TL;DR: I realize I'm posting this in the S7 forum, but should I buy the Galaxy S7 Edge or the iPhone 6s Plus? Samsung scarred me for life and I have good experiences with Apple, yet I am drawn by the spec-tacular (lol see what I did there) S7 Edge.
All right, I know that the S7 Edge is superior in almost every way to the 6s Plus, but give me a chance to explain my reasoning for being unsure about which one to purchase. Let me just warn you that this will be a long read, but if you love phones as much as I do and would like to kill some time then I hope you will enjoy this post and maybe even have some input to help me make a decision.
First, some history. I had my first smartphone about six years ago, and it was a Samsung Galaxy S Captivate. It was glorious when I bought it and I loved it, but after a while it became extremely laggy, froze quite frequently (I would have to remove the battery to turn it off and on), the power button broke, the software got ****ed up and I was not able to go to the home page without my phone freezing and crashing (I fixed this by installing a different launcher from my computer, but it was pretty scary not being able to navigate my phone). All this stuff caused me to kind of lose my trust in Samsung. I even found a note (lol get it) a few weeks ago and thought it was pretty pretty funny, although also slightly worrisome. For the sake of comedy, here it is:
So I got the HTC One M7, kind of ignoring my own advice, and the first two weeks with it were tough (I was paranoid and I found dead pixels on both of the phones they let me look at, the camera made weird sounds, the build quality was much worse than advertised on YouTube, etc) but after I get over these little things, I really enjoyed the phone and the experience was much better than with my Samsung. No lag, no freezing. Pure bliss.
A year later, I realized I need a tablet for school. After considering all my options I went for the latest Samsung tablet, deciding to give them another chance even though my experience was so bad previously. And this time… they disappointed me again. Turning the tablet on by pressing the home button took literally 2 seconds and taking notes in school was impossible because the note-taking app kept crashing. I filmed these things but I don’t know where those videos are now. My friend ended up getting the same tablet and hers was way quicker and didn’t have these problems, so I don’t know why mine was slow. But this made me trust Samsung even less.
So, here I am again. It’s been almost three years and my good ol’ HTC One cannot fulfil my needs anymore, thus it is time for an upgrade. So I wait, and I wait, and the iPhone 6s Plus comes out and I’m amazed by the new 3D touch feature, but I like Android so I wait some more. And then the LG V10 comes out and I like it and decide to buy it, but it isn’t available in Canada. So I wait some more. Then, finally, an angel appears out of nowhere: the beautiful Galaxy S7 Edge. The only problem is… it’s Samsung.
I watch unboxings. I watch reviews. I watch comparisons. This phone is a beast in every way. It has expandable memory, a fantastic display, a crazy battery, amazing cameras, it’s waterproof, it has quick charging, it has wireless charging, etc. Why the hell would someone not want this phone?!
Honestly, I was still unsure about the phone when I decided to buy it (my instinctual fear of Samsung was telling me to stay away). Samsung was having a promotion where they gave you a free 128GB micro SD card if you reserved the phone, so I decided to just reserve it and see what happened. Then when the phone came in, I decided to just buy it and see what happened. Then I traded in my ****ty old non-functional Samsung phone for $125 off the S7 Edge. Then I kind of fell in love with the phone. Well, until things started to go wrong.
You see, I am someone who over-analyzes everything. If I’m buying headphones, I will research headphones every day after work and on the weekends for at least a week. This is pretty much what I did with these phones. Specs-wise, I knew the Edge was obviously the best choice. However, in real-life use it had a few problems, one which I had trouble getting over.
The first of these problems was that the camera would make a weird popping sound when I recorded videos. I actually think this had something to do with Snapchat because it stopped happening a while after I uninstalled it. But that was weird and it made me slightly paranoid.
The second problem was connectivity issues, although this could have been due to my carrier. It was strange though, because I never had problems on my old HTC One M7 with the same carrier. Anyway, they somehow resolved themselves as well.
