I'm about to get a new phone and I'm torn between the Galaxy S5 and the iPhone 5S. I currently have the iPhone 5. I've traditionally been an Apple guy but I'm hearing a lot of good stuff about the Galaxy S5.
So, what do you guys recommend and why? Go!
The iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S5 have similar targets as they are both extremely brand-based phones:
iPhones are very attractive to the 'standard' public, they are classy, look good, got a brand name on them, relatively simple to use.. The app store is decently trimmed to not have weird and unneeded things and the iOS updates are instant, the moment that Apple launches them, you can download it on your phone(excluding technical problems within the download service) as long as your phone can receive the update.
Androids depend, they have two or three sorts of public targets: The 'standard' user, the same as the iPhone, the top notch phones are directed to those, like the S5. The 'not-so-rich' market which got cheaper phones, this ranges from the extremely cheap phones like Samsung Galaxy Y to the not soo cheap but still not top notch like the Moto G, some other phones. The third group is the 'tech-savvy' user, the one who is going to root his phone, who's going to install custom roms on it trying to balance between consumption and performance, the one who's going to run dSploit and other programs that are much more focused to this very specific group, apps that are not available on the Google Play store and so on. This last group is bound to the Android as doing anything of those on a iPhone is much more complicated and much more forbidden.
If you are the sort of user who wants to have a classy phone and can afford either the S5 or the iPhone, there's some other things you need to consider:
Note: I'm not going to discuss aesthetic details, those are relative form person to person.
If you buy the iPhone:
+ Updates come instantly and do not depend on anything other than Apple.[2]
+ OS is clean, runs from start in a decent speed/performance.
+ App store is much more selective.[1]
+ Has some gimmicks.
- You are bound to use iTunes.
- Limited space.
- "Closed" hardware, you can not tinker with it without lots of risks(maybe even legal ones?)
- App store is much more selective.[1]
If you buy the Samsung:
+ Can expand the data storage.
+ "Open" hardware, you can root it and make it run better.
+ App store is much less selective.[1]
+ Full of gimmicks.
+ You can exchange data as simple as plugging the phone, no need to use software to sync music, photos or anything else.
- The OS is clustered with useless and intrusive Samsung apps and Carrier apps, making it run much slower and get extremely slow after a couple months.
- Updates will take as much time as Samsung AND YOUR CARRIER are going to need to issue their versions of the updates, full of useless stuff.[2]
- App store is much less selective.[1]
- TouchWiz.[3]
- SD Storage can't hold most apps unless the phone is rooted, only games.
DISCLAIMER: Please do not take the above pros and cons as a quantitative thing, do not think that the Samsung is better than the iphone because it has more pros and less cons, this is just a review of the OS's infrastructure, there's a whole lot on hardware and everything else..
[1]: This has it good and bad sides. A more selective app store will mean that you won't see lots of crap that are only stopping you from getting the good stuff, but will also mean that you won't see some gold pieces that did not go through the guidelines because of some stupid reason. A less selective app store, while it will allow more people to show their work, the probability to you grab something misleading is much bigger.
[2]: Allow me to explain this point. When Apple releases an update, all iphones that have the capability to receive said update can then go and download it, just like some iPhone users have downloaded their iOS 8.0 the past days. Happens that when Google releases a major Android update, like the Android Kit Kat 4.4, which was released in October, 31st, 2013, the companies that build and sell phones have to program the Android update to work with their phones.When they are done, they send these updates to the carriers who then update the companies update to have their own set of rules and apps. Those two process of updating postpone the updates to further away.
So, Android 4.4 was released in 31st october of 2013, Samsung S4 only got the update 3.7 months LATER, this is rather crucial if we take a look at some things that are being changed between every new release, Android 4.4.4, the changelog says: CVE-2014-0224 fixed, eliminating an OpenSSL man-in-the-middle vulnerability. Now, imagine if it took you 3.7 months to receive an update that fixed an exploit as dangerous as a Man-in-the-middle attack? If it would take so long to the update get issued, that depends on a lot of aspects that are rather complicated and out of our range of discussion. Just so you know: The 4.4.4 update was released in June 19, 2014, the S5 will get updated only in September, 2014. Now take in account that THAT is only the Samsung's time, now the carrier will take more time to publish their own stuff inside the update to only then ship it to the users.
[3]: The reason as of why it takes the Samsung so long to get updated is this magical thing called TouchWiz. TouchWiz is Samsung's custom touch screen interface, it is what incorporates all cool gimmicks that everyone finds incredible in the S5 and a whole different looking, but more than that, it is what lags the Samsungs to no end. You won't be able to experience the true power of the phone if you keep TouchWiz, but worse than that, you still won't get new updates faster if you remove it. Even though Google suggests that the companies ship their phones as clean as possible, Samsung still prefers to ship them with TouchWiz.
---------------------------
So, which one to buy?
From those 2, I'd buy the Galaxy S5 ONLY BECAUSE I'm the tech-savvy user and I want to be able to implement my code without having to pay to do it.
From all phones, I'd get the Nexus 5.
