let's face it. If you could run Fruit Ninja and WeChat on a rice cooker, then people would be roaming the streets with rice cookers. 

Can't help you at all I'm afraid.  I'm the last person in China to still be using a phone with buttons.  Mine's great for making calls and sending messages.  It also wakes me up if I want it to and has a fairly ordinary dictionary.

Everybody wants me to get a computer phone but I don't see the need.  My schedule is pretty good and I have ample time to spend at my laptop if I want to do that.

So further to Coin's question, I'd like to know how these smart phones are of any real use at all.

I know the cameras on the newer ones are fantastic, but other than that.....what?

ps.....I am old.

What I think is strange is how a lot of the extras that bring a smartphone into their own are seen as extravagent but not the phone itself.

Like a good data plan.

The obsession with Iphones by people who know nothing about technology is classic Chinese. Show off an expensive and trendy purchase but have no actual use for it because they have no clue how to live life. I bout the FIL an Ipad and he only uses it to play the fruit cutting game and Angry Birds. But he loves having an Ipad! 

Yeah I use both ios and android somewhat regularly, though android far more (I use an xperia mostly, but have an iphone 4s from work I use for travel).

The only real advantage I see to iphone is that the itunes store media ecosystem is brilliant. Haven't found anything like it on android. Really solid system.

But i've never seen a local using it. They can get all that stuff free on chinese language apps. So yeah they buy it cause it's recognizable as the most expensive one.

They're both really solid systems, and apple does make very polished products.

I don't use half (or even less) of the possible apps and all on my 5 year old iPhone 3GS.. nor even half of the storage space!

However, I bought it way back cos at the time it was the best phone for language apps (ie, Chinese). Now, there's probably nothing I use that I can't use on another smart phone... but, I don't want the hassle of hlaving to change systems (cos of contacts and the like) or cables (cos this one uses the same cable as my 160GB iPod I bought 6 years ago).

As Coin indicated, there isn't much that an iPhone can do that a much cheaper phone can't.

I'm not young, but being able to take photos whenever and wherever I am, listening to music while I run, replying my work e-mails, finding hookups on wechat and momo and seding voice notes with my dad and brother through whatsapp are the main reasons I use a smartphone. However I wouldn't care about the brand or operating system, it's just decoration for me (total clueless user)

I know countless young Chinese (not friends) who own iPhone 5, 5s, spit their hate on the cheaper 5c and other brands, but eat a bowl of rice with a cup of boiled tap water everyday, can't afford to party or eat in restaurants, live in a crap hole that they call home, stink because they even save money on the water bill, shampoo and body soap, then wonder why no girl want to settle (or even sleep) with them despite having an iPhone.

Priorities 

People just buy it for the brand name just like why people purchase BMW or Mercedes for their car.

I've been invited to parties and group outings where everyone is sitting and sending messages to the person directly opposite them. They also take photos of themselves constantly.

The one thing I could never figure out is why they always take photos of their dinner. Is it to wave in the faces of other people who can't afford a nice meal? How cretinous is that!

There used to be a perception that the Chinese were ultra efficient and hardworking. Perhaps this came from our history: the notion of a rising power which threatens the status quo conjures up the memories of Germany in the early to mid twentieth century. The Japanese were also an economic powerhouse throughout the eighties and early nineties when I was a young boy.

Having been in China for two years now, I'm completely baffled how there are so many people willing to do business in China. The people are xenophobic, uncultured, greedy, dishonest, vain and selfish. The government is a klepto-gerontocracy which bends the rules to help its entrenched cronies, and many sectors of the economy are monopolies enforced by guanxi. If you rub someone up the wrong way by introducing competition into their domain, you'll have the police coming over on the pretext that you need licenses and certificates etc. to ensure the business is safe. I've even heard of schools being closed by the local police because foreign toilets could possibly give students AIDS!

How can you even employ such credulous and disingenuous people let alone trust them with your capital? I can understand big business coming to China because they can absorb the opportunity costs, but there is no way I'd ever start a venture here. I'm better off staying on a salary and not taking the risk in the first place.

Perhaps I could wrap a turd in tinfoil and slap an apple sticker on it? Either that or buy a wrecking ball and take the local governor out to dinner.

As an IT guy I love having the smoothness of an iPhone, Android has too much going on in the background, if you're not a computer imagine what a 6 year old kids room would like after not cleaning it for 1 month. Pretty messy right? Thats android in the background for you. although you can turn off a lot of these functions on android but it take a IT to understand what you are really doing, so dont try if you dont know. I love iPhon5s, it's perfect and only need one hand and my other hand is free forrrrrrr,,,,mmm well you know.