New iPhone?

Unless you need the biggest one, you can get the 16GB iPhone 6 for $200.

IMO, it really depends on how invested you are in the iOS ecosystem. If you have a lot of iOS programs that you like and use, I'd go with the iPhone. If you don't and only have a couple of programs you use (and which wouldn't be all that expensive to replace), I'd go with whatever phone strikes your fancy.

Just know that it will probably be a bit before companies release battery cases for the new iPhones, if that matters.

Certainly you're gonna get a range of opinions on this. Mine, FWIW: I've been a long time Apple user, but not a fanboy (I have Dell laptop w/ Windows 7 because it was cheaper and did everything I needed it to do). My wife and I have had iPhones since we got smartphones but I think when my iPhone 5 dies I'll be moving on. I'm sick of being roped in by the ecosystem, and all of my friends with Android phones enjoy features that I have to wait for with my iPhone. Just my $0.02 – Apple is still making beautiful and innovative products, I just think there's more competition now.

Work is PC but home is Apple. The iPhone melds with my entire families "ecosystem" with FaceTime and all devices hooked up to "find my Iwhatever" should one be lost or stolen.

That said I'm waiting to see which apps play well with the 6. A buddy uses Backpackers' Trimble mapmaker on an iPad mini which performs like a sweet big screen GPS (tho battery life is a problem), … if the larger screen 6 can do the same, I may need to trade in …. for the long haul of course.

"That said I'm waiting to see which apps play well with the 6."

Not with the 6, per se, but with iOS 8. If that's a concern, I'd recommend writing the app author and asking about iOS 8 compatibility. Probably won't be an issue since developers have had access to it for a few months now.

It seems that iPhone 6 has a pressure sensor. So there will be non-GPS altimeter/barometer functions. That will be a big selling point for me if it works well.

I've put myself into Smartphone timeout for some months now but miss having an e-reader, gps, a camera to back up my Sony, alarm clock, etc so I'm jumping on the larger 6 to replace both my Android tablet and dumb phone. Wish there was a way to buy a plan without data plan and wifi only.

I think the Android OS is fine but it has been buggier for me than what I've experienced with all of my Apple products.

I think smart phones are maturing pretty fast. In not so long, a smart phone will be a generic, like desktop PCs are now. I mean, we used to quote our desktop CPUs and main memory … except for gamers we are beyond that.

And so, I'd take "a deal." Verizon has 5c's for free with 2 year contract. Amazon has their Fire for 99 cents with contract. If those were unlocked, I'd take the deal, and then go to StraightTalk or whatever on expiration.

You can also get an unlocked Moto G straight from Net10 for $170.

My Nexus 5, with the generic Android, has been pretty much flawless. Of course, I paid a premium in those days for an unlocked and generic Android phone.

"It seems that iPhone 6 has a pressure sensor. So there will be non-GPS altimeter/barometer functions. That will be a big selling point for me if it works well."

+1

I noted yesterday there was some mention of elevation detection.

I've still got a 4, so when I upgrade that will save me about one very expensive ounce. And it runs around as much as a nice alt watch, which is on my wish list.

(Though generally I only take my phone cause I don't want to leave it in the car.)

From everything I have seen, it looks like they have copied the Galaxy S3 – a two generations old phone. I'm just surprised people are still buying these. At least they have finally admitted that we like a bigger phone.

I bought an iPhone 4 32gb back in 2010 and loved it. When the iPhone 4S came out, I broke my contract to get Siri functionality and a larger 64gb machine. I'm a longtime Dragon Naturally Speaking user, so I like the idea of "talking to my phone" for text and emails, though this apparently seems unnatural to many.

When the 5 & 5S came out with the same old small screens, I jumped to a Samsung Note 2 because I use my phone for a lot of functions, including reading on the go and in bed at night, and I thought the big screen would be great for that.

That love affair with the Note 2 lasted for about 8 months. I finally gave it to the wife and went back to my old 4S. As you say, the Samsung hardware was certainly good (though the plastic back was worrying after experiencing the high quality finish of the iPhone), but Android was so buggy that the phone crashed or hung up 2 or 3 times a month. Some aps I'd had for a long time simply didn't run – or ran very poorly – on the Note 2. There were some aps available on Android that I'd have if I could get them on the iPhone, but the stuff I wanted to count on either ran poorly or not at all.

I strongly suspect that the problem was initial phone setup and all the "bloatware" that came with it, pre-installed (like a PC). When I turned it over to the wife, I backed up my stuff, then took it to the Samsung kiosk at Best Buy and had the guy reset it and load the latest version of Android, getting rid of all the "bloatware". The aps that didn't run before now run for the wife. She isn't a "power user"/abuser like me, so the phone is great for her. She can talk to the kid on Skype now (4 CPU processor & 4G, so it's fast enough for video feeds), unlike her old Droid phone, an HTC "ancient" that ran Android 2. She's happy.

