The Replacements… (Goodbye iPhone 4, Hello iPhone 5 and Galaxy Note II)

Ok… So its not really goodbye to our iPhone 4‘s since my daughter still has her 8GB white iPhone 4 under contract until end of 2013. But for me and my wife, we have finally decided on which phones would replace our 2 year old iPhone 4’s.

Our new phones will be used for the next 2 years so basically with the new phones out in the market, its a very tough decision to make.

My wife has decided to get the iPhone 5…

This will actually be her 5th Smartphone!

Having used Windows Mobile Phone 5 devices in the past she has no issues with learning a new Mobile OS.

She really wanted to Note II but Samsung’s Android Phones don’t sync well with Macs (to Samsung… you really need to do something about this)

Although we have other PCs at home running on Linux and Windows 7, our entire library of photos, videos and songs are stores in our iMac using iTunes and iPhoto.

My wife’s requirements are simple…

She needs Genius Mixes
Latest 20 iPhoto events should be in her phone
Good and fast instant messenger

Syncing random songs is easy, although iMessage and Facetime is not available on Android, she was happy to use Viber and Skype. BUT the biggest problem for us was syncing the 20 latest iPhoto events.

iPhone 5 was the most sensible choice for her. She would love to have the bigger screen of the Note II but if she can’t sync her iPhoto events the big screen will be only used for videos which she watches on her train ride home.

My new phone is the Samsung Galaxy Note II

I really love to own Google’s Nexus 4, but Singapore was not included in the initial list of countries where it was sold first.

As of 19 November 2012.

I decided that if I was going to use an Android phone with a skin (like TouchWiz), might as well use the Note II.

I love browsing through websites at night, and I always found the iPad to be too heavy. Because of the iPad’s weight, I used my iPhone to read news.

The Note II was perfect for this because of its size. OTG feature and the expandable memory was a big plus for me too.

Here’s a list of the other phones that we chose from.

HTC One X+ has a great camera and an amazing screen and it came with a 64GB memory. Issue I have against it is that it looks like the One X (which was released early this year) and that it’s not yet subsidized by my carrier. (As of Dec 01, M1 cannot comment on the release date of the One X+… It’s presently only available on Starhub.)

Samsung Galaxy S III is a great phone, but Singapore units were sold with Ice Cream Sandwich (as of Nov 19, 2012). I wanted a phone running on Jelly Bean because of Google Now.

LG Nexus 4 I really wanted to wait for this phone, but with the way it sold out in less than an hour, it looks like this phone will reach Singapore by early 2013.