Apple or Samsung?

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I've been a longtime Windows Phone user (believe it or not). More to the point, a very long time Nokia phone user. I am currently using a Nokia Lumia 925.

Due to a recent mishap that cracked the screen pretty bad, I am looking to replace the phone. I am becoming more and more frustrated with the lack of app support on this phone. Until recently, it had not been a huge issue, but it is becoming more and more of one every day. Major users are ceasing their support for apps on the platform, and others are being snapped up by google and shockingly, they drop the windows phone apps.

So, I am looking at either an Iphone 5s or a Samsung Galaxy S5 as potential replacements. An Iphone 6 is not on the table (cost is the driver here). I am not changing phone plans (ATT is my carrier for coverage reasons and is not negotiable).

Looking for opinions either way, good and bad.
 
I have a Samsung GalaxySIII that I totally love. But I have a few questions:

1. Do you have a Mac computer and other apple gadgets to interface with your phone...if yes get the iPhone
2. Do you mostly use windows computers if yes get the android
3. Do you have other family members across the country or even world who have apple devices where you can "face-time" them for free on the apple network? if yes get the iPhone.
4. Do you like to expand your devise physical memory yourself? if yes get the android.
5. Do you use Google and Gmail to manage all of your online experience? if so get the android.
6. Do you use Itunes? if so get the iPhone

The face time feature on the apple network is really a cost saver if you have kids who travel abroad. My wife face times with my daughter in Europe every day and it's all over wifi and free. This is a big feature if you have that situation.
 
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It really depends on what ecosystem you want to be tied into or are already tied into. Do you use Google services (Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Play, etc) or would you be more comfortable with Apple (iTunes, iCloud, etc)? Android serves me better because I have become dependent on Google's services. I switched to an iPhone for all of 2 weeks before I realized that it was not going to fit my Google lifestyle, so I returned it for a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. I am not running a Moto X 1st Gen and couldn't be happier.

The truth of the matter is that both iPhones and Samsung phones are excellent devices. How you use those devices should help you make the decision.
 
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Use both and decide. Both Samsung and Apple are different in use etc. I have a modern Android(5.2) tablet and Apple iPhone and find each has incredible benefits. If you like to fiddle with experience(not my forte) Samsung has the advangtage for sure.

Play a long time with each at the store.

I will state the build quality of Apple products is outstanding. The abuse and longevity of their stuff is quite amazing. My daughter is using my wife's old iPod Touch from 2010(she was too cheap for data plan then) and it works pretty well still no issues. My wife's iPhone 5 in an otterbox freefell two stories before bouncing down the last stories flight of stairs. It was rebooting when she picked it up.

My use case on iPhone is texting, occasional browser usage, watching plex, google hangouts with work and filtering work and personal email. Reality with that is either would be excellent.

It may be my specific tablet but rebooting occasionally seems par for the course for Android but rarely required with our Apple products.
 
Originally Posted By: thunderfog
Cue the Apple fan boys in 3... 2... 1...

The iPhone 6 is not as good as the S5 IMO.


Worthless without any reasons either direction.
 
First off I currently have neither but from past experience having owned both Galaxies and other Samsung phones and Apple products as well I can say I'd go for Apple every time.
Every single Samsung device I've ever owned, tablets or phones (probably 10 - 15) has always become unbearably slow after a few months of owning them. Same with everyone else I know that has them too. I'm honestly surprised people are still buying their stuff! My old man has a Galaxy S5 and that is already garbage!
Yet every Apple product I've bought that hasn't been accidentally destroyed, is still going with the same performance as when I bought it. In fact I'm sending this from a 4 year old iPod touch that has been used for hours every day since I bought it!
Go figure but it's a no brainer for me!
 
Originally Posted By: 19jacobob93

Every single Samsung device I've ever owned, tablets or phones (probably 10 - 15) has always become unbearably slow after a few months of owning them. Same with everyone else I know that has them too. I'm honestly surprised people are still buying their stuff! My old man has a Galaxy S5 and that is already garbage!


Ever try shutting off all of the running apps? How about clearing accumulated bloatware? There is a lot more of it for android phones than apple. So if you don't know how to clear it out you will end up with a slow device. My next question is why after the first say 3 slow devices did you buy another 10 or 12??????
33.gif
 
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Originally Posted By: Doog
Originally Posted By: 19jacobob93

Every single Samsung device I've ever owned, tablets or phones (probably 10 - 15) has always become unbearably slow after a few months of owning them. Same with everyone else I know that has them too. I'm honestly surprised people are still buying their stuff! My old man has a Galaxy S5 and that is already garbage!


