<p>I'm planning on getting a smartphone before I attend college this fall. I'm either going to get Samsung galaxy s4 or Iphone 4s or 5. I never had a smart phone before so I would like to ask some college students here which one would be better for a college student and why? They say that these 2 are the same but i'm pretty sure there are differences. What were your experiences with these phones?</p>
<p>I recommend the new HTC One, it has a way better design than the s4. The s4 has a good screen but it has a plastic case that looks really cheap. The iphone 5 is good too but it’s a little over simplified for college students, you can do much more with an android phone.</p>
<p>Is it unlocked that it can be used on any cell phone providers? The HTC one doesn’t look as nice to me for some reason. So you think an android phone is much better than Iphone?</p>
<p>Based off your initial thoughts, I’m going to assume initial price isn’t a huge deal here:</p>
<p>Galaxy S4 / Droid DNA (the S4 is <em>barely</em> better) > HTC One (up there with the S4 and DNA, personal pref though) > iPhone 5.</p>
<p>The Android phones listed are the best on the market atm, and definitely kill the iPhone 5 and future 5S. I don’t know, just look around.</p>
<p>Android phones > iPhones. It’s a personal preference again though. Typically Android phones are more powerful for the cost of an iPhone (the cameras are more advanced, etc.).</p>
<p>It was either a droid or an iPhone 4s for me. </p>
<p>I went with an iPhone. I like it quite a bit.</p>
<p>One of my sisters asked me about smartphones this afternoon and I told her that it’s about the kind of ecosystem that you prefer. So decide on the ecosystem that you prefer and that dictates the phone. If you pick Android, then you then have the choice of hardware.</p>
<p>I have an iPhone 5 and a Google Nexus 7. I like both devices.</p>
<p>I find that I generally prefer the iOS ecosystem on apps. I find better availability for what I like to do, that the apps are better and that there are more of them. There are free TV apps on the iPhone for the three major networks but only one network has shows on Android. I find that there are nicer UIs on iOS vs Android. It may be because Apple customers tend to spend more while Android users tend to be cheap (I well understand both sides) or that writing software to very similar hardware platforms is easier than writing to a wide variety of platforms.</p>
<p>The flexibility of the Android ecosystem is nice. You can customize your own home pages and you can mix widgets and icons on your home screen. There are Apps that control low-level operating system operations that you can’t access in iOS without Jail-Breaking. Android gives you a ton of options for the screen lock. You can use Android phones as you would a file system. You can connect your phone to a PC with a cable and move stuff back and forth using Windows or Mac OS X drag and drop. Android supports multiple video formats. If you want to play videos on the iPhone, you have to convert them to MP4 format. This isn’t that hard to do but it’s still something that you have to do. You can generally do things directly on Android where you have to go through iTunes on iOS. Some people like iTunes, some people feel walled-in by it.</p>
<p>I got my daughter a Google Galaxy Nexus last summer and she absolutely loves the thing. It doesn’t have the greatest of specs but it does what she needs it to do. The Google Galaxy Nexus 4 is a much better device than hers but she’s happy with what she has.</p>
<p>I think that a lot of the current high-end Android phones are great devices. Best is always relative and it will change on a regular basis.</p>
<p>I find great utility in the iPhone 5 and depend on it a great deal but I suspect that I would be fine with an Android device too - though I’d probably have an iPad Mini to go with it. I guess that I like having one device for each ecosystem as they both have their merits.</p>
<p>Hmmm. Sounds like the android phones are better for me then lol.</p>
<p>I’ve used android and the iPhone so I’ll try to compare them for you. </p>
<p>Galaxy s4
PROS: large screen, does everything the iPhone does, much more customizable, so many cool little features
CONS: a little too big for me, won’t fit in my pockets, can’t see the emojis that iPhones users have, sometimes have to wait for an app that’s already on the apple market to come to the android market, hard to find cute cases for unless you look online, won’t fit in cute wristlets</p>
<p>iPhone
PROS: compact, easy to use, can see emojis, FaceTime, so easy to find cases everywhere you are especially at souvenir stores and such, GREAT camera</p>
<p>CONS: can’t customize the phone very much, if the phone freezes you can’t take the battery out and reset the phone, the android twitter apps are better in my opinion, everyone and their grandma has an iPhone so it’s kind of boring, to me phones with an android operating system are easier to use</p>
<p>Overall, I liked my android phone better. I only have an iPhone now because I wanted to be able to see emojis, use the Nike training app that android doesn’t have, and get a more compact phone. If you don’t care about any of those three things then definitely go for the galaxy s4! My mom has the s3 and she raves about it. It does so many cool things. Like if you have the camera on you can say “cheese”, “smile”, or “capture” and the picture will take without you pressing a button. Also, the screen won’t go black no matter how long you go without touching the screen as long as the sensor can see your eyes. It’s really a cool phone. I have an iPhone and I can honestly say the iPhone is overrated. It’s not a bad phone but nothing to write home about.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of your imput, guys :).</p>
