Interesting to read this since I'm considering getting an iPhone; so far I've only used Android. Does anyone have comments who has done the switch in that direction?
I switched to iPhone for a few months after being on Android since the Motorola Droid. All of Android's little annoyances and failed promises to fix problems for years finally annoyed me into trying out an iPhone (6s). Apple's build quality and UX were a welcome improvement, but after a while I found some different issues that were equally annoying. I think iOS is still better overall, but not better enough to justify the cost for me. Both have their drawbacks and both are good enough.
The 6s's crappy camera made me decide it was time to upgrade to something with a good camera, and I was able to get a Pixel 2 for way less than an iPhone 8 so that's the route I took. If the cost was around the same I would have stuck with iPhone for the wireless charging.
Just got a iPhone 8 at the beginning of the year after probably 7 years of Android, mostly Samsung devices.
Can’t wait to go back to be honest. Part of the problem was that iOS 11 was super buggy at the beginning. That really soured me to start and I haven’t found anything particularly worth changing my mind over since.
Yes, I've been quite happy with my Galaxy Note 4, now so old that I can't even remember when I bought it — must be 4 years or so. I haven't even replaced the battery, though I like having the option to do so ... oh well, I guess nobody lets you do that anymore.
I switched to iOS this past year after using Android since the G1, and working as an Android developer for the past 5 or so years. Pretty happy with the iPhone X, less happy with iOS 11, I think previous iterations were better.
Things I like:
* typing feels much nicer, no lag in character input
* phone runs much cooler, does not make hand sweaty to hold
* far fewer random freezes or lag
* password management much better by default, every app with important information has faceid which is quite nice
* I prefer the photos taken by the iPhone camera
* I find tethering on iPhone works more consistently
Things I don’t like:
* no back button
* some Google apps for iOS don’t seem as good as their android counterparts. YouTube app keeps getting buggy updates, Inbox still doesn’t support full iPhone X screen.
* Prefer Android’s notification system
* A bunch of apps have video playback issues, I suspect there’s an OS level bug
>* some Google apps for iOS don’t seem as good as their android counterparts. YouTube app keeps getting buggy updates, Inbox still doesn’t support full iPhone X screen.
Google is simply sabotaging iOS with all of that. There's no way Google can't afford to pay developers to fix that. They just want to annoy people. My solution was to quit as many Google services as I could.
> * typing feels much nicer, no lag in character input
This is huge for me. I feel like every Android phone has some kind of lag when typing and scrolling. It's really annoying me to the point of sticking with iOS even thought I'd love to switch to Android.
I did it a little over a year ago. Many frustrations with Android, switched to the iPhone SE (mainly due to size). Most of the time on android I was running native on Nexus.
Apps are more consistent, and generally better designed. Wider range of apps, far less crap.
Restrictions on background tasks and what apps are allowed to do mean a couple of things I had on Android can't be duplicated on iOS (eg a WiFi signal strength thing - no huge loss)
Apple focus on privacy, along with granular app notification and data restrictions are marvellous, as is the way apps request permissions, and it just works. Apps make less of a land grab as a result. Android was still fundamentally broken in that area when I left.
iOS feels slicker than any version of Android despite clearly having some feature-itis and clumsiness (e.g. timestamps on SMS and iMessage are hidden off screen). Android isn't free of this, but never feels (across multiple versions of Android) like they put much thought into joining it all up apart from joining up data harvesting of course.
Trivia: iTunes is a mess, but it does what you need. iOS still lacks a dark mode that I would really prefer. SE keeps a headphone socket so all is well with the world. :)
> Apple focus on privacy, along with granular app notification and data restrictions are marvellous, as is the way apps request permissions, and it just works.
This is one of the reasons I also ditched Android for an iPhone.
I had an HTC Hero, an HTC Desire and a Galaxy Nexus before I jumped to the iPhone. I forked out more than I normally would have for a phone when I bought my Galaxy Nexus under the assumption that it would receive regular OS updates being a Nexus device. Nope; stuck on Android 4.3 and was eventually forced to install a glitchy 4.4 custom ROM. There were never any decent ROMs for later Android versions so I gave up on the whole platform.
I haven’t switched, but I often use my fiancée’s iPhone (which isn’t at all the same thing, I know).
The way that I put it is that the iPhone is a better smart phone; Android is a better pocket computer. If you want something which is basically a small communications device, which does one thing at a time & gets out of your way, then you probably want an iPhone. If you want a flexible, capable device which does many different things and respects your choices, then you want Android.
Things I like about iOS: on brand-new hardware, it feels snappier than Android on similarly brand-new hardware; the experience within a single app is less distracting.
