Why this Samsung user isn’t switching from Android The iPhone 5 is the best phone Apple has ever made – but Google’s Android now offers more features, argues Matt Warman

Why this Samsung user isn’t switching from Android

The iPhone 5 is the best phone Apple has ever made – but Google’s Android now offers more features, argues Matt Warman

As Apple was mid-way through announcing the new iPhone, I was certain that chief executive Tim Cook had something surprising up his metaphorical sleeve. He’d announced that the iPhone 5 would be taller, lighter, thinner and faster – but none of that was news to an Apple fan who had seen the leaks online. The press conference, inexplicably, moved on to talk about a new version of iTunes and new iPods – surely, as the world’s interest waned, Cook was about to say: “There’s one last thing I didn’t mention about the iPhone 5.” The wow-factor was inevitable. But nothing came. The iPhone, when I got one in my hands, was indeed the best Apple has ever made – perfectly weighted, its black colour the perfect matte with the ideal texture. By making the screen half-an-inch bigger, Apple has added an extra row of icons, meaning the all-important apps are now easier to get to from a home-screen. The original iPhone was a brilliant idea and the iPhone 5 is a peerless refinement of that idea. And yet, since the first iPhone in 2007, technology has moved on. Better ideas have evolved. While the iPhone still undoubtedly offers a superb and easy experience for users, I look at how I now use my Android Samsung Galaxy S III and, now that the app selection has caught up, I simply couldn’t do everything I now need. On my main home-screen is a widget that shows my emails, with the most recent ones immediately obvious and a button to start writing a new one. Apple won’t permit widgets, maybe it breaks up the view or saps their battery. It would take me longer to keep track of those emails if I had an iPhone, constantly flicking in and out of an app, or checking the details of the notification centre. If I scroll over to my second home-screen, there’s a second widget for another inbox, and then over on a third are widgets for Facebook and Twitter. A forth has news, weather, British Airways and Starbucks, to name a few. Underneath all of these, all the time, are the persistent apps for phone, contacts, messaging and Google Chrome. Google does not compel me to keep a ‘Stocks’ app. Apple is so sure you hold shares that it won’t let you delete it. Let’s not pretend that any of this is earth-shattering – both the S III and the iPhone 5 are great phones, and both of them are, well, just phones. But the S III lets me send files simply by touching it to another phone; if I look up a contact and pick up the phone to put it to my ear, it knows I want to call that person. Best of all, if I am looking at the phone it (mostly) detects I’m looking at it and keeps the screen on. All of this is clever; Apple has no answers on these fronts. All this is before we talk about Apple’s risible new Maps product, introduced well before it was ready and inflicted on customers without providing an alternative. So far, too, Apple hasn’t even apologised or tried to explain. Perhaps consumers will now jailbreak their phones to install an older iOS. The S III does not, I concede, feel as solid as the iPhone. But I’ve dropped it more often than I’d like and the screen is not broken, or even scratched. The S III’s huge screen looks glorious; so does the iPhone’s smaller version. I like the larger version. Ultimately, unexcitingly, it’s down to personal preference. Under every Apple story published on this website and others, readers commented “how much did Apple pay you to write this advert”? Yet, the traffic such stories get demonstrates overwhelming interest from readers. None of this is worth sending death threats over – Android phones, I think, offer a slate of features that far exceeds that available to iPhone users. If you’ve got an iPhone, upgrading to the 5 will make your life marginally better (unless you want to use Maps). Especially if you’re due an upgrade, it’s an easy and inexpensive move. But if you’re willing to go through the trauma of switching, if you’re not too wedded to iTunes for your music, then Android is probably cheaper and probably better in the end. Apple deserves every one of its many millions of pre-orders – but its fans can’t reasonably pretend it is the only option for smart people. Daily Telegraph