 Welcome to day 30 of my iSwitch to Android blog. I realize I haven't actually done as many updates as I did when I did my switch to Windows Phone 8. And there's a very good reason for this. So I went from iOS to Windows Phone 8, back to iOS, and now to Android. And the reason I haven't really had much to say is I haven't really thought of anything to complain about. And in my first two videos, I really did cover most of what I thought was great about the platform, as well as about the HTC One in particular. So I've been kind of sitting here thinking, what can I possibly say other than I'm switching to Android, and this will likely be my permanent home for the foreseeable future. Now, with that said, there are some interesting competitors in the Android space. This right here is the Galaxy S4. So I'm going to treat this video as my final thoughts on Android in general, as well as some of the observations I've made about the HTC One while using it for 30 days, and a little bit of comparison between the One and the S4, which I've now had my hands on for about 10 days. So we'll start with the HTC One. If I had to complain about something in Sense 5.0, it's the fact that, or 5.5 Plus, or whatever they're calling it now, it would be the inelegant implementation of the stock music player. So the stock music player is... media music. The stock music player is well integrated with the OS, but the navigation isn't that great. And what I discovered myself doing, because it doesn't have a built-in EQ, is I found myself trying to find an alternative music player. So the ones that I tried were... oops, excuse me... Rocket Player as well as Winamp. So these have the advantages of EQ settings, but they don't integrate with the Sense 5.0 UI as well as the stock one does. So for example, with the stock one, I can have a lock screen that has a music player, whereas with the other ones, I can't have it on the lock screen, but I can implement it here. But even their integrations here aren't that great, and they have some strange behaviors, like for example, if I plug in my headphones right now, you're going to see that it's just going to start playing music, even though I don't necessarily want it to do that. Give it a sec, give it a sec, and it'll probably start doing that. See, there you go. So I have to actually tell it to go away every time I plug something into the top of the device. So I wish there was one that was as well integrated as the stock one, but sounded a little better and had better navigation. The market, I wish it kind of had a convenient favorites list of apps. And this one right here, App Backup and Restore, is really cool. So what it does is it just creates a file that you dump onto your computer, and then you copy that into the folder on another phone, and what happens is as soon as you launch it, you can restore, and it'll install all the apps that you had installed on the device. So I used this when I went from using the HTC One only to using the Galaxy S4 as well, because it allowed me to just load my entire app load out onto it. Now I remember in the tablet version of Android on Honeycomb, in the market you were able to just see all of the apps that you downloaded before, and I wasn't able to find that, but that doesn't mean it's not there. And I found this was a little bit inelegant, so I got prompted by every app. Are you sure? Yes. Are you sure? Do you agree? Yes. Yes. So it took a long time to install all the apps, even though I had the full list. So that's something that I wish Android had, because with iOS it's simple. You backup your phone, you restore your phone, and everything's exactly the way you left it. I did find the People app a little bit confusing, so I still am not really using the stock Android desktop, and I'm not using BlinkFeed. I'm just using this list right here, which is more like Gingerbread. So I did find the People app. Oh, I should probably turn that. Yeah, nothing there that matters. I did find the People app a little bit confusing. A lot of the links that it suggested weren't right, and it didn't pick up on a lot of the links that I ended up setting up manually. But once I did set them all up manually, it's great, except that it doesn't really allow me to pick. Do I want to pull that person's Facebook picture? Do I want to use my own picture that I took of them so that I know who I'm talking to? Because not everyone uses a picture of themselves for Facebook. So for example, when my wife calls, it's a picture of my baby, because that's what she uses for a Facebook picture. I can't figure out how to change it. Multitasking is still a highlight of the platform for me. I love this. I do not miss the hardware button. In fact, going to the S4, which is more like the button loadout that I'm used to, where you've got your context menu button here, you've got your hard home button here, and then your soft back button here. This is more like what I was used to with Android, but I didn't miss it at all with the HTC One. I found that back, home, and then multitask was really all I needed, because that context button has been replaced with these dots up here, and I actually find it a little bit easier to press. So I mean, when I'm holding the device, I hold it like this. So when I'm going to go back, I can reach back. Okay, that's