iOS vs Android & iPhone 5S Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
2,608 words · ~13 min read
0:06
the CM Storm sf7 uses a massive 18 cm
0:10
fan to cool your gaming notebook and it adds a four port USB hub click now to
0:15
learn more so why am I holding an iPhone
0:18
5S or why have I been using one lately you might ask great question since my
0:23
trust the iPhone 4 Apple has released three incremental updates to the
0:27
smartphone that served me really well for 3 years so I figured as a supposedly
0:33
unbiased technology lover who has been using Android in one flavor or another
0:36
for about a year now I owe it to myself and to my viewers to take another run at
0:41
iOS with the iPhone 5s and see if they've done enough to win me back
0:46
welcome to my late but hopefully interesting iPhone 5S
0:52
review as always the iPhone experience starts with the Box Apple's attention to
0:57
detail continues to amaze me all I had
1:00
to do was put the iPhone box on the coffee table and my toddler was
1:05
immediately drawn to it the power of great packaging eh once we get past that
1:09
stuff though physically the 5S is nothing groundbreaking the difference in
1:13
weight compared to the four was shocking for me now that they've done away with
1:16
the glass back but aside from the lightning connector and the bottom
1:20
mounted headphone jack the io and buttons pretty much haven't moved at all
1:24
and unfortunately neither have the speakers for a company that claims to
1:28
care about audio Apple's track record lately with poopy speakers on the
1:32
bottoms and backs of their devices hasn't impressed me compared to other
1:37
implementations that are available the home button hasn't moved either but the
1:41
tactile click does feel a little bit different to me although it could just be because my old one is worn out to the
1:45
point where it only registers clicks like half of the time now the size is
1:50
still perfect for one-handed operation for me which was a refreshing change now
1:55
that I can like type with one hand but I
1:58
did still find myself frustrated by the upper left corner placement of back
2:03
buttons in many apps and I think that's something that will have to change if
2:06
and when Apple does release a larger iPhone to be clear guys I'm aware of the
2:11
swipe back gesture the problem is that it doesn't work in plenty of third party
2:15
apps so it's still an issue for me speaking of iOS 7 features most of them
2:19
weren't really anything new because I still use my 4 as an MP3 player and
2:23
Apple has done really well by me here to have given me updates for so long on a
2:28
device that compared to similar class Android devices at the time like the
2:32
Samsung Galaxy S is equally old but
2:35
still much more functional but there were a few things that I hadn't used
2:40
much Apple's Maps app has evolved to the
2:43
point where not only is it not totally terrible but I've actually stopped using
2:47
Google Maps in the couple of weeks that I've been using the iPhone 5S Google
2:51
Maps has actually not been that great lately it started flaking out on me a
2:54
lot it can't find the local dump it never finds the nearest location of a
2:58
chain restaurant for me me anymore and its voice recognition for GPS navigation
3:03
is just plain not as good more on that later Apple Maps on the other hand was
3:08
world's better for me in these regards from my use and I also like their
3:12
Tastefully applied 3d effect um but I do
3:15
have a couple of complaints about it I did find that GPS data lagged a little
3:18
bit behind where I actually was on the road and I definitely miss the ability
3:23
to pan around when I'm in turn BYT navigation mode to look for alternate
3:27
routes and then quickly press a button to go back to turn by turn the good news
3:31
though is that like so many Google products Google Maps is also available on iOS now with turn by turn so you can
3:37
have the best of both worlds if you really feel like it that said it's not
3:41
always quite the same experience and heavy Google product users like me will
3:45
find little differences at every turn so
3:49
some of them are good and some of them are bad like for example two-step account validation is not as seamless on
3:54
iOS and you'll need to set up some app specific passwords to upload to Youtube
3:58
from iOS you still need to share to YouTube through the photo gallery versus
4:02
just uploading through the YouTube app like you would on Android on the other
4:05
hand the YouTube app supports sorting the comments by most recent instead of
4:10
just by most popular on iOS but I can't find that functionality on Android maybe
