Friday, March 17, 2017

Avoid the Samsung Galaxy if You Go With an Andoid OS

Samsung Galaxy: The Short-Bus of Smartphones



If you're in the market for a new phone and you decide on the Android OS, for the love of God PLEASE heed this warning and go with something made by #Motorola. The Samsung Galaxy S7 has some nice features (notably an above-average camera and a traditional speaker/headset port that you can plug your existing audio gear into instead of having to shell out for Bluetooth audio (speakers, bass, headphones, etc.) that at its highest setting, isn't nearly loud enough to be useful to someone like me. I don't listen to music often, but when I do, I like it LOUD.
Samsung Galaxy S7
If the audio port isn't a big deal to you, then any new Motorola will pleasantly surprise you with its capabilities.
If you're like me and don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on inferior audio equipment relative to what you already own, then an older model Motorola (2013-2015) will be better in nearly every category than a 2016 or 2017 Samsung, the lone exception being the camera. 
The camera on the Galaxy S7 is vastly superior to my 2014 Motorola Android Maxx. That's it though.
The autocorrect on the Samsung Galaxy S7 is an unmitigated disaster of biblical proportions. That's not even an exaggeration. If you text, type emails, use any of the various social and messaging apps, post to websites or message boards, Samsung's semantic limitations (I would expect a fourth-grade student at an average U.S. public elementary school to have a broader and more diverse vocabulary than this self-proclaimed "smartphone"), utter disregard for proper grammar and punctuation  (the phone doesn't know and is incapable of learning what an apostrophe is and how they're used) and insistence on overruling its user no matter how many times it's corrected, the Samsung Galaxy S7 will cause you more headaches than its above-average camera is worth.
Perhaps the worst part about it is that the phone's ability to learn from user behavior is limited. And that's being quite generous. 
I can't even remember how many times I've clicked the little check symbol (the command to tell the phone to quit meddling) for the same words, and it still gets them wrong. My old Motorola phone usually learned after being corrected once in the rare event it made a mistake (and it was rare), twice at the very MOST.
My old Motorola after a year could often finish my sentences after just a few words. It was incredibly intuitive, the AI was outstanding, and it didn't have the air of arrogance about it the way the Galaxy dies.
For the sake of full disclosure, I've never strapped on the headset and done the whole virtual reality thing. Then again, I'm an adult. 

Bottom Line
The Samsung Galaxy S7 so-called "smartphone" has the vocabulary and language skills of a 10-11 year old child. With its primary draw being a quality camera and a supposedly neat virtually reality experience, the Galaxy is a great phone for a child who writes in Twitterspeak anyway, and who takes no pride in spelling, grammar, punctuation or command of the English language.
For adults and especially professionals who use their phones for work as well as communication and recreation, I strongly advise avoiding a Samsung phone, and going with something made by Motorola; or just going the iOS route.
In my experience, iPhones are closer to the Motorola than the Samsung. I would rate them slightly below Motorola Android OS phones in terms of AI and intuitive design and programming. However, iPhones are (or at least were as of 2015) FAR more brittle than any phone I've had on the Android OS. My old Android Maxx took quite a beating, even being fully submerged underwater twice for about 20 seconds  combined and never skipped a beat.
That phone survived no less than six instances of trauma that would have totally destroyed an iPhone. What ultimately did it in was the charge terminal became worn, and I couldn't rely on it to take a charge --- a problem that interestingly enough went away once I "upgraded" a step down to the Samsung Galaxy S7.