fine. It's a little bit of a stretch, but I don't go back as much as I might want to access context, because that's your new tab, your bookmarks, all those kinds of things, which I actually like having on the right versus having on the bottom left like that. So yeah, I thought it was great. The camera is still awesome on the HTC One. I know I've talked about this before. I played around with zoes or zoeys, which are those sort of three, four second clips that you take, and then you can take some pictures during it. I used them a little bit at first, but then I really found myself not really bothering with it, and just using video a lot more, because it's so quick. You can go from lock screen to recording a video in that long. And so what I just found myself doing is if I wanted a four second video clip, well, I'm going to take a four second video clip. That's what I'll do. So the zoes didn't really matter that much to me, but I do think they're a better implementation than Samsung's thing with the still photo and the audio recording that goes with it. I'd rather have the video and then I can capture a few still photos at the same time. I do, on the other hand, find myself watching highlight reels of previous days. It is so cool. If we go into my photos, I'm just going to pick a random day, such as, for example, this day, I think we were we did a video shoot. So let's just see what it comes up with on its own. So here's me dressing up the cat. Here's our actor as well as our film crew. Here's me and Diesel crammed into the back. It's a really cool way to look back at a day of events. So here's that we did some behind the scenes footage of this particular shoot. So that's what a lot of it is. But yeah, it's just it's a it's just really cool. So, yeah, I do find myself using this, but not not Zoe's at all. The feeling of solidity with this phone is outstanding. Really unlike any other device other than an Apple device that I've ever seen. So I want you to watch the pressure my thumbs are exerting on the phone here. As hard as I might press, I can't get the phone to flex, which is I mean, I kind of took it for granted a little bit going from iOS to this phone, going from an iPhone 4, which is also a very solid device to this one. I was like, oh, yeah, well, whatever. No devices flex. Of course they do. This is the Galaxy S4. And with this one, you can probably see that bend, particularly on my right thumb. I'm putting about the same amount of pressure on it. Is the S4 a solidly built device? You know what? Probably. It's better than the S3. It feels better to hold than the S3 with the squared corners. But it without the metal backing, which Samsung sacrifices in order to get things like the optional wireless charging back cover, as well as being able to integrate your cover, like the front case cover with the back cover and have it all be one piece in order to give you that micro SD upgrade as well as the removable battery. These are the sacrifices Samsung has made in order to to bring you those those functionalities. But I like the feeling of this. And honestly, the finish on the aluminum is one of the best ones I've encountered in spite of the fact that it's a phone. It's still immaculate. Most even brushed or anodized aluminum surfaces. Every time you put them down on something solid like a table, you put them on a table and they slide a little bit. You go, oh, no, I just scratched it. I'm sure I just scratched it. No, not with the one. I really didn't get that impression at all. She does get hot when she's under load. My hand got a bit sweaty the other day when I was sitting in the car with navigation running in the background and I was watching a video on it. So navigation was running so that the driver could hear the navigation things. But I was sitting watching a video. She got toasty. Whenever you whenever you share your wireless network with people, it does get quite toasty. But the flip side of that is at least it has the aluminum backing to help dissipate the heat. So, yeah, it's more hot to my hand. But that probably means my processors are actually running cooler. You know what? Actually here, something I should have mentioned when I said I didn't miss the hard button here is Windows Phone probably helped a lot as a buffer to help me break that habit. Because, I mean, honestly, the search button is pretty much useless. I never used it. The Windows button is good and the back button is good. So essentially I had two buttons. I had home and back, which that that that that that home and back. So it's quite possible that that was part of the learning experience there as well. Because I went from a platform with just a home button to a platform with a home button, a useless button and a back button to this. And I haven't really used the S4 super extensively yet. HTC actually, there's some leaked pictures that the HTC one in China is going to have this back piece removable with a micro SD slot. You know what? I already find myself wishing I had a micro SD slot. My 16 gig iPhone never used the whole thing, never found that to be a problem. This is 32 gigs. I've already almost filled it. And a big part of the reason for that is I'm shooting so much HD video with it, so much 1080p video that I find myself filling it. Also, it's so much of a