Why I got rid of my iPhone!
A couple of years ago I purchased an iPhone 3G and thought it was the best phone ever! I loved the Apps and user interface; I also liked the fact that I could sync all of my contacts from my Mac Pro to my iPhone. I could surf the web, view documents and read my Kindle books. Life was good until that fateful day in June 2010! ---That day changed my mobile life and satisfaction with the Apple iPhone forever! In June 2010 Apple released iOS 4.01 (which I immediately upgraded without a second thought). Until now I had absolutely no reason to suspect that my phone would turn into such a mess.
After about an hour of downloading and installing the update my phone rebooted and I was eager to try the new features such as iBooks. That is when I noticed that everything was so slow! Apps that had previously worked crashed despite being certified with version 4.01, iBooks took over 2 minutes to launch, the keyboard had so much lag at times my words would suddenly show up all at once, etc. The list of problems seemed unless.
After dealing with these problems for months I started looking at my upgrade options. Normally I would have just purchased an iPhone 4 and have put my iPhone 3G on Craigslist or eBay. Around this time the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 was on the horizon and I was interested, very interested! I signed up for a Backstage pass and kept track of the progress of the new phone. In late December my Outlook reminder telling me that my upgrade availability was ready! I waited to until after the holidays to upgrade. I was on the fence about upgrading to either the iPhone 4 or Windows phone for several weeks. Then in early February 2011 I decided that the wait was over! I decided to bite the bullet and leap headlong into getting a Windows Phone 7!
Samsung Focus Experience:
I have to admit I was very skeptical about switching to the Windows Phone 7 but now I’m glad I did! The first thing I made sure of was that my unlimited data plan would be active on the new phone. The first thing I noticed when I turned on the phone was how fast it was to boot up, the Samsung Focus booted 50 seconds quicker than the iPhone 3G (which is impressive). I also do not notice any lag at all with the Focus, I have one more e-mail account configured on the Windows Phone (Hotmail). Switching through Apps and content is so much faster on the Focus even when fully loaded! Also the Super AMOLED screen is gorgeous and much nicer to look at compared to the iPhone 3G, I’m sure the iPhone 4 is on par with it! Facebook integration is flawless and I find that I rarely use the Facebook app because my social network updates are in the people App.
Another nice feature is that I can replace the battery myself; I do not need to take the phone into a store and pay nearly $100 to get that done. Supposedly I can expand the storage capacity on the Focus but it is not fully supported yet, at least not according to Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/12/atandt-tells-samsung-focus-customers-not-to-buy-microsd-cards-yet/). Another cool (or not so cool) feature is the font size on the Windows phone is huge! My wife likes it but I do not! I’m still trying to find a setting that controls the font size but it is a minor inconvenience. I was able to copy most of my iTunes+ music from iTunes over to my Windows machine and import it into Zune without incident. I have no way to transfer the TV Shows and Movies to the Windows phone but that doesn’t matter to me as long as I have an iPad. Viewing video content on 4” screens is not an ideal experience anyway! If I do feel the need to view video content on the device I can always use the Netflix App anyway.
Apps:
For the most part I have been able to find about 90% of all the Apps I used for the iPhone in the Windows Marketplace. I found Kindle, WeatherBug, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Flixster, Fandango, Twitter and You Tube without trouble. My news Apps are missing but there are 3rd party alternatives that I plan to try out. The Apps I cannot find I will run on the iPad until a suitable replacement will be found. The Apps that I cannot run on the Focus that I care about are as follows.
Sirius Radio – I can run this App on the iPad but I will miss it when I’m driving around in rental cars.
American Airlines – I e-mailed AA and got a very fast response stating that they are looking at supporting other mobile platforms, right now the only other mobile platform they support besides the iPhone is Android.
Nook – I guess I will not be reading any of my Nook books on the go! I have this on the iPad so it is not as much of a worry but it is since catching up on a book while waiting for the dentist or in line at the post office. I can always purchase more Kindle books in the mean time!
Amazon Shopping Cart – I heard an announcement that it would be on this phone but it is not available in the Marketplace yet!
HULU Plus – I will definitely miss listening to Fora.TV when I’m in the car! When I’m watching content I’m doing it with the iPad anyway!
Dragon Dictation – Not that this is very accurate in the first place but I do miss the functionality when I’m walking or otherwise cannot type on the keyboard.
After almost a week of using the Focus I’m very satisfied that I switched. There is functionality that I like on the iPhone better, namely how the phone contact lists are managed but I can live with these for the greater good of having a faster smartphone!