What's your favorite smartphone?

[Chamberly]

Okay, I don't like the Android 4.4, KitKat version. Dang thing is bulky interface. Any app to recommend to allow more configurable options and interface? & how to turn off the damn autocorrect? I never have it on my other phone.

Lel was told the phone can't be rooted. Can always look around and be sure.

However I can get a Samsung Galaxy S6, it would come with Android 5.0 but can upgrade it to 6.0. Hmmm... but I'd end up spending 500+ for that heh gotta find a used one.

[uranus]

*in sales
OnePlus Two arguably over shadows the iPhone6s Plus for less than 1/2 the price. The fatal flaw for me in iApples (among other flaws) is the lack of support for native flac and ogg playback.

[seabass]

That's hard to say. From what I can tell, OnePlus doesn't release sales figures. Not even shipments. I'd be surprised if they didn't sell a buttload of them in China at that price, though.

Aren't flac and ogg just archival formats?
When Tidal launched their lossless streaming service, I seem to remember that there were blind test where most people actually thought that Spotify's 320kbsp mp3 encoding sounded better.

Apple has support for a lossless format, though. It's called ALAC, but I've never used it.

[uranus]

@seabass, Yes, 320 mp3 is pretty damn good. If you're just listening on the phone then it probably doesn't matter much and could probably even get by with 192 aac or even 128 mp3 depending on the dac. I don't want to have to carry around different formats, though. Having a MicroSD slot in the S4 allows me to carry files around to play on finer sound reproduction equipment. It doesn't really matter much if just listening to dubstep or The Sex Pistols or crappy original recordings but it's nice to have high resolution audio for very well engineered recordings of rich music.

flac is lossless compression, ogg is lossy compression. Windows has their lossless compression format, as well. I'd expect that shit from M$oft but every other BSD OS pretty much defaults to flac and ogg since they are not proprietary like mp3, and the others, so I get all self righteous and shamey at Apple for basically removing the function. Yes, you can use VLC on macbooks and mac desktops but why should I have to? Monkey's Audio is pretty neato and the dev finally got brow beaten into altering the license, I think, or something like that, but kind of too little too late for it to gain adoption. Monkey's was my favorite back in my Windows days. Then by the time I'd converted all my .ape files to .flac the dev changed the license. It's still an interesting project, though. Wavpack is another open source lossless type.

@Chamberly, usually those prepaid phones are locked into their service. I'd be very, very careful if you decide to root it. If it was me I wouldn't bother. Plus, you're on an MVNO using Verizon? Chances are slim that you can mod that phone. You could screw up the part that is the actual phone and then you'd be lucky to end up with a tiny tablet with no phone. Rooting is usually only the first part, anyway. You'd probably want a custom ROM like Cyanogen or AOSP which require root to install and that's only if you can find or make a ROM for your particular phone.

[Chamberly]

I think I'll either find some app to deal with customizing stuff or make my own... or I can take it back but only got a few days. But the real main reason I like the phone is I actually get small signal in my area, like random 1 bar in my room instead of none with the previous phone cuz this one use Verizon, and I don't know if Samsung Galaxy S6 use Verizon or not.

I think the phone is using CDMA.

[seabass]

so I get all self righteous and shamey at Apple for basically removing the function.

I don't think Apple ever had support for it. Mac's kernel Darwin is based on the NextStep kernel which was forked from BSD in 1980. Ogg and Flac's initial releases were in 2000 and 2001, respectively.
ALAC is open-source and royalty-free, but initially it wasn't. Probably too little too late as well to gain any adoption as well.

[uranus]

@Chamberly, I'm willing to bet that the biggest part of "Android" that you don't like is the bloatware added by the manufacturer and the carrier. Samsung loves to put tons of useless and uninstallable bloatware on their phones, too, and that's on top of the carrier's bloatware. High end models like the S6 are likely to get more support for rooting and ROM'ing but there are usually quirks and the responsibility for updates is on you after you do that. You can usually revert back to official without too much trouble, though. Still, there is always the danger that you might brick your phone.

This is pretty typical for Android phones in the USA due to the nature of Android being open source and available to any manufacturer that wants to use it. It's also one of the reasons that the iPhone experience tends to be more positive. iPhone doesn't allow any alterations to their OS, at least the last time I checked, so they're all the same and updates come from a centralized authority. This is a good thing, as long as you trust the central scrutinizer. The term "Android phone" is very generic and refers to any device ranging from pure junk to high end bejeweled pocket space ships, whereas iPhone refers to a distinctively curated minimal set of devices.

The flagship Nexus phones are pure Android without all the bloatware and some other manufacturers, like OnePlus and Motorola have some models that run near stock Android. My sister recently bought a very decent unlocked Motorola (model ?) for like $150 and it's very decent but she has AT&T. If you want Verizon service your choices are immediately limited to phones with VZW capabilites. Verizon does currently have the best coverage in the USA as far as I know, especially "in the mountains" and remote areas. You might find Howard forums informative. I found it when I was looking at Verizon MVNO's like PagePlus, http://www.howardforums.com/forum.php

[Puskis]

Pussy/Boobs > Android > Apple

[LordRixuel]

how many years do you think it will take for other brands to beat apple and samsung? o.o

[seabass]

That's hard to say. Samsung's main challenge now is that they're losing market to cheaper Chinese brands that are good enough for most people (OnePlus being a great example here.)
Same thing with Apple, really. We're reaching a point with CPU speed, screen quality, etc that cheap phones will be plenty fast/good enough for most people, so it'll be interesting in the years to come to see whether they can differentiate their phones enough that consumers still think that their phones will be worth the premium that they're charging.
Of course, this is a bigger problem for all the current big Android phone manufacturers, since none of them own their OS, unlike Apple.