Things I like about Android: real Firefox; headphone jacks; ability to sideload apps; open source apps; back button; task switching; less lock-in (iCloud, I’m looking at you); doesn’t make me want to chuck the phone at a wall after using it for three minutes.
I trust Apple more than Google, but I trust me even more than Apple, and with Android I can have a mostly Google-free existence, while with an iPhone I cannot have an Apple-free existence. For me, the choice is easy.
I made the switch from Android (always used Samsung or Nexus devices) to iOS two years ago.
My two issues with iOS:
- Siri is absolute trash. I've given up on using it for text messages. Even when just using it for timers it fucks up. It's basically a 50/50 chance it will interpret things like "3 and a half minutes" as "3 to a half minutes". Whenever it does this it then says something like "I don't understand what time you want". I literally never had Google mess up a timer.
- Apple insistence on making you use their apps has gotten better, but it's still annoying. I still run into cases where it tries to open links in Safari (my default browser is chrome) or open directions in Maps ( I use Google maps).
Outside of those things I really love iOS.
My biggest reasons for switching was horrid privacy controls on Android(which have improved since I left) and device degrading rates. Every Android phone or tablet I owned would slow down terribly and have a noticeable dip in battery quality within 1 1/2 years. It was like clockwork. Luckily this hasn't been the case for me on iOS. I will hit the two year mark with this phone in the summer and it's still running and holding a charge like the day I got it. I used to get a new phone every two year religiously but this is the first time I am going wait it out.
The author asked for a replacement for Ominfocus. One of the best Android only apps I've seen is a taak/project/to do list app: DJT GTD. It has a lot of features and requires reading the tutorial to get the most out of it, but it is really impressive and fast once you get the hang of it.
I had the same experience when first switching to Android after a lifetime on iPhone. But after a year of really getting to use Android features it eventually became apparent Android has its own problems, and I ended up switching back to iOS. It'll seem great at first since it does things differently and improves on many aspects of where iOS fails at while it's fresh in your mind, but you'll need to spend much more time using it day to day to get a real sense of the pros and cons.
The #1 reason is Apple's focus on user privacy and the device's purpose to serve the user through of specific set of features (note I do not mean they give us control of the features, just that they designed it for specific purposes). Apple's business model does not rely on monetizing user data and it shows in its products.
At the time I switched (Nexus 5) there were abundant issues with the Android OS from a memory leak issue that required rebooting the phone periodically to design flaws such as Android's UI rendering de-prioritization. Much lower quality of apps in general. Much worse customer service experience (you can't just walk into an Apple store and get an issue fixed). Much worse hardware quality (part of the reason I switched back was because the Nexus 5 charging port stopped working and started emitting smoke. For a while i was charging purely through the Qi charger. I've never had an iPhone break on me, and any other issues were always resolved for free at the Apple store) Not sure if these are fixed, but I cannot switch back as it's basically impossible to use Android without Google services and consolidating all my data with Google. If google wants me to give me data they're going to have to pay me more.
> you can't just walk into an Apple store and get an issue fixed
The vast majority of people can't do that anyhow due to the rarity of Apple stores. For example there are two on the island of Ireland, for a population of seven million.
Most people have to get the i-devices fixed by a third-party just like they do with Android.
For places that do not have apple stores they usually have authorized repair centers. These arent as convenient as walking into an apple store but usually still better than shipling them something and waiting weeks to get it back.
Yes, there is an Apple authorized repair center. I had a sticky key on my laptop. It took them two weeks to fix it. They claimed it was because they don't keep parts in stock and have to order them from overseas.
Anyone know if you can still get a high quality Android experience without being a slave to Google? Obviously things like Google Now are only particularly useful if you submit to Google, but other than that, what can be expected? Can I root it and disable all the bullshit?
For a while I tried using a blackberry that had android app support. One of the caveats was that the android support had no Google services support which rendered many apps unsable (including apps like Lyft that required Google maps).
Of course it's entirely possible, depending upon your use-cases. If you want to use your phone as a communication, navigation and browsing device then there is no need to touch Google. You can disable Play, Maps, Chrome, Drive etc and install alternatives. Even WhatsApp offer a direct APK download, I wish more vendors did.
But if you want to play the latest games , install your bank's app or use voice agent then you'll need Google Play and an account.