4:14
it's there but I definitely couldn't find it so there's a bunch of little differences I noticed and there are a
4:19
lot more than that moving on to the camera a lot of fuss got made about the
4:23
iPhone 5S camera and how amazing in DSLR quality it was and you know what the app
4:27
is fast and super easy to use it's pretty awes awesome I mean the beauty of it is definitely its Simplicity I did
4:33
miss sometimes the bajillion options that you get in various Android camera
4:37
apps but what I didn't miss was the fact that on Android they hide cool features
4:42
like slow-mo or 4K recording Within These like deep difficult to man
4:47
navigate menu systems that take a while to get to Apple makes it simple you
4:51
press the button you swipe for the different modes and then you press the button again to capture it's just faster
4:56
and gives you a better chance to grab that moment while it's happening that
5:00
said speaking of grabbing moments I did miss HTC's Zoey shooting mode now that
5:04
I've gotten used to it it takes a bunch of pictures and video at the same time
5:07
so it's great for uncooperative subjects like cats and toddlers with all that
5:13
said you know the camera is okay um when you're looking for perfect testing
5:17
scenarios to show it off I think you can make it look fantastic but at the end of
5:20
the day for me as a casual user it might be slightly better or slightly worse
5:24
than competitors s or H but it's not DSLR quality and it's it's all right
5:30
now I alluded to this before on the map segment but compared to the you know
5:34
it's all right it's still a phone camera camera Siri is not Siri is awesome from
5:40
the speed to the voice recognition accuracy to the fact that it just plain
5:45
does more stuff like allowing some system settings to be adjusted apple is
5:50
so far ahead of Google right now in terms of real world usability that I
5:54
really did find myself considering a permanent switch back just for Siri like
5:59
basic B stuff like being able to say take me home at the end of the day and
6:03
it plotting a course for home very satisfying love it another thing I ended
6:07
up loving was the touchbase unlock if you recognize that for what it is and
6:13
for what it's not it's not a bulletproof security measure it is a convenient way
6:18
to sign in quickly and make purchases without entering a password then it's a
6:21
great feature and another one that really had me kind of teetering on the
6:25
edge there it works really well and I went from feeling like it was gimmicky
6:29
to using it every single time I unlock my phone within like 2 days but it's not
6:34
all completely Rosy and touch land and the touch screen actually gave me
6:38
constant headaches the 5S is known to have poorer touchscreen accuracy
6:43
compared to other Flagship smartphones but I didn't expect it to affect me
6:46
quite this much I often misclick letters at the bottom corners and icons along
6:51
the top and not because I'm not familiar with the Apple keyboard but because it's
6:54
just not picking things up speaking of the Apple keyboard I do still like it
6:59
and I have missed the multi-word correction that it does in special cases
7:03
like Mother's Day where it goes back and fixes capital letters for you but I also
7:07
wish as a you know longer term Android User now that I could change it out for
7:11
something else if I wanted I mean maybe something with much easier click and
7:14
hold access to symbols like swift key for example which I guess leads pretty
7:19
well into the list of the rest of the things that I really missed about
7:23
Android while I was doing this battery life is not as good as a flagship
7:27
Android device but I guess I wasn't expecting it to be I am still typically
7:31
getting around 20 to 35% battery at the end of a workday but that's about 15%
7:36
less than the 1 M8 and on a heavy day I did find myself running out of battery
7:41
sometimes I find it infuriating that I can't put a text cursor in the middle of
7:45
a block of text or even in the middle of a word without holding and dragging it
7:49
that was something I really missed about Android uh home screen
7:52
customization um maybe is less of a big deal for me than it is for heavy widget
7:56
users but not being able to at least
8:00
turn my bottom row into folders or Force
8:03
apps into a particular position on the desktop rather than waiting for the
8:07
whole thing to fill up is a real drag the bottom right is where I like to put
8:11
the icons for my most frequently used programs and it's the last part of the
8:15
screen that fills up even though it's the easiest one to reach bummer the home
