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.
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 made the switch too earlier this year from a Samsung Galaxy S10e to an iPhone 12 and I agree to all of your points.
The only thing I liked much more on Android were the notifications. Android’s notification are so much more flexible with the option to customise each different kind of notification for each app, to have silent notifications and “collapsed” ones that do not show a marker in the status bar.
Speaking of that, it is annoying that on iOS there is no indicator in the status bar if you have a notification, so that you always have to pull down to check for new ones.
Beside that, Apple ecosystem is so incredibly well integrated and in my opinions feels overall smoother than Android.
It’s interesting you bring that up. It annoys me slightly about the notifications but also I thought that my android phone spammed me with them. And they all got equal priority. So at least iPhone does do that better. I think for me it’s about equal there as well because I never took time on android to customize the notifications and I’d rather they all just act consistently.
I generally agree about notifications being a little better on Android, but I think I’ve used iOS for long enough that I’ve made it work for me regardless. On iOS, I’ve found that the best way to see when an app needs your attention is to be very intentional about which ones get notification badges, and make sure those apps are visible on your first home screen and/or dock.
Once that’s set up, you probably won’t need notification center as much, or you might only check it when you see a badge on an app you care about. I’d still love to see a couple more options (maybe utilizing the dynamic island?), but this gets the job done.
I always see people mention notifications not being good on iOS, and maybe I’m in the minority but why do people really care about them? What benefit am I missing from constantly being bombarded by notifications?
Like I only have notifications on for messages and phone calls, and once a month for a week turn on outlook for when I’m on call.
I’m just not sure what people need besides a line or two about what the email is or message says and the iOS covers that, whether in the card that pops down or in the Notification Center.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@beehaw.org
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
I made the switch too earlier this year from a Samsung Galaxy S10e to an iPhone 12 and I agree to all of your points.
The only thing I liked much more on Android were the notifications. Android’s notification are so much more flexible with the option to customise each different kind of notification for each app, to have silent notifications and “collapsed” ones that do not show a marker in the status bar.
Speaking of that, it is annoying that on iOS there is no indicator in the status bar if you have a notification, so that you always have to pull down to check for new ones.
Beside that, Apple ecosystem is so incredibly well integrated and in my opinions feels overall smoother than Android.
EDIT: changed tone a little bit
I switched a few months ago and this for me has been a bit of a pain point.
As you say even a dot at the top would be adequate to show there’s notifications. Just like the apple watch!
That red dot on my Apple watch is always there. I always have notifications.
It’s interesting you bring that up. It annoys me slightly about the notifications but also I thought that my android phone spammed me with them. And they all got equal priority. So at least iPhone does do that better. I think for me it’s about equal there as well because I never took time on android to customize the notifications and I’d rather they all just act consistently.
I generally agree about notifications being a little better on Android, but I think I’ve used iOS for long enough that I’ve made it work for me regardless. On iOS, I’ve found that the best way to see when an app needs your attention is to be very intentional about which ones get notification badges, and make sure those apps are visible on your first home screen and/or dock.
Once that’s set up, you probably won’t need notification center as much, or you might only check it when you see a badge on an app you care about. I’d still love to see a couple more options (maybe utilizing the dynamic island?), but this gets the job done.
I always see people mention notifications not being good on iOS, and maybe I’m in the minority but why do people really care about them? What benefit am I missing from constantly being bombarded by notifications?
Like I only have notifications on for messages and phone calls, and once a month for a week turn on outlook for when I’m on call.
I’m just not sure what people need besides a line or two about what the email is or message says and the iOS covers that, whether in the card that pops down or in the Notification Center.