I bought 4 extra batteries for the Note 2 (a big plus when you can't get to a recharger). This is the biggest disadvantage of the iPhone, but you can overcome it with an external battery for not much.

For me, the biggest disadvantage of the Android phones is storage. I had a 64gb external microSD in the Note 2, but couldn't use it for most of the time I had the phone because pre-Android 4.3 you couldn't put aps in external memory. Aps were mostly designed NOT to use external memory, so the chip remained unused. I mostly stored backups there. With the iPhone, you get to use all of your available memory space, and that would be the primary reason I would get a new iPhone – the 128gb model. In addition, if the iPhone 6 is like all the ones that went before it, it will be rock solid, the aps will be vetted sufficiently that they will consistently work most of the time "as advertised", and I'll be a happy camper.

"From everything I have seen, it looks like they have copied the Galaxy S3 – a two generations old phone. I'm just surprised people are still buying these."

It's the ecosystem (and supposed Apple cachet), not just a phone, that people buy. Apple understood that early on when others didn't, which is why they do so well now. Once you're heavily invested in the ecosystem, it's hard to leave (certainly nearly impossible to leave without, perhaps major, cost).

So Apple has seemed content to define a category (which they did with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad – not created, but defined) of product, and then lag behind the innovation curve as the product category takes hold and other companies continually bring more robust products to market. But Apple keeps winning mindshare.

Brilliant, really, even if their products aren't.

Edit to add: as two other posters mentioned, because they own the ecosystem, Apple products seem (to many, anyway) to simply work better and frustrate less than their counterparts. There's a lot to be said for positive user experience.

"And so, I'd take "a deal." Verizon has 5c's for free with 2 year contract. Amazon has their Fire for 99 cents with contract. If those were unlocked, I'd take the deal, and then go to StraightTalk or whatever on expiration."

Not sure I understand what you mean. It's my understanding that after expiration of contract, Verizon and AT&T will unlock your phone. I had a 4s that I unlocked and gave to my brother when its contract expired with no hassle.

Doug, I'm not sure what I mean either.

I blithely talked about the Net10 process to a couple iPhone owners, but then when I checked youtube, it looked like the process going from a major service was a bit more cumbersome. Not that buying a sim and signing on yourself is really for the faint of heart.

For what it's worth, there is some interesting data on on/off contract prices for iPhones here:

http://www.cnet.com/news/what-itll-cost-you-to-get-a-no-contract-apple-iphone-6/

Update, it seems the Amazon Fire Phone is locked to ATT only, so forget that:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/22/amazon-fire-phone-review/

I switched from an iPhone to a Galaxy and could not be happier really. My experience has been much better with the Galaxy. I would not consider going back.
I like the open "ecosystem" much better. Apps work great. Camera is really good. I have added a memory card to hold loads of music and photos. I haven't seen anything someone does on an iPhone and wished I could do that.
I don't think Apple is winning the younger folks. Most young people I know consider them to be old people phones, going the way of Facebook. I'm fighting the old folks category presently, so that may explain my preference.
Apple does have nice advertisements

The old Mac vs PC argument. My programs are all PC based and I use both platforms; however with PC, eventually a virus would wipe everything out every 3 years or so (including pictures) …. blue screen of death, new machine. Since switching, the Macs have lasted several years and about as good as new for about double the upfront cost, so I'm past the "break even point". Work docs are my employers property, so the PC-windows is fine for that stuff. It was just a logical progression to include mobile devices. Gotta have a skin for the phone though, cause a broken screen hurts.

The radio had pros and cons about the new iOS … Razzle, frazzle

"I like the open "ecosystem" much better. Apps work great. Camera is really good. I have added a memory card to hold loads of music and photos. I haven't seen anything someone does on an iPhone and wished I could do that."
I'd like to know how you did that. At least with the music aps I used on my Note 2, I could not get the ap to consistently recognize that the music files were on the external 64gb SD chip. It was a mess getting them to "see" the files there. It seemed like I was forever resetting pointers to simply get recognition of the files, using an Android "file browser" and resetting things. I had better success with photos, but, hey: How do you get movies to download to your phone? What do you do with pdfs? I must have tried a half dozen pdf viewers on the Note 2 w/o great success, but with my iPhone, I merely access the pdf online or on my PC (via a "file browser" ap), and tell it to "open in iBooks", and there it is. Permanently. I can rename the file, categorize it by genre, and so forth. In addition, iBooks automatically paginates pdfs and allows bookmarks and categorization – though you can't highlight passages like you can with epubs. This is functionality that's built in – you don't have to do much more than access the file and select where it goes. (BTW, I have more than one pdf viewer for the iPHone, but I find I don't use them because I don't need them.)

I think the devil is truly in the details for this one.