8:19
button and multitasking are pretty darn good but not a replacement for a back
8:24
button a universal back that works both
8:27
within an app and for switch ing back to recently used apps is something I've
8:32
always felt even before I used Android like iOS is missing the continued
8:38
omission of a landscape mode lock is annoying when I'm trying to watch a
8:42
movie in bed for example it's on the iPad Apple it's been years please just
8:46
add it thank you and the quick toggles can't be customized can't be used to
8:51
access the general settings menu and can't be used to turn on a Wi-Fi hotspot
8:55
quickly it's something I use a lot so that bothered me as well NFC is
8:59
something I never cared about before but since we did that recent video about it
9:03
I've actually found myself using it more often I really wish Apple had that or
9:07
something equivalent and finally taking iTunes off my computer is the first
9:12
thing I'm going to do now that I'm done this video what a horrible blast from
9:18
the past that was but as negative as all
9:21
of that sounded in the grand scheme of things it's relatively minor stuff and I
9:25
could probably find matching complaints in terms of annoyingness level on
9:29
Android to match up to pretty much all of them
9:33
but if you're still here watching this video thank you for sticking around and
9:36
I guess it's time for the conclusion here it goes I'm not sticking with iOS
9:41
not because it's terrible or because Tim Cook is the devil or something I just
9:45
happen to like the bigger screen and better speakers on the 1 M8 better and
9:49
on top of that my iPhone 5S is unfortunately a 16 gig model so it
9:52
doesn't hold much of that sexy slow-mo video footage and this is what I think
9:58
at the end of the day it's just a smartphone and doing this trial run
10:02
reinforced the belief that I already had that with a bit of effort pretty much
10:06
anyone could fairly easily get used to one platform or the other switching from
10:10
the 1 M8 made the iPhone 5S feel like a little light toy but switching from the
10:15
5S back to the 1 18 makes the M8 feel a bit like a clunky brick it's all about
10:21
perspective and I think that people lack that sometimes when they get into the
10:25
whole Apple versus Android Fanboy thing
10:31
speaking of perspective I wasn't really
10:34
sure how to do this normally when chero
10:38
power has us talk about their stuff in our videos we are talking about like uh
10:43
a great deal on one of their excellent portable battery Banks or something like
10:47
that but when they generously provided us with the iPhone 5S that we needed to
10:52
do this review they actually wanted a shout out not for a battery bank but
10:57
rather a revolt Tech Dan board figurine
11:01
that features artwork on the character's head that is inspired by chiro's
11:06
danboard themed 10,400 Mah portable battery bank that we have featured in
11:11
the past the figurine comes with a little stand is posable and even
11:15
includes another head the link for where to buy one is in the video description
11:19
and I have to confess here though manga
11:23
figurines are a little bit outside of my area of expertise so I'd love to hear
11:27
from you guys in the comments is this kind of stuff like totally Neato or are
11:32
you more likely to geek out over being able to charge your cell phone multiple
11:36
times off of you know a wicked battery
11:39
pack like this when you're on the go and it's okay for enough you know to have
11:43
like a cute character for your charger
11:46
and you don't really need see it like lights up like that actually this guy lights up too there's a little switch on
11:50
it and you don't really need uh like a like an actual action figure of it would
11:55
love to to hear what you guys think about that um
12:00
I think that's pretty much it thank you guys for watching my iPhone 5S uh I
12:05
switched back video here thanks to chiro for sponsoring this episode guys like
12:10
this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it and share it if you felt
12:13
like other people should watch it we've got a link in the video description to
12:17
support us so you can go ahead and you know buy a t-shirt give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon
12:21
bookmarks to ones with our affiliate code so that we get a small Kickback whenever you buy things like extra lamp
12:26
shades for example I think that pretty much wraps it up thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to
12:31
whack that subscribe button if you haven't already to make sure you don't miss any of our awesome videos at least
12:37
I think they're awesome