What did you get as replacement for your S+?

Hey Guys

The lifespan of the S+ is reaching its end (No Android L) and im wondering what y'all got as replacement for your S+ and if you still use your s+ after you got a new phone
Or do you even use your S+ as Primary?

I for myself got a Nexus 5 a few weeks ago (atm in repair) and I got a replacement Galaxy S4 mini until my N5 comes back.
I miss the N5 so much ..holy sht man. I even made the S4M look like my N5...


P.S: if youre about to buy a new phone, id want to let you know that samsung still didnt change their update policys...they give 1-2 updates and thats it..so be careful what you buy.

Recommended phones: Nexus Phones(Best Choice - Every bit of needed code is released)
Phones with Qualcomm SoC(Not the Samsung ones - Usually good documentation and interchangable sources)
Google Play Edition Phones(Unlike the Nexus devices those dont get updated by google, but from their manufacturer f.e Samsung)
Motorola Phones (What Motorola does is, they basically use AOSP on their phones with some useful adaptions, thus reducing the development time for the developers over at Motorola. What does that mean? It means youll get the update earlier than ohers f.e Samsung!

If you want to use custom roms, your main attention should lay on the SoC. Let me explain to you why.
Qualcomm has very good documentation and helps the developers with preconfigured stuff, just take a look at code aurora. Also they provide all the needed sources unlike Samsung with their Exynos SoC´s (The Galaxy S3 still doesnt have working project butter from Android 4.1 in his AOSP based roms). I have no idea how other manufacturers handle their sources, but you should also be aware of their update policy.

"Meh, Xellar, im still going to buy a Samsung!"
Alright, but check this out before: http://www.sammobile.com/2014/05/08...-galaxy-s-iii-gt-i9300-and-galaxy-s-iii-mini/
http://www.androidpit.com/galaxy-s3-neo-with-android-4-4-kitkat-in-germany
Funny, right? They did the same **** with the Galaxy S1(S Plus), and S2 (S2 Plus)...now the S3(S3 Neo). Next up, S4(Neo).

I can bet my last penny, that the same will happen to the S4, AND the S5 in the future. What makes it a little bit better for these both is that they have Qualcomm SoC´s, that makes it easier for developer to take the lifespan even further.

"Yeah..what are you talking there xellar!? I see the S3 has many many roms"
Sure, the roms are running. But did you checkout the logcats and dmesg logs?
-Camera is hacked together
-No Project Butter from 4.1 aka Jellybean (Thanks to missing blobs)
-Sound is Buggy
And all that just because of the Exynos SoC, if it had he QCOM S4 Pro, like the Nexus 4, this phone would still fly through the sky. But samsung was like nah. So the devs who got it are basically fuc*ed right now.

The best combination you can get is a Nexus phone with Qualcomm SoC (N4/N5/NextNexus). The next nexus phone will probably have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805, the Nexus 9 will have a Tegra K1.

What i can tell you is:
There will be 3 new Nexus Phones (2 of them are Android One, made by Micromax - Probably some cheap MediaTeK SoC, but since google updates it, it shouldnt be that bad) (The Nexus "6" aka Shamu is probably made by Motorola)
There will be a new Nexus Tablet (Nexus 9, made by HTC)
There will be 2 new Motorola Phones (New Moto X & the Moto G(2))

Last but not least, reccomended phones:
One+1, Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 4, Galaxy S4 GPE, New Moto X, Moto G(2), Moto E(2), Galaxy S5, HTC M8 GPE,

Reccomended Tablets:
Nexus 7 2013, Nvidia Shield Tablet, Nexus 10, Nexus 9


Be very careful in what you buy, if you want to keep your phone for more than 1year.

