Wow, it's been almost a year since I last posted on here... not like this blog gets traffic to begin with (only 3000+ views in a span of about 3 years.), but it's a long lost stress relief tactic that I should engage in more often. What better way to do so with a relatively new but relentless war? Smartphones have been evolving from an exclusive luxury item to the cellular standard of today. I don't know about you, but I welcome technology.
The most notable "war" is the Apple camp with all of their diehard fans and the Google camp with all of their subdivisions. "Subdivisions, you say?" Absolutely! Not every Android-powered device are created equally. Let's face it, there are a ton of Android-based devices, and a lot of them suck. You know this is true; faulty hardware, horrible OS builds, and terrible optimization plague a lot of the devices that were out during the beginning years of the Smartphone wars. A lot of this had to do with a service carriers control of content within their device (i.e bloatware), as well as the manufactures take on the Android OS (i.e Touchwiz and Sense), and even hardware, itself. There were a lot of weeds in the garden, and they were often stomped out by Apple and their crazies for awhile.
Sifting through the carnage, a couple companies were relentless in ousting Apple's reign in the market, and this pursuit ultimately put a bitter rivalry on center stage: Apple vs. Samsung. This relationship, as you know, has gotten so bad that we have ongoing lawsuits against each other (Apple first... of course). Today, Samsung owns a 30.8% share in the market, compared to Apple's 18.2% (down from 22.5% in Q1 2012). It's amazing if you just look at just the numbers and no context, but it's the iPhone 4, 4S, and 5 versus (and I listed EVERY device currently being sold by Samsung in the US... to make a point) the S2, S3, S4, Note, Note II, Galaxy Stellar, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Stratosphere, Galaxy ATIV Odyssey, Galaxy S Blaze, Galaxy Relay, Galaxy Exhilarate, Galaxy Focus, Galaxy Express, Galaxy Focus 4G, and the Galaxy Rugby Pro. These are all Samsung smartphones; this is not including the regular cell phones that they sell like the flip phone Rugby or Gravity.. I really hope that you get this picture. 3 devices versus 16. 3:16... Austin 3:16... that reminds me.. beer. (Publish edit: At the time of publishing, I neglected to add Sprint's Galaxy Victory and Transform Ultra M930.. which really doesn't help Samsung's case, anyway. 3 vs 18, and the difference is only 13%? Yeah..)
Yep... beer.
So while this war is ongoing, the proverbial climax of the conflict has hit in the form of the initial ruling in the US which a judge ordered Samsung to pay for damages of infringement to Apple. Of course, this is being contested and Samsung has been successful in reducing the billion dollar price tag. This obviously is a company to company battle... and yet, the diehard fans, and the bandwagon fans from both sides somehow feel justified to religiously defend one company and destroy the rival through a series of "Internet White Knighting," logic, and lack-of-logic. From Cult of Mac to Cult of Android. From Mac Rumors to Android Central. From 4chan to Facebook. The Fanboy War reached the vast killing fields that is the internet, surpassing the noise made by the likes of PC vs Mac, Call of Duty vs Battlefield, PS3 vs 360 vs Wii and even Fairy vs Fairy (AKA, Team Edward vs. Team Jacob). The biggest volleys of words seemed to have occurred in the later half of 2012, and while it has somewhat subsided for now, a Civil War of sorts is about to hit the Samboys (<----I'm a crafty muthafucka) future.
THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS.
What's the state of smartphone fanboyism in 2013? Well, we haven't seen it get to it's peak yet. Apple has yet to release their lineup for anything. Google hasn't announce any new Nexus hardware, as well as the elusive Moto "X-Phone" (or XFON). Nokia is also releasing newer Lumia devices and Sammy & HTC are always pumping new products throughout the year. This doesn't mean that nothing exciting came out. Two of the biggest Android flagship devices released in US markets weeks apart from each other and they're both selling like crazy. These are the Galaxy S4 and the HTC One. Both devices showing new features that are (somewhat) groundbreaking in the industry. Both phones have received universal acclaim by professional critics, as well as amateur YouTube reviewing critics. While there has been manufacture fanboy defense (and offense) within the Android community, nothing has been more prominent than the battles being waged right now. Yes, it's HTC fanboys versus Samboys.
Yes, it has come to this. Click pic for huge awesomeness!
