The Wisdom of LiveJournal and Smartphones

[marcusmarcusrc]

I figure it is about time for me to join the world of the smartphone enabled, and before leaping into it, I thought I'd check the collective wisdom:

Given that I am a mac-user and a Verizon customer, are there any good reasons not to go with the default of an iPhone5 and a verizon plan?


I'd probably get the 32 GB (16 GB would probably be sufficient, but historically I keep phones and laptops for 4 or more years, and the extra memory might be valuable in a few years), 4 GB plan (though I have little idea how much I'd actually use), black phone.

My plans for the phone (listed here both to inform any advice for what phone I should buy, but also for app recommendations) include:

mapping functions (google maps over apple maps?)
zipcar/bikeshare functions
next bus apps
email checking
list making (eg, books I want to read, movies I want to watch, things I need to do) (I hear evernote is good?)
taking photos
making phone calls
price-comparisons/reviews in stores (some day I'll post thoughts on smart-phones and reducing market distortions)
checking wikipedia to answer random questions

... maybe game playing? I went cold turkey on playing kongregate games in January, because it was just too easy to lose hours to them. I've divided the time gained between a number of things - reading (I should post some book reviews some day), sleep, house-stuff (cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc.), socializing, and, sadly, more web-surfing... But hypothetically, waiting for buses, standing in grocery lines, etc. are good times for game playing.

...maybe reading e-books? I have an e-ink kindle, which I use when I can't get a book out from the library/get too impatient for the next book in a series, and one thing I like about it is that it isn't back-lit, and I spend too many hours staring at computer screens as it is. But I recognize that having a book-reading-device on me at all times might be nice.

...maybe music? though I don't really like wearing ear-buds. I do have a nice iTunes library, though. And probably not movies/TV, since I'd want the bigger screen from my laptop.

...maybe calendaring, though mostly I use my work computer for that because I have to use Outlook for meeting scheduling, and once I've done that, might as well put everything else in there too.

What other smart-phone functions am I missing? And apologies for oversharing here. But hey, isn't oversharing what livejournal is for?


Thanks for your thoughts.

Comments

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

Tasker sounds like a really neat tool... I guess it is a question of just how much I get into my phone. In one possible future, I'll be moving to Boston in the fall and taking some time off, at which point I'd be buying a new laptop, learning R, and otherwise trying to improve my computer & life-hacking abilities, so I could see tinkering with Android flexibility fitting in well there. But... if I don't move to Boston, I'd probably poke at Tasker the way I poked at Papers as a way of keeping all the scientific literature I read organized... which would push me towards the cleaner iOs.

Also, you didn't mention that the Android supports Facebook Home! (ok, that might be a minus, not a plus...)

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Mmmm???! Moving to Boston in the fall!

We all convene back in Bean Town!

And for what it's worth, I enjoy my Android. For the way I use it, it probably wouldn't make any difference. As I recently read, all truly hard decisions are unimportant because there are good points on both sides. But I do find that Androids play better with Googlemaps than the iPhone. Then again, if you have a fondness for Apple products, the iPhone will do just fine.