I’m here to give an update to my journey from an Android to an iPhone after much debate in a previous post (from a different account). TLDR at the bottom.
If you’d like to see the old post: Click Here
For those wondering on details, I switched from a Galaxy Note 10+ to an iPhone 12 Pro Max. I won’t explain my reasons for model choice but it was a balance of price, size, and features in that order.
I’ll discuss my main pros and cons in sections here, going from what is most important to me to least important.
USER INTERFACE The user interface and experience on android isn’t awful, but I don’t think there’s much contest here. I said in my other post that apple has an advantage here and I was absolutely right. iOS has smooth animations for everything, is quicker for searching and finding apps, and just plain looks better to me. And while the android toolbar provides many more buttons for quick actions, I never used many of them. Most of the usable settings are here on iPhone in that easy drop down menu. Even long presses on icons to quickly change settings is here. And the mute button on the side is and has always been a no brained for me, should be standard on every phone.
I come from Samsung and their OneUI so I recognize this could be better on other phones, but I was plagued with some stutter in animations and slow app indexing through their search bar. The UI always felt a little clunky and that’s clear with how much was changed in OneUI versions. Things were often easier to access, sure, but the common actions I was taking reduce to simpler menus. Not only that but scaling is very wrong on android phones for some reason. I had my text somewhat smaller because if I blew it up, it looked very strange to me.
iMESSAGE AND FACETIME This was another big reason to switch because a lot of my friends have iPhones and use iMessage frequently. I can tell you that this is a problem specific to the US but so far I do enjoy the maturity of having a put together messaging app. Only recently has Google created something even close where before each android phone had their own app and it was a massive headache. As I stated, having RCS on android and iOS communicate would be big in bringing me back to android but until that happens, the social cost is not worth it to me. I know other apps fill that void in other countries but I couldn’t get my friends to migrate. Aside from that though, it’s one of the best messaging apps I’ve used and FaceTime seems more stable than most video apps.
APPLE ECOSYSTEM
Now look, I know how it works and they stock you in a walled garden. But consider that other companies do the exact same and *sometimes * the benefits can be worth it. For instance, my partner has an Apple HomePod speaker. It’s incredibly easy to stream music to it and as a plus, the Siri assistant has gotten much better. I can’t pick this apart by each strand, but the smoothness of the connections to my devices has definitely improved. I used to fail just to cast YouTube to my Tv on android for random reasons. It would take a couple tries. Now, first try every time. Same with the speaker. No fiddling with Bluetooth with this one. And the menu to change what device is playing sound is miles better than on my android phone.
VOICE ASSISTANT
This one is unexpected, but I’ve enjoyed the voice assistant a lot more. This is something that should be current across android phones so I feel comfortable speaking on it. If you’ve used SIRI previously, it used to suck. Like a lot. Google was miles ahead by every metric. Now though? I can ask Siri to play music and it knows what app Im asking for and doesn’t take up to 15 seconds to phone home and do the task. It’s faster. Much faster.
The only area in which Siri suffers is when asking for web based questions. Other than that, it works better for the much more common tasks I do.
RANDOM OBSERVATIONS
I mentioned Siri but the real benefit is with CarPlay. Where to start? CarPlay is quite a bit ahead here as well. It starts up on my head unit in about 1/5th the time before the warnings even disappear. And the interface is simple and knows where to put things. Putting the time near the driver and putting the app bar on the left near where I sit just seems like the way to go. So yeah, CarPlay is smooth and even has easy ways to make it wireless with unofficial dongles. Can’t say the same for android auto.
Charging times are worse on the iPhone but it’s not that bad and the phone does last me longer. My battery in my old phone was a bit older though, so I’ll call it even.
Grudges
I hate the lightning connector, it’s a PITA compared to UsbC but I don’t interact with it often, only for charging. And MagSafe would solve most problems and can be used with cases unlike my android phones wireless charging.
The Home Screen is a sticking point as well but mostly just for app arrangement. Otherwise, the widgets are perfectly fine. Better than fine actually because the Home Screen implements the widgets well even if space is limited. I’ve noticed that the apps that I use frequently also have more and better widgets on iOS than on android. I noticed it specifically with TickTick but overall the systems are fairly similar but with less customization of widget size and placement on iOS.