These two devices are now in the sights of fanboys from both sides.. and it's getting pretty nasty. The biggest arguments coming from the HTC camp (that I been reading on forums, and comment threads) is that the S4 is only an incremental update of the S3 (wrong.. it's more based off the Note II), has a ton of gimmicky features (Smart Scroll, Smart Pause, S-everything, etc) that bogs the OS down, and feels cheap (rational phone techs should know better and see past that lame excuse). Samboys look at the HTC One and see their arch nemesis, the iPhone. It must be the unibody-like design. The main arguments on the Sammy camp is performance comparisons (which is obvious due to the lower clocked CPU and DDR2 memory), smaller screen (by a whopping 0.3 inches), weird button layouts/menu (I give them that.. that shit is weird), and most of all, the non-removable battery and expandable memory option. Again, this is seriously the main arguments I read/seen/heard about both devices.. and both sides have been in bitter contention for the past couple weeks.
THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE DEVICES..
Have I mentioned how ridiculous fan-ppl are? Well, they are. The way I see it, both of these devices are really, REALLY good. They have impressive specs. Both companies have come a long way . Lets get this right, The S4 is by no means an incremental update to some past device like the S3 or even the Note II. The model is based off the Note II, rather than the S3.. but that's where it ends. The currently available US model has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 Quad-core processor. There is even an Octa-Core Exynos processor. That is unheard of in a smartphone, and the benchmarks for these two S4 variants are off the charts. Next is the gimmicky features.. Yeah, that's true, IMO. I had a lot of playtime with a friends S4 (4 hours, give or take.), and the only feature that I would be using is Air View, which acts like the Note II when you hover the stylus over the screen, except its your finger or hover hand (pun not intended)... and that's only if I have food in my hands or I don't feel like putting fingerprints on my screen.. something that's relatively silly. Now, about Smart Scroll.. I just can't get that to work.. seriously.. I think it hates brown colored eyes.
If a properly and consistently (keyword consistently) functioning Smart Scroll were the only thing that would save my life from the likes of Jigsaw, I would be dead...
I can go on with the gimmicks, but luckily, you can turn all of that off and save some battery life and the OS didn't really get so bogged down as claimed, so the argument is on thin ice to begin with. As far as it feeling cheap.. "yeah, well... that's just, like, your opinion, man." Seriously though, as long as you're not playing baseball with it being the ball, or some other unlikely activity that requires you to use your device in a manner that it was not meant to be used for (like dropping it, or eating it, or using it as a soccer ball), it's going to feel fine. The build quality still feels premium.
As far as the HTC One is concerned the unibody design is, again, a matter of user preference. It certainly feels nice on the hand (when compared to the S4). The design and the decision to not include expandable memory or a replacement battery may also be a big reason why Samboys dislikes the One (lolNEO). I can understand people's full dependence of their phone so much that they need more than one battery to go through the day and most of the night. OK, if you're using your phone THAT MUCH. For us normal people (and even a good majority of power users), the battery is sufficient to last the day. People are also dynamic. They have unique needs. If they really feel that they need a removable battery, they'll just get S4 anyway, or they'll pull a me and have a 6,000mAh tiny battery brick in my bag. The point is that not everyone is the same, and certainly, not everyone will be carrying an extra battery to begin with. Get over that, Samboys.
This leads to the second part of this argument: expandable memory. First of all, the S4 needs it... badly. The 16GB model has a significant chunk of storage already taken, out of the box. You already need something like a 32GB or 64 GB MicroSD card. That's fair enough. The HTC One starts at $199 (w/contract and/or upgrade); the same price as the S4 16GB.. The HTC One has 32GBs of storage. Cough up another bill and you get the 64GB version. I currently have a 32GB Apple iPhone 4S, Jailbroken with 2 videos, 365 photos, and 91 apps (not including Cydia apps/tweaks).. I have 28GBs available and I have 21 GBs left. "Where's your music, Ryan?" Well, I have this thing you probably heard of.. its called cloud services. In fact, not only do I have iTunes Match, I also have Amazon Mp3, AND Rhapsody. I have 3 Cloud based-services... plus Pages, Keynote and Google Drive all work in the cloud. With the exception of videos, apps, and the pics I choose to keep in the 4S, everything that would otherwise be in my device is in the cloud. Again, i'm not saying that everyone is doing this. People's use of their device are unique, but even if I wasn't using any cloud services (which wasn't that long ago), I would still have a considerable amount of space... and I'm a heavy power user who believes in making my phone as my own and no one elses. I did that when I was using the [Samsung] Captivate. I did that when I had the [HTC] Inspire. I'm doing it with the 4S (until July when I can upgrade to some Android goodness).
