So it happens to be that my I5 was  taken from me at gunpoint before Ramzan Eid, quite a common occurrence in this neck of the woods mind you & so i thought i should now give the S4 a whirl as I had been hearing great things from friends about it for a while. Over all its a very customisable very fast smart phone but I decided to go back to the I5, when the new Iphone 5S came out and pushed it down in my price range in the used category. Sacrilege I know if you happen to be an android user but I thought I would make a list as to why i did this.
1) I do not want a phone that is watching me : I think technology should be complementary to a persons lifestyle and not intrusive to the point that it starts creeping you out. Well the separate camera for my eyes in the front of the S4 did just that. It would stop a video if I turned head away turn it back on when I looked back at it, scroll a web page down if i moved gaze down scroll it back up if i looked up..it was literally WATCHING ME and that I did not appreciate in the least. Yes you can turn of these stupid features but still that third camera is staring you in the face and I kept thinking what the heck is it doing now..over and over. Â It actually came to a point where I would turn the phone on its face when I slept at night….
2) I do not want a phone screen that moves if you breathe on it : Talk about ultra sensitivity, the S4’s screen is so slippery and so sensitive that even with the uber sensitivity feature turned off (yes it has that feature) It literally shifts at a bloody breath or anything close to a feather touch. I certainly did not appreciate the hover feature either where before I touched an sms just bringing my finger close would make it flash across my screen!! Over efficiency much!!!!
3) I do not want a phone which has so many options: Friends used to tell me this all the time, oh your iphone cant do this…oh your iphone is not customisable..it is too limited. Well you know what pals? I did not appreciate the fact that when i tried to take a picture the S4 would give me thirty different options on how to take it..and stupid jerky buggy options like “beauty face” and other korean eccentricities did not help much either. If you want to give filters at least make them sound cool damnit. Also how the heck is a person supposed to customise to a reasonable setting when every three seconds a new setting pops up!! Nope wait let me term this better…it doesn’t have settings it has multiple layers of settings and options buried within the top layer of settings and options…perhaps the people at samsung concentrated too much on customisation and ended up with a device that is supposed to do everything and the kitchen sink but does none of it in a great way..just does it all very fast so you are supposed to go wow…and then go yuk when you look at the results of a camera shot in indoor lighting.
4) I do not want a phone which updates every single day! : What is up with this? I mean this has been the bane of my android experience from the first HTC device ive tried! Yes I tried those for a while as well before I could afford an Iphone…every single day the android os download updates for almost all the apps you have installed in it. Cant the developers of the apps come up with reasonably spaced updates? It seems like every time a button changes theres an update to it for the android. It is very very irritating to say the least.
5) I do not want a 600 usd phone which feels cheap to hold : Seriously, the people of Samsung want someone who has been handling finely honed blocks of aluminium that Apple makes and then settle for plastic? Umm no..the back of this phone feels horrible and slippery, there are no grooves.. it does not fit well in your hand and it reminds me of tupperware..and I do not pay 600 dollars for tupperware!!
6) I do not want a phone that has crappy reception : The only phone I have owned with worse reception issues is a blackberry and I am happy to see they have finally sold out according to their amazing corporate strategy to an insurance company. The samsung galaxy S4 gives more “no signals” then a a desi chick who thinks she is hot..in fact that is what the Samsung S4 is Its a phone version of a desi chick who thinks she is too hot. You take it to a basement…no signal….you take it on a moonlight stroll…no signal..testimony of this can be found on the google play store..where there are more then 10 apps to handle network issues..including “magic refresh” wow…thats what I want..I wanna magic refresh so I can make a phone call!
7) I do not want a phone that you cannot type on : Im into text…I write long emails…I run campaigns online from whatsapping…I am a textual person and the androids key boards are still not upto my mark. Yes swift, samsung, paid versions , free versions, chicklets even the Iphone keyboard emulated all tried and tested in a month…same old crappy mistakes..same old autocorrect on crack cocaine…keyboards telling me they have corrected 50 k mistakes of mine in a week..yeh well I don’t need to know that. I need to be able to write using you the keyboard as that is your primary function!!
8) I do not want a phone which you cannot see on in daytime! : You think I am exaggerating? Take the samsung s 4 out in the daytime in sunlight and tell me what you can see on the screen…right you can see nothing! Turn up the brightness to full and you can see a bit in a semi transparent sort of a way but then your battery lasts about 4 hours. Such a beautiful large screen with such graphics octapoctra ( isnt that what they call their )processors in it to power it and you cant see jack in the sun..wow
Notice I haven’t commented on the google store or the fact that this phone lacks speed or anything of benchmarks because clearly on paper The Samsung Galaxy S4 is a beauty of a phone. Notice also that I am not touting the new apple 5 S’s sales figures in three days even though the whole world said its a piece of crap at launch.  The thing is though….. I want a great phone that works like it should and doesn’t require me to be a geeko god out of the box. I want a phone which is worth its price in the materials it uses and the quality it gives you. I want a phone that is supported by very robust apps and has no issues with what I do with a phone to speak off. The Apple I phone is that phone…and thats why i am back to it. With the new IOS 7 it has even adopted most of the features that were lacking before and yes the IOS 7 does resemble the android os a lot but is meaner faster and less buggy. What I have in fact realised is that the S4 can become all its touted to become in the future..if it gives up trying  to do everything possible under the sun and uses quality materials..till then it will always remain a runner up to me.
By the way The 5C is not my version of what an apple phone should be at all..thats apple trying to do a samsung..jobs must have puked in heaven.
So here we are…and i wrote this on my Iphone 5 tell me when you can do that on your S4?