I've run CopperheadOS a while ago (https://copperhead.co/android/) and in my opinion it's only gotten worse. As someone else mentioned; the "Google Play Services" are an essential part of apps these days. So expect any "mainstream" app not to work. You're forced to use open source alternatives from F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/en/)
Yes it's possible, but i wouldn't call it a "high quality android experience"
This is the review I'd really like to see. I'm not interested in "first impressions" or "1 month in". I'm interested what happens after a year, two or even three years.
I have an iPhone 6S+, and it works almost flawlessly - animation is still good, very few app glitches, and even the original battery is in decent shape.
I'd like to hear how Androids from that era fare compared to iPhones from that era - because I plan on having my next phone for at least this long.
I am having my oppo a57 for over 2 years now. Longer than I had any other Android device before, and there are literally zero issues except it never really had a good camera to begin with.
What I am trying to say is that it's not easy to compare android with iOS because of all the devices. There aren't many Samsung Sx devices still alive from that time, yet my (never heard of) oppo still does a great job
I replaced my battery and the phone sped way up. Unfortunately, after the battery replacement, the new battery health UI doesn't work, saying it can't communicate w/ the battery.
> I'm interested what happens after a year, two or even three years.
I can write an older version of this review, so it may be a bit out of date now. I owned the iPhone 1, 3g, 4, 4s, got tired of waiting for a larger less expensive phone, and moved to Android. I had the HTC One X, Nexus 4, and Nexus 5 (also a Nexus 7 tablet). I move back to the iPhone for the 6, and have had the 6s, 7+, and now the X.
The One X was almost a disaster that forced me to switch back. As soon as I had to deal with carrier and HTC crap, I immediately thought mistake but made it work and decided to never get another non-Google Android phone.
IMO, Google hit a sweet spot with the Nexus line because they were priced well and performed well. I had nagging issues with them, but for the price I dealt with them. The build quality was also not quite the same as the iPhone, but again at that price they were great. On my value recommendation quite a few friends left their iPhones and gave the Nexus line a shot (all have since moved back to the iPhone).
My main issues were around performance, camera quality, general quirks (a google process would randomly spin out of control causing the phone to really heat up and be fully out of battery in about 10 minutes). If I didn't notice this happening, then I would end up with no phone until I charged again. This issue along with Google moving the price up near flagship is what caused me to look at the iPhone again (I can write an entire other rant about how Google destroyed my perfectly working N7 with an update).
I looked at some of the other manufacture flagship Android phones and IMHO, none are worth the flagship pricing. The build quality is just not the same as with the iPhone at that price. And since Google decided to go flagship also, I decided to give the iPhone a shot again. Once back on the iPhone, only then I realized how much I took for granted all the things that just worked. At this point, I doubt I'll ever try Android again. iMessage, Continuity, my Apple Watch, etc... all rely on the iPhone now. Plus, I think my point is still true that even the latest Pixel2XL screen is not as nice looking at the screen on my X. I've looked at the them side by side and even the Android people in the office agree.
I'm sure someone will come along and say I'm an idiot and Android is the best thing ever (I'm sure it is for a lot of people), but you asked for opinions from someone who used both extensively :)
Thank you for your thorough review. The last Android device I used was a Samsung S3 which was very glitchy. Your review matches my experience and confirms my suspicions (based on that experience) that Android phones will never be as polished and "just work" as Apple devices.
Most of what the article describes in terms of user experience is that of stock Android, not just the Pixel 2 - For those interested in a clean Android but who don't want the Pixel I can recommend the Android One line, those are devices by other manufacturers that basically have the same stock Android as the Pixel devices, with similar quick updates etc.
I just exchanged an older Samsung Galaxy S-line phone with a new Nokia with Android One, and it's the best Android experience I ever had.
Yep. I'd recommend the Mi A1. If you can find one, they're pretty cheap, $200 I paid at a retail store. Great specs, very little trash (Moto X4 is Android One, but ships with Moto specific stuff that is annoying.)
> Much more transparency about what the phone is doing
This is a curious point, especially considering the recent FB Android app revelations about lots and lots of things the phone was doing that nobody realised, things that cannot happen on iOS due to stricter privacy enforcement.
I suppose no month is complete without an iOS/Android flame war, but hopefully that won't happen here. For what it's worth, smart phones are all pretty darn awesome and if there is one key distinguishing factor that seems to persist across generations of devices, it's privacy and security, of which Apple is far different. If that doesn't matter to you, pick a year, any year, and you will find one or the other platform to offer features that the other lacks.
> it's privacy and security, of which Apple is far different
I simply don't trust Google to act in my interests when it comes to use of very private data by them or how their operating system permits use of that data.