bigger screen. It's great for content. So when I don't take something like a Seagate Wireless Plus out with me, it's nice to be able to load some videos on here. And with Wireless AC, I can transfer things to myself very quickly. And there's all these good things about it that really mean I would love to be able to throw a 64 gig micro SD in there. So I wish HTC would reconsider and do an HTC One Plus or something for other regions where they implement the micro SD. But I really don't see it happening. Widgets are cool. But honestly, I am as a user who sees pretty well and is used to the iOS experience and has this great multitasking interface where I can see the last nine things that I've done. I didn't find myself really using any of them. It comes with a lot of stock widgets that you can add just by going down here, and you can add a calendar and bookmarks and FM radio and all that kind of cool stuff. I just didn't find myself using it. I prefer the density of this interface with folders where I can put almost everything I need and just put it here on one page. And I'll just open up the app or instead of going back to the home screen, so you know, like home screen, home screen, to get back to the Google one, going like this to find my appropriate widget. If I just go like this, most of the things that I use a lot of the time, like my Gmail, my calendar, are within the last nine things that I've used. So there's very few situations where I would need a widget in order to make it quicker for me to access it. So there you go. And like compared to widgets, I'd much rather have things implemented into the drop down menu here like my power toggles. I just realized I had my Wi-Fi off. This I use all the time. And this is a very natural way for me to access it compared to click, click, left, left, right, right, or whatever else I happen to be doing. Try that one. So this is something iOS users I'm sure will appreciate is how simple it is to set a song as your ringtone on Android. I'm sure every other platform has been taking this for granted forever. But as a longtime iOS user, I was like, really? I just like long click it and then set to be my ringtone. Holy crap, that's the easiest thing ever. So that was a really neat thing to run into. And I think at the end of the day, here's what it comes down to. After my 30 day trial, yes, I'm switching to Android. I'm still going to be open to trying new platforms such as Ubuntu phone or Blackberry. Actually, there's a Blackberry in the mail, so I might have to kind of cheat on my new love, Android, very, very soon. Skype integration was much better than Windows Phone, similar to iOS. So that's something that I realize I haven't talked about yet. But there you go, guys. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Oh, right. I just realized I never really did any of the talking about Galaxy S4 other than the ruggedness of it. So I think the thing that I find most strikingly different between TouchWiz and Sense is that TouchWiz feels very, very bubbly, very happy. You know, it's all super bright colors and sort of big, big friendly icons and sort of easy, easy to easy to touch. Whereas Sense feels more a little bit more more elegant, but maybe not as maybe not as easy to use. Like, it's really cool the way TouchWiz already has this implemented so you can switch things on and off. I think the easy mode on TouchWiz makes it the kind of thing where... Here, I'm going to see if I can find...see if I can find easy mode. I was playing around with it before, and it's the kind of thing where I'd go, OK, yeah, I'm going to get an HTC One. But if I was going to get a phone for my mom, then I would just give her the S4 because, yeah, I can't find it right now anyway. So easy mode just basically consolidates Android down to like a few buttons. S Translate is really cool. I did find that Smart Stay worked for me and was very helpful. The HTC One is sort of just like every other phone where if you're reading something for a long time, it'll dim and it'll eventually turn off. Whereas that doesn't happen with the Samsung phone. I personally didn't find the hovering above the screen and it detecting things very helpful at all in things like the browser. It would just be zoomed in looking at stuff that I'm just trying to move my finger closer to the screen. I just went, no, just let me touch the touch screen and I'm good with that. What were some of the other things that I found myself? I found myself turning off the...yeah, those ones right away. NFC is good. Gesturing was kind of cool, but it's a very unnatural thing for me. For example, gesturing to take a call, I was like, oh, well, you just do it like this, right? That didn't work and it wasn't just one. So you have to go back and forth kind of slow and I'm looking at it going, okay. So if I was driving and I had it in a cradle or something like that, yeah, that's very practical. But in everyday use, it's probably not the kind of thing that I would use unless I really wanted to use all the features that came with my new phone. So thank you for checking this out. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews and other computer videos. And the baby decided to join us because he woke up when we were filming and nobody was there to go get him. Sorry to do. So yeah.