The most scary problem was the last one. I was talking to my friend on a messaging app (Line, specifically) a few days after buying the phone and suddenly my phone shut down without a warning. It freaked me out because I got flashbacks to six years ago when this would happen all the time on my old Samsung phone. I pushed the thoughts away and said, it was probably a one-off error that won’t happen again.
But alas, it happened again twice on one day (the day before the last day for me to return it, too). The first time I got a text and opened my cover, which would usually turn on the screen, but nothing happened. I pressed the home button. Nothing happened. I pressed all buttons, nothing happened. After about half a minute, the phone restarted. Then the same night, I was talking on Facebook Messenger and it happened again. No matter what I did, no amount of pressing the screen or any buttons would do anything. And then it just turned off and I had to turn it back on by pressing some combination of buttons.
Needless to say, this freaked the **** out of me. I talked to my friends and they all said this wasn’t normal and I should take the phone back for an exchange or in the worst case just return it. So I contacted my local Samsung store and they told me they were out of stock, but that I could check again tomorrow. At this point I was having major Samsung-hell flashbacks and was totally second-guessing my decision and was considering getting the Nexus 6p. So I stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning (even though I had work the next morning) so I could do some more research, and I found myself in the morning desperately hoping they had no more stock so I could return the damn phone and get a Nexus.
And to my absolute glee, they had no more stock! So I went in and returned the phone, not without a lot of convincing arguments from the salespeople about why I should keep it (“with all these discounts and free stuff you save almost $300!”), as well as giving me a one-day extension so I could come in the next day and get it replaced if they had stock. I spent a week being anxious and stressed I didn’t feel like dealing with this for even a day longer so I returned it and went home and relaxed for the first time in probably a week. I even cried some tears of joy because I had forgotten what it was like not to feel like there is a constant clock ticking, waiting for me to make a decision. Ah, peace at last…
But then I started second-guessing my decision. I didn’t actually want the Nexus; it has an inferior battery, a camera without OIS, and the Snapdragon 810 sounds like a pain in the ass. I was pretty depressed for a day about returning my gorgeous S7 Edge with all those marvelous specs, until I remembered, “Hey, I can always get the iPhone 6s Plus!”
So now we’re finally at the juicy part, after all the rambling and storytelling. I need your help. Samsung has scarred me tremendously, yet I am still so damn drawn to their hardware. My coworker has had a Samsung S6 for half a year and says it has not crashed even once. My other coworker has also had the S6 for a while and she says it's smooth like butter. My best friend has also had a Samsung S6 for a little over a year and she says it only crashed a few times in that whole year. What are your experiences with Samsung’s latest phones? Can Samsung be trusted? Do their phones crash frequently, or do I just somehow curse every Samsung product I buy? A lot of people complained about Samsung becoming laggy after some time, even though their products are amazing initially. Is this still true?
Yet at the same time I somehow cannot seem to bring myself to get the iPhone, knowing all that it’s lacking. It has no quick charging. It has no wireless charging. It has no expandable memory. Its display is worse than my three-year-old HTC One M7’s (what the hell Apple lol). Its battery life is worse than the S7 Edge’s. It’s not waterproof. It has worse low-light pictures. It has slower upload/download speeds. Basically, it is worse in every way, except for two important ones: It has 3D touch, and it’s Apple.
3D touch seems like such a useful feature, both from a user perspective and from a developer perspective. I’m studying computer science and I really want to make mobile apps (I’ve made two already for Android) and 3D touch seems like it’ll be very interesting to incorporate into apps. I’ve also read that iOS devs make more money since iOS users are more likely to spend money, but I guess if my apps have ads then it’ll be more revenue on Android since there are more users there.
The second point I mentioned is that it’s Apple. I own a Macbook Air and used to own an iPad and I have had nothing but great experiences with Apple. My friend has an iPhone and she says it has never crashed. Apple’s customer service is outstanding and they make me feel very secure with my purchases. I know that no matter what happens to my phone, AppleCare+ has got me covered. Also, I’m going on exchange to Asia for a year and it’s nice to know I can take my phone to any Apple store in the world and get it repaired (which I can’t do for any other phone).