Gz
X

Hi guys.
It was more than two years since I sold my i9001. Honestly, I am so damn impressed, by the things I saw on this forums, that I decided to share some words.
When I bought this mobile (December 2011), only development were at tweaking TW ROMs. There were some tries with CM7, but I remember they were not successful. Many people start to saying 'it's time to move', well until something happened. Arco68 was able to prepare first bootable CM9. Hell, he made it actually without owning the phone. There were always many users who couldn't wait to test new ROM, so it seems that wasn't an issue. Then there were few problems, especially with camera. ICS used completely different Camera API, than GB (or rather finally had an API?), so i9001 need either rewritten driver or wrapper. If I remember correctly, similar wrapper was written for one of HTC models, so proper thread appeared and we were trying to make it work. After some time, when hope was almost lost, somebody said, that his friend have very buggy, but working camera. At first nobody believed, but in the end this was a fact. This gave another hype to community. Not long after, ivendor joined our happy group, who was able to fix problems with camera. Not long after fully working CM9 was released, I sold my i9001.

OK, history lesson is over, so let's back to the topic.

XeLLaR* said:

Hey Guys

The lifespan of the S+ is reaching its end (No Android L) and im wondering what y'all got as replacement for your S+ and if you still use your s+ after you got a new phone
Or do you even use your S+ as Primary?[...]

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Back in 2012 I told myself, that I will never buy another Samsung phone. So I got HTC Sensation. Treatment from them (HTC) was no better than Samsung and I once again stuck with "buy newer model" scenario. But XDA are full of wonders and there was a DEV who was able to write missing audio and camera libs, so full port of Sense JB ROMs was possible. Hell, after that TeamVENOM was able to port JB 4.1.2 with Sense 5.0 from HTC M7. Forums thrilled and I felt once again i9001 CM9's development time. Next I got LG NEXUS 4 and currently I have LG NEXUS 5 and HTC ONE M7.

The thing I miss from i9001 is feeling, that I was using something, which we thought was impossible. In case of N4/N5/M7 everything is working, mods are available. It's just... too easy.

In any case, thank you guys. I wish you all the best in 2015!

For those interested in switching to iOS:

So yeah, after using the awesome Galaxy S+ for 2 years I committed the greatest sin that an android user could commit. I switched to iOS, iPhone 5c more exactly. The reason why I did this is simple: I judged the Android OS by my laggy experience with my Samsung handset. Was it a wrong decision? Well, it depends. I'll talk about my experience with the iPhone in sections:

Music

The first few weeks were alright, but then, after a month, I really understood what I did. I really dislike carrying with me too many devices, so all my music, photos, ebooks etc. are now on my iPhone. And putting things on your iPhone means SYNCING, which also means ITUNES. And man, it really is a nasty piece of work. I could no longer simply drag on drop my music on my SD card and instead I had to rely on Apple's buggy software which is both time-consuming and annoying to get used to. Also, another weak point of the whole sync thing is that manually deleting songs from your phone is useless, because eventually you will end up syncing again, which means that everything that you deleted will be put back. Surely, you can sync only selected playlists, but personally I would like to have an option to delete from my computer all the songs that I deleted from my phone. However, I can say that after the first 6 months of usage, I finally got the hang of it. Now my libraries are much more organised and everything is clean. The key is to accept the way Apple software works and not go against it.

Apps

Generally talking, apps are great. They look fancier than on Android and almost never lag. However, their functionality is not as great as it is on Android. As iOS has no file management system available for the user, apps cannot access locally stored files. Simply put, if you create a word document using let's say Google Docs, only Google docs is going to be able to modify it. The same goes with apps that edit music. A "ringtone maker" app trims the song, but then you have to sync with iTunes and get the ringtone you have created with your phone on your computer. Then you have to put it in the ringtones section of the iTunes and sync it back to your iPhone. In Android, you simply grab the file and put it in the ringtones folder and voilà, there you have your new ringtone.
Games are really good, but most of the time they are paid. This is not a problem for me as I never play games on my phone, but it may be a problem for heavy gamers. Sideloading(=stealing) apps requires jailbreak which I'll talk about in the next section.

