I’ve been using an iPhone for quite some time now and really like it. However it’s not without its shortcomings – the battery being the most obvious culprit.
With that in mind I was interested in testing the Samsung Galaxy S (android) phone when we got our hands on one last week.
The Samsung Galaxy uses Android as its OS, so instead of using iTunes to access apps you use the Android Store, which is linked to your Google account.
The version of Android that shipped with the phone was one version behind. Unfortunately the only way to upgrade is via a Windows only desktop application. I was unable to get this to work on either Parallels or on a Windows 7 machine. It did, however, work fine with my mother’s Windows XP machine.
I am quite a heavy data user, as I use my phone for email, twitter, facebook and other things when I’m not at a desk.
So how does the Samsung Galaxy compare with the iPhone.
For web browsing there’s no real difference, though Safari’s multiple windows (pages) interface is very handy and I miss it. The Galaxy can open multiple windows, but unlike Safari on the iPhone, it loses the windows when you switch between apps.
Email, however, is a key function for me.
Setting up an Exchange account on the Galaxy is pretty easy – almost as easy as on the iPhone. Unfortunately, however, the iPhone’s interface beats the Galaxy’s handsdown. The Galaxy will display my various folders, but rearranges them according to its own internal logic. This means that the folders I access most frequently on my desktop (or my iPhone) aren’t the ones near the top. It also throws really unhelpful connection errors from time to time, which are quite hard to diagnose.
Installing other applications on the phone can be done either via the Android marketplace or using the Samsung application installer. There are a very wide variety of apps available and most of them have similar functionality to their iPhone equivalents. While in iPhone world I had to pay for a usable SSH client I was able to find a very nice SSH client for the Galaxy for free, which was nice.
Battery life on the Galaxy is probably marginally better than the iPhone, so that’s a plus in its favour.
The application manager is handy for seeing what resources each application is using and allows you to kill off ones that you don’t need.
There are also a few other features that are pretty handy or slick.
You can, for example, turn your Galaxy into a wireless access point very easily. So you can easily share your 3G connection with your laptop or iPad. You can also use it for “tethering”, which is fairly standard on most smartphones.
The “notifications” section at the top of the device’s screen is pretty handy. You can instantly see how many new emails you have, messages and various other updates from the accounts you have configured on the phone.
However there are quite a few “features” of the phone / OS that are incredibly annoying.
A lot of the time the phone goes to a completely black screen while an app is opening or doing something. During these “blackouts” the device is completely unresponsive.
So would I swap my iPhone for the Samsung Galaxy?
Realistically – no. It’s a nice enough device, but the email client alone is enough to put me off making a permanent switch.
I assume you’ve got an older iPhone? The iPhone 4’s battery life is much, much better.
weird that the Galaxy forces you to connect to a desktop to update the OS that’s not been my experience of android at all. In fact my HTC Desire has updated the OS at least twice without any problem over wifi and app updates come in weekly.
The only time I connect it to a pc is when I want to add music to it and I’m pretty sure I could find a workaround for that if I thought it was that much of a hassle.
As for the black screen thing, I only ever see that for Tweetdeck and even then it’s only occasionally, like when I haven’t used it for a while and it has to load the last 300 tweets.
I’ve never used exchange on it but I find the gmail client great and the integration with all the google properties is great once I turned on Javascript.
If you don’t like the browser I’ve heard good things about skyfire although I haven’t tried it myself, the standard browser does everything I want on mobile.
Not an iPhone fan but I was looking around to see what would compete with it and the S does look like a real contender however the one thing that stops me from buying either of the phones is the lack of a keyboard. I use a BB8900 and Palm Pre and I just love the full qwerty keyboard for email. Have you seen any new phones out there with full keyboard? BB Torch?
Robert
I’m still using an iPhone 3GS. I was thinking about upgrading, but can’t really justify the outlay .. though who knows 🙂
Michele
George
There’s no way to do an “on device” upgrade. It’s possible that Vodafone disabled the option, though I can’t imagine that they have.
I’ve had the black screen issue a LOT – which is really annoying.
I don’t use Gmail, but I do use Exchange ..
The iPhone handles mail very well “out of the box”, as does its browser.
Michele
Ronan
Some of my friends have two phones – an iPhone for most things and a Blackberry for sending emails, as they prefer the Blackberry’s keyboard.
I’ve no idea which devices have full keyboards these days, as I’ve found the iPhone’s virtual one quite usable once I got used to it
Michele
George – the most recent version of Winamp lets you sync music over your home wifi network.
Ronan – The HTC Desire Z has a full keyboard. No idea if it’s any good though.
What I love about Android is it’s so easy to replace any application you don’t like with a better one. I use Swype as my keyboard instead of the default one. Use Dolphin HD as my browser. Am sure there are better Exchange applications than the default too.
My feeling on the Galaxy is that it is hampered by the firmware thats on top of the OS. I need to replace my G1 as it won’t upgrade beyond Android 1.6 and it doesnt have an earphone socket.
At the moment I am looking at HTC Dream or Dream HD or I might wait for the new Google Nexus (3?) which is based on the Galaxy hardware but without the additional software layer.
My T-Mobile contract gives me access to subsidised phones but they have no Dream HD’s in stock. Its a big phone though. Which is also off-putting.
The iphone is ubiquitous but I am used to a number of android apps and I am unsure about the memory limitations. Even the G1 can do 32GB via micro SD. I phone seems a bit limited although it does work with itunes.
For the average punter its less of a problem. But for people who need to consider tethering or specialist apps then its more complicated.
My first phone was an NEC analogue back in 1994. With a special high gain antenna I had to carry and plug in when I was in a poor reception area. 50p/min for calls.
Bought a desire z last week and can’t put it down! Unlimited data on EMOBILE which is great, nice keyboard for accessing server (blacknight of course) and runs on latest version of Android. All my email is running off Google apps so works like a dream. Was between this and the galaxy but heard Samsung software and support wasn’t as good as HTC.
Sent from my desire z 🙂
Adrian
The spec on the HTC looks very good 🙂
Michele
Samsung have decided not allow OTA updates and instead tie you to their truly awful Kies desktop software, which is plagued with bugs and the cause of much frustration amongst Galaxy owners.
This combined with the sometimes unresponsive screen when opening apps means my Galaxy S now resides in the coffin it came in, and my wonderful HTC Desire is back in action.
Why did Samsung take Android and make it worse..?
The Galaxy S had one very big advantage for me over the iPhone…
Over an 18 month contract (in Northern Ireland) – it will cost me £360 less than the best deal I could get with a new iPhone.
I had an iPhone 3G for 18 months (but badly cracked the screen a few months before my contract was up by dropping it on my kitchen floor).
In some ways it is better than the iPhone and some ways not so good.
Put it this way – I am not thinking “damn – that would have been £360 really well spent”..
PS – yes the Samsung software they make you install on your PC (if you have XP or Vista) is very crap indeed – no comparison with iTunes there…
Hey Michele, you pushed me into writing a blog entry about the Galaxy S, I would suggest you make your way there 🙂 http://goo.gl/xaJin
As for the comparison with the iPhone, I’ve touched one some time ago but never used one per say, so cannot compare 🙂