Last comment is that I understand this isn’t for everyone, we all have our own use cases. This isn’t a phone war, just here as reference for those wanting to switch or considering it. If you haven’t used iOS for a sustained period in recent years, understand that your perspective may be out of date because mine certainly was.
Thanks for reading!
TL;DR iOS has its ups and downs but from my perspective, most of what I said in my original post stands as good reasons to buy an Apple device. My main sticking points are repairability, walled garden apps, and initial price. Other than that, I’ve converted to iOS and I don’t miss many features of Android and I suspect that for all but the tech tinkerers, an iPhone is the way to go in the US.
I cannot handle the lack of a unified control scheme and app logic in iOS. I don’t understand how all apple users just ignore that.
In android back is back. In every single app. It always does what you expect. It goes back.
I iOS sometimes it goes back, sometimes it goes up. Sometimes it’s on the bottom, sometimes it’s on the upper top left (why the actual f would you place it there…), sometimes it’s wherever. It depends on the apps it seems?
App settings are sometimes in the apps themselves and sometimes buried twenty menus deep in the phone settings menu. Where is the logic in that?
Those two points alone hold me back from using an iPhone or iPad. (there’s others, but I could live with those). It’s frustratingly complex to use compared to the relative simplicity of an Android.
Every time I grab my son’s or my grandma’s iPhone to help them with something I run into this lack of universal “back” functionality and it drives me absolutely crazy.
Most people use a gesture - swipe from the left edge of the screen. Or from the bottom if you want to leave the app.
This works most of the time, but not all of the time. Even in official apple apps some menus don’t let you swipe from the left to go back.
I use gesture navigation on Android. It has some upsides and downsides compared to iOS, but it works 100% of the time, no exceptions.
Yeah, I know this gestures, they’re not the same…
iPhone users always tell me about those. They have never used the superior android implementation for any real stretch of time and don’t know what they’re missing tbh…
iOS does a lot right. Navigating the OS itself is not one of them though imo.
Yeah problem is that is usually works. It work often enough that you get used to it. But then an app comes along that doesn’t use it and its infuriating. Android has ALWAYS had a os based back button, so implementing gestures means they just work.
Oh my god! Thank you. I just made my post about those exact same two gripes. Its so rare to see people complain about it and I really don’t understand why.
I’m glad I’m not the only one
Can’t believe I saw no mention of adblockers in this thread yet. On android you can get firefox set up with ublock origin and also other add ons, including dark reader and sponsorblock. Firefox on ios doesn’t have that functionality.
Adblocker that I can control is way too big of a functionality. I can never go over to ios.
On IOS there is not much point in using Firefox, because it’s just an UI shell for Safari with crippled functionality at that. I hope EU law will make real Firefox a possibility.
I have a friend who used Android, switched to iPhone, and just got an S23 today because iPhone kept doing things with the OS, not putting calls through the phone piece and offloading apps when he told them to not.
That said my wife switched from Android to iPhone about 7 years ago and loves it still. She won’t go back. Overall she cares less about the tech stuff than my friend does.
I’ve been tempted to switch but things like Apple automatically offloading your apps that could have been removed from the store and then not putting them back counts me out entirely. Like I had an app, you deemed it too big to keep on my device so you just nuked it without ensuring you can reinstall it? Hard pass on that. That’s one of the major straws that broke my friend who used some sort of Manga app that was removed from the app store. I likely won’t have any issues like that but the thought of that sort of control from Apple drives me away. I trust Apple or Google about the same which is none at all. Both have shown they are only in it for the money.
Lastly, I wouldn’t say iPhone or Android is the definitive way to go in the US. I can understand your point of view but even from a basic standpoint, I feel like neither do things all that differently to justify one or the other for everyone. Realistically people should just try both out and figure out what works best for them.
You can turn off automatic offloading. I agree through that it’s bullshit that it can offload an app that is no longer available on the store.
I used the iPhone 12 mini for about a year before I gave up and went back to android. Some of my thoughts:
I don’t actually understand your comment about apps being easier to find. There is no way to organize them alphabetically. You can’t choose which folders they go in. It’s only “easier” because people default to searching for apps. Which is very annoying to me personally. My GF does it that way. But I really don’t like it.
