As we all know, technology giant Apple recently released the new iPhone 5, which hit stores on September 28, 2012. I don’t necessarily consider myself an “Apple guy,” although I do love both my iPhone and my iPad. However, I have to admit I was disappointed by the release of the iPhone 5, feeling it lacked the “wow factor” I have come to expect from Apple product releases.
That being the case, the following is a personal account of a five day period starting Monday September 24 and ending Friday September 28.
Feeling unexcited about the release of the iPhone 5 and its lack of new features, most notably NFC (near field communication) technology, I began researching the other devices out on the market. I had seen a number of commercials over the weekend for the Samsung Galaxy SIII. They highlighted many of the features missing on the iPhone which were conveniently present in the Samsung device; I was impressed. The more I read about the SIII, the more intriguing it became to me, not only for the mobile features, but for its presentation capabilities.
I finally convinced myself that I owed no loyalty to Apple or its iPhone. I thought, I deserve to have the best technology on the market today and shouldn’t limit myself to just Apple products if the SIII can give me all the iPhone can give me and more.
Monday night I waltzed into the Verizon store and used my upgrade to purchase the Samsung Galaxy SIII. I took it home and began to experience firsthand all the features it had to offer.
Tuesday morning I was anxious to set up AllShare Play, a feature of the SIII which allows you to stream content directly from your SIII to your computer or any DLNA devices (i.e. Smart TV, PC, Camera). I read the instructions and began to get it set up. It didn’t work. I read the instructions again and this time the SIII was able to locate my colleagues PC, but not mine. After about an hour or so of looking at the settings on the SIII, my PC and my colleague’s PC, I was frustrated. I tried again later that night and was still unable to successfully register my PC to this app – the software I installed on my computer to do it never allowed me to get to step 2 (there were only two steps).
Adding to my frustration was the inability to easily communicate with all my friends and colleagues who have iPhones. Apparently group messages between iPhone users and me (an Android user) just don’t jive; responses came in separately and sporadically making communication inefficient. The frustration only continued with setting options, turning data on/off and all the other options they give you to be creative with the SIII device.
By Wednesday my mind was made up, the experiment was over and I had set in motion the plan to return my SIII and get the iPhone 5. Why you ask? The iPhone, and all Apple products for that matter, just work. No programming, no settings; just turn it on, tap and go. Certainly better than spending hours trying to use a cool feature that never quite works how they promise.
By Friday night I had my iPhone back and had never appreciated the sophisticated simplicity more. Glad I tried the SIII, because as the saying goes, “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”
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