<p>Is there a difference between the galaxy s3 and s4?</p>
<p>@lillemonred
Here’s a good comparison of the two
<a href=“10 scariest girls and women in the world - Top Tens”>10 scariest girls and women in the world - Top Tens;
<p>Samsung Galaxy Nexus…or Google Nexus 4. The 4 is better, but you can’t go wrong with either.</p>
<p>The Galaxy Nexus was the Summer 2012 model and it was replaced in the fall - so yes, same price, better specs. I like buying the Google branded products because you know that you’ll get update in a timely manner. That hasn’t been the case with many other products because the carriers seem reluctant to do the updates. They get money when you buy a new phone; they don’t get money for developing upgrades. I’ve read that there are a lot of smartphone out there stuck on very old versions of Android.</p>
<p>Most of the phones that you hear of that aren’t getting updates are the secondary models; ones that weren’t a flagship phone of their respective manufacturer or network at the time. It’s a little unfortunate, but there is an important lesson to be learned there to try to stick to a mainstream android phone if you want to rely on having timely updates down the line. I do feel like the Droid DNA falls in this “not flagship” category so I can’t really recommend it that strongly.</p>
<p>Currently, I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 (AT&T version) and I’m very pleased with it overall. The updates did come a little later than the international version or the Nexus phones (Just got updated to Jelly Bean this month, nearly 9 months after it was released for the Nexuses), but it really wasn’t too big of an issue for me. Note that I swapped to android from my old iPhone 3GS and I was immensely satisfied with the change, I really appreciate the level of customization and openness that an Android phone offers over iOS. The increased screen area is a huge bonus for me as well.</p>
<p>Still, I will be getting a new phone this summer and so I’m in a similar situation as the OP is. Basically, the 3 choices that make sense right now are the Samsung GS4, HTC One, or what will probably be the Nexus 5 that will likely be announced around May 15 at the annual Google I/O event. HTC One looks absolutely incredible but the lack of a removable SD card or battery is very close to a deal breaker for me. I do not have a tablet or separate mp3 player so I keep a lot of media (movies, music, etc) on my phone and being limited to 16/32GB instead of the 80GB+ you can get with a SD card is a huge step down, especially when the screen resolution is full 1080p. The ability to swap out a battery on a long car or airplane trip (or when you just forget to charge it overnight!) is really nice as well.</p>
<p>I’m basically left torn between the Galaxy S4 and the (as of yet unannounced) Nexus 5. One one hand, the S4 is an immensely powerful phone with an amazing screen, and the SD card + battery I mentioned earlier. However, the design and build quality isn’t outstanding and you are left with a version of Android that I feel is largely spoiled by TouchWiz (samsung’s skin and suite of crappy apps, able to be removed but it’s just annoying.) The Nexus 5 on the other hand likely wont have as much raw processing power as the S4 but you can count on excellent support from Google over the lifetime of the phone. Basically, I’m waiting to see what Google shows off at the I/O event (if they even announce anything, remember it’s just all speculation right now!) and making my decision based on that.</p>
<p>Honestly, any of the flagship phones (Galaxy S4, HTC One, Nexus 5, and even the iPhone 5) are all fantastic devices and you cant really go wrong with any of them; just choose whatever you like best in my opinion.</p>
<p>Are all they unlocked phones? They can be right?</p>
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<p>Not everyone buys the flagship product. I got my daughter the unlocked Google Galaxy Nexus for $350 (unlocked), about half the price of a flagship product.</p>
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<p>There are those that want smartphones on a
budget that would like timely updates too.</p>
<p>Make sure you get credible anti-malware apps or software on your smartphone, smartphones are as sophisticated as many laptops.</p>
<p>Otherwise, for crooks, remotely activating your microphone and listening in on your conversations and text messages will be easier than taking candy from a baby.</p>
<p>So basically, you would need to download antimalware apps when we first get it? or we have to order that separately?</p>
<p>"Not everyone buys the flagship product. I got my daughter the unlocked Google Galaxy Nexus for $350 (unlocked), about half the price of a flagship product.</p>
<p>There are those that want smartphones on a
budget that would like timely updates too."</p>
<p>I should have clarified a little more I suppose, Nezus phones are pretty much exempt from this as they have such strong support directly from Google themselves. Not to mention you can pretty much classify any Nexus device as a “flagship” device, really.</p>
<p>The current Nexus 4 is a fantastic phone for someone on a budget; you can get one unlocked for $299 which is far cheaper than any of the contract phones from Apple, Samsung, or HTC.</p>
<p>Is 8 gb really enough?</p>
<p>8 is fine. I’m assuming you can add a memory card for more storage?</p>