How Does Galaxy Compare To The iPhone?

[Xenon]

Nah, this is not a flame thread

I'm a long time WinMo user and I switched to Android recently. Bought
Galaxy some two months ago. I like it. However, I've never owned an
iPhone, in fact, I never even used an iPhone.

So I am curious as to how the Galaxy compares with Apple's product.
If someone has had extended experience with both, I'd appreciate your
comments.

 

[kam187]

There's so many reviews etc you can find online, so I wont waste time comparing feature by feature, and instead give you a summary.

The iphone OS is very fast, and everything the iphone does is highly tuned. You won't get many wierd bugs like you do with other phones and OS's - BUT this comes at a {big} cost.

Apple decide what features they think are safe and secure and then release them to the user. The problem starts when you want to do other things or add other features - sometimes simple ones. Apple are so paranoid that they don't let tasks run in the background. Any task that looses focus must save its state and resume when its executed again.

The new SDK lets tasks schedule a few things with the OS, like keeping links alive (for MSN etc), but its severly limited. This is why the OS is so fast - only 1 program running at any one time!!

Just to give you an example, the iphone OS didnt even have copy and paste untill version 3 (when the 3GS came out this year). Some apps tried to add the feature but apple wouldnt aprove them on their app store.

Jailbreaking/rooting the iphone is also very dificult. Every time a hole is found apple close it shut in the next update.

Think of the iphone like a clean windows installation running Windows media center. The user can't install much on the base OS, and it all looks pretty and fast. But the user also cant add any features untill they get pushed an update.

Other OS's like symbian and WM have always found it hard to find the balance between - let the user install loads of crap, slow the phone down, and moan its a shit phone - and - don't let the user install much, or sanbox it/limit it, like the iphone model.

You must have seen HTC trying to add their own spin on this with their front ends, but imho android is the first OS to actually get it right.

Now specifically the galaxy, it has all the same things that the iphone has - and a flash on top!. The capacitive screen is as good as the iphone, and the OLED screen is miles ahead.

Overall if you can put up with crashes etc as a consequence of you installing lots of crap on the phone, android is much better. But if you have no clue what you're doing and just want it to work then go for the iphone. Put it this way i'd buy and android but buy my dad a iphone - because i don't need a headache every time it stops working!

 

[Rastaman-FB]

Nah, this is not a flame thread

I'm a long time WinMo user and I switched to Android recently. Bought
Galaxy some two months ago. I like it. However, I've never owned an
iPhone, in fact, I never even used an iPhone.

So I am curious as to how the Galaxy compares with Apple's product.
If someone has had extended experience with both, I'd appreciate your
comments.

im surrounded by ipnone users at work and play with them quite often. the only things iphone users have over galaxy users is these

No pinch multitouch (yet)
No Equaliser for audio
ii5 has messed up 3d graphics engine
better video codecs

apart from that we have a better screen can upgrade our memory so its 40gig and that 32 gig is removable storage rather than in built.

the screen is miles better than iphone
its smaller
we dont need itunes bloatware
our app store doesnt require wifi
were open source so naturally a better dev community

basically iphone is good at being an iphone
i dont think the two are really comparable as galaxy android is a smart phone
iphone is not the 1st to do what it does. winmo has been around for ages and xda have had touch compatability for donkies.

if you want to be fashionable and fell like you belong to something then Iphone is a winner
you want a functional phone that does what you tell it and keeps getting better and better from a smartphone perspective the galaxy wins hands down

EDIT:
screw you KAM you beat me

 

[kam187]

Rastaman, I beat you... 1-0 to me

 

[lior1230]

I have an ipod touch and the galaxy. If only to compare the OS and no features like camera and screen and speakers etc. them i would say iPhoneOS now at the moment is better then the Android BUT Android will overtake it and leave it to breath dust!
the only 1 reason that the iPhone is better is that amount of apps for the i phone like it says in this commercial: YouTube - LEAKED: New iPhone Commercial
that will change soon.
If you look at other features in the OS's than you will find that iphoneOS is more smooth and looks nicer then the basic Android UI. The Android is more compact as there are more then 1 button on its phones so no all options need to be shown on screen or shown at all. About the 1 app at the time its not so true actually. It is very rare when I need to use more than 1 app at the time except music player which the iphone has. More often I find myself closing apps in android that are left open for no good reason and take RAM and battery.