Frankly, I think Android is great. I love myriad things about it:
- Set a default e-mail app
- Set a default browser that isn't Safari (my kingdom to use Firefox Mobile with all of its attendant add-ins on my iPhone)
- Put icons wherever I want, like the author mentions
- A WILDLY better--in my opinion--notification system, again like the author mentions
- Themes, widgets, and other customizations
- Automation with things like Tasker
- Background tasks
I'm gonna stop here because I could keep going for much longer. But the point remains that my iPhone and iPad do 90% of what I want on a day-to-day basis and I'm used to the quirks and, more importantly, Apple has shown a propensity to keep what it knows about me primarily on my own devices or, when actually transmitted to Apple, under much more restrictive policies than Google has.
I'd love it of Apple could do both, the astounding customization of Android with the privacy and security features of iOS. But maybe you don't get one with the other for some inherent reason. I'm not sure, so I stick with the one in which I'm more confident.
Well, it could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. It's foolish to argue that background tasks can't be useful. Can they also be privacy-violating battery drainers as well? Sure. I'm sure there's a right tradeoff here, and it doesn't have to be "no background tasks, period". My personal take is that it's much closer to "no background tasks" than "free reign", but your needs may vary.
The sensors should store the information inside themselves and then sync with the mobile when I open the app. No need to have my mobile awake all the time for something like that.
Most sensors do tend to store data for backfill upon reconnect the designers are not idiots and have spent a much longer time thinking about this. Off the top of my head, I can immediately think of several reasons you need to pull the data off regularly:
- Data is needed for real time alerting features for the user (e.g. low blood glucose).
- Data needs to be uploaded to cloud services in real time so carers have access to that data so they can also be alerted.
Both of these requirements require timely access to data. A delay can mean the difference between no real impact and "this user is now in hospital".
I find it interesting how you can't expand your horizon to see that these features are useful to somebody that's not you.
> This is a curious point, especially considering the recent FB Android app revelations about lots and lots of things the phone was doing that nobody realised, things that cannot happen on iOS due to stricter privacy enforcement. . .
Yep, I'm definitely being careful. E.g., not installing Facebook or Messenger. I guess I _do_ have more confidence in Apple's dedication to privacy and security. Even with their recent security lapses in MacOS.
My experience with Chromebooks gave me a lot of confidence in Google's understanding of security and privacy.
>>especially considering the recent FB Android app revelations about lots and lots of things the phone was doing that nobody realised,
No lots of people realized them, and lots of people have been talking about them for years just no one really payed attention until now.
When you install FB or any other app you get a nice list of things the App is allowed to do, if you do not want the app to do those things you should not install the app.
The problem is most people simply ignore this list and click "install" with out questioning why a Flashlight app would need access to your call history...
With Android the user is in control, Some/Most people can not handle that responsibility.
For a person that is concerned about privacy, Using facebook at all seems counter intuitive...
For me while I do supports Apple's take on user privacy, I do not support their Business Practices of being rabidly anti-repair, anti-ownership, and anti-consumer. It is my device not Apple's, the the fact that Apple wants completely control over a device have I bought from them for about $1,000 is a non-starter for me, I can control my privacy in other ways I do not need my phone OS to do that for me.
> When you install FB or any other app you get a nice list of things the App is allowed to do, if you do not want the app to do those things you should not install the app.
This is actually a fairly recent change to Android. It did not used to provide you with these choices. It demonstrates that user privacy is a bit of an afterthought with Android.
For Apple, these kinds of user choices have been there since the start.
I've been using Android since 2.x and I sell to remember it has always been like this. The recent change iirc is being able to decline a certain privilege and still use the app.
Yeah, they'd show you a list of a dozen things that the app was going to use and you basically just tapped the "accept" button because you wanted the app to have access to your photos except now it has access to your contacts, location history, notification center, and firstborn child. Android Marshmallow brought improvements in this area, though.
Yes an a responsible person that downloaded a photo app that requested access to "your contacts, location history, notification center, and firstborn child" would choose not to install it.
If you continue to install those apps you only have yourself to blame IMO
Using a Core Android App developed by Google, that used to be a part of ASOP, and it required to be installed on all Play Store Eligible Android Devices is not a good example of "Pretty much any app does this"
I have all kinds of apps that do not do this, only asking for permissions they need
No, only Android 6 and later has provided proper user permissions [0] :
> You declare that your app needs a permission by listing the permission in the app manifest and then requesting that the user approve each permission at runtime (on Android 6.0 and higher).
> Beginning with Android 6.0 (API level 23), users can revoke permissions from any app at any time
>>This is actually a fairly recent change to Android
if by "recent" you mean "almost since the beginning" then sure.
