My employer provided me with a Galaxy S4 until February and I never cared for it because Touchwiz always felt relatively sluggish and the dialer was agitating to use. I also didn't care for the build of the S4 or the way it felt in my hand. The S6 (and the Edge in particular) are on my shortlist as I look to upgrade my personal iPhone 5 and move away from the Apple ecosystem. Just wondering if anyone has any real experience going from S4 to S6 and would care to comment on improvements/differences.
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S4 to S6
- Thread starter Eradan
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I've used both extensively; it'll be a night-and-day difference. It feels like Samsung finally understands at least some of what it's been doing wrong since... well, since it started making smartphones. It finally feels like you're holding a high-quality device, it's consistently fast, and TouchWiz has been toned down to both improve ease of use and cut back on broken gimmicks. My main beef with it (besides Samsung's poor OS update record versus, say, Apple or Google) is that the battery life is only so-so, but that only matters if you're away from a charger for long stretches.
rudy
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If you like an iphone then the S6 is going to be a great phone.....
I went from the S3 to the S5 so not exactly what you are looking for.. but that was night and day.
I still have the S3 around in the original box. It never really gave me any problems, but it was definitely not near as good of an experience even when new compared to how good the S5 is.
I still have the S3 around in the original box. It never really gave me any problems, but it was definitely not near as good of an experience even when new compared to how good the S5 is.
T4rd
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My wife has the S4 and I'm considering upgrading her to the S6 as well, but what is keeping me from getting it for her is that Samsung seems to break their phones after its first major update. Her S4 was fine until it got on Kitkat, and now it won't last half a day with the screen off after several factory resets and it performs like garbage compared to my M8 unlock my mom's older Moto X (2013) that is just as fast as my much newer M8 on much faster hardware. Now her phone refuses to take the Lollipop update and fails every time even after trying to do it manually with the SD card. It's impressive how much shit they inadvertently break with all these updates.
Something to consider.
Something to consider.
DejaWiz
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I'd go with something running pure Android like a Nexus or Moto, personally. I have an LG G3 that replaced a GS3 and, while much better than Touchwiz, the custom overlay can be annoying at times. My next phone will be one that runs pure Android. Something to think about.
DeaconFrost
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I just upgraded to an S6 this weekend, and I am loving it. So fast, so responsive. I had a Lumia 928 previously, but I set up phones of all types at work. This is, by far, the best phone I've ever used, and that includes all ranges of iPhones.
Still undecided as to what I'm going to do. I switched jobs mid-February and my new employer has offered to roll me into their corporate Verizon plan and buy me a new phone.
I'm almost overwhelmed with options. I like the finger print scanner and camera performance of both the iPhone 6 and the Galaxy S6 phones but prefer, as DejaWiz mentioned, the pure Android experience. That leaves the Nexus 6 and the Moto X or Moto Turbo. My first two smartphones were the Droid 2 and Droid Bionic and that's one of the reasons I went with the iPhone 5 in 2012. Vowed I would never buy another Motorola device. Now I'm bored with iOS, tired of fussing with iTunes, and less than pleased that iOS 8 took the fun out of using my trusty old iPad 2. I'm completely ready to jump ship to the Google garden across the board... from phone to tablet to TV media device (have an Apple TV as well).
Thanks to all who responded. It's helpful. The research continues. I need to get this right because whatever I choose, I'm going to be stuck with for the next 2 years.
I'm almost overwhelmed with options. I like the finger print scanner and camera performance of both the iPhone 6 and the Galaxy S6 phones but prefer, as DejaWiz mentioned, the pure Android experience. That leaves the Nexus 6 and the Moto X or Moto Turbo. My first two smartphones were the Droid 2 and Droid Bionic and that's one of the reasons I went with the iPhone 5 in 2012. Vowed I would never buy another Motorola device. Now I'm bored with iOS, tired of fussing with iTunes, and less than pleased that iOS 8 took the fun out of using my trusty old iPad 2. I'm completely ready to jump ship to the Google garden across the board... from phone to tablet to TV media device (have an Apple TV as well).
Thanks to all who responded. It's helpful. The research continues. I need to get this right because whatever I choose, I'm going to be stuck with for the next 2 years.
DejaWiz
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Keep in mind that Google owned Motorola before selling to Lenovo, so these newer phones are technically designed for pure Android.
Had forgotten that actually. I did look at the Moto Turbo earlier this evening, but this particular Verizon store (wasn't a corporate store) didn't have the Moto X or the Nexus 6. My understanding is that the camera in all three is rather lackluster and the battery life is lacking (with the exception of the Turbo). I guess I really need to figure out my priorities going forward because there isn't any one device that's going to hit everything. Always a trade-off.
Camera quality is kind of a big one. I have a DSLR but I carried that big sonofabitch around on vacation in the mountain of New Mexico last summer and it wasn't a lot of fun. Went to Chicago around Christmas time and left it at home, just using the camera in my iPhone 5. Wasn't that great in low light. There seems to be an agreed upon pecking order as far as camera quality with the iPhone 6 and S6 leading the pack but the LG G4 is coming very soon. All three of those options leave me stuck with iOS, Touchwiz, or Optimus. But like I said...can't have everything.
DejaWiz
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I went with the G3 for two reasons: amazing camera and removable battery with an extended option (running the Zero Lemon 9K mAH). I don't need to charge very often, but it did add A HELL OF A LOT of bulk to my phone. I can still pocket carry it, but it's like a small brick.