Whoa, whoa! We're not done with the HTC One... unfortunately, the Samboys are a much larger demographic than HTC folk. They're also pretty damned vocal about their devices. They have a lot of complaints (and sound more like Apple fanboys.. but I'll get to that, later). So performance comparison between both devices... not much of a difference. In fact, some of the general use comparisons from pro sites showed that the HTC One was slightly faster than the S4 in a number of normal tasks... tasks that most people would confront daily. I can't find the relevance in arguing performance until both devices are running Stock Android (one down, one to go). Finally, the weird button layout. Yes, that is a problem. I don't know what HTC was thinking when they decided on the two-button layout and very intrusive menu option button while running in-app. Luckily, for power users, there is already a hack to turn the HTC logo into a capacitive button (apparently). Rejoice, current One owners who are tech savvy! There is also talk of HTC getting rid of that menu bar in a future update. Rejoice, every other non-tech savvy HTC One owners!
The button layout.. and that trickery of a HTC logo button that's not meant to be...
The menu bar, meaning that out of place, black bar with the 3 vertical dots... yeah, that one.
I'm sure there are more technical-related issues that the hardcore fanboys would dish at each other.. I feel that this is scratching the surface. The point is that, in the end, both of these devices are amazing. There really needs to be more recognition for that, instead of a e-peen measuring, "my daddy is better than your daddy" contest. It was stupid 5 years ago. It's still stupid today. The hard truth is this: fanboys are afraid of admitting their commitment to whatever company they think should rule the world. They'll deny it up and down, but for someone who has been observing the battle from a distance, it's clearer than day. You have to accept this:
HTC fanboys = Samsung fanboys = Apple Fanboys = Nokia Fanboys = Motorola fanboys... etc, etc, etc.
If you engaged in such activites or feel a sense of duty to defend your favorite companies honor, regardless if you stood to make money by doing so, than you are that person. You are a fanboy. You are part of the problem. You are not a solution. In the hastag of the recently ousted Adam Orth of Microsoft: #dealwithit
...and the war continues.
SUPPLEMENT. FANBOYS OF A DIFFERENT TYPE - THE MINDLESS, CASUAL OUTBREAK.
Example 1
...annnnd Example 2
So while the most noise can come from your typical fanboys, there is always a left out demographic within our midst. They're left out because they're simply silent majority. These are the people who don't look at phones the way power users look at their phone. These are the users who buy devices such as the S4, HTC One, iPhone 5 or the Nokia Lumia 920 (as shown in video), just to use Facebook, Instagram, play Candy Crush and text to their hearts content.. AND even obtain social status. These are just the average users who honestly know little or anything about the true capabilities of their devices..WHICH IS COMPLETELY FINE! The majority just wants a phone that just works.
The thing that I have been noticing as of lately is how vocal they are about their phones... and worse, the companies behind the phones. I see people asking their peers "which phone should I get?" Is it condescending to think that the random folks who quickly scream out "X, because derp derp!" is clueless and blindly following a device/company and bashing the other for some external, irrelevant reason? I'm talking about the people who use the "because its better" and "I hate blah blah, so you should get this" justification.
"What do you mean my administration derp dee derped in Benghazi?"
The contribution of what I like to call "depring points" doesn't help... at all. No, I'm not saying STFU. You have a right to say whatever the hell you want. I'm am saying that if you haven't thought about it all the way through and have some sort of backing or formulation or articulation as to why you think this device is legitimately better than another, than respectfully STFU! One can only read/hear/watch so much until they're flipping desks in rage. "Get X because I hate Y" is not legitimate. Here is the main point as to why you shouldn't be so quick to voice anything in regards to this: people are unique. People can think for themselves. No, I'm not saying that you shouldn't stop asking others what phone should you get. I'm saying that you should really read whoever answers that question; look who has given you well thought out answers or who actually has the device and whether they actually compared it to another device in question. Formulate your unique reasoning and decide on your own at the phone shop.
To not blabber anymore, I'm saying to think about it. Claim: "I need a new phone." Warrant: "my other phone is broken/old/shitty." Data: "This phone is better because the battery life is much longer than my old phone and/or other device i'm looking to buy," or "i'm looking to game a lot so I'll get X over Y because X has better graphic capabilities," or "X uses LTE and Y uses the older HSPA+ so i'll be getting X so I can have faster network speeds." Now you have the device and you can talk about it and recommend it to someone with legit reasoning instead of something as quaint or childish as "herp derp Apple is turd; Samsung is durr!" Every time I read the comment boards on Apple's, Samsung's, and even Hawaii News Now (of all places) FB pages regarding any phone tech, I see the shit comments everywhere. They bury the legit comments or are responded with childish and irrelevant replies. Don't be that person!
"Upham, careful you don't step in the bullshit."