Essentially I need a few things from my phone: A good camera, a good battery that can survive a whole day (since I’ll be doing lots of touristy picture and video taking), enough storage for photos and videos (while I’m travelling I’ll want to record lots of videos, although probably not in 4K), and peace of mind. I’m sad that I can’t seem to enjoy Samsung phones as much as other people do, and those damn specs are driving me insane and make me want to buy the phone again right now and give it another try (maybe it was just a bug?). But I’m hesitant and scared of buying a phone that will constantly fail on me just like my old Samsung used to do.
At the same time, I feel silly paying $160CAD more for an iPhone which has much worse specs than the Edge. But is it all about specs, or is it more about the experience? Does it matter if it takes 3 hours to charge to the same amount the Edge charges to in 1 hour? Does it matter if I can’t charge wirelessly? Does it matter if there are less pixels per inch on the screen? Does it matter if the iPhone isn’t waterproof? Does it matter that low-light pictures are worse? Does it matter that the selfie camera is way too damn zoomed in to take any decent group photos without a selfie stick? Does it matter that once I choose a storage size, I can’t expand it? I don’t know. It’s hard to really know how useful or useless these things will be until I use the phone for a long time. If I were rich, I’d buy both. But I’m not and that’s crazy.
I’m going to Asia in September for a full year and my HTC One M7 won’t do. It barely lasts half a day with normal use and the camera is broken. I want to take pictures and record videos (so I can make vlogs on YouTube and share my experiences with my family and friends) and go out in the morning and come back at night with enough charge. I don’t want my phone to freeze and crash in the middle of all of this.
I wanted to love the S7 Edge so much but the crashing is not okay, but after thinking about it for a few days I wonder if this is something that is not common anymore and something that just happened to me because I’m unlucky. I also still would be open to the idea of a Nexus 6P (especially for the price), but I’m not sure if the slightly worse camera and the much worse battery are a good fit for me. Then again, there’s the iPhone 6s Plus…
What the hell do I do?
All right, I know that the S7 Edge is superior in almost every way to the 6s Plus, but give me a chance to explain my reasoning for being unsure about which one to purchase. Let me just warn you that this will be a long read, but if you love phones as much as I do and would like to kill some time then I hope you will enjoy this post and maybe even have some input to help me make a decision.
First, some history. I had my first smartphone about six years ago, and it was a Samsung Galaxy S Captivate. It was glorious when I bought it and I loved it, but after a while it became extremely laggy, froze quite frequently (I would have to remove the battery to turn it off and on), the power button broke, the software got ****ed up and I was not able to go to the home page without my phone freezing and crashing (I fixed this by installing a different launcher from my computer, but it was pretty scary not being able to navigate my phone). All this stuff caused me to kind of lose my trust in Samsung. I even found a note (lol get it) a few weeks ago and thought it was pretty pretty funny, although also slightly worrisome. For the sake of comedy, here it is:
So I got the HTC One M7, kind of ignoring my own advice, and the first two weeks with it were tough (I was paranoid and I found dead pixels on both of the phones they let me look at, the camera made weird sounds, the build quality was much worse than advertised on YouTube, etc) but after I get over these little things, I really enjoyed the phone and the experience was much better than with my Samsung. No lag, no freezing. Pure bliss.
A year later, I realized I need a tablet for school. After considering all my options I went for the latest Samsung tablet, deciding to give them another chance even though my experience was so bad previously. And this time… they disappointed me again. Turning the tablet on by pressing the home button took literally 2 seconds and taking notes in school was impossible because the note-taking app kept crashing. I filmed these things but I don’t know where those videos are now. My friend ended up getting the same tablet and hers was way quicker and didn’t have these problems, so I don’t know why mine was slow. But this made me trust Samsung even less.
