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Saturday, January 14, 2012

iPhone 4S, it really is about user experience

    Yesterday, I was finally able to upgrade my phone. My old phone was a Motorola Droid 2 Global. I have made several post's about my Droid and it really was a great phone. It did everything it was suppose to do and looked good doing it. The google market place is full of free apps for both work and play. I will miss that phone, sort of ...

    The problem was timing, and Verizon. Yes, they have an entire slew of new Android phone's that are great. However, I travel outside the of the United States of America on a semi regular basis for work. In order for me to take any phone with me, it must be a world phone. AT&T generally does not have this problem, but Verizon is a CDMA network and thus not compatible with overseas cellular networks. When my upgrade date finally came, I only had three choices:

        1) Any iPhone
        2) The Droid 3
        3) Stay with the Droid 2 Global (No upgrade)

    That's it. Verizon has no new global phone's. Even the Droid 4, when it finally gets released will not be a global phone. There are internet rumors for a Droid 4 Maxx, but these are only rumors. Besides the "rumored"  release date is months away.

    Considering the Droid 3 is pointless upgrade, there are no real benefits to the upgrade anyway, that left me with the iPhone 4S. Ok, I could have went with the iPhone 4 and got it around $30 (I also had a $30 credit for upgrades available). But again, what would be the point of that?

    All in all, after taxes and such, I got a 16GB iPhone 4S for $178 even. Not a bad deal if you ask me. Besides, iPhones hold their value really well, so if something newer comes along I can sell this one to help pay for that.

    What really surprised me was all of the things you can do that you don't see in the commercials. Like the ability to sync and add new playlists over Wi-Fi, or rearrange all my desktop icons from iTunes, or even buy new apps from iTunes and have them auto delivered to my phone. Now I even have a use for the iPod dock that came with my Onkyo receiver.

    In fact, I added two new playlists, five apps, and rearrange my desktop icons all while it was in the dock paying music. The iCloud service is great and helped me transition all of contacts from Google to iCloud.

    Speaking of that, with Android, if you have a separate contact for a person, and you install the face book app, then you now have two contact listings for the same person. You can merge them, but I have several work and personal email accounts. On Android you can only merge a maximum of five (5) contacts together. With iCloud and osX Address Book, you can merge as many as you want, then re-sync to iCloud and all of the "Mergers" are complete. This alone makes auto dialing vastly easier to use.

    Apple definitely got it write with this phone. It really is about "user experience". 

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