I am a little jealous of IOS widgets and the ecosystem. While I haven’t tried a pixel watch yet, the apple watch is absolutely amazing and it’s the only real reason for me considering to go back.
My two biggest gripes is that there is a serious inconsistency in their apps. I never hear people talk about it. But some apps, have their settings inside the actual apps. Other apps are you tied into the apple settings app. Most apps use gesture navigation. Some, especially older ones, don’t react to it and still rely on a back button in the top left. Which was a good option when the phone were sub 5", but not anymore.
Other stuff, while the ecosystem is great, being locked into it is extremely annoying. Not being able to put a torrent app on the phone is annoying. There’s still a lot of things you cant do.
Maybe I’ll buy the iPhone 16, I seem to try it out every 4 or 5 years. But I doubt they’ll fix anything other than the back button, because no one really complains about it.
The App Library grouping of apps is automatic but when you add apps to the Home Screen, you can drag one onto another to group them in a folder and then name that folder whatever you like.
Also there is an alphabetic sorting in the App Library when you tap on the sort field:
I used to fail just to cast YouTube to my TV on android for random reasons. It would take a couple tries. Now, first try every time.
This is an interesting situation because my household has the exact opposite problem, where Android phones cast YouTube to the TV seamlessly and Apple phones take a solid 15-30 seconds to recognize the TV at all (Roku SmartTV).
That is odd. But I can definitely tell you that most of the solutions for casting your phone to a tv never worked for me on android. Smart cast almost never worked for me at all. But I will slightly miss the Dex software which was occasionally useful.
I think the best solution for me was getting an NVIDIA shield and using 3rd party apps anyways. It’s better than casting and works more consistently.
How does the lightning connector bother you? I have less trouble out of phones with lightning connectors than phones with usbc…
Everything else in my life is USB-C now - my laptop, my Steam Deck, my ear buds etc. My wife and I are both Android so we only have to have one charging cable anywhere in the house or our bags.
Add to that the fact that iPhone will switch to USB-C in max 2 years and people with any iPhone sold today will have to deal with a legacy connector.
I have devices that already use USB C so now I have to have two cables in the same location where before I only needed one. And also transfer and charging speeds are much slower with lightning. I think my phone takes much longer to charge, especially at lower battery percentages.
Overall, pretty much every device should have USB C by now. Apple only stays this way to further lock people into the ecosystem.
I like lightning for durability. the extra wire is a bummer though. never noticed slower charging or transfers.
All great points.
I used to like to tinker on my phones but I got out of the habit. Android is better for that. The only other thing I would add is when I had Android phones (up until about 3 years ago and been using them since the late 2010s) I was always looking forward to that next upgrade time. The phone was slowing down or other issues that would crop up like that. Updates would stop coming and we’re slow to begin with. My company buys my phones now. So I got my first iPhone just over 3 years ago cause that is what they provide. We are allowed to get one every two years. I went past my 2 year upgrade and never even noticed. My boss had to tell me to upgrade a few months past the 2 year mark to get it into the current year budget. I would have happily kept using the original. Worked just like the day I got it. My kid uses it now. Still gets updates.
Sorry. That was a bit more text than I intended hehe.
I have very different priorities. I’ll never use anything with a walled garden, that isn’t hackable. I’ve also weaned myself almost completely off Google services and apps at this point. Also I can get a brand new unlocked Android phone that does everything I want with decent specs and almost stock Android (minimal bloat) for under $200. The only positive that really interests me that was mentioned in this thread is the longer security support.
I hate the lightning connector, it’s a PITA compared to UsbC but I don’t interact with it often, only for charging.
Do yourself a favor and get a magsafe charger. It’s far better than USB or Lightning.
sad
Switched from a pixel 5 to an iPhone 13 Pro 2 years ago when google removed smart home integration from the power menu. Other than the way iOS handles notifications I have no regrets, picked up a 14 pro max a few months ago and have been loving the full days worth of battery life, something I never achieved on any other phone.
I switched when I was much younger. I understood the customizability of Android, but ultimately favored access to iMessage over it. Also, the built-in UI of Apple somehow feels better to me than the Android UI. It was an unfortunately significant part of my switching decision.
I switched long ago and never looked back
