Things that the iPhone 5 can't do, that Android can [video] | Hacker News Reader

Things that the iPhone 5 can't do, that Android can [video]

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13 pointsbitcartel17 comments

11. Load pages on Google Plus?

Seriously, trying to load that page on my iPhone was a disaster.

It's a disaster on my Android phone as well.

FYI the video title on YT is 10 Things the iPhone 5 Can't do that Nexus 4 Can

Intents is worth listing three times imho but I still think he could have come up with a better list of standout features for Android/Nexus 4. Was lucky I wasn't drinking anything when he said soft keys.

The two that stand out for me are NFC and app integration (intents).

With Android Beam, NFC is a pretty cool way to share things. The only quirk is the positioning of the NFC chip by different phone manufacturers, which means bumping phones back to back doesn't always work and you need to slide a few cm up or down.

Meanwhile, Intents is something which iOS developers would appreciate. Both Dropbox and Microsoft (Live) faced problems recently where their SDKs were found to be in violation of the iOS App Store. This resulted in third party developers being punished, by not being able to update their apps until the SDK issues were resolved, even if the update involved bug fixes or feature upgrades unrelated to the SDK.

NFC makes no sense to me.

Walking up to a person to share things!? We have the Internet. You can already share things with people faster with less effort anywhere in the world. You want me to get someone else to pull out their phone and tap it?

Also pairing. You are pairing wireless devices. Which means you have a short range wireless network already. And you want to add another shorter range wireless network to pair? You can already leverage an existing technology.

I can see uses for payments, and sharing information on things like museum displays. But this is not wide spread enough that it matters yet. I guess this is a chicken and egg problem. But maybe you can leverage an existing tech more?

Completely agree with intents. Stupid that they don't have it yet.

There are still many places where you don't have reception and there's no wifi. For example, if you want to share a contact card with someone when visiting a new company (large building, blocking most of the cell signal), then simple short-range communication is probably going to be the easiest to setup.

I think NFC makes sense in quite a few situations. For example, if there's no wifi or data coverage, or you don't want to share private data via a third party service like FaceBook or Twitter.

Using NFC to pair devices for transfer is quicker than doing it manually. No need to navigate to the bluetooth settings page, search for device, enter pairing code, etc.

Can somebody list he 10 things so I don't have to watch the annoying video?

People invented writing thousands of years ago so they could quickly communicate ideas without having to act them out each time. Now we're regressing.

1. Customizable App integration

2. Setting Default Apps

3. NFC Tech

4. Google Now

5. Larger display with "HD Resolution"

6. Wireless Charging

7. Widgets

8. Soft Keys (e.g. the bottom row of keys dissapears in landscape mode)

9. Swipe Keyboard

10. Photosphere

So, widgets and NFC, then? I love Android as much as the next guy, but most of this is just grasping at straws for something to hate on the iPhone.

For me, the killer app for android is dropsync. This program works like the desktop Dropbox client, providing true two way syncing of a directory on my device with a subdirectory of my Dropbox account.

The first 2 I get. The rest? Who cares? I live in Japan, where NFC is probably used more than any other country. But I don't need it. I pay cash for most things and my train pass is a rechargeable card. All NFC would allow me to do is pull out a different thing from my pocket or bag to pay with.

App integration and default apps are the only two things that are worth anything in the list IMO. However, combined with the fact that iOS app ecosystem is still quite superior to Androids more than makes up for the difference.

I like the content, but I dislike the annoying way in which it is presented.

Thing that Android can't do: Be an iPhone.

How do you mean hat? Android is software. Of course it cannot be an iPhone.

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