So, here I am again. It’s been almost three years and my good ol’ HTC One cannot fulfil my needs anymore, thus it is time for an upgrade. So I wait, and I wait, and the iPhone 6s Plus comes out and I’m amazed by the new 3D touch feature, but I like Android so I wait some more. And then the LG V10 comes out and I like it and decide to buy it, but it isn’t available in Canada. So I wait some more. Then, finally, an angel appears out of nowhere: the beautiful Galaxy S7 Edge. The only problem is… it’s Samsung.
I watch unboxings. I watch reviews. I watch comparisons. This phone is a beast in every way. It has expandable memory, a fantastic display, a crazy battery, amazing cameras, it’s waterproof, it has quick charging, it has wireless charging, etc. Why the hell would someone not want this phone?!
Honestly, I was still unsure about the phone when I decided to buy it (my instinctual fear of Samsung was telling me to stay away). Samsung was having a promotion where they gave you a free 128GB micro SD card if you reserved the phone, so I decided to just reserve it and see what happened. Then when the phone came in, I decided to just buy it and see what happened. Then I traded in my ****ty old non-functional Samsung phone for $125 off the S7 Edge. Then I kind of fell in love with the phone. Well, until things started to go wrong.
You see, I am someone who over-analyzes everything. If I’m buying headphones, I will research headphones every day after work and on the weekends for at least a week. This is pretty much what I did with these phones. Specs-wise, I knew the Edge was obviously the best choice. However, in real-life use it had a few problems, one which I had trouble getting over.
The first of these problems was that the camera would make a weird popping sound when I recorded videos. I actually think this had something to do with Snapchat because it stopped happening a while after I uninstalled it. But that was weird and it made me slightly paranoid.
The second problem was connectivity issues, although this could have been due to my carrier. It was strange though, because I never had problems on my old HTC One M7 with the same carrier. Anyway, they somehow resolved themselves as well.
The most scary problem was the last one. I was talking to my friend on a messaging app (Line, specifically) a few days after buying the phone and suddenly my phone shut down without a warning. It freaked me out because I got flashbacks to six years ago when this would happen all the time on my old Samsung phone. I pushed the thoughts away and said, it was probably a one-off error that won’t happen again.
But alas, it happened again twice on one day (the day before the last day for me to return it, too). The first time I got a text and opened my cover, which would usually turn on the screen, but nothing happened. I pressed the home button. Nothing happened. I pressed all buttons, nothing happened. After about half a minute, the phone restarted. Then the same night, I was talking on Facebook Messenger and it happened again. No matter what I did, no amount of pressing the screen or any buttons would do anything. And then it just turned off and I had to turn it back on by pressing some combination of buttons.
Needless to say, this freaked the **** out of me. I talked to my friends and they all said this wasn’t normal and I should take the phone back for an exchange or in the worst case just return it. So I contacted my local Samsung store and they told me they were out of stock, but that I could check again tomorrow. At this point I was having major Samsung-hell flashbacks and was totally second-guessing my decision and was considering getting the Nexus 6p. So I stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning (even though I had work the next morning) so I could do some more research, and I found myself in the morning desperately hoping they had no more stock so I could return the damn phone and get a Nexus.
And to my absolute glee, they had no more stock! So I went in and returned the phone, not without a lot of convincing arguments from the salespeople about why I should keep it (“with all these discounts and free stuff you save almost $300!”), as well as giving me a one-day extension so I could come in the next day and get it replaced if they had stock. I spent a week being anxious and stressed I didn’t feel like dealing with this for even a day longer so I returned it and went home and relaxed for the first time in probably a week. I even cried some tears of joy because I had forgotten what it was like not to feel like there is a constant clock ticking, waiting for me to make a decision. Ah, peace at last…
But then I started second-guessing my decision. I didn’t actually want the Nexus; it has an inferior battery, a camera without OIS, and the Snapdragon 810 sounds like a pain in the ass. I was pretty depressed for a day about returning my gorgeous S7 Edge with all those marvelous specs, until I remembered, “Hey, I can always get the iPhone 6s Plus!”
