Samsung S4

Old Mar 19, 2013, 3:22 pm
  #46  
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Originally Posted by gfunkdave
Hi all,

Let's not have this thread devolve into an Apple vs. Samsung or Apple vs. Android thread. We have plenty of those already. Let's keep this thread to discussion of the Galaxy S4 without turning into a fanboy/baiting festival.

Merci
Gfunk
Agreed. Started it with the intention of analyzing the S4 pros/cons, how it will fare, etc.
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Old Mar 19, 2013, 4:13 pm
  #47  
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Originally Posted by cordelli
Where are you coming up with this stuff? They can use any generic usb charger on the market that puts out a bit of power, easily available anywhere for $6 or $7, sometimes with the cable. Most people probably have a handful of them already. The cable is available for as little as $10 depending on where you buy it. Heck, you can get both a 30 pin and the lightening cable today for under $5

I'm curious how this works. Lightning connectors include a manufacturer-specific encryption chip. The phone won't accept a charge from a connector without the correct encryption. If this adapter is a knockoff of someone else's, Apple can disable that manufacturer's encryption key.
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Old Mar 19, 2013, 5:29 pm
  #48  
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Originally Posted by cordelli
Where are you coming up with this stuff? They can use any generic usb charger on the market that puts out a bit of power, easily available anywhere for $6 or $7, sometimes with the cable. Most people probably have a handful of them already. The cable is available for as little as $10 depending on where you buy it. Heck, you can get both a 30 pin and the lightening cable today for under $5

With all due respect - I have purchased several non-authorized cables, and most of them are quite crappy. Lousy connectors, weird error messages and some that just don't work at all. The cheapest "authorized" cables I have found are around $15. IMHO, a cable that is this important to iPhone owners should not be some proprietary piece of junk that requires a dedicated encryption chip.

Also, for those of is that use iOS products for business, the lack of ease of finding these products in retail so long after the launch is quite the hassle. Just this past weekend, I realized I had lost one of my cables for an iPad - do you know how hard it is to find a replacement on a Saturday night?
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Old Mar 19, 2013, 6:54 pm
  #49  
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Half my cables don't say Apple on them for the apple devices, and they all work. Even if you have to get another cable from Apple, since apple users are all filthy rich, spending the ninteen bucks is well worth it, and does not to me make it a

proprietary incompatible expensive new charger
Given that Samsung's charger is $35 off their site, which is only three dollars less than apple gets for the cable and charger, the argument that it's an expensive new charger is just plain silly.
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Old Mar 19, 2013, 8:44 pm
  #50  
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Originally Posted by ScottC
With all due respect - I have purchased several non-authorized cables, and most of them are quite crappy. Lousy connectors, weird error messages and some that just don't work at all. The cheapest "authorized" cables I have found are around $15. IMHO, a cable that is this important to iPhone owners should not be some proprietary piece of junk that requires a dedicated encryption chip.

Also, for those of is that use iOS products for business, the lack of ease of finding these products in retail so long after the launch is quite the hassle. Just this past weekend, I realized I had lost one of my cables for an iPad - do you know how hard it is to find a replacement on a Saturday night?
That's a nice thing about the S4 and all other modern Android phones I know of: a mini-USB cable, about as universal as you can get and fully interchangeable with all kinds of devices, will charge it from your computer, car, wall, or whatever, and can be had for as little as a dollar.

Originally Posted by cordelli
Given that Samsung's charger is $35 off their site, which is only three dollars less than apple gets for the cable and charger, the argument that it's an expensive new charger is just plain silly.
Who would buy an overpriced charger for *any* phone direct from the manufacturer? You can use a $1 cable to charge the S4, swap in an old charger from a different device, or share with another one. As generic and widespread as USB.
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Old Mar 19, 2013, 8:58 pm
  #51  
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Based on specs and looks, I think I prefer the HTC One over the S4...with two caveats:

1) I can install a different launcher on the HTC One.
2) T-Mobile's wi-fi calling framework is built-in.

Otherwise, I think I'll stick with my S3.
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Old Mar 19, 2013, 9:05 pm
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Originally Posted by pseudoswede
Based on specs and looks, I think I prefer the HTC One over the S4...with two caveats:

1) I can install a different launcher on the HTC One.
2) T-Mobile's wi-fi calling framework is built-in.