Ever try shutting off all of the running apps? How about clearing accumulated bloatware? There is a lot more of it for android phones than apple. So if you don't know how to clear it out you will end up with a slow device. My next question is why after the first say 3 slow devices did you buy another 10 or 12??????
33.gif


Did all of that and even completely formatted the devices and this barely helped so my guess is it's to do with the hardware.
I got Samsungs because where I worked at the time sold them and I got irresistable (or so I thought) discounts.
And 2 of those were Samsung Waves a 1st and 2nd gen. Both had the problem, wasn't fixed by 2nd gen.
Next I got an S3 which yet again slowly degraded into a useless mess.
Same with the S4.
Got 2 cheaper Samsung phones, one for the mother and one for my sister, both were unuseable within 2 months.
Got a Samsung 10' Tab, same yet again, started being very slow and crashed constantly.
My mum recently got a free Galaxy something (the smaller one) and that started being slow, crashing and restarting constantly because opening Facebook or reading a text was too big a task for it.
Now my dads new S5 is getting there.
They just get lathargic after a short while but I've learnt my lesson and no longer get a discount on their items so I won't be returning anytime soon.
I'm certainly not an Apple fan boy as I've only bought 3 things from them. A first gen iPod Touch that was great until it went in the washing machine! The second was an iPad mini which has been flawless, and the third being this trusty old iPod touch. Treated no differently than the Samsungs if not worse yet still working great.
 
Cricket Wireless.

$25 (after rebate) Moto G

Uses AT&T network. $35 or $45 per month plan is plenty of data

Do the math and see how much you will save over 2 years. Its quite significant. You can also get $25 referral discount(s).
Oh and 5 lines for $100/month.

I left VZW with a grandfathered unlimited data plan for Cricket and am quite satisfied.

(edit) bummer the Moto G deal is gone currently. Was offered late last year and earlier this year, it comes and goes, I guess. Can find them cheap on ebay though.
 
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Beware that many of those Motorola phones do not provide MicroSD storage capability, so you're stuck with the limited built-in storage just like Apple.

OP is comparing iPhone 5S to Galaxy S5: Another difference between those two is their physical size.
 
Originally Posted By: 19jacobob93
Originally Posted By: Doog
Originally Posted By: 19jacobob93

Every single Samsung device I've ever owned, tablets or phones (probably 10 - 15) has always become unbearably slow after a few months of owning them. Same with everyone else I know that has them too. I'm honestly surprised people are still buying their stuff! My old man has a Galaxy S5 and that is already garbage!


Ever try shutting off all of the running apps? How about clearing accumulated bloatware? There is a lot more of it for android phones than apple. So if you don't know how to clear it out you will end up with a slow device. My next question is why after the first say 3 slow devices did you buy another 10 or 12??????
33.gif


Did all of that and even completely formatted the devices and this barely helped so my guess is it's to do with the hardware.
I got Samsungs because where I worked at the time sold them and I got irresistable (or so I thought) discounts.
And 2 of those were Samsung Waves a 1st and 2nd gen. Both had the problem, wasn't fixed by 2nd gen.
Next I got an S3 which yet again slowly degraded into a useless mess.
Same with the S4.
Got 2 cheaper Samsung phones, one for the mother and one for my sister, both were unuseable within 2 months.
Got a Samsung 10' Tab, same yet again, started being very slow and crashed constantly.
My mum recently got a free Galaxy something (the smaller one) and that started being slow, crashing and restarting constantly because opening Facebook or reading a text was too big a task for it.
Now my dads new S5 is getting there.
They just get lathargic after a short while but I've learnt my lesson and no longer get a discount on their items so I won't be returning anytime soon.
I'm certainly not an Apple fan boy as I've only bought 3 things from them. A first gen iPod Touch that was great until it went in the washing machine! The second was an iPad mini which has been flawless, and the third being this trusty old iPod touch. Treated no differently than the Samsungs if not worse yet still working great.