The app permissions system has gotten better over time, more fine grained, ability to deny permissions while still install the app, and other features, but the basic list of "if you install this app it gets X access" has been there for a long long time, v2 or v3 if I remember correctly
Android was a breath of fresh air after using the original iPhone and every generation all the way up to the 4S..... for the first 2 months.
Then it just got progressively slower with crappier battery life. Switched to a different Android phone (from a Galaxy to an Xperia, and then a newer generation Galaxy).
Back to iPhone now. Will probably never get Android again.
I've switched for a month while traveling and I agree with the author, some additional points:
- The phone is too smart. E.g. it transforms your voice messages into text messages which is magic but also pings you after you visit something "Hey, wanna rate the store you just visited?" "Hey, you took pictures of this place today, wanna share them?".
- The pictures are outstanding, particularly in low light. The portrait mode works much better than on the iPhone X.
- Third-party apps are not as polished, e.g. Instagram Stories do not work well.
- The design is good but placement of the buttons is awful. After a month I was still shutting down my phone while taking a picture because you can press on the volume button to shoot which is right next to the power button.
- Project Fi is perfect (the price is the only downside I've found and it is a subjective argument) and should have an Apple counterpart, not only Apple SIM on the iPad.
All in all I liked it and it was great to go back to Android for a month, but I went back to the iPhone. I have an Apple ecosystem and the iPhone is just too well integrated to leave it. It feels like the Pixel is one of the few Google hardware devices that is not an experiment but Apple offers me an entire ecosystem that is coherent and enjoyable for my daily life.
> The placement of the buttons is awful, after a month I was still shutting down my phone . . .
Lol, yeah, that's taken some getting used to. I bet they did that so that the phone would work smoothly in the VR headset. It is supported on the left side edge, and doesn't work the other way around because the buttons get pressed.
The smart notifications you are mentioning are from Google Maps. You can disable them individually by going to Settings -> Apps -> Maps-> Notifications and then unchecking everything under "Your contributions". But I agree they are anoying.
> Universal back function: It’s great having a global “affordance” for the super-common thing that people want to do. It works well, too: its meaning subtly changing in the right way, depending what you’re going back from.
Funny, I always hated this. I could never figure out just where the back button would take me.
Agreed -- I use an iPhone, but I have a couple of Android tablets at home, and I find this super annoying. It appears not just to be dependent on the app state, but also the path to get there; sometimes navigating into an app through the task switcher means that back will take you to the app you were just using, sometimes it means that you will tell the current app to go back.
There are too many contexts where "back" doesn't make sense or have a single meaning to make including it as a hard button rather than in the app chrome a good decision.
After 7 years Android user across three phones, I decided to try iPhone. Now 2 years in, on my 2nd, and never going back. Android tends to slowly slide into glitch land and demands you throw away your phone far more aggressively than iPhones do. The 911-crash on Android was the last straw. That's when you call 911, and the phone crashes instead of, you know, calling for help.
iPhone might not be latest and greatest. But the overall package is better. Definitely not perfect - I've experienced a disabled Phone app on iPhone where I would not have been able to call 911 had I needed it - but all my i-devices have been glitch resistant in a way none of my Android devices ever were.
My experience exactly. I always said bad things about iPhone. Hay it is closed, it has fewer options, worse hardware than top Android phones, etc.. It was the time during which I fiddled with the phone much, installed Ubuntu on Android phone, etc.. But then my last Nexus started to glitch like any other Android top phone after 1 year of use. I was so irritated by it that I said well I will try iPhone now.
It was about 6 month ago and I could not be more happy. I have phone that just works, never glitched, not once in 6 months, never sttutered with animation or anything. Yes, it is less extensible, has less options, but actually I like that now better. I wan`t it to work good, work well and be reliable.
One major additional benefit is that I use iPhone less than Android phone, and it spams and pings me less. At first iPhone, notifications felt overly simplistic, but now I love them. There are no permanent notifications/icons that some android app can put there, and I can just scroll from the lock screen and see without clicking/opening everything that happened. Also, I can disable every notification/spam per app, disabled all bubbles (red circle numbers over app icons) except for messaging apps. This way I feel that I don`t expect dopamine dose from my phone, and I use it only when I really need something.
>>Also, I can disable every notification/spam per app
You can do this on Android as well
>> Nexus started to glitch like any other Android top phone after 1 year of use ... 6 month ago and I could not be more happy. I have phone that just works, never glitched
hmmm, Anyone else see a issue with these 2 statements?
I really don't know about that. I had the og Moto-X and it served me will for years without issue.
