I feel a little bit sick writing this, a bit like the big reveal in The Crying Game. I feel like I'm doing something I'd always vowed not to do.

 

I'm considering an iPhone.

 

I've had a WinPho for over 2yr and it's been a good phone but the lack of support for WinPh10 puts me off getting another. It's a shame I really like the Tile interface, and it's actually good at being a phone, excellent camera and the keyboard is great.

 

I'm finding now that the lack of support on WinPho is starting to affect how I use other things. I'm signed up to Prime and I found the Prime Music to be a good replacement for the old Nokia Mix Music that was canned. But no app for WinPho.

Also Amazon video, no app for WinPho.

 

The car had various apps to pass on info, no app for winPho

Dashcam, no app for Winpho.

Free Wifi tends to be a PITA coz they don't recognise WinPho so often you can get to registration fields etc.

Plus my Windoz desktop doesn't even seem to recognise the phone as part of the same ecosystem.

 

Effectively I'm getting ****ed off with it except as a phone.

 

bit of a common thread here

 

Sooo new phone time. I'm not a phone junky so I don't spend a fortune on them.

 

I was looking at the older Iphone5s which is now down to about £15 on some contracts. the other was the new Moto G4 plus.

 

I'm not a huge Android fan at all, I really don't trust Google or their app store.

I don't trust Apple either but at least the app store is fairly tight and the phone is default encrypted.

 

Does anyone know stuff about the Iphone5s, is it actually old and crap. Is the screen too small for my fat man fingers. It is any good as a phone, call quality etc.

 

 

Droid all day long, I find with apple you have to buy into their whole ecosystem to get the best out of their products. I was an apple fan boy when the first few iphones came out but everything I had at the time was apple. Then google caught up and I think have now pass apple by. I'd go for a nexus 5x or similar if you want an older but decent phone. I've got the Nexus 6P and love it. My wife decided to go back to apple a few months back after 3 years with an android phone, she had it 2 days if that and sold it and is now back in the fold 

 

I think Google will one day run the planet which is a scary thought but they do make good products  

For me the quality of the materials used on apple products outweigh the fact it may not be cutting edge compared to other OS, FFS I do not use my iPhone to it’s full capacity so I certainly do not need every latest thing on it.

 

What I do want, no demand, is a good quality product (so no cheap plastic) that ‘just works’ and is very user friendly, so for me apple / iOS ticks the boxes.

 

FWIW I had a Samsung smart phone for work and use a Windows10 tablet for VCDS... and hate the OS on both of them with a passion.

 

A word of warning... if this turns into the usual bashing of any product then it will be locked, keep it factual and informative.

+1 Apple.

It just works, I have an Android Galaxy for my work phone and a PITA.

All the Apple products in our house ( 3x iPhone various MK's and 3x iPads) just work

There's no answer to this - it's going to come down to which you prefer so try out the handsets and make a choice on that.  I did have to have chuckle at the 'it just works' rubbish though, I still hear that from the very people who have frequently needed help from me for something on their IOS devices.

 

John

Edited 30 May, 201610 yr by JohnMcL7

Also you mention the iPhone 5s, I prefer these to the newer 6 variants.

Wifey has my old 5s and I have a 6 but my contract ends in a couple of months so heading to Tesco for SIM only deals to join the wife and daughter on a family bundle which is around £7.50 a month per SIM.

It is worth buying a refurbished 5s off a well known site etc and going SIM only as there are some good deals to be had.

Edited 30 May, 201610 yr by Defenderben

I went from a Lumia 1020 running the 10 preview to droid last year.

Worlds apart, even on my initial Droid phone which was a Doogee X5 for £40 straight from China. Showed my I liked the OS enough to actually spend money on it and I'm now running a HTC M8S and have been for 8 months (and it's been updated to Android 6 as of last week).

I wouldn't ever go iPhone again - spent so much time dealing with them in my last job and the list of problems that we not accepted as problems by Apple was ever growing (5c didn't have enough space to upgrade the firmware, 5s wiping itself - happened on 4 different phones on 4 different occasions, 6 locking itself out and not allowing unlock when fingerprint sensor failed). This wasn't across hundreds of devices either, this was just across the 40 or so that were in Cornwall. Apple's response was always "we've not come across this before" despite the numerous posts on the same issues in the Apple forums...

Have you looked at the iPhone SE? Same form factor as the 5 but with most of the guts of the 6s and can be found on fairly decent contracts (I was looking for a mate and found them cheaper on contract than sim free + sim only).

Personally I've used iPhone since the iPhone 4. I've tried to get into andriod as there's some lovely phones (Galaxy s7 for example) but I just can't get on with andriod even though trying a couple of times.

Although iPhone owners seem to tend to move towards apple products I don't think you get a huge amount more out of the iPhone having a Mac etc. Although if you want a smart watch andriod wear on iOS is severely limited which is a shame as a prefer the look of the andriod wear watches to the Apple Watch.

Having had 3 iPhones in 6 years plus SWMBO having a further 4 iPhone in 7 or 8 years we've had very few issues and nothing that wasn't immediately sorted by Apple under warranty by way of replacing the phone in store.

The only downside of iOS is "having" to use iTunes which is dreadful on both OS X and Windows but with iCloud backup and online setup I've not had to use it for a couple of years - I think you can avoid it completely now.

The main complaint I have about iPhones is Apple are still selling 16gb models which I think is both mean and a bad idea due to issues with firmware upgrades, although the move to deltas has mainly solved this.

