quote:

Originally posted by ffips:
Just to bring closure to thus thread, I ended up with the Samsung Galaxy S7.

What I had left out was that it is a work phone. They Asked What I wanted, I said an S8, but didn't expect them to get it as it was newish. A few days later the S7 showed up.

Thanks for the update, and enjoy your Galaxy. I'm still just browsing and waiting for some future reviews to leak out for the iPhone "X" as well as some others. I'm still interested in the Pixel also and will be reading further reviews. My iPhone 6S will get me thru until I do make another purchase. I did call Apple yesterday about going to the Apple Store and trading my i6 and i6S towards a future iX just to get some ideas of their trade in values.

quote:

Originally posted by henryaz:
... Just don't let someone else get hands on your phone.

They don't need to, multiple successful exploits of iPhone running latest iOS as well as one instance of Galaxy S8:

Apple's security team is having a busy week thanks to Wi-Fi issues. First, it patched the scary KRACK vulnerability revealed in October to have exposed Wi-Fi encryption. And now researchers from Tencent's Keen Lab have just shown off a hack that took advantage of four bugs to run malware on an iPhone 7 running the latest operating system, iOS 11.1, again via Wi-Fi.

The hack was a winner on Tuesday at the Mobile Pwn2Own hacking contest run by Trend Micro's ZDI Initiative in Tokyo, where the researchers were handed $110,000 for their successful exploits. There's not a wealth of information about the specific vulnerabilities exposed by Keen Lab, but a spokesperson from Trend Micro told Forbes: "The phone connects to a Wi-Fi network and a malicious app is installed. Sensitive information can be exfiltrated from the targeted device."

Apple, which has now been warned about the flaws, is aware of the issue and is working on a fix, which will be ready soon, the company told Forbes. Trend Micro said in a blog post that representatives from Apple, Google and Huawei were at the event. They have 90 days to fix the vulnerabilities or offer a valid reason for not addressing them, otherwise Trend will publish its own limited advisory.


The Keen hackers earned themselves another $45,000 by using two bugs to exploit Apple's Safari browser on an iPhone 7, on top of $100,000 for an attack on the Huawei baseband processor in the Chinese manufacturer's Mate9 Pro device. Another researcher, Richard Zhu (also known as 'fluorescence'), hacked the iPhone 7 with another set of Safari exploits and won himself $25,000. And another $70,000 was given to a security researcher known as mj0011, from Chinese firm Qihoo 360, for an attack of Samsung's Galaxy S8.

Forbes

Don't let yourself be fooled by marketing.. All devices are vulnerable to a degree.

quote:

Originally posted by saigonsmuggler:
Don't let yourself be fooled by marketing.. All devices are vulnerable to a degree.

This is so true. How many (what percent) of Android phones have been patched for Krack? When I used to have Androids (the original Droid, and Google's own Nexus 5x), patches/updates were miserably slow to appear, especially for carrier-tied phones, because the carrier has to "approve" and push out the update. There is no central entity to create and make updates available across the Android ecosystem. That is what I see as the main difference. The iOS vulnerabilities (and they are there) will be patched and made available, usually in the very next point version.
 

quote:

Originally posted by henryaz:
This is so true. How many (what percent) of Android phones have been patched for Krack? When I used to have Androids (the original Droid, and Google's own Nexus 5x), patches/updates were miserably slow to appear, especially for carrier-tied phones, because the carrier has to "approve" and push out the update. There is no central entity to create and make updates available across the Android ecosystem. That is what I see as the main difference. The iOS vulnerabilities (and they are there) will be patched and made available, usually in the very next point version.
 

I don't know about other Android phones, however in my house, we use Nexus 6p and Samsung Galaxy Note 5, S7 edge and S8+.

Nexus 6p is patched monthly (Oct 1st 2017).

Samsung Galaxies (all AT&T versions) are patched bi-monthly (S7 edge/S8+ running Oct 1st 2017 version, Note 5 August 1st version but should be patched again soon).

The hack on Galaxy S8 was thru Samsung browser, which fortunately we do not use. We all use Chrome on our Android phones.

I agree. I've had the Note 8 for a little over a month now and I really like it. If you had asked this question a month ago you could have gotten a really good deal on the note 8 if you traded in a phone.

Still it is a great phone.

quote:

Originally posted by AirmanJeff:
My Note 8 is great. Wasn't cheap, but it blows my old Note 3 out of the water. I miss my removable battery but it still has removable storage.

The new features with the S pen are awesome too. I use it a lot more than I did with the 3. Right when you take out the S pen, even if the screen is locked, you can right a note and save it to the phone. You can also draw notes and send them to people as gifs, and you can use it to translate by hovering the S pen over the text you want to translate.

People were criticizing Samsung for putting the fingerprint scanner on the back, but I have a junk iphone for work and I prefer the scanner on the back. It's a natural spot for your finger when you pick up the phone anyway. With my iphone it takes two or three scans a lot of times to unlock (that is, if it doesn't ask for my password randomly). Never had that problem with the Note.

I bought it unlocked with no carrier bloatware from Best Buy. I would definitely buy it again. As for the iphone, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

quote:

Originally posted by ShneaSIG:
... and no external storage, though.

That's a deal killer for me.

Seriously, what is the deal with devices nowadays not having external storage? It's ridiculous.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
Seriously, what is the deal with devices nowadays not having external storage? It's ridiculous.

They're forcing you to cloud storage for recurring revenue.

It's just like what software development companies are doing in pushing you toward cloud based software versus locally installed applications on your PC's and servers. The desire for end users and companies to constantly replace software with the latest version slowed considerably in the 00's and companies like Microsoft saw people keeping versions of Windows and Office for several more years than they had anticipated, causing a lag in their revenue cycles. The 'cloud' has taken those revenue cycles and created a recurring revenue thing that the software companies are building their future forecasts around. Why sell someone software they can keep for 5-7 years when they can get you to pay monthly or annually to use the software that they host?

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by ShneaSIG:
... and no external storage, though.

That's a deal killer for me.

Seriously, what is the deal with devices nowadays not having external storage? It's ridiculous.

For as long as an alternative exists I will never own a phone that doesn't have an sdcard slot and a flipping headphone jack. Both are essential to how I choose to use my phone, and I will not be herded like cattle toward ensuring they have continuing revenue streams. My priorities couldn't possibly be more different than theirs, and I couldn't possibly care about their concerns any less than I already do. The "cloud" is a phase that will end, and a bad idea for many things in the first place. Bandwidth and fast speeds are far more rare than storage space, and this will continue to be true for many for a while.