Which mobile OS (and relevant app) best for any media format + subtitles?

[The Stig]

Simple question. I'm a bit of a mobile tech retard of recent, and am soon to be joining the club with either an Android Device (Samsung S5, m8 or sony Z2) or Apple (ipad, Iphone 5S) EDIT: or maybe even Windows!!! (NOKIAAAAA!)

Reason for holding back so long (but not ignoring) is that I simply am not too interested in it. But now is nearly the time for me to upgrade, my phone (a mighty Iphone 3GS/32gb since 2009 -- which i don't use much, it's 90% an mp3 player, 5% phone and 5% for messages; I don't really play games/do anything else) might give in soon and/or is not too fit for purpose (a tad laggy).

Anyways, I have a wide variety of media, mainly mkvs/mp4s, anime included, which means subtitles.

I wish to know which OS/app for both sides of the fence will give me a hassle free experience of playing my media (i.e. like VLC/MPC which is all self contained). I haven't looked at all, but based on presumptions, I guess Android will have VLC/MPC app on the store which will do exactly that, play all my media with 0 questions, and iOS will have something dumb on the appstore that I need to shell out money for (and/or it'll severely limit what media i can put on it). Not sure about Windows.

I do not wish to be re-encoding my media when considering to put it on my device.
Nor do I wish to use anything that's dependant on a jailbroken/hacked/modified/homebrewed firmware

In short, I want to remain technically retarded when it comes to this, I don't want to "fiddle" (tweak). I've done my time fiddling with all this shit back in the 2002-2006 days of Symbian/etc and 2008-2010 on a PSP lol

I can easily find out, modify, play, tweak, figure shit out. I just don't want to.

tl;dr Which mobile OS (and relevant app) best for any media format + subtitles?

[Niya]

Can only speak for the android side, but the situation is sadly not as nice as you think ^^; VLC is available, but it's still flagged as beta for a reason. Just tried it out on my Galaxy Nexus, subtitles are completely ignored, and it doesn't like 10bit encodes. Aside from that it plays pretty much everything, even crap like .flv rips from youtube xD
There are other players that might work better, i've tried vplayer. It plays everything nicely, the only thing that really nags me is that it always turns the display backlight to full power, haven't found a way to stop that. And, it's not free but supposed to be a demo. My older version complains about it every once in a while but still works fine.
There's probably a player out there that can do anything you need, and it might be free. The good thing for Android is that you have a HUGE amount of programs to try out, most of them free.

My view might be biased because i absolutely don't like Apple, but i'd say go for android and try it out ^^

[Obiron]

I personally haven't tried it on mobile devices, and it may not qualify depending on how easy you want the solution to be, but I would take a look at XBMC on Android. I use XBMC for my media system at home, and assuming the Android version can handle subtitles just as well you should be covered.
There is an iOS version, but it requires a jailbroken phone, so I would steer you more towards Android since you want it to be simple. The only catch is that you have to install it manually (which isn't really that hard) since they don't put it in the Google Play store. Reasons as to why are in the FAQ I linked, and may be why you will see issues with other (free) apps like Niya mentioned.

[Stromgarde]

I've had good success with MX Player for Android.

[Niya]

Hm, nice tip with XBMC ^^ Just tried it out on my Nexus again, like the FAQ said 720p material isn't really suited for older ARM processors.... Video was running, subtitled worked fine, but it was stuttering all the time (video, not audio), probably because the hardware decoders were either not used or overburdened. And on a 4.something inch screen, the controls are darn small, hard to hit xD
On a recent phone with better hardware and a larger screen it should run better ^^

[The Stig]

Thanks for the inputs. So it's not overall as nice and easy as I imagined (I assumed the top tier phones of today, i.e. 5S, M8, Z2, iPhone5S) would be more than capable these days. I'll keep note of it all and research around.

Otherwise it's looking to push me down the Android path for a handset (the 128gb possible expansion is the seller for me) combined with some sort of Windows 8 tablet for my media viewing, which I would guess not very often, however I just like to know that my device can handle it, hence the topic.

Niya I assume your Nexus is of an older one which doesn't have enough oomph? It's just that I find it odd that these people release 1080p screens that can't handle 1080p video lol, but then again I'm not one really to judge overall as I don't own any of it.

Stromgarde: Will research MX player

Obiron: XBMC yes I believe can be run on very very weak CPUs (Raspberry Pi springs to mind) so technically a handset such as the tier 1s currently should in theory handle it no problem, however I didn't expect it to run on Android, was more thinking Linux, but they're more or less ... identical? I think... sort of. Will keep it in mind.

[Obiron]

In fact, one of the machines I have XBMC running is a Raspberry Pi. And it handles 1080p just fine. But that's with nothing else running, so I don't know what other factors prevent some phones from playing it well since at that point it's just an app.

Unfortunately, I got an iPhone this time around, so I won't be able to try it out until my contract is up.

[Niya]

Yup Stig, my Nexus is about 3 years old, so don't take my experience as any kind of indicator how it would run on recent phones ^^ The newer processors have WAY more power, and better hardware decoders for more formats.
The RasPi can only handle 1080p videos because of said hardware decoders, if those were missing it would be unplayable. You notice that when you're playing a video and then try to use the overlay menu for anything, it starts to stutter because the CPU is overburdened.
Tried out MX player too, and it works. Had to explicitly disable hardware decoding and switch to software, that removed the video stuttering. But I noticed that the processor got pretty warm, so I guess it was quite some work for it xD The free version is supported by ads, there's an ad-free "pro" version.

Android has a linux kernel at its core, yes, but aside from that everything is heavily adapted to mobile devices.

[Prothescar]

I've had good success with MX Player for Android.

second. one of the few apps i've actually bought the full version of

[Kerberoz]

I've had good success with MX Player for Android.

+1 Plays all my 10bit .mkvs with subtitles just fine.