Getting rid of your iPhone? BEWARE!!!!

[terryg]

"The Samsung Galaxy S4 has experienced a few problems. Its battery has been the biggest issue. There have been reports of batteries draining down very quickly, and even of them swelling up. Samsung has responded (always a sign that an issue is serious) by offering battery replacements to any owners of Galaxy S4s affected by the problem."

Apple has had its own fair share of battery issues - including swelling and exploding batteries:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3718734" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And, unlike Samsung Galaxy line - the batteries are not user replaceable.

[terryg]

A little known fact about iPhones/Apple can bit you in the rump, if you aren't careful. When an iPhone sends a text to another iPhone, the message is automatically converted to an iMessage. (I have no idea why this is done, unless to cause the very problems it is causing.)

Mr. Cotton,

I agree complete that Apple needs to address the issue of persistent use of iMessage for those who no longer have iPhones - and I am anything but an Apple fanboy. I carry a Galaxy S4 currently and I can barely stand to help my kids with their own iPhones.

But I can describe one of the primary reasons technological reasons iPhone to iPhone messages are converted to iMessage. iMessage treats group messages (those to more than one person) differently than standard text messaging.

-When a group message is sent via SMS (traditional text message) - everyone gets a copy of the message and can see who sent it. They cannot, however, see the other recipients and they can only reply to the sender.

-By sending the message as an iMessage, the whole group can interact to the message thread. Everyone who received the message can see all recipients and replies are sent to everyone. In my opinion, this has both good and bad connotations. But it is certainly key to how iMessage is utilized and it is HUGE for teanagers - even to the point of being exclusionary to teens who don't have iPhones. Again, I am not saying it is a good thing - but it is what it is. Here is a pretty good article (HuffPo - sorry) about this from a teen perspective: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/2 ... 22095.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Not having an iPhone can be social suicide, notes Casey. One of her friends found herself effectively exiled from their circle for six months because her parents dawdled in upgrading her to an iPhone. Without it, she had no access to the iMessage group chat, where it seemed all their shared plans were being made.

"She wasn’t in the group chat, so we stopped being friends with her,” Casey says. “Not because we didn’t like her, but we just weren’t in contact with her.”

I know it seems petty - and that is because it is. But it doesn't change the fact that it is happening. It is proprietary issues like this that make me leap with joy when I see Apple smartphone market share rapidly falling:
http://www.mercurynews.com/60-second-bu ... one-battle" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://pocketnow.com/2013/08/13/has-apple-lost" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I think the public can only benefit with competition which will force companies to use standardized communication methods. One of the things that has always infuriated me is that Apple will rake other companies over the coals for being proprietary (i.e. Adobe with Flash) and yet their entire business model is built around proprietary services and exclusivity.

For what it is worth - I have been trying Google Hangouts to allow similar functionality with my iPhone using family. They have an app for Apple and Android. It allows similar group messaging capabilities as well as video chat. But unlike iMessage - it is intended to be cross platform - it works on Android, Apple iOS as well as PC and Mac computers.

[terryg]

Especially since iPhone sales account for 50% (approx) of all smart phone sales in the US *AND* worldwide markets.

I would love to see the source for this. Everything I read lately paints a different picture - although Apple still seems to hold the market share lead for tablets.

[Wes]

Apples share is only decreasing because the total smartphone market is increasing and more competition is coming out. Not because they aren't selling as many, they are continuing to grow each year. Of course android is more prevalent, there is at least a dozen companies selling it vs only apple selling ios, as is in the pc market and they aren't number 1 there obviously. Apples sales of iPhones have continued to increase almost every quarter though. Look at q3 this year (31 million units) and q3 last year (26 million) and finally q3 the year before (20million). The company keeps growing but android being available to everyone will grow quicker, and it is.

Apple has always had great service in my experience, and every time family or friends have had a problem the store has taken care of them. They have even handled out of warranty stuff like broken screens, and broken headphone jacks fee of charge. The only time they have not fixed an issue was a corrupt OS problem and that's as because I had not done a backup before going to the store. Does that mean they are perfect? No way, it's impossible to find a company who does not have any bad marks against them, they are still relying on 'people' to be the face of their company after all and not everyone can do it day in and day out. Just like its possible to get a bad apple rep, the same will go for any phone or any service provider though. I like apple because of the inter connectivity between my other devices and because I have a lot of apple apps/videos/music from the years already purchased. It's worked great for me and most people I know but it's not for everyone and that's ok.

The imessage thing has given me problems in the past but I work in it and I know stuff happens, so it doesn't bother me so much. Now, the originally posted problem Mr Cotton has does seem like quite a misstep, and would make me quite annoyed myself but its one that should be easily resolved by apple support. The benefits of imessage to me are worth using it, and if I ever change to android I would wipe my previous device anyways which should fix the imessage problem. As mentioned above, everyone should really be doing this when they are done with a phone anyways.