Otherwise, I think I'll stick with my S3.
I have to agree with your initial comment - the HTC One definitely takes the aesthetics category. The GS4 is nothing special to look at.
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Old Mar 19, 2013, 9:18 pm
  #53  
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Originally Posted by mooper
Who would buy an overpriced charger for *any* phone direct from the manufacturer? You can use a $1 cable to charge the S4, swap in an old charger from a different device, or share with another one. As generic and widespread as USB.

Exactly my point, thank you.

But then again I'm not the one who said apple requires you to buy an expensive charger, you did. I said there were other options out there that cost much less as there is for virtually every phone ever made.

But once again, facts change with each post.

So apparently now you don't need to buy the charger from the same company who made the phone, there are alternatives. Funny how that works.
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Old Mar 19, 2013, 10:25 pm
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Originally Posted by pseudoswede
Based on specs and looks, I think I prefer the HTC One over the S4...with two caveats:

1) I can install a different launcher on the HTC One.
2) T-Mobile's wi-fi calling framework is built-in.

Otherwise, I think I'll stick with my S3.
To me, the HTC One has two strikes against it - no external SD card slot and no removable battery. Yes, it comes with 64GB but I tend to move my 32GB microSD and install my Titanium backups off it. Much harder to do with internal memory. As for battery, it's de rigeur to change out the OEM for a higher capacity one.

Too bad. I would've loved to go back to HTC.
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Old Mar 19, 2013, 10:26 pm
  #55  
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Originally Posted by SRQ Guy
Incredibly,Samsung seems to have peeked at Apple's playbook and decided that tiny incremental upgrades are a great idea. Way to squash your own momentum.
Part of the problem is the market is mature; what were you expecting them to add/change that they didn't?

I'm not really recalling changes that aren't either network-related and largely unrelated to the smartphone itself (LTE, HSPA+), incremental (almost everything) or gimmicky software tricks (Siri, Google Now, a bunch of the Samsung stuff in the S4) since the generation of phones including the first iPhone introduced capacitative multi-touch and gestures instead of resistive single-point touch more aimed at a stylus.
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Old Mar 20, 2013, 1:44 am
  #56  
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I look forward to swap to the S4. Couldn't care less about the aesthetics as after all we tend to wrap it in some case anyway.
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Old Mar 20, 2013, 7:56 am
  #57  
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Originally Posted by nkedel
Part of the problem is the market is mature; what were you expecting them to add/change that they didn't?
I don't know, but then I'm not a phone designer.
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Old Mar 20, 2013, 9:53 am
  #58  
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Originally Posted by SRQ Guy
I don't know, but then I'm not a phone designer.
The phone companies may come up with some "wow" new feature, but those are necessarily few and far between and except where they're successfully patentable, they're going to be copied everywhere(*); if you're representative of the market as a whole... well, the expectation of those big new changes is going to be disappointed more often than not.

(* and usually when you really look, there's some failed prior product that tried it first before Apple or Google managed to figure out how to market and sell it.)
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Old Mar 20, 2013, 11:57 am
  #59  
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Originally Posted by cordelli
Exactly my point, thank you. But then again I'm not the one who said apple requires you to buy an expensive charger, you did. I said there were other options out there that cost much less as there is for virtually every phone ever made.
The difference is that you can charge an S4 with a widely available, universal, cheap ($1) USB cord, rather than buying an expensive one from Samsung.

For the iPhone 5, as ScottC correclty pointed out, it's not only a hassle to find and buy one elsewhere, but unreliable and not nearly as cheap to do so. Plus, you can't use that cord on other devices later.

Definite S4 advantage, albeit one common to all modern Android phones I know of.
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Old Mar 20, 2013, 12:18 pm
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Originally Posted by mooper
The difference is that you can charge an S4 with a widely available, universal, cheap ($1) USB cord, rather than buying an expensive one from Samsung.
This something I discovered over my last 2 or 3 trips. My phone, tablet, eReader, and media player all use the micro-USB for connectivity and charging. All are from different manufacturers.

All I carry is one generic 115/220V USB charger and 1 USB/micro-USB cable. If the plane has both power and USB ports at the seat, I can charge 2 devices at the same time.
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