I now have a Nexus 6 and didn't wipe the phone for two years after use. I only did so because I wanted the better system encryption that came with a newer Android and that was only available after a full wipe.
What Android phone were you using? I have a Pixel 2 XL and no idea what you're talking about regarding glitchiness or animation stutter. I previously had a Note 4 for maybe 3 or 4 years and only had problems with it when I needed to replace the battery
You can also disable notifications per app on Android.
I think a high end Android phone is going to be very similar to an iPhone. Personally, I like the Pixel's camera better, I think it has a better touch id to unlock, the voice assistant is much better, and there is a better integration with Google maps in my experience. All that, plus I can root my phone if I need to.
Also there's small stuff like: Photo map. I've traced back treasured photos that would have been lost in a sea of 44,000 photos by finding them on the map.
Google Photos doesn't seem to have this.
Notes also works really nicely for loads of stuff.
It's useful enough that I could find out the exact spot I slept by the river Seine years ago based on scrolling around Berlin on the map for 5 minutes until I found the photo, taken several years ago on a completely different iPhone, then go back there recently and recreate the picture.
You're taking too many photos. Honestly ask yourself, how often do you go back and look at old photos? Maybe you do, but for me, I realized that I never do. So I stopped taking them.
I think sometimes it's a grass-is-greener situation. I had an iPhone bug where the camera/gallery would just crash on startup or basically anytime I had to do anything camera related. I eventually fixed it (after months of trying) by connecting to a PC with a 3rd party app, navigating the file system, and deleting a bunch of thumbnail cache files.
I had plenty of problems answering phone calls on my iPhone -- it would be glitchy and unresponsive and I'd miss calls.
Even more annoying about the iPhone is the always growing "Other" space on the phone. I was constantly short on disk space with no way of knowing what the cause was or how to clean it up.
The bluetooth stack would crash every week disconnecting all my bluetooth devices temporarily. Very annoying when you have a smartwatch.
My wife's iPhone screen doesn't turn off after she uses Siri sometimes -- it'll just say on all night long.
The entire iPhone 6 (non-S) line was total garbage. Tons of people bought these and had nothing but problems.
My point isn't so much to rag on iPhones -- they're actually really solid devices -- and I highly recommend them to non-technical users pretty much exclusively. They are hands down better than the vast majority of Android devices.
But I switched from iPhone to Android on this last cycle and couldn't be happier -- this article covers much of what's good about it. But I love the flexibility and a lot of little touches that iOS devices don't have. And I think all devices have different problems. My Android phone is not glitch free either.
I have beefs with my iPhone and iPad but not those.
1. Nagging for Apple paid services
2. Gestures changing every month and becoming increasingly complicated with small variations doing different things, inconsistent experience between iPad and iPhone
3. Audio jack
4. Anything that involves editing is a catastrophe. Selecting an element of a table on a web page or trying to copy the text of a link (not the url) is nearly impossible.
5. Auto correct introducing more errors than it corrects.
6. iTunes on Windows which is still the only way to sync my music to the iPhone is just completely broken.
Which is why I am tempted to move. I can see some candidates for an iPhone replacement but the iPad Pro 10.5 doesn’t seem to have any competitor (large-ish screen with high refresh rate).
I was specifically replying to the idea that iPhone are glitch free rather than merely what's wrong with the fundamental design of iOS. That's an entirely different kind of post and after being an iPhone user for many many years I do have a long list of those too.
> Gestures changing every month and becoming increasingly complicated with small variations doing different things, inconsistent experience between iPad and iPhone
Why would the phone's gesture controls change for you every month?
He might have meant, e.g., that iPhone X has a wildly different set of gestures and shortcuts. Like, guided mode being triple-power instead of triple home, battery/volume/etc menu swiping from upper left corner instead of from below, apps being minimized vía swiping up instead of home button, etc, the list is long.
That's hardly going to be an iPhone only thing though. Any phone that does away with one or more hardware buttons, especially the home button, is going to have to present a new command interface. It's not like going into getting an X that this is going to be some unexpected surprise, and certainly not every month.
I have definitely known too many people to experience issues with missed calls on iPhones to ever consider buying one. I have had android phones since the HTC Dream and I have never had something as simple as that go wrong - although the 911 bug seems far worse; I've just never met anyone with that problem.
I know plenty of people including myself that experienced it with Android phones. Weirdly, one of the most stable Androids I owned in terms of phone use was my Xperia X10 — one of the first android phones out! I miss that phone. And my Nokia N9.
My Nexus 4 developed an interesting one after the update to 5 and 5.0.1. Incoming calls would crash it half the time, or 5 seconds of silence on calls that didn't crash. The dialler was almost unusable.
