Help me choose a new phone - which one? Which OS?

JAJ5Point0 · Post by **JAJ5Point0** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 7:25 am

I'm a long-term user of HLT on my iPhone 4S, and it works great - video could be smoother, but otherwise ok. Today, I'm looking at new phones to run the HLT app on and I'm not getting a nice feeling about the options.

From what I've read hear and in other places, the newest iPhones seem to have serious video problems, while the Android phones seem to be quirky memory-hogs.

I specifically want to buy a new, unlocked-from-the-factory, phone that'll run HLT, so my choices are an Apple iPhone 6 or 6s, a recent Google Nexus, or a Blackberry product like the Passport or even the new PRIV. The relevant phones are all in the same price range. I have a VBox Sport for GPS, so I could also use an iPad Mini. So, I have a few questions:

1. Which platform is easier to set up and use? iPhone or Android? The Android world seems to be a bit of a jungle with variants by manufacturer and by carrier. iPhone seems more consistent.
2. I do about 120 minutes on the track each day I go out, in 3 forty-minute sessions, so how much memory do I need for HD? Is 64GB enough? The PRIV has a SD card slot, the others don't.
3. Which one does the best video quality? Or are they all so bad I should just record the floor of the front seat in low-res, discard it, and use a GoPro for the real video track?

Thanks for your input!

Post by **Harry** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 9:13 am

The problem with jitter in videos is common to all recent smartphone, both iOS and Android. In case video is your top top priority you may indeed get an action cam.

I do not want to recommend anyone to go for iOS or Android - that is going beyond a single app's requirements. It usually starts with feature discussions and is getting a religious war fast.

For developers it is easier to make a perfect iOS experience. One can optimize the app for all models available (maybe 6 recent models including iPad). For Android this is by far more difficult, there are 5000 compatible models around. In terms of functionality of LapTimer, iOS is a bit ahead too. This has historic reasons but the Android version is constantly closing gaps.

So from a LapTimer app perspective, chose iOS - but there are plenty of reasons you may prefer Android nevertheless.

For not super intensive video recording, 64GB should be the best fit.

Harry

JAJ5Point0 · Post by **JAJ5Point0** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 8:24 pm

Thanks Harry! I was trying to avoid "platform wars" and focus on getting the right phone to make it easy for myself. I actually use multiple phone OS's on a daily basis, so for this phone I'm agnostic - they're all good. Thanks again for helping me to pick the unit that works best with HLT.