 

[kam187]

The bigest problem about 1 app at a time is things like messaging apps in the background. Only since 3.0 have they been able to schedule data with the OS. Previously if you wanted to stay connected you needed to leave that app in focus. Same for other apps that set alarms etc.

This has changed slightly with 3.0 but it still means you have to use their mechanism and change your servers acordingly (have a proxy server for the app).

Also there are no widgets and stats collecting software is not possible. It drove me nuts when I had the iphone because I was so used to having my RSS feeds in a widget on the screen, and also messaging running 24/7. Having said that I always knew if i pulled the phone out of my pocket it would be on, and not just sudenly dropped to 0% battery or the radio crashed!

 

[Rastaman-FB]

there are alot of apps on iphone yes. most of them you will install and uninstall as most are for gimic purposes

the decent apps are already being or have been ported over to android.

i just wish we had a decent media player with decent equaliser settings, this is androids major downfall


ive never had the radio stack crash or device power off on me, only ever had battery issues and now i dont use the case its fine

 

[Xenon]

Android way of running applications in virtual machines (almost) ensures
that an application crash won't take down anything else with it. I like that
over WinMo.

 

[codesector]

Samsung Galaxy, iPhone, HTC G1:

Galaxy has an excellent screen - great colors at any angle, maybe little warm. G1 has significant blue cast while iPhone has neutral colors.

Hardware wise Galaxy is closest iPhone competitor - size, weight, light and proximity sensors.

The only problem, there is no community like xda-developers for Samsung phones. When Android 1.6 will be available for Galaxy? G1 got it month ago. Waiting for HTC Dragon..

 

[danimar]

And don't forget that with Android you will be getting Adobe Flash for the browser early next year, while with an iphone it seems you would have to wait much longer (if it ever comes...)
In able to have a full internet experience in your phone Flash is a must

 

[Rastaman-FB]

its just annoying that the hero apparently has flash working

 

[Bomberman]

its just annoying that the hero apparently has flash working

Yeah, I saw it on my friends Hero last night. It's very good for the sites it works for, but not stuff in the latest flash version - just nothing.

 

[dragon2611]

Funny enough I've literally (yesterday infact) just gone from using an Iphone 3G to using a Galaxy.

So far I've been able to find android Apps for most of the things I had on the iphone, (In some cases much better ones)

The iphone has a brilliant UI, probably one of the best smartphone UI's I've used and it's web browser is also pretty good for a mobile browser, love the multitouch zooming.etc

BUT and there is a But the inability to background an app without resorting to hacking the phone was driving me nuts, particularly as I recently became a subscriber to spotify and use it to listen to music on my commute to work.

Becuase I wasn't using the built in "ipod" to play music it would mean I could Listen to the music OR check my email OR browse the web...

It gets irritating very fast when you to have to pause a song so you can see an email that's just dropped into your inbox.

I also hate the idea that Apple lock down the platform so much that all apps have to be pre-approved and unless you hack the thing.

I found the Android UI to be fairly easy to learn and the ablity to background the apps is a godsend, now I can if I wish listen to spotify AND browse the web

Also I recently switched from using a hosted exchange provider to google apps (save some cash) so the tight Google integration was one of the other reasons i went for an Android phone.

Now all I need is a decent RSS reader that can pull from google Feeds (I used netnewswire on the iphone, and feedly on the pc) and i'm happy.

All in All I'm pleased with the phone, seems to do everything I want, not really had it long enough to comment on the battery life, but then again I was often only getting a day out of the iphone.

 

[Rastaman-FB]

well we have it from a iphone user now

 

[dragon2611]

well we have it from a iphone user now

ex-iphone user

 

[z0mbi3]

I'd probably take a jailbroken iPhone 3Gs over the galaxy at the moment. That's basically because of the dodgey radio stack, OpenGL problems with the latest firmware, lack of native tethering support in the vanilla rom and the sucky battery.

Note I'd take a 3Gs but I wouldn't pay RRP for one. The Galaxy is far more desirable when you compare the costs.