Edited 30 May, 201610 yr by gullyg

Android 6 has better control of the permissions apps have than 5 did. But I'm thinking that at least Google has access to all my contacts. Some brands may be more easily rootable than others. Beyond a certain time security faults won't be fixed (eg on my Samsung Note 3).

Edited 30 May, 201610 yr by wonkyewok

I work all day with smartphones in the corporate environment and if you want poor security it is Apple. we currently use WM10 but do have Android on the tablets. You can turn on encryption on the Android and WM10 devices if that wories you. (we enforce it on all devices)

 

john

I think W10 is a dead end now. Intel has stopped making the processors for them. MS will bring out the Surface phone but that's going to be a small format tablet really. And no one will support it, probably not even MS.

 

Windows encryption needs an exchange box to turn on. I could build one in a VM but I'm far too lazy for that.

 

I did look at a BlackPhone but I'm not paranoid enough to pay £700 for a droid.

 

Also looked at the iPhone SE but they want £30 a month for it.

I share the OP's frustration with WinPho - but for me I think I will get a refurb Nexus 5. £120 or so. My wife has a Moto G 4G thingy and it does all I would want and more but I would want to avoid the Samsung overlay - hence the Nexus.

I get a Windows Phone for work use and it's upgraded to Win 10 seems OK as a phone and as you say has a good camera but certainly poor app support etc. It will prob never have an in-car interface either.

Personally I'd go Apple I've had all incarnations of iPhone since the beginning and found them reliable and pretty tough if dropped etc. iTunes works on Windows ok and although I also have a Mac and iPad I'd prob keep using an iPhone anyway. CarPlay if you have a car that supports it is good also. I'd also look at 5SE over the 5S.

Android you can enable encryption and lock it down just as much as on iOS.

If you stick to mainstream apps there's no more security risk than the apple store. It's when you start downloading any old app.

But then there have been several vetted apps in the apple store which have gone rogue and caused a lot of problems.

iPhone for work. POS

Galaxy S6 for personal. No probs.

I actually have to email myself stuff from the work phone as the word docs never ever open correctly. S6 has Office built in

Android all the way for me.

Edited 30 May, 201610 yr by Gizmo68
read post #3

 

Edited by Gizmo68, Today, 19:35.

read post #3

They can be a bit fanboisih though :p

The moto range are all really good. I have been using the moto X play for a year now, all encrypted etc, no issues at all. Brand new at £240, sim only deal and I've saved loads of money. Compare with the cost of a high end Samsung or an iPhone and pocket the savings.

And as for the "it just works" argument, they all do that, if they didn't no one would buy them.

Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

Personally used to have am iPhone but prefer the freedom you can get on Android.

I have a nexus 5x now, having had a nexus 4. The interface on these is pure Android, not with some stupid overlay on the top like some Samsung and HTC phones. But then, you are free to change it if you want via the many launcher programs available. I wouldn't be shocked if you could make it look like a windows phone if that's what you wanted.

I find the widgets useful and the support for apps is there now, with much less Apple first, Android later.

Android phones on the nexus program are always first to get the upgrades and there's lots of help available. Somewhere, someone will have solved the issue already. Probably.

Good luck choosing something that works for you.

Moto G4 Plus coming in at about £230. Had a look the other day.

I can't stand Apple but I do appreciate that if you have all apple gear they do work well together.

 

I much prefer Android myself

Another vote for Apple, it just works and the build quality and materials used are decent.

 

You don't have to buy into their eco system, you can have a iPhone and not give a single penny more to Apple if you so wish.... I don't use iTunes (Spotify) and most of the apps I find useful are free.

 

You could buy a refurbished phone out right and then go onto a sim only deal, this can be cheaper than a contract.

I used to be a "hate all Apple stands for etc" person, like a few people I know, they all moved to iphones when their kids upgraded!  My initial reason to move to iphone - well my daughter left behind an iphone 3GS (when she upgraded to iPhone 5) when she went to work in Oz, her mother (far too far for me to go) went to visit her and by that time she had a secondhand iphone 4, so I was mugged into starting to change to the old iphone 3 so that keeping in touch would be easy and cheap - which it was! By this time youngest daughter in London had given in to Apple and got an iphone 5S, So we became an Apple phone family. Older daugher and wife also have ipads so that makes talking face to face so much easier as well as getting/sharing/showing pictures. Last year I finally upgraded myself to a used iPhone 5S and,  M-I-L at 87 is saying that she is getting an ipad to replace her lappy, which makes a lot of sense (overkill for her any old tablet would have done).

 

One other thing, which might be the same as other mobile phones is, if you use EE with an iPhone 5S> you get "WiFi Calling" which might not mean much to people in towns with a brilliant signal, but for us out in clean air and away from riots etc, it does help a lot.

 

It is really a bit like our love/hate relationship with VAG - hate them as much as you like, but the devil you know etc etc --- !

Android all the way for me too.

I like the way you can swap files, photos, music and ringtones via Bluetooth between Android phones with ease, try doing that with iPhones.

I've tried and iPhone and found it much too restrictive with the way it works and the lack of file sharing abilities without resorting to email isn't good enough for me.

Apple has Airdrop which allows photo's etc. to be shared between Apple devices.

I really don't know much about phones, but have my daughter's cast-off iPhone 5s and I really like it. It's very intuitive.  It replaced a 3gs, which, according to my daughter wasn't a proper iPhone in any case.

 

Before that I had a Samsung Galaxy Mini (I think - wife's cast off) and the iPhone's much better in my opinion.

 

Gaz

Edited 31 May, 201610 yr by V6TDI