This week was time to return the Samsung Galaxy S7 to the Verizon store. It was fun on a Florida trip being able to use the phone in the pool, but back in the real world the party is over. (see initial review and then a post about battery life)
Trying to get out of Florida was challenging because the Uber app said that the device wasn’t supported. Back in Massachusetts I tried the Uber app again and it said that I had to reenter the credit card numbers, which I did and it still failed. The Uber app then said to contact support@uber.com, which resulted in them suggesting gender reassignment. “Hi Philip, Sorry to hear about the trouble accessing your account, Danielle. … Keep safe and enjoy your day. Jaysel”.
Making phone calls in my Boston suburb was impossible with the Samsung whereas the iPhone 6 Plus had managed to be fairly reliable despite the fanatical opposition of the Millionaires for Obama to cell phone towers. I turned on WiFi calling and the phone/network wasn’t smart enough to use WiFi in our one-bar house. While driving in Florida (superb LTE coverage everywhere), the S7 lost all data coverage for about five minutes. My companion’s iPhone 5S, also on Verizon, worked perfectly during this period.
The best thing about the phone is the camera but a photographer’s workflow from the point of exposure onward on is inferior to the iPhone’s. I couldn’t find an easy way to send a reduced-size image from Gmail on the Samsung, for example, so my data plan was being consumed to send ridiculous 5MB photo attachments to people who didn’t want anything that large. Dropbox’s photo upload feature seemed to create duplicate images on my PC, as did the Google Photos app (but of course the images that were duplicated were different between Dropbox and Google Photos).
The true deal-killers for me were the lack of battery life and the poor performance in areas with weak coverage (i.e., the United States!). I was using all of the same apps in all of the same ways as on the iPhone 6 Plus and battery life was roughly halved.
“I’m lying alone with my head on the phone, thinking of you till it hurts
I know you hurt too but what else can we do, tormented and torn apart…
…I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you,
I know you were right, believing for so long
I’m all out of love, what am I without you,
I can’t be too late to say that I was so wrong”
That was a cheapo way to experience first hand what seems to have been your Secret Dream of gender reassignment, Danielle [bucket list tick-off].
A very useful review. I am very happy with my iPhone 6s plus, with Verizon service, for both phone and photos. It’s a little buggier than my iPhone 5 was, but not enough to make me want to switch back.
All I look for in phones is battery life now. I use my phone heavily and rely on it. The iPhone couldn’t hack it so ended up carrying around battery packs and cases everywhere.
Ended up getting the Moto x play, which is about £200 sim free. Has a 3600mAh battery and even with my heavy use can still work the next morning for a while if I don’t charge it. It also supports quick charge, so plugging it in for 20 mins at my desk gets it mostly full.
Camera isn’t great but I don’t take many photos.
Key takeaway: most important spec on a phone is the mAh rating of the battery. Ignore the rest.
I do like many things about ios more but at the end of the day having battery life to call an uber after a late night at a bar trumps everything.
Martin: The S7 is rated at 3000 mAh, thus proving that there is no brilliant hardware design that cannot be rendered useless by software engineers.
One of the key reasons I keep my old Blackberry Q10 is the big battery that can be swapped out. The battery lasts me about 2 days with heavy use and 4 days if I am not doing much. Then with the spare battery I don’t need to charge for an entire trip, just swap out the battery. And the BB user interface is a lot simpler and easier to use than the IPhone 6 plus my wife has. Has anyone tried the new BB phones?
As I am—sort of—married to the iOS mob, yet do not depend on a phone all that much, this interactive online comparison chart of smartphones with removable battery is of little interest to me, but presumably of value to others here (client works on iPhone, but, when queried with selector OS=iOS, it correctly returns “0 matches”).
http://www.productchart.com/smartphones/sets/3