In effect, I think what someone said before is absolutely true: it's the "ecosystem" more than anything else. If you have primarily used an iPhone or an iPad, then it makes sense to you, and you have a "uniform ecosystem", where everything talks to everything else.

I could absolutely use an Android – and have – but I'm an ex-programmer with some idea about how these things work. I doubt that a casual user would be as successful making the transition – esp. if they were "power users" who expected to use a lot of aps and a lot of functionality. Yes, Android works – but I'd really like an answer based on your level of usage and how you "made it work" – esp. the "memory thing", which stopped me cold.

As a programmer, I also really like the "openness" of the Android system, but I spent far too much time trying to get things to work that should have simply worked. My wife, who now owns the Note 2 I had, is perfectly happy. But after she got the main screen to display the background she wanted and got the time and date to display, she hasn't changed the basic setup. Even my iPhone uses group icons for organization so I have everything I use on a regular basis on the first screen. I'd really like Apple to open up the architecture a bit more and allow some of the gadgets and widgets I found on the Android system, but I can mostly do without all that. What I CAN'T do without is strong basic functionality that always works, and lots and lots of freely available memory for books, music, movies documents, etc. I don't want to be constantly resetting pointers or telling the OS that I want this here and that there.

I know this sounds argumentative, but I really don't understand how someone gets what you say you managed on a Droid system. In the area of memory (and content) mgmt, it seems severely limited.

Seems like a CHAFF discussion. gear = (backpacking) gear, IMHO

This depends a lot on how long your trips are, but for I think $40 I have a much larger battery for my Galaxy S3 that in normal day-to-day use goes for about 4.5 days without charging. There are battery extension options too for an iPhone, but since the battery is made to be removable in my S3, it's a bit more natural, at the expense of thinness and weight for the whole phone.

Again, not to say that there aren't options for both, but even in normal use I love having a much larger battery.

if we carry it backpacking it's backpacking gear.

My phone is a critical piece of backpacking equipment. GPS, backup electronic maps, numerous e-books including trail guides, first aid books & apps, etc. My decision about what phone to buy is influenced 90% by suitability for backpacking.

So long as a thread is clearly titled to show its subject matter, isn't it less effort for you to just ignore the thread, rather than moan at people that they shouldn't discuss things that you personally are not interested in?

Kullenberg:

You and I have had very different experiences. I used to own an iphone and had PDF problems with the iphone. I have never had a problem with pdfs on my Galaxy. As to the memory, I have not done anything to make it store on the card or the internal memory; it does it all without asking me anything. No resetting pointers or such for me at all. Also, you can cheaply add a lot of memory with a card.

For me, the Galaxy experience has been seamless.

I've used both pretty extensively and did not have any trouble switching to a Galaxy. I can't imagine many casual users would have a difficulty either. For casual use, it honestly seems to work very similarly to an iphone.

I think the power users are the users who especially like using an Android based phone. Its more powerful, more open.

With the card ability, a Galaxy seems much better on memory than apple; and with content management, it seems slightly better but that's clearly a subjective thing.

I am agnostic in terms of IOS vs android. I have had both, and my household is currently split. we are tech savy enough to synch across platforms. I use my S3 phone as a GPS, emergency phone, camera, watch/clock and camera when backpacking (also sometimes games at night if I can't sleep). I don't use the GPS for navigation that often but I do take lots of pictures and turn on the GPS periodically to verify location. I absolutely require a long battery life and the ability to swap out the battery. I used to carry an external charger but found that at 1.5 ounces for a 2200mah extra battery that was a much better way to go. I also replaced the original battery when it started to age after a year with a new and better one. Batteries age, and if you can't replace them your usage time will degrade over time.

Apple is notorious for small batteries and the 6 is no exception. On top of they are not user replaceable. For me personally that is an non-starter. On my last backpacking trip my buddies IPHONE was dead after a day and a half. I got 3 days out of my first battery alone not trying to conserve as it was only a 4 day trip. Popped in the second battery and was good to go.

The 6 is a beautiful machine, just not for me.

I have found iPhone 5 battery life to be excellent. I get 7-10 days out of mine, using it pretty much the way you say – occasional GPS, frequent camera, wake up alarm, reading pdfs of maps & guidebooks.

However, it is critical to set it up correctly. 1.5 days is what you get if if you just do nothing and leave the phone hunting for cell towers in the wilderness.

The key is to lock the SIM card. Put a password on the SIM, power cycle the phone, and do not unlock the SIM at the prompt. With Flight Mode OFF and the SIM card locked, the GPS chip works, but all the cell functionality is disabled and the phone does not waste power hunting for towers. When not using GPS, switch Flight Mode ON to further conserve power.

Having said that, I agree that I really wish it were possible to change batteries so I could take a second one. There are plugin options, but I've never found anything light.