Smartphones

Ok gang I'm ready to beecome part of the smartphone crowd. I have it narrowed to an Android Razor Max and a Iphone 4S. As one being pretty illeterate to benefits, speed, apps etc and a 10 year old helping but confusing me even more I wondered what ya'll have and why?

iPhone. If you don't have to have it right now and can be patient they wait for the new model this summer. I really like the 4S, my wife has one and I've almost bought one myself a couple of times, but now that we're into the spring I can see the next one heading my way so I can wait and see if I have to have it when it gets here.

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that it's worth the extra expense to stick with most Apple things because they work and I don't have to time or the knowledge to mess around with the other stuff. My iPhone will do 90% of what I would do with a laptop, the rest I can do on the Mac it's just not portable.   

Blackberry, I hate touch screens. My phone is a tool, not a toy. I won't buy a phone that requires you to be married to itunes.

You aren't married to iTunes, most of my music collection is on disks, same with the DVD's, I just keep it in iTunes. I think I've bought maybe 5% of that stuff from Apple, but it's so handy to be able to put it all on an iPod Classic and take a cable with me and I can watch or listen to it all of it where ever I want. It's the head unit in my boat, I have satilite radio as well as almost every station in the country and Pandora. Most of my posts now are from the chair on my front porch, and if i wanted to i could say them and not have to type. It keeps my bank accounts and does the record keeping for my lawn service. I can shoot edit and upload video from the boat with it. My son has my 3GS and now the PS2 and the Wii spend most of there time collecting dust and he can communicate with his friends even though it runs without a cellular contract. Those are only the things I use it for daily.

The only issues I have with the iPhone is that it gets really slow when I go to Austin, that's AT&T's fault. I don't have that issue elsewhere. I think that Austin is just so overloaded with iPhones that the network can't keep up. At home on the wireless network it runs just as fast as the computer on wireless.   

I am biased as I love Apple and Mac based products. I use a MacBook, iMac, iPad and of course my iPhone, my 3 year old son even plays with my old iPod Touch. I love the way my information transfers seamlessly and now with the newest software updates I don't even have to plug into one of my computers to sync.

I don't know much about the android phones, but all my family and friends that have them love them. My brother did swear by is droid, albeit the first generation and then switched to the iPhone and he says he wished had done it sooner, but again he loved his droid.

I think you have to determine what each has that the other doesn't and then decide on which you can and cannot live without. Like one person mentioned earlier, you cannot change the battery on iPhone. However, Apple customer service is second to none. If you live by an Apple store I highly advise you go there and purchase your phone. Those guys and gals will typically bend over backwards to help you out, unlike those folks at the phone store. One last note, if you use iTunes and like it then iPhone IMO is the best way to go and vise versa if you hate iTunes then you will hate the iPhone.

Allen

There is something to be said about buying into the herd.. down at the SJRR we had 5 iphones on the boat for a good part of the weekend. You could grab anyones phone and not have to ask how to make a call, send a text, lookup directions to the spring, or play music. One charger and everyone (Except trbenj and his dinophone) could keep thier phone charged.

Being the kind of guy who abuses and then likes to fix his stuff I liked that I could find cheap parts online and replace a broken screen and waterlogged speaker (it took repeated dunks to finally kill it) on my last iphone to keep me going until the next one came out. It is like buying a full size chevy or ford.. there are so many out there that aftermarket parts and apps will be plentiful and cheap.

That being said.. there are alot of great smartphones out there.. it is hard to go wrong with most of them!

I'll vote for an HTC Android phone. Root it, and the sky's the limit on what you can do with it. I used to want an iphone, but was with sprint and didn't have the option until recently. Now that I can have it, even with a year and a half year old EVO, I don't want one.

With the google music app, there's no need to store music locally or have a lot of storage on the phone.