I have an S3 that's almost 3 years old, and it works just as good as the day I bought it in July 2012. I'm not sure what you're doing to your phones but I don't think you can blame Samsung if you managed to destroy that many phones.
 
My Galaxy S5 is a huge pile of Dog Poop after the latest Lollipop upgrade. Reboots when it feels like (latest was yesterday when plugging in to charge), drains the battery quick, and is quite laggy.

I made the Android Mistake again (had a Droid X back in the day) and once the iPhone with 700a hits, I'm done.
 
If you care at all about information security then get the iPhone. All phones are vulnerable to some sort of attack but you will be hard pressed to find an iOS attack that does not involve significant involvement from the user. With iPhones most attacks involve the adhoc application protocol used in business networks (won't affect 99+% of iPhone users) then the user would have to give the malware permission to be installed. With an Android 90+% of phones are vulnerable out of the box and most malware doesn't require permission to be installed. If you do get an iPhone do not jailbreak it! If you do, you will be making it just as bad as an Android.
 
My wife just got her first smart phone with the LG G Vista 5.7" IPS. Why is not a goldstar, like the nice G3, not a player here?

AT&T gave her a "free" 7"tablet as a bonus.

All this too much bucks for me for MY payback. I still use a lil free flip phone for 15 bucks a month.

I have a Dell OptiPlex 790 INTEL core i5 workstation to play on
smile.gif
 
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Originally Posted By: dishdude
Originally Posted By: 19jacobob93
Originally Posted By: Doog
Originally Posted By: 19jacobob93

Every single Samsung device I've ever owned, tablets or phones (probably 10 - 15) has always become unbearably slow after a few months of owning them. Same with everyone else I know that has them too. I'm honestly surprised people are still buying their stuff! My old man has a Galaxy S5 and that is already garbage!


Ever try shutting off all of the running apps? How about clearing accumulated bloatware? There is a lot more of it for android phones than apple. So if you don't know how to clear it out you will end up with a slow device. My next question is why after the first say 3 slow devices did you buy another 10 or 12??????
33.gif


Did all of that and even completely formatted the devices and this barely helped so my guess is it's to do with the hardware.
I got Samsungs because where I worked at the time sold them and I got irresistable (or so I thought) discounts.
And 2 of those were Samsung Waves a 1st and 2nd gen. Both had the problem, wasn't fixed by 2nd gen.
Next I got an S3 which yet again slowly degraded into a useless mess.
Same with the S4.
Got 2 cheaper Samsung phones, one for the mother and one for my sister, both were unuseable within 2 months.
Got a Samsung 10' Tab, same yet again, started being very slow and crashed constantly.
My mum recently got a free Galaxy something (the smaller one) and that started being slow, crashing and restarting constantly because opening Facebook or reading a text was too big a task for it.
Now my dads new S5 is getting there.
They just get lathargic after a short while but I've learnt my lesson and no longer get a discount on their items so I won't be returning anytime soon.
I'm certainly not an Apple fan boy as I've only bought 3 things from them. A first gen iPod Touch that was great until it went in the washing machine! The second was an iPad mini which has been flawless, and the third being this trusty old iPod touch. Treated no differently than the Samsungs if not worse yet still working great.


I have an S3 that's almost 3 years old, and it works just as good as the day I bought it in July 2012. I'm not sure what you're doing to your phones but I don't think you can blame Samsung if you managed to destroy that many phones.

Yours must be a one off then since everyone else I know with Samsungs have had the same issues. All my other phones get treated the same, only used for calls and the odd text ans apparently it's only Samsungs that can't handle it
 
I forgot to add Apple has incredible resale value if you decide to move on even older hardware($200 for iPhone 4s when I bought my iPhone 6 outright). Not sure if Samsung is the same resale or not.
 
Appreciate the good feedback here.

I have NO other Apple devices and am not an itunes user. I am a Windows user and for business purposes have no intentions of changing. That to me screams Samsung.

I do use some google services, like gmail. Then I hear the issues with needing to actively manage a lot of things, with slowing down and bloatware, rebooting, etc... (Is that why the removable battery is the deal?), and that screams Iphone.

Close family all have iphone 5s's. I definitely see the size difference between the iphone and Samsung. The Iphone 5s would be a downgrade in size from my current phone. Resale is not an issue, since I keep my phone until its used up and trashed to the point it will not be usable or desirable by anyone else.

Lots to ponder.
 
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