Customisation

While on Android, I was really obsessed with customization. My OCD( i.e. Obsessive–compulsive disorder) made me spend a lot of time getting what seemed to be the "perfect setup". Having switched to iOS I now realize that personally I do need to to personalize my phone that much..for me, icons and folders will do it now. However, these days I got really angry because I really wanted to switch to 2G as I had to leave my cellular data on most of the day and 3G would have drained my battery way too fast. So, having used my iphone for 6 months now, I finally jalibroken it last week. I spent like 3 days to customize everything to my liking and then I realized that my OCD(it is a serious mental disease, please don't make fun of it or of the people who suffer from it) had taken over again so I switched back to stock iOS.
Available customization tweaks: kind of everything. From widgets to themes, everything is available. Let's say that once you are jailbroken you can customize almost as musch as on android(please don't kill me for saying it, but it's quite true).

Battery

As I mentioned, my battery lasts pretty long with the exception of leaving 3g/4g turned on all the time. I browse the web, listen to music, make phone calls and use social apps such as Facebook, Whatsapp etc. and I never run out of juice. However, remember that I said I never play games. I don't know how much the battery would last if you run away from monkeys or use birds to kill pigs for hours.

Storage

I have the 16 GB model and I've never run out of space. The thing I really like about iTunes is that it lets you convert your songs to a lower bit rate so the take up less space. The lack of an SD card slot was frustrating in the beginning, but not anymore. Please take into consideration that Apple did a really good job with the required space for the firmware. I have 13.5 GB available out of 16 GB. A 16 GB Galaxy S4 has only 8.8 GB available as the rest is used by bloatware and Touchwiz. Of course, you can always get a microSD card, but still, there's so much inefficiency in managing the space.

And finally updates

This was my main reason for buying the iPhone. Updates come yearly, and every iPhone has a 3 year lifespan. My iPhone will be up to date for at least 2 more years while Samsung will only provide like 1-2 minor updates for its non-flagship devices and 2-3 for the old flagships. Compare Galaxy S i9000 with iPhone 4. Both were released in 2010. The last update that the Galaxy S received was 2.3.x Gingerbread, while iPhone 4 is running iOS 7, the same as the iPhone 5s, Apple's 2013-2014 flagship.
I also want to talk about the fact that before updating, iTunes backups everything. I really like being able to backup all my settings and apps, so that I don't have to rely on any third-party software.

Conclusion

I like my iPhone, I really do. Although I still miss some features from Android, I can get by with my current phone. While using the iPhone you have to trust iOS and abstain from trying to modify things too much. This experience taught me that a smartphone doesn't have to be really complicated and with a lot of features. As long as I con browse the web smoothly, watch some videos and use some cloud services I'm fine with it.
I will keep using my phone until the end of its lifespan, more exactly until Apple stops updating it and that might be around 2017-2018. After that I might consider switching back to an Android phone. But who knows? Technology is evolving so fast that smartphones might be replaced by smart watches by then.
Anyway, I hope those who consider switching to iPhone will appreciate this long post. Thanks again for the awesome development that has been done for the old but amazing Galaxy S+.
Good luck!

Hi @XeLLaR*
I really like the idea of this thread, it demonstrates that, even if we are a small community, we are just like good friends, and this is the main reason for me and for a lot of other users why we still come here and see how development on S+ is going on.
Unfortunately for a damage on its motherboard that caused random reboots and power off on S+, I switched a couple of months ago to Moto G... It is not a monster like other phones, but it has a great performance and battery life for its price and it was a kind of "forced choice" because I didn't have a lot of money to spend...
I'll never be thankful enough for what this community did and still does for our beloved I9001, I hope to see someone of you on Moto G thread, that community is not so unite like this one...
I'm sorry for my long post.
Have a nice day
Regards
Stefano

OK...couldnt resist.
I just installed the Developer preview of Android L frok yesterday and it is amazing! Everything is smooth as lube and the new design is astonishing! I love it cant wait for my other devices to get it.


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