The S4 is now just below £300 on Ebay – still not cheap.
I am not after the whole Apple app shop 
I find the Nokia 808 with its “near-DSLR-quality” camera works brilliantly for what I need, home, work, and travelling. But even my 808 is hacked, with custom firmware, to get goodies like unlimited SMS retries which make it possible to send texts during a flight, when you might get only extremely brief moments of GSM connectivity. Or in much of the UK countryside 
The bigger screen would be good.
Would an external antenna be required? I have no trouble with my old 7100 Thuraya phone, used by itself. I did install a rooftop antenna, at considerable expense and hassle (the “145” company bodged the riveting of the doubler plate, not sealing it against moisture with PR1422 as I requested) but in the end never used it because it required the sh*tty Sattrans car holder which generated enough interference to put the NSA out of business worldwide. I tried to build a really good filter but it didn’t do anything so it is probably radiated and the only way to attack that is to silver-paint or plate the whole car holder.
The 7100 doesn’t always work but when it doesn’t it is never due to having no signal. Sometimes, Thuraya just decide to unplug some BNC connector called “internet access for the infidels”, for a few hours You get DHCP but noooo data. Very rare though. The only time the phone’s antenna won’t work is if flying a metal-roof aircraft on a heading of about 330 degrees which puts the satellite directly behind you (OK in an SR22 with its back window, I guess).
That’s why iOS is so successful in aviation.
Not wishing to digress (haha) but it could also be that the market is so small and specialised, but the apps are often not trivial, that IOS’s very small inter-platform variability is a huge asset to any developer who is knocking up an app for that market.
Anyway, we now have what we now have.
I would be using this thing just for tafs and metars, plus a few graphics, and maybe send/receive emails (but with attachments blocked because you never know when somebody sends you 10MB of pics – happens almost daily to me and totally kills my emails while travelling until I am on some cheap/fast connection so I can clear them out, or log in via webmail). So I would be looking only for a browser, plus a POP3/SMTP email app which can be configured to retrieve a maximum email size only. One cannot block “attachments” entirely because many people unwittingly send their entire emails as MIME-encoded attachments – it seems one of the many config options in Outl$$k… like the dreaded winmail.dat.
I like “near DSLR quality”. (What DSLR are you comparing it to Peter? :-)
Of course, If you want only Metars and Tafs, Galaxy is fine. But there’s a reason actually why iOS outsells Android 4:1 i the aviation field (or why Airlines buy ipads). One of the main reasons is that the iOS wordl is not as fragmented as Android. 75 percent of iOS users update their OS right away when itÄs available, while there’s x different versions of Android. Doesn’t really help the deveopers much.
I don’t know which aviation apps you are referring to. I have both Apple stuff and Android stuff and there isn’t anything I’m missing on Android, to the contrary, very useful things like OziExplorer are only available on Android. This market fragmentation argument is old Apple propaganda, maybe there was some truth to it a few years ago but today all serious smartphones are on a current version of Android. Overall I personally find Android to be the much better platform and the devices too, especially with the terrible screen format of the iPhone 5.
Historically iOS dominated the high end market (including aviation) but that has changed considerably. Both platforms offer good solutions.
What DSLR are you comparing it to Peter?
On a good day, in easy conditions, it gets close enough. I still keep my Pentax K5 though, and will go to the K3 when a few months have passed for them to get the bugs out and the price has dropped a bit. How much this matters to you depends on how much you like walking around with a waistpack or a shoulder strap.
One of the main reasons is that the iOS wordl is not as fragmented as Android. 75 percent of iOS users update their OS right away when itÄs available, while there’s x different versions of Android. Doesn’t really help the deveopers much.
That is what I said: “IOS’s very small inter-platform variability is a huge asset to any developer who is knocking up an app for that market.”
But as Achim is saying, it is changing. Maybe not anywhere near as fast in aviation, where we have very few serious apps aiming for a relatively small market. Ultimately one has to get a tool for one’s job, which is why I went for the Lenovo Tablet 2. Oziexplorer is a killer app for VFR mapping and it will never go to IOS. There were rumours but it won’t happen now.
Well, guys – that’s why you use Android, because you like it.
Comparing a smartphone camera with ANY DSLR is ridiculous though. I use them too, for snapshots and fun, but the comparison is really useless.
Achim,
OziExplorer is one of the very few examples that prove your point.
IOS outsells Android in aviation about 4:1, and (once i am home) i can give you many examples for very useful aviation apps that are only available for iOS.
“Apple propaganda”? :-) Come on, let’s not discuss it on this level.
An article (by Sporty’s not Apple, about iOS and Android in AVIATION). While it is a year old not so much has changed. In my opinion most is still true today.
http://ipadpilotnews.com/2013/04/why-android-is-losing-in-aviation/
But, of course, both platforms have interesting apps for aviation.
If Jepp and Foreflight rolled out Android apps then there would be no inherent iOS advantage. It is purely inertia now. I prefer Android but use an iPad mini for JeppFD.
Right,
the two market leaders in aviation apps – both have no Android version.
What a shame ;-)
Isn’t there a high risk to get sued if one publishes apps for Android? At least the developer of the Xavion app (check out, very good) states this as the main reason that Xavion is iOS only.
