I had an interesting (and by interesting I mean not that interesting) encounter today that made me double think how much longer I'm going to keep my iPhone 4S. It's interesting how you think there's nothing wrong with what you have until you experience something else that's better, and I suppose with how advanced 4G and LTE have gotten it's become a ticking time bomb before I realized that I'm way behind when it comes to phones. My iPhone 4S is a relic now - it's coming up on being two years old. It's shiny and it feels good in the hand, but sometimes the perfect fit regarding hardware doesn't compensate for the internals of the phone.
Here's where my eyes were opened a bit: So my friend and I were driving to a new restaurant that we've heard about but never been to before. We usually take her car because it's newer, shinier, and looks way better than mine - she's that friend with all the cool things, such as a shiny new phone. I didn't know about said new phone until I was having trouble navigating with my iPhone 4S (that's what we do, by the way. We co-pilot for the other one when together because we're both directionally challenged for the most part; also, focusing on a phone that you're holding in your hand while driving is bad) and she said “Oh, you should use my phone.” Last I checked she had an iPhone 4S like I did, and we use the same carrier. Generally when one of us has problems the other one does too.
I said, “I don’t know if your phone will be any better at loading the directions, but alright.” Alright indeed! What appeared on my lap a few seconds later was no iPhone 4S. It was a phone that looked like it ate her iPhone 4S – a Samsung Galaxy Note II. I think my reaction was almost as if she had a baby and didn’t tell me about it; I was under the impression she didn’t want the Note II for the same reason I didn’t. It’s just too big.
“The rep sold me on it,” she said. I knew she was due for an upgrade but she had pretty much sold herself on an iPhone 5… I thought. “Did you know it came with a stylus in the side? Just like my old Centro did!”
“Is that what sold you on it?”
“No. Just look at how much easier you can see everything.” Yeah, I could see the screen was bigger - how can you miss that? “Plus, the battery life has been great. I haven’t even had to use my car charger yet. My iPhone was always attached to that thing.”
“Alright, alright,” I said. Whatever, she likes her new phone. Good for her; bah humbug! But despite what she says, we still use the same network and her phone probably will have about the same amount of trouble as my phone did getting any information. Type in the address, get the directions… bam. There they are. Just like that! In reality I don’t remember how fast they actually came up, I didn’t time it. I just remember sitting there with a look of disbelief. I’m so used to sitting there and waiting in an uncomfortable silence for my directions to pull up. She knew what I was thinking too.
“Pretty fa—“
“Yes I know it’s pretty fast! Don’t rub it in!” We laughed. I asked if she would mind if I poked around a bit with it as this would be the first chance I got at holding one without a bulky security device attached to the back.
While the device was still somewhat uncomfortable to hold, I can admit that it’s not as uncomfortable as I had originally thought it was. It’s workable. It felt light for its size, and it was remarkably easy to see things from a good distance away. Most importantly, however, it was loading websites very quickly. When comparing how quickly PhoneDog loaded on the Samsung Note II compared to the iPhone 4S, the 4S took 19 seconds to fully load PhoneDog’s home page on Chrome as oppose to the Note II’s 5 seconds. Two words: foul wizardry.
As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve become spoiled in many ways. Today, I realized I’ve been spoiled with speed. 19 seconds isn’t that long – really, it’s not. But when you compare it with speeds that you can have, it’s sort of annoying. So now I have to figure out what’s more important – size or speed? Do I really want to keep my iPhone 4S because it’s a convenient size, or do I want to move on to something faster and, of course, bigger? Which one is ultimately more important to me? (And before anybody says anything about getting the iPhone 5, I would like to clarify that I have vowed to move on to another platform for my next device.)
Readers, what do you prefer? Are you more concerned about the size of the device or the speed? Let me hear your thoughts in the comments below!
Image via Yugatech