Was widely reported but never properly resolved, so that was the cue for replacement.
My Samsung Note 3 got so laggy that I couldn't get the unresponsive phone app to actually pick up the call before it flipped to voice mail. Reboots would fix it temporarily, but it would come back. You have failed at your primary purpose, phone. Android experiment over, back to iOS.
2. is a real issue. I had to google how to turn off an iPhone X, this is after there being an iOS product of every gen being in the family since the iPhone 3
> Even more annoying about the iPhone is the always growing "Other" space on the phone. I was constantly short on disk space with no way of knowing what the cause was or how to clean it up.
Hm? There is a very simple Storage page in the Settings that shows you exactly how much storage each app is taking up (including things the app is storing) and it is ordered by size so you can immediately see what's using up your space and delete it if necessary. I have an old 16GB iPhone that is still chugging along after 7 years and is my daily phone but it is a bit lacking of space and this Storage area is a simple fix.
iTunes will show you the space taken by apps, by music, by videos, by documents, and then "other". My other just got slightly bigger all the time. This isn't unique to my phone either.
I find this area the single most useless display of information on an iPhone.
Yes, you can see which app takes how much space. Then what? There is no way to control or clean up that space. You can hope that an app has a setting somewhere that let's you delete old data, and that's it.
The biggest offender? Apple's own Photos app especially with iCloud and Photo Stream: there's exactly zero ways to make it give up space (unless you "want to delete photos from all connected devices")
On the General > Storage there are some options I have on my iOS (v 11.3):
- Offload Unused Apps
- Auto Delete Old Conversations
Or I can manually offload apps one by one.
I think you are referring to the iCloud Storage settings on the iPhone when talking about deleting photos from all connected devices.
Probably the confusion is because they decided to put two storages: General > iPhone Storage (managing local storage) and Accounts > iCloud > iCloud Storage.
The last one (iCloud Storage) manages the iCloud so if you delete something from iCloud it will delete it from all devices.
Old conversations actually used to be the worst offender for some users - it included all media sent or received in those conversations which could be really hard to track down.
What's stopping you deleting photos and videos, or even whole albums in the app? Or syncing photos off and deleting on sync?
Anyway, I'd genuinely be interested in how Android or Android apps solve his problem in better ways.
For a lot of the other issues, it seems like this is a problem with the apps though, not the OS. If Facebook or a podcast app is hogging space, it's up to the app to provide options to manage it's data.
Android has an overview by app where you can a) delete the app entirely, b) delete the app's data entirely or c) delete the app's cache. C solves most issues described here.
Why doesn't it delete / trim the caches automatically? If they are safe to be deleted by the user at any time, the device itself should be clever enough to clear the space.
Apple's Photo app's interactions are so incredibly broken that is nigh impossible to figure out how to properly remove photos from a service without accidentally deleting them across all devices you own.
Heh, I'm a programmer, and I'm scared to touch anything in that app :)
Yes, that page is very simple, and very wrong. On my mom's iPad and iPhone, the app numbers on the storage page simply don't add up. Many gigabytes of space are unaccounted for, yet unusable. As far as I can tell the only way to recover the space is a factory reset, and it's only a temporary fix.
Tbf, my last phone(Xperia Z5) did the same thing - it would show me that apps were taking ~22GB, but when you displayed them and actually added up the numbers it was about ~12GB. I actually went and uninstalled pretty much everything I could, and "apps" were still showing as using nearly 10GB. I only got it back after a full firmware reset.
On Android, you can install any random file manager and explore & clean the filesystem yourself (many apps litter on the virtual sdcard). There's also a DiskUsage app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...), that will scan the device and tell you, where are the files that take up the space and allows you to delete them.
Unfortunately iOS tends to group everything that's outside an app's container into a big lump that you have no permission to modify or even view to see what's taking up the space. Often the only solution is to perform a full wipe and restore from a backup.
Kind of exactly like “disable” on an android unless you know the magic incantation for your device to get a third party OS installed.
I deleted iTunes, music app, the games center, and other built-ins on my iPhone and I cannot re-open them again without reinstalling them, so this seems to do more than just remove the icon.
On my iPhone 4S Wi-Fi dies after 2 years and was not working since. Phone performance had been crippled by iOS7. Power button almost broke after 2-3 years (no click).
iPad also crippled by iOS7.
Friend bought iPhone7 and 7plus, 7 had broken GPS out of the box, 7plus had power and volume down buttons break down after several weeks of usage.
