iPhone

In Part 1 of my series on transitioning from an iPhone to Android, I gave the background on why I made the transition, as well as my general purchase experience on switching to the Samsung Galaxy Note II (the Android phone I ended up switching to). In Part 2, I gave an in-depth review of the Galaxy Note II’s hardware, comparing it to both my iPhone 4, the iPhone 5, as well as other popular Android smartphones (the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One). In Part 3, I touched on the heart of switching to an Android phone, the Android OS (Operating System) itself.

In this final segment of the series (Part 4), I want to explain what led me to switch wireless carriers from Verizon back to AT&T.

A little background first. I started off with AT&T as my wireless carrier when I purchased my first iPhone, the iPhone 3G. The iPhone was both my first phone and my first smartphone, and since AT&T was the exclusive wireless carrier for the iPhone at the time, obviously I knew which wireless carrier I was going with when purchasing an iPhone. Since I was living in Hot Springs, Arkansas, at the time (which didn’t have 3G at the time, but EDGE was still decent), and had landline phone and DSL through AT&T, it also made sense to have my wireless service through AT&T as well. I was happy as an AT&T customer. I had unlimited data, rollover minutes on my Nation plan, unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling to all my friends and family (most of them had AT&T), as well as the perks of being an iPhone customer such as Visual Voicemail and hitting a 3G area when I traveled to Little Rock. All in all, I was satisfied with AT&T as my wireless carrier.

That is, until I moved to North Georgia…

In Part 1 of my series on transitioning from an iPhone to Android, I gave the background on why I made the transition, as well as my general purchase experience on switching to the Samsung Galaxy Note II (the Android phone I ended up switching to). In Part 2, I gave an in-depth review of the Galaxy Note II’s hardware, comparing it to both my iPhone 4, the iPhone 5, as well as other popular Android smartphones (the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One).

In Part 3 of this series, I want to touch on the heart of switching to an Android phone, the Android OS (Operating System) itself.

Jelly Bean and TouchWiz
The Samsung Galaxy Note II currently ships with the Jelly Bean (4.1) release of Android OS, masked behind Samsung’s TouchWiz interface (versus stock Android). Jelly Bean seems like a solid Android release for a person like myself to switch into, and all in all, it feels pretty stable. I’ve had a couple of minor app crashes since switching, but nothing more than I would encounter on iOS, and after I ran some app updates, things were even better. Multitouch gestures (zooming, scrolling, etc.) feel just as responsive as they did on iOS. I haven’t experienced any lag or performance degradation at all.

As for TouchWiz itself, I’m personally fine with not using “stock Android”. I’m not a huge fan of “stock Android” anyway, and TouchWiz seems more geared toward someone who’s coming over from an iPhone. The nature themes (water ripple effect when unlocking, etc.) also add a nice layer of eye and touch candy as well. In order to fully benefit from the GUI experience, however, I did need to add a few personal customizations, which I’ll touch on later.

Updates/Fragmentation

In Part 1 of my series on why I switched from an iPhone to Android (Samsung Galaxy Note II to be exact), I explained the background to why I made the switch, as well as my general purchasing experience purchasing the Note II at my local Sam’s Club.

In Part 2, I want to focus on a solid review of the Samsung Galaxy Note II’s hardware, why I chose it as my phone of choice, as well as how well it stacks up against the iPhone and other popular Android phones on the market.

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