<p>with the exception of a few things that are still " waiting" to download, seem to be up and running.</p>
<p>If you want marketing, Samsung outspends everyone and by a large amount. It’s probably gone down - because profits are down - but they outspend, get this, Coca Cola, HP, Dell, Microsoft and of course Apple COMBINED. Their outlay for just ads, not promotions, etc., is approached only by Coca Cola, which is a long way behind. Apple spends about what Dell does, sometimes less, and much less than Microsoft, which in turn spends much less than Coca Cola, which … well, Samsung’s 2013 marketing budget was $14B. </p>
<p>Some people are hoping to get their hands on as many as 30 new iphones to sell through grey marketin China and Russia. I don’t understand why people can’t wait a bit and get a phone at a regular store.</p>
<p>Poor microsoft. They spent millions on a five year contract with the NFL, including getting Surface tablets in the hands of coaches & players…and announcers, who still call them ipads.</p>
<p>Shades of Oprah.
<a href=“NFL TV Announcers Call Microsoft's Surface Tablets 'iPads' | PCMag”>http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2468382,00.asp</a></p>
<p>Also like the timer for pictures now. As long as you can find a place to set your iPhone, you can set the timer so that you can get in the picture without holding the phone out at arm’s length. </p>
<p>I don’t have the iPhone 6 yet but I did upgrade to IOS 8. I like the voice text messages feature and the ability to swipe left on a mail message to delete it. I’m just afraid I’m going to accidentally swipe left sometime before I’ve read the message.</p>
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<p>Microsoft products are really poor. I bought Surface Pro 2 early this year and I am not happy with it. The device consumes a lot of power and is really hot. The touchscreen is sluggish and erratic. The soft keyboard is horrible: you have to press 3 different screen modes to enter a password that requires a combo of uppercase letters, numbers, and special characters. Besides it’s hard to know what you are typing because the keyboard covers 2/3 of the screen. </p>
<p>I’ve got to figure out what is sucking battery life from the new phone. I close all the apps, so that’s not it, and I seem to recall that the GPS connections run on many apps. so will see if can remember how to find where that is. Any and all help and other tips is appreciated :)</p>
<p>Didnt know about the left swipe thing. Where’s the cheat sheet for this stuff… Have been doing voice texts for a long time but the autocorrect makes some entertaining errors.</p>
<p>My Samsung Galaxy s5 has button Battery Usage to tell detailed percentage of power used by each app. iPhone does not have something like that?</p>
<p>Surface Pro 3 is solid. I’m glad I waited a bit and did not buy any earlier ones.</p>
<p>Jym - nooo! How long does it take for it to drain the battery?</p>
<p>It was at 45% by midday!</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/[/url]”>https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/</a></p>
<p>Lots of iphone apps automatically update, track your location, or otherwise suck battery by running in the background.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.zdnet.com/how-to-improve-your-iphones-battery-life-updated-for-ios-8_p2-7000014902/#photo”>http://www.zdnet.com/how-to-improve-your-iphones-battery-life-updated-for-ios-8_p2-7000014902/#photo</a></p>
<p>jym, the voice texts in IOS 8 are different. The ones you were doing were voice recognition – the software interpreted what you said and transcribed it into words. The IOS 8 voice texting only works between other iPhones and it sends an actual sound file. The other person hears your voice.</p>
<p>Mr B says his phone (4s) was constantly trying to synch with the cloud. When he got rid of the cloud, his battery life improved significantly. </p>
<p>ooh, gonna have to try that, patsmom. It says tap and hold. But holding the mic icon doesnt seem to work. Whats the trick?</p>
<p>ah-- it sent. From upstairs to downstairs :)</p>
<p>OOOh, that got the big thumbs down from DH. He said the beauty of a text is that it can be read surreptitiously when in a meeting or something. Does NOT want to play an audio message. He said if if I want to leave an audio message, leave a VM 
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<p>re: post 249. It does say how big it is, somewhere (I forget how to find that) but not how much power. And will read the links re: improving battery life. Thanks CW and EK.</p>