, you can do anything the iPhone can, but you can choose HOW.

Music. Both can play music. With the iPhone, you have to use the iPod app (now just called "Music"). With Android, if I don't like the stock music player, I can get any of 100 other music players, each with their own pros and cons.

That's just one example.

And let me be clear, the iPhone is a great device. Earlier I was shooting my mouth off with the euphoria of having a new toy. Honestly, even now though, I still prefer the way the Android paradigm works compared to the Apple way of doing things, but that's not to say I think it's better for everyone.

If you like your 3GS, and it's been working for you, and you need to upgrade, by all means go with the iPhone 4S. It's a great device.

One final word, my BIGGEST reason I switched to the Android phone is that I use the piss out if my web browser. The iPhone's screen is friggin' DINKY compared to the big ass screen on new Android phone.

Also, my new phone is 4G LTE. Apple doesn't have that yet. Will the next iPhone have it? Probably. But I'm usually a "here and now" kinda guy when it comes to my toys.


YMMV with all this.

The iPhone screen is designed for one handed use. Your thumb can cover the entire screen - but not much more. You may or may not like that, but I like one handed, easy used.

But Elwood loves his iPhone, which means the screen must be tiiiiiny.

I haven't heard about this. I've got my work and gmail and other accounts all set up on my Android phone; everything works just fine.

Another flaw, IMHO. Thumb typing is so paleolithic.