[MadMonkey]

I barely escaped the iStuff cult a few years ago... like many I thought the iPhone would be the end-all phone, so I got a contract with AT&T and a 3G (against my better judgment since my first and only iPod had just died for some reason). After a few months, the 3GS was released, and iO4 was released which pretty much made my phone completely useless (lagged like crazy, took forever to simply make a call or open a browser). Couple that with the fact that after a couple of months, it would randomly reset itself when trying to update or add music (or anything involving being plugged into the computer), the charge connector shocked me (literally) because it fell apart, and I realized that doing any regular file transfer was either near-impossible or a complete PITA... I broke my contract, discovered pre-paid phones, got an Android-based phone and have been thrilled ever since. The iPhone is now my bedside MP3 player

ETA: An unintended benefit is that I can now charge my Bluetooth headset, phone and MP3 player in the car without needing a proprietary charger!

[jimlongley]

I barely escaped the iStuff cult a few years ago... like many I thought the iPhone would be the end-all phone, so I got a contract with AT&T and a 3G (against my better judgment since my first and only iPod had just died for some reason). After a few months, the 3GS was released, and iO4 was released which pretty much made my phone completely useless (lagged like crazy, took forever to simply make a call or open a browser). Couple that with the fact that after a couple of months, it would randomly reset itself when trying to update or add music (or anything involving being plugged into the computer), the charge connector shocked me (literally) because it fell apart, and I realized that doing any regular file transfer was either near-impossible or a complete PITA... I broke my contract, discovered pre-paid phones, got an Android-based phone and have been thrilled ever since. The iPhone is now my bedside MP3 player

ETA: An unintended benefit is that I can now charge my Bluetooth headset, phone and MP3 player in the car without needing a proprietary charger!

My wife's car charger has never worked, according to Apple the voltage in our carS must be too low. I really love that one.

[jmra]

I barely escaped the iStuff cult a few years ago... like many I thought the iPhone would be the end-all phone, so I got a contract with AT&T and a 3G (against my better judgment since my first and only iPod had just died for some reason). After a few months, the 3GS was released, and iO4 was released which pretty much made my phone completely useless (lagged like crazy, took forever to simply make a call or open a browser). Couple that with the fact that after a couple of months, it would randomly reset itself when trying to update or add music (or anything involving being plugged into the computer), the charge connector shocked me (literally) because it fell apart, and I realized that doing any regular file transfer was either near-impossible or a complete PITA... I broke my contract, discovered pre-paid phones, got an Android-based phone and have been thrilled ever since. The iPhone is now my bedside MP3 player

ETA: An unintended benefit is that I can now charge my Bluetooth headset, phone and MP3 player in the car without needing a proprietary charger!

My wife's car charger has never worked, according to Apple the voltage in our carS must be too low. I really love that one.

I ran into that with some aftermarket USB chargers. Turned out the chargers themselves were not rated high enough to charge the phone. Replaced them with higher rated chargers and never had another issue.

[jimlongley]

I barely escaped the iStuff cult a few years ago... like many I thought the iPhone would be the end-all phone, so I got a contract with AT&T and a 3G (against my better judgment since my first and only iPod had just died for some reason). After a few months, the 3GS was released, and iO4 was released which pretty much made my phone completely useless (lagged like crazy, took forever to simply make a call or open a browser). Couple that with the fact that after a couple of months, it would randomly reset itself when trying to update or add music (or anything involving being plugged into the computer), the charge connector shocked me (literally) because it fell apart, and I realized that doing any regular file transfer was either near-impossible or a complete PITA... I broke my contract, discovered pre-paid phones, got an Android-based phone and have been thrilled ever since. The iPhone is now my bedside MP3 player

ETA: An unintended benefit is that I can now charge my Bluetooth headset, phone and MP3 player in the car without needing a proprietary charger!

My wife's car charger has never worked, according to Apple the voltage in our carS must be too low. I really love that one.

I ran into that with some aftermarket USB chargers. Turned out the chargers themselves were not rated high enough to charge the phone. Replaced them with higher rated chargers and never had another issue.

I did much the same, and took the Apple one apart and talk about cheap circuitry, I built better stuff than that on breadboards when I was a kid.

[Charles L. Cotton]

To the iPhone fans, my motive for making the original post wasn't to start an "us v. them" battle over iPhones or Apple. As an iPhone user for 5 years, I just want people to know that they better turn off iMessages if they are going to switch to another phone. If they don't, they will have a problem and Apple likely won't help them after the fact.

Chas.

[bmwrdr]

That is one reason why I converted my cell phone number which I have since nearly 15 Years to Google voice. It allows me to get to my text messages and voice mails via any web browser from anywhere in the world. In addition I can place international calls for $0.02 using any phone I want to and I can route my incoming calls anywhere I want to.
I do not have to give out my real cell or home phone number at all by using Google voice. The only drawback is the fact most of the features are tied into a Google account and a MMS is split out to the Google e-mail address because the Google SMS service can not handle messages with an attachment (MMS). The beauty is I can always ise the cheapest month by month rate and plan and even have my home phone ring on the same number.