Surely this will turn Sony around...

[BoredSysAdmin]

iTunes is not needed to take pictures stored on an iphone to view and transfer them to a Windows PC. It just pops up as an external drive when I connected it to any Windows PC whether it has iTunes or not.

Have't used idevices for personal use in a long while so I can't confirm or deny that, but I can say that any android phone connected to any pc does show entire file structure (unlike iphone)..
Now what I can say with confidence is that movies are required to be loaded using itunes

Now going back to original subject: Sony has a good chance to win big (IE: to be second on marketplace - I have no illusions on who's going to stay #1) on mobile devices market.
Imo right now Samsung is lacking vision and it shows in their recent devices - instead of trully innovate - they just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks - not bad methodology, but not with NOT with hi-end devices

 

[Hi Ho]

^ Not to mention that the S6 looks almost exactly like the iPhone 6 alone the bezel. There is no way that is a coincidence.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

^ Not to mention that the S6 looks almost exactly like the iPhone 6 alone the bezel. There is no way that is a coincidence.

My current gripes with s6 are :
A) smaller capacity battery that s5 had
B) none removable battery. S5 was removable.
Combine a and b = idiotic design decision
C) no memory expansion slot (*)
D) usb port downgraded to 2.0
E) glass back.
F) On one hand i want to congratulate Samsung for using their own processors instead of Qualcomm's snapdragon, but as Semi Accurate found - all evidence suggests that 1) Samsung chips are not as efficient as Qualcomm's and 2) Samsung was source of fud, claiming Qualcomm's chips overheat.

So let's add up: more pixels, brighter screen, less efficient cpu and smaller battery. Even with fancy power management system, i reasonably can conclude that s6 battery life is not going to be amazing.

Now combine C and D. Add to this mix fact that internal flash memory is always demanding high markups.
So pay arm and a leg for large storage and it would take over 3 hours to fill highest 128gb model using usb wire.

 

[lsiberian]

I should clarify. I challenge them to work as well as competitive iPhones 4 years down the line.

I know plenty of people who own the iPhone 4 still and use it daily. At the time the iPhone was released Samsung had released the Galaxy Captivate. I haven't seen one of those in over 2 years. Granted iPhone had better market saturation at the time, but I don't think they held 50% of the market on cellular devices, I don't recall seeing any devices from that era for a long time other than the iPhone 4.

My wife's iPhone 4 is a little over 2 years and has broken power button, and occasional data issues. My Samsung Galaxy S2 was working fine when I last used it, but obviously I don't use it as a phone anymore. The thing is the gap between Android and IPhones is really widening from a technology standpoint. My wife will still probably get a new iPhone, but that doesn't mean I suggest them for tech folks. Also I don't suggest keeping the stock OS on any Android root it and put a custom rom on their.

 

[lsiberian]

Much of that is the crappy skin that Samsung and so many other manufacturers put on top of Android. Samsung TouchWiz is obviously not well coded as shown by the fact that it bogs down on the ridiculously high spec Samsung hardware. Samsung has a history of throwing every gimmick and "feature" they can think up against the wall to see what sticks and they end up with the bloated mess that is TouchWiz. I had an SIII which was before they got really carried away and the TouchWiz interface was among the worst aspects to the phone. I installed countless customer ROMS and some were pretty awesome but all had at least one killer flaw like a camera that didn't work right or random reboots.

Stock android is a much better experience but almost no phones have stock android. The Moto X is probably the most popular and widely available phone with (mostly) stock Android and it really makes a difference.



iTunes in OS X works fine. Haven't used it in Windows for quite some time but I remember the experience was not good. The only thing you need iTunes for anymore is to do manual local backups and sync music. You can use an iPhone without ever connecting it to a PC if you want.

Sony and Google both offer unlocked phones, but with a droid it really doesn't matter because you can easily root the phone and load a custom rom on it. Just make sure you back up your contacts on your google account.