The official tablet (and other useless electronics) thread!

[Evan]

thats even better. the t-mobile version IS the GPE edition. Im hoping its easy to flash. If its possible, Im sure XDA has figured it out.

[ViPER1313]

Just remember you will probably lose wifi calling if you go to a non-TMOBILE build.

[G.Irish]

Not too fussed about that. The wifi calling failed tonight when someone was trying to call me. I've had my phone in my hand gor the last two hours and it never rang. Would be bummed if I lost hotspot functionality tho

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[JPolen01]

Apple to offer $10 charger in buyback of 3rd party iPhone, iPad, iPod chargers. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/tech/mobile/apple-chargers-trade/index.html?hpt=hp_t3">http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/tech/mobi ... ?hpt=hp_t3</a><!-- m -->

[Evan]

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2573415">http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2573415</a><!-- m -->

79% to 14%

ouch

not a good time to be a fruit

[Apoc]

Or 3%, depending on what kinda fruit.

[G.Irish]

The other good news for Android is that Google Play revenues are up 67% in the last 6 months. Still way behind iOS but if it does mean that more Android users are buying apps which will motivate more devs to make quality apps for Android.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/12/google-play-revenue-up-67-over-past-6-months-fueled-by-japan-s-korea/">http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/12/google ... n-s-korea/</a><!-- m -->

[Evan]

the cheap plastic iPhone coming in the fall is going to give fruit marketshare a resurgence, but it could be too little, too late. Apple should have done that 2 years ago.

[Sully]

Well looks like my android device must have turned a year old in the past week. It celebrated by running like complete shit and takes sometimes up to a full minute to register a touch. It also decides it doesn't want to be a phone and unmounts the sim card now. A reboot remounts it but That's kinda f****** irritating when I take it out of my pocket and realize the card has been unmounted for who knows how long. Since it waited till a year to start this shit, I'm sure Verizon will be oh so helpful in replacing it.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

[JustinG]

That's what you get for buying a Motorola product.

[CaptainHenreh]

That's what you get for buying a Motorola product.

[Jake]

I just switched all of my "cloud" shit away from Apple's iCloud service, over to GoogleThings.

I've had iCloud since it was .mac, then MobileMe, then iCloud. Since I was a long-time member, when they switched from MoMe to iCloud, I got 20 GB of storage for free. Well, that storage is being taken away and I will only have 5 GB at the end of September. I'm using about 8 GB now, so I figured I'd move everything over to GoogleStuff, and just keep iCloud for my automated iPhone and iPad backups.

The transition was pretty easy. I set an auto-forward for my Apple email address so it will continue to work. And now, all of my email/contacts/errything show up on my work phone as well as my iPhone. Hooray.

I am really curious to see what Apple does with their "announcement" event on September 10th. I still have a year-ish in my contract, so the iPhone 5 is staying for now. But I'm not 100% sure that I want to blindly order the next iPhone when the time comes. This new "Moto X" looks intriguing, although the specs are lesser than my work S3. I'm also intrigued by the HTC One, although that's got a skin over top of Android.

If I get an Android phone next, I don't want any TouchWiz or Sense or whatever. Just straight-up Android. On good hardware that isn't flimsy. With good battery life. So basically, not an S3. I don't know why people like this stupid thing. It's too big, physically, and the battery life sucks. The back casing is micro-thin and so is the screen. It feels like a toy compared to my iPhone.

So. Think I'll be able to find the mythical Android phone when the time comes? Or should I just keep drinking the Kool-Aid since it's been good to me since 2007?

[JustinG]

You can dl a new home launcher to kill touchwiz. I use nova launcher.

And I agree the s3 doesnt feel as sturdy as a naked iphone. But I typically run a rugged sort of case on my phone so it has never been an issue. I do love my s3. I vow to never own another Moto phone though, my droidx was garbage and aside from the og droid their phones turn to shit in like 6-8 months. But now that they are owned by the googles, things may change. Ill stick with htc or samsung until I hear otherwise.

[SlimKlim]

My contract is up in October I think. Not sure whether I'll stay Apple. One the one hand the 4S has been the best phone I've ever owned, and if the 5S or 6 or whatever is a significant improvement it'll be pretty tempting.

