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Comment by cageface | Hacker News Reader

Likewise. My Nexus 4 and iPhone 5 are pretty much indistinguishable in terms of UI responsiveness. Samsung devices are notorious for lag, even with the ridiculously powerful hardware in the S4.

As happy as I am to see Android thriving I'd prefer to see somebody other than Samsung on top.

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I have used Android for about 6 months and iPhone for about 3 years. I find using IOS like being in hand-cuffs. Let me give an example. For about 6 months, there was an audio bug in IOS (that now seems to be fixed). If I plugged in my iPhone to a car charger/music player, and removed it while a song was playing, the audio would switch off. Now Apple, being a hip company, had about 6 volume settings, of which you can't see the settings for most of these volume settings. The volumes I know of are :- 1) the volume level through the headphones 2) the volume through the speaker, when the audio is switched on by a physical switch 3) the volume through the speaker, when the audio is switched off by a physical switch 4) the volume through the headphones when the phone is plugged in through a 30 pin connector 5) an application specific volume (eg. playing a movie through a web browser - which does NOT use volumes 1-5) 6) ring-tone volume

Now, for some reason, Apple got the volumes mixed up so that it was IMPOSSIBLE to get any sound (except 6.) without plugging in a 30 pin connector and increasing the volume.

It took me MONTHS to work this out. All of the Apple "experts" I knew swore that this was not possible until I showed them. Even Apple said there was no bug and that it was faulty hardware, which I knew it wasn't.

The problem is that I keep on having similar issues with IOS. It's just "too clever" for its own good. Settings that you need are just not there (eg. accessing WIFI settings with a single click or slide).

There was also the time that iTunes REFUSED to copy music to my iPhone. If I used a 3rd party tool, songs would be copied and could play, but as soon as I used iTunes, it knew the new songs were "corrupted", and put the broken versions of the music on my phone. Thankfully, this bug only lasted a week.

I also find my iPhone 4s laggy. As an example, if I load a web page in the background, and try to scroll the current web page, the phone locks up for about 1000 milliseconds (ie. a VERY long time). It really infuriates me.

As for the Android lag, I am not sure what people are referring to. the Google hardware has not been a problem that I have seen - ever.

I think the best summary I can think of is that IOS is for people that don't want choice (eg. no FLAC, no 1080p MKV, no volume settings, you can't copy music files directly - you need iTunes, etc). Android has more that you need to know about, but at least you CAN find it if you want to.

I have a love/hate with IOS. But, when IOS pisses me off, it REALLY pisses me off. I can't say the same for Android.

You can see that I like choice. I also agree with others that I'd rather see Apple do well than Samsung. Samsung have a highly unethical history. If it weren't for Apple, Samsung would still be churning out rubbish handsets.

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