Since the dawn of the smartphone platform, I have been an Android
user. To say that I eventually became
ridiculously biased towards Droids would be an enormous understatement. To me, Droids were easily the better choice
when it came to which platform I thought dominated the smartphone market. Unfortunately, not everyone would agree with
that notion and Apple has their fair share of biased fans.
So what prompted my devotion to Androids?
Thinking back, I would have to admit that I honestly do not know. However the same could be said about people
who favor their beloved iPhones. Why do
they favor Apple devices over Androids?
I speculate that most of them would have the same difficulty answering
that question much like I did.
Until recently, I have never owned an iDevice in my life. I am not unfamiliar with iPhones but being
how I was biased towards Droids, I wondered what would it be like to own one. Having said that, I came up with an idea and
decided that I was going to conduct a social experiment of sorts.
I approached Cricket Wireless and they agreed to provide me with my first
iDevice to try out. The idea was to use
the iPhone for one month and then reevaluate on if or if not I still felt that
Android was in fact the better smartphone platform.
Almost immediately I discovered aspects of the iPhone that I did not like,
most notably was iTunes. I hated the
fact that iTunes was required on my PC and launched every time I plugged the
phone in. Even when my phone wasn’t
plugged in, a service called iTunesHelper was continually running in the
background of my computer. Going in, I
knew that iTunes was going to be required but I felt it was more of a hassle
than anything since Androids do not require a media entity to be continuously
synced to the device.
Another annoyance I discovered were the changes that would occur on my
phone if I plugged it into a computer that was synced to a different iDevice. In some instances, my phone was synced to the
other iDevice’s account and I was given applications that I did not
download. If Apple wanted to require
iTunes on every computer, why did they make it so difficult? I am not saying it is impossible to plug the
device into a computer that is already synced to another account, but it posed
the question of why couldn’t iTunes be universal to all devices and not limited
to one specific account per computer?
After running into issues regarding iTunes, I speculated that I was going
to have trouble getting my existing music onto my phone. With a Droid, while connected to a computer
you can just drag an MP3 onto the device itself or onto the SD card. It was literally that simple. With an iPhone, it was nowhere near that
simplistic. The software wanted to sync
my entire music folder into iTunes. That
was something I did not want to do that since my music folder is shared with
other people in my household. Needless
to say, I had to manually find the files I wanted to add to my iTunes library
and manually sync them to my phone. It
was not hard to do, however I felt a drag and drop method would have been much
easier. I came to find out that previous
versions of iTunes did have a drag and drop method but has since done away with
it.
I did notice that the Cricket Wireless iPhone does not come with their Muve
Music service due to the fact that the iPhone comes standard with iTunes. Muve Music is a Cricket Wireless exclusive
music service and comes with most new Cricket smartphones. In no way does the selection in Muve Music
compare to that of iTunes, however there are some major differences. Muve Music is a free service that is included
in Cricket’s smartphone Android plan.
Users are allowed to download music for free and save them to their
computer or their phone. Aside from
that, users are also allowed to use the music as ringtones, or ring back tones
that replaces the traditional ringing of a phone to that of a selected
song. These are features that are not
available on iTunes. While Muve Music is
included in most of Cricket’s Android smartphones, Cricket iPhone users cannot
take advantage of the service.
While it may seem as if my biased towards Androids is still intact, there
were things about the iPhone I did like.
I did enjoy the iTunes store’s enormous selection. Anything from music, television programs,
movies, and podcast are all available for purchase 24/7. The selection was certainly impressive and
clearly trumps the Android market due to the sheer volume and variety that
iTunes provides. Most application
developers prioritize the Apple platform over any other. This creates a situation where some of the
apps that are available for Apple, are not available for the Android
market. So it was nice to have access to
some of the games and applications that I did not have or was unable to get on
my Droid. I also like the Facetime
feature that allows video chat with other iPhone users. This is something that I would like to see
make its way to the Android platform.
Finally, I took some time to address data and minute usage for the iPhone. I have been a longtime Cricket Wireless customer. My phone bill is literally $50 every single
month for unlimited minutes and unlimited text.
In 2013, I find it somewhat amusing that people still have phone plans
where they are limited to minute usage per month. It kind of reminds me of the early days of
the internet when users would have to pay for minutes to be online instead of
being able to surf the web with unlimited access. Aside from being limited on how many minutes
other carriers restrict users per month, in my opinion iPhone users are
ridiculously overcharged.
Conclusion:
This past month has honestly changed my point of view regarding the
iPhone. I like the device despite some
of the issues I experienced with it.
However if I had to choose, I would choose to stick with the Android platform. To me, I am much more comfortable with
Android since it is extremely simple to use.
Pros:
- Vast selection of multimedia in Apple Store
- Excellent front facing and back camera
- Ability to Facetime with other iPhone users
Cons:
- iTunes is required
- iTunes services run in the computer background taking up system resources
- iTunes has issues when connecting to another computer that is already synced to another Apple ID
- Does not allow Muve Music (Cricket Wireless only)
- Assigning ringtones is complicated process
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