[AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note II] mugget:
Another iPhone 4 to Note 2 switcher

Seeing as this is an iPhone 4 to Note 2 thread I will add some comments as I've just done the same. I had the original iPhone then an iPhone 4 and was only just looking for another phone and picked up the Note 2 just in this last week. About iPhone users/fans "hating" Android - I've gotta say that definitely was not true in my case. But why had it taken me 5 years to even seriously consider Android? I think it's because I had thoughts of early Android stuck in my mind, whether or not it's true I thought of Android devices as being finicky and needing a lot of setup and continual fettling to get to work properly. Whereas iPhone was my first smartphone and I was just blown away by it. After all, it was revolutionary, so why change? I didn't have any reason at all...

(I'm sure a lot of iPhone/iPad/iOS users get stuck in this phase/mindset that they have the absolute best device available, so like I did they don't even bother looking into the alternatives.)

Until it came time to consider the iPhone 5... I usually follow all Apple events and stay up to date on new products - but for some reason I just didn't bother with the iPhone 5. I guess I just saw it and thought "yeah yeah, more of the same"... Which kind of worked out in my benefit as I was in the shop nearly a couple of steps away from signing up on a new 2 year contract with an iPhone 5. Now I have to confess the original reason I considered Android was that I didn't think the iPhone 5 had 4G! :laugh: So I figured that I should look into Android options because I really wanted 4G. And the little bit taller screen on the iPhone 5 wasn't too exciting... I mean that's really just good for being able to see more losers at the bottom of the list in sports results! :silly: Big screen on the Note 2 as well as the S Pen with Wacom tech especially drew me to it (I have a Wacom tablet and knew if the pen was anything like that it would be great - and I'm not disappointed). Watching a bunch of vids on YouTube (especially the Note 2 vids that ColdFustion has done) really sold me on the Note 2. Whereas with the iPhone, it was Apple's own marketing and website, TV ads that sold me on the iPhone. This is another area I think that Android manufacturers need to catch up, or band together to market the Android OS just to make people aware of the capabilities. Then again Apple does spend an obscene amount of money on advertising... But even basic stuff like the Samsung Note 2 website/pages - just didn't quite sell me on the Note 2.

I also have to say that I did still expect that it would take me a little bit of time & effort to get the Note 2 setup to my liking. Not least of all because I was coming to a completely new OS, but I had used iOS for more than 5 years as well. But I got sick of the iPhone being same same all the time and wanted a change. I'm not tweak-averse at all, I had Linux on my 3rd gen iPod just because, and my PowerMac G5 was dual boot with Gentoo. So I was actually looking forward to being able to tweak Android, and I'm enjoying learning about it and tweaking around now. I think I will root tomorrow, then let the fun begin...

But there's some things I really like on iPhone/iOS that I am trying to get setup on my Note 2. For instance the redundant confirmations, IE, pressing Power Off then getting the message "Your device will power off [Cancel / Ok]". Of course okay, that's why I pressed the power off button in the first place! One other thing that I am giving high priority to do is find a way to make pages and lists scroll to the top by tapping the notification bar area. That is great in iOS and I really noticed it missing as soon as I used Chrome and scrolling through the settings menus. Notifications badges and on screen notifications are another thing that I like the way iOS handles, but I found out about Tasker today so I'm going to look into that. And I'm sure there will be more...

It's hard to say whether those things are actually better in iOS, or whether I just prefer it because that's what I'm used to - but at least I can change them all to my liking on Android (I hope!) And I've also got to say that for someone who picked up a current Android smartphone as their first, I don't think they will have any issues with it. I was not sure what to expect, but I found that the stock Note 2 was really easy to use. If I was not too keen on tweaking, I could easily just keep it stock. I was also really glad to see lots of the familiar iOS apps available on Android. That's another one of the reasons why I liked the iPhone, and I'm sure that it was true early on that if you wanted all the great apps you had to be using iOS, but that looks to be evening out now - good stuff. :good:

It does seem like iOS could be described as slick and more polished than Android... but not enough to stop lots of people skipping the iPhone 5 and coming to Android! Plus there's a bunch of top developers working on ROMs, I'm just keen to see what stuff they will come up with for the Note 2, that's actually pretty exciting!! Coming from iOS, MIUI grabbed my attention right away... there's some polished work right there...

Do you really mean smoothness, or speed??

Just a tip - you could disable transitions to increase speed. I have only played with an iPhone 5 in the store, but it just seemed the same as my iPhone 4? I mean it was faster, but as far as "smoothness" it really did seem the same, or very very similar. And my Note 2 is still mostly stock, but I wouldn't have said that it's lacking in smoothness at all. There is something about it that doesn't look quite as slick & finished with the same level of detail, but that's a bit different.

Anyway... let us switchers band together to unlock the mysteries of Android! :D

Oh and one final thing while I'm just ranting on - the Samsung ads that made fun of Apple users, presumably some of the very people who they were trying to get to use their devices. I think that was a bad move and straight away turned a lot of Apple users off (I know it didn't do them any favours in my case). People will point to the PC Vs. Mac ads that Apple ran, but that was making fun of the hardware, not the users. Samsung must have missed that memo.