I wanted to love the Samsung Galaxy S4. I did love its big, luscious screen. I enjoyed its camera. The hardware of that phone is lovely. I liked the customizability of ringtones, as I screen calls via ringtone.
But android software is dreadful. Dreadful, awful. Bad. Don’t buy an android phone.
First, the Galaxy ships with several gigs of utterly useless space- and processor-swallowing software. This software is mind-numbingly stupid. There are several scornful nicknames that convey the derision in which it’s held: “bloatware” and “crapware” among them.
You have to do this tech-intensive thing called “rooting the phone” to really exterminate that pestiferous bloatware.
Second, the settings are badly disorganized. It’s hard to find what you’re looking for. Someone who has no executive skills capacity whatsoever designed the Galaxy settings.
Third, the software doesn’t always work. For example, mailing pictures from the camera album. Sometimes they would send, sometimes they wouldn’t. Very frustrating.
Fourth, the email app is god-awful user unfriendly. Impossible. Doesn’t sync often enough, only likes gmail. And everything, including your password, is stored on the cloud, which means Big Brother NSA can pluck your password out of the cloud and ruffle through your emails at will. (Imagine a big hairy oaf rummaging through your underwear drawer….)
Fifth, you have to press extra buttons to make a phone call or get a message.
I personally found that android software required a lot of fussing with. It’s not well organized and intuitive, as apple iOs software is.
My Galaxy screen had an issue in the fall and I swapped the sim card out into my old iPhone, and I sent the Galaxy to Samsung for repair. While using a slow old iPhone 3, I fell back in love with the iPhone. There’s NO stupid crapware to root out. Everything just works. I don’t have to fuss with it.
The Galaxy came back from Samsung. It looked beautiful and worked–well, it worked as well as an android phone does work, which is to say, encumbered with stupid bloatware and sporadically. I delayed putting the sim card back in because I just couldn’t bear to leave the pleasant efficiency of the iOs environment. Finally I girded my loins and dutifully returned to the Galaxy.
Two weeks later, and some website or email created an annoying alert on the phone that it had a virus and I needed to download antivirus software. There was a specific website it wanted me to go to. I was pretty sure that was a scam. But it finished off my tolerance of all things android.
I took myself to ATT. I did what it took to get the iPhone 5S.
Awesome phone. A pleasure to use. And my relief is delicious.