So now we’re finally at the juicy part, after all the rambling and storytelling. I need your help. Samsung has scarred me tremendously, yet I am still so damn drawn to their hardware. My coworker has had a Samsung S6 for half a year and says it has not crashed even once. My other coworker has also had the S6 for a while and she says it's smooth like butter. My best friend has also had a Samsung S6 for a little over a year and she says it only crashed a few times in that whole year. What are your experiences with Samsung’s latest phones? Can Samsung be trusted? Do their phones crash frequently, or do I just somehow curse every Samsung product I buy? A lot of people complained about Samsung becoming laggy after some time, even though their products are amazing initially. Is this still true?
Yet at the same time I somehow cannot seem to bring myself to get the iPhone, knowing all that it’s lacking. It has no quick charging. It has no wireless charging. It has no expandable memory. Its display is worse than my three-year-old HTC One M7’s (what the hell Apple lol). Its battery life is worse than the S7 Edge’s. It’s not waterproof. It has worse low-light pictures. It has slower upload/download speeds. Basically, it is worse in every way, except for two important ones: It has 3D touch, and it’s Apple.
3D touch seems like such a useful feature, both from a user perspective and from a developer perspective. I’m studying computer science and I really want to make mobile apps (I’ve made two already for Android) and 3D touch seems like it’ll be very interesting to incorporate into apps. I’ve also read that iOS devs make more money since iOS users are more likely to spend money, but I guess if my apps have ads then it’ll be more revenue on Android since there are more users there.
The second point I mentioned is that it’s Apple. I own a Macbook Air and used to own an iPad and I have had nothing but great experiences with Apple. My friend has an iPhone and she says it has never crashed. Apple’s customer service is outstanding and they make me feel very secure with my purchases. I know that no matter what happens to my phone, AppleCare+ has got me covered. Also, I’m going on exchange to Asia for a year and it’s nice to know I can take my phone to any Apple store in the world and get it repaired (which I can’t do for any other phone).
Essentially I need a few things from my phone: A good camera, a good battery that can survive a whole day (since I’ll be doing lots of touristy picture and video taking), enough storage for photos and videos (while I’m travelling I’ll want to record lots of videos, although probably not in 4K), and peace of mind. I’m sad that I can’t seem to enjoy Samsung phones as much as other people do, and those damn specs are driving me insane and make me want to buy the phone again right now and give it another try (maybe it was just a bug?). But I’m hesitant and scared of buying a phone that will constantly fail on me just like my old Samsung used to do.
At the same time, I feel silly paying $160CAD more for an iPhone which has much worse specs than the Edge. But is it all about specs, or is it more about the experience? Does it matter if it takes 3 hours to charge to the same amount the Edge charges to in 1 hour? Does it matter if I can’t charge wirelessly? Does it matter if there are less pixels per inch on the screen? Does it matter if the iPhone isn’t waterproof? Does it matter that low-light pictures are worse? Does it matter that the selfie camera is way too damn zoomed in to take any decent group photos without a selfie stick? Does it matter that once I choose a storage size, I can’t expand it? I don’t know. It’s hard to really know how useful or useless these things will be until I use the phone for a long time. If I were rich, I’d buy both. But I’m not and that’s crazy.
I’m going to Asia in September for a full year and my HTC One M7 won’t do. It barely lasts half a day with normal use and the camera is broken. I want to take pictures and record videos (so I can make vlogs on YouTube and share my experiences with my family and friends) and go out in the morning and come back at night with enough charge. I don’t want my phone to freeze and crash in the middle of all of this.
I wanted to love the S7 Edge so much but the crashing is not okay, but after thinking about it for a few days I wonder if this is something that is not common anymore and something that just happened to me because I’m unlucky. I also still would be open to the idea of a Nexus 6P (especially for the price), but I’m not sure if the slightly worse camera and the much worse battery are a good fit for me. Then again, there’s the iPhone 6s Plus…
What the hell do I do?