However, I could save like $50/mo by going for an Android phone on Cricket or Tmobile or whatever.

[Evan]

Well looks like my android device must have turned a year old in the past week. It celebrated by running like complete shit and takes sometimes up to a full minute to register a touch. It also decides it doesn't want to be a phone and unmounts the sim card now. A reboot remounts it but That's kinda f****** irritating when I take it out of my pocket and realize the card has been unmounted for who knows how long. Since it waited till a year to start this shit, I'm sure Verizon will be oh so helpful in replacing it.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

have you done a factory restore?

when your phone does funky shit, thats job #1

[G.Irish]

If I get an Android phone next, I don't want any TouchWiz or Sense or whatever. Just straight-up Android. On good hardware that isn't flimsy. With good battery life. So basically, not an S3. I don't know why people like this stupid thing. It's too big, physically, and the battery life sucks. The back casing is micro-thin and so is the screen. It feels like a toy compared to my iPhone.

So. Think I'll be able to find the mythical Android phone when the time comes? Or should I just keep drinking the Kool-Aid since it's been good to me since 2007?

If you buy outright you can get either the HTC One or S4 with stock Android. I think I can load stock Android on my TMo edition S4 but I haven't tried it yet.

The S4 feels a bit more sturdy than the S3 did, and even though it's a big phone, I think you'll like the fact that it is far easier to read on it. I read more articles on my S4 because it's not such a strain (I was coming from an iPhone 4 tho). With Swype i can type way faster than I could on my iPhone, to the point that I find myself doing things on my S4 that I couldn't be bothered to do on my iPhone.

So far the battery life on the S4 is pretty good. My only battery problem is that it doesn't charge anywhere near as fast as my iPhone did.

For my money, when it comes down to the choice of Android vs iOS, the fact is that Android is getting better at what iOS does well faster than iOS is getting better at what Android does well. All of the Google cloud services are integrated neatly into Android and the UI/UX is leaps and bounds better than it used to be. In several places I think the Android UI/UX is better (at least for stock Android).

On the other hand Apple's cloud services aren't much to write home about. Siri, Apple Maps, and iCloud just don't measure up very well to the Google counterparts. The UI/UX of iOS is still better in some ways, but now it's almost down to matter of preference.

The big place where Apple still has an advantage is in the selection of apps but at this point it's mostly games where Android trails. All of the serious business apps are on both.

[HAULN-SS]

So. Think I'll be able to find the mythical Android phone when the time comes? Or should I just keep drinking the Kool-Aid since it's been good to me since 2007?

Look into nokia. My winphone is awesome, and the hardware is really good quality so far. The apps, if you need them will come. I really like having my work and home email on the same phone, and being able to open up Office docs with no problems.

[Apoc]

All we need is Mikey in here talking about straying and my head will definitely asplode.

[G.Irish]

the cheap plastic iPhone coming in the fall is going to give fruit marketshare a resurgence, but it could be too little, too late. Apple should have done that 2 years ago.

Agreed, Apple should've done that a long time ago. I kind of feel like at this point this is Apple just making a marketshare grab rather than focusing on taking the smartphone game forward. It almost seems like they've given up on leading the way in new features. Apple was behind on 4g, behind on bigger screens, still doesn't have wireless charging, no NFC, hasn't done any touchless functionality, etc. Some of the stuff Android phones are doing now are probably not going to last, but there's no excuse for Apple being last to the party on 4g.

I don't think going downmarket now will hurt Apple per se, but if the 5S doesn't bring some new hotness to the game it will definitely tarnish Apple's luster.

[Sully]

Well looks like my android device must have turned a year old in the past week. It celebrated by running like complete shit and takes sometimes up to a full minute to register a touch. It also decides it doesn't want to be a phone and unmounts the sim card now. A reboot remounts it but That's kinda f****** irritating when I take it out of my pocket and realize the card has been unmounted for who knows how long. Since it waited till a year to start this shit, I'm sure Verizon will be oh so helpful in replacing it.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

have you done a factory restore?

when your phone does funky shit, thats job #1

Uhh no. I don't want to have to redo all my shit. And if I have to do it, I would rather just do it on a new phone. I have down the "battery pull" reset

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2