Might come in handy if you have knock somebody out. 
I also looked at the G3 again tonight. I find LG's Optimus UI far less objectionable than Touchwiz. Camera on the G4 is supposedly awesome. Probably a good idea to wait another week or two for it to get into the wild and see what's what.
I also looked at the G3 again tonight. I find LG's Optimus UI far less objectionable than Touchwiz. Camera on the G4 is supposedly awesome. Probably a good idea to wait another week or two for it to get into the wild and see what's what.
DejaWiz
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Might come in handy if you have knock somebody out.
I'm just glad I have to wear steel-toes for work in case I drop the damn thing.
Yep, definitely wait for the G4 since it's so close to allow you to gauge the entire field of options.
I'd stay away from Moto. Since they were sold to lenovo, updates are no longer fast at all. I have a droid maxx and it used to get updates relatively fast (roughly within a month or 2 of the nexus line). It still hasn't gotten lollipop, the turbo hasn't got lollipop. 4.4.4 introduced some crappy battery drain on it that made it only last a day when I would easily get 2 before. They left always on listening broken for months if you tried to make a call with it and go to speaker phone, I think it was something like 4 months before an update finally fixed it.
Honestly I think I'm just going to stick with nexus phones from now on as makers seem to break crap all the time and don't care to fix it. I have a developer note 4 I'm currently using now and its nice but very very few roms for it as there aren't many developers.
I have not. Will take a peek today at what Verizon carries.
T4rd
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The Z3v on Verizon is a decent phone, but I'm not sure I would consider it today with it essentially being over a year old since it's really a Z2 with wireless charging tacked on. It doesn't get near the battery life of the Z3 because of its older less efficient display. The Z3+ (known as the Z4 until recently) is pretty close now, I would wait for it before getting a Sony phone if Verizon will even get it this time. I wouldn't be surprised if Verizon gets it but it's really a Z3 with the Z3+ moniker or something stupid like they did with the Z3v.
Otherwise the G4 and maybe the Droid Turbo are the only phones I would consider outside of the S6 for now on Verizon.
Otherwise the G4 and maybe the Droid Turbo are the only phones I would consider outside of the S6 for now on Verizon.
dandragonrage
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Almost every manufacturer screws updates up. That's why I'm still running stock on my Oneplus One. Stock updates have never worked out for me on any phone. And custom OS are usually just as problematic as well if not more so in my experience.
T4rd
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My mom's (2013) Moto X and my One M8 have been fine on latest stock ROMs.
I happened to just get Lollipop to install on her GS4 last night though. Every method (OTA and .zip on SD card) would fail to install until I used Kies on my desktop to update her phone. Ridiculous that it forced me to do it that way and it took two tries for it to take it.
In the few mins I played around with it on Lollipop, it did seem decently fast. Now we'll see what affect it has on battery life. I'm thinking of replacing the stock battery she has with a new one since it's about 18 months old now, so I'm wondering if it has degraded considerably by now. It shouldn't have lost but 10-15% of its capacity at most, I'd think, but it's worth a shot since they're so cheap. I'm still hesitant to throw money at it with a GS6 when I'm still reading about people struggling to make it through a day with it on here and other reviews.
It's baffling why Samsung decided to put a considerably smaller battery into the GS6 like that, they really think they're as good as Apple/iOS now in terms of power efficiency..? Android has a long way to go before they can match that, esp. in standby time with how Android lets pretty much any app/service keep the phone awake and burn through the battery at any moment. This is my largest complaint with Android and really hope it gets addressed in the next revision of the OS, though it hasn't been too big of an issue on my M8, just Samsung phones mostly from what I've noticed, as I saw it frequently on my old Note 2 as well.
iOS isn't immune to update issues either where you have to resort to DFU/iTunes factory restore. In ways it's worse as the other day my the mail app stopped working and the only way to recover was to do an 'erase all content and settings' then restore from backup. On Android usually all it takes is clear data/cache for the app.
My iPad 2 choked on the iOS 7 update. Had to reset it, update it, and then restore from backup which fortunately I had taken before I started the update process. That was the only time I had any issues, other than iOS 8.x rendering the device basically unusable. Well you can use it, but it sucks.
DeaconFrost
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As an IT Manager who has to support a company full of smartphones, Apple is far worse than Android at updating. My fleet of iPhones give me MANY more issues with updating than our Android phones. Considering Apple has far fewer versions and models to handle, there's no excuse for their updates to cause as many issues as they do.
DejaWiz
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I agree. I'm an IT field service tech that also helps configure, deploy, and fix our company phones. The iPhone hype bit a few years ago with around 80 in my service region, but they've been so problematic, there are only 2 users with an iPhone. Everyone else has switched back to Android. We're field testing a few models of Lumia Windows phones, and so far so good, last I knew...although I doubt they will be a popular pick with users when they finish validating and move on to deployment approval.
Don't forget that if you don't like the launcher you can always drop the Google Now launcher on there.
That's what I did with my G2 on 4.4. The upgrade to 5.0 went off with no problems and I even had that thing formerly rooted so I was slightly surprised. (de-root, update, re-root, no problems)
That's what I did with my G2 on 4.4. The upgrade to 5.0 went off with no problems and I even had that thing formerly rooted so I was slightly surprised. (de-root, update, re-root, no problems)