Not the ideal quality for sure, especially for that price tag.
I agree. Frustrating and clunky as the iPhone might be at times, it's relatively reliable and stable.
I'm quite happy to use Android on a tablet. It's far closer to a "traditional" operating system in terms of the amount of control you get over everything.
Although I've got to say, the headphone jack might be the last straw for me ... my iPhone SE could be my last iPhone if a reasonable alternative materialises ...
I like small and light phones so I bought an Xperia X Compact at the end of 2016. It's more or less the same form factor of the SE and it still works very well. Unfortunately its ticker (9.5 mm vs 7.6 mm) and it weights more (135 g vs 113 g). The Xperia Compact XZ1 from 2017 is 2 mm less tick but weights even more (140 g). If I could make me like iOS I would have got a SE immediately. The Compact is probably the best small phone in the Android world but I stopped researching phones. I'll start again when the Compact will be about to die. I hope it lasts at least as long as my old Galaxy S2, 5 years.
Same. I’m holding on to my 6s until its last breath. I replaced the battery recently and that boosted its performance back to launch-day levels, so I’ll probably keep chugging along for another two years at least.
I had a similar experience with a S7E but now have a Pixel 2 XL and that is the key. My Pixel is as smooth as an iPhone. Plus does not slow down over time.
In someways phones like the S7E give Android a bad name.
> Now 2 years in, on my 2nd, and never going back. Android tends to slowly slide into glitch land and demands you throw away your phone far more aggressively than iPhones do.
I doubt that an Android phone would become unusable in the first 2 years.
I have a Pixel 2 XL, alas the USB-C headphone adaptor died.
There's a request a support call button in settings, I pressed it and 2 mins later a native english speaker called me back, 12 minutes later (which included getting my address details), Google was express shipping a replacement from part which arrived 42 hours later (HK - Melbourne, Australia).
Googles business customer service never actually was bad. Guess that is why the price tag of the pixel isn't to bad because it allows them to serve quality service.
There's this meme that Google has terrible customer support that is years out of date. When you have a problem with a Google product that you actually paid for (like one of their hardware devices), experiences are generally good. I had a replacement Nexus 5X shipped with no problem, for instance.
Google only gives support for paid things. I was a Nexus user for years and always got good service. I'm in Project Fi now and the service there is excellent. Just try getting support for a Gmail bug, if you're not paying Google money for your phone.
And to be fair ... why would one expect customer service on a free product? Free Gmail is possible because, as a software product, it scales effectively infinitely with no marginal cost beyond increased data center utilization. But customer service requires real humans, with marginal costs too high for a free service. Customer service only scales by adding more reps, which has linearly increasing costs.
I think a reasonable expectation is that if you want customer service, you should actually be a paying customer (one way or the other).
Whenever someone complains about bad customer service, my response from now on is going to be "And how much are you paying for the product?"
The headphone jack is my only gripe with the Pixel 2 and it is a surprisingly big deal to me. The USB-C dongle is terrible. Easy to lose, doesn't work half the time requiring me to reboot the phone (lightning quick thankfully), stops working if the headphones get yanked out etc. I use my headphones almost every single day with my phone so it's a "big" (in the first world problem sense) deal to me. I love everything else about the phone, but I still kind of wish I bought something else.
I was an an android user for many years but switched to an iPhone about 10 months ago. I have three complaints with android which will stop me going back again:
1. It demands my attention too much. Updates, problems, weirdness, random crashes.
2. I don’t trust any android handset vendor to look after me. I’ve had a handset abandoned by the vendor before I’d even bought it despite assurances otherwise. A promise is worth nothing now.
3. Poor control of data collection and privacy. I feel like I am being milked constantly for my whereabouts and information.
1. Buy a flagship phone. My S7 hasn't crashed once since I got it over a year ago.
2. Buy a flagship phone (or get better laws? Pretty sure EU has laws against that sort of behavior).
3. Disable the 2 or 3 settings in Google Maps that make your phone ask those nosy questions [a].
1. I had a flagship from Samsung. It’s google’s Estate that is buggy as hell.
2. I’m in the UK. Forget it. We have good laws. Law should be a last resort but would have to be first call to get anything useful out.
3. And the 9,000,000 other places it does the same thing.
Honestly the last straw was when I was sitting down having a shit and it asked me to rate the public toilet and suggested taking a photo. So I did and for 6 months there was a picture of my excrement and a review on the Internet.
Except the update issue I always tell people the opposite, never ever buy a flagship. Usually they have bad screens (in terms of you always only see flagships breaking on a 1m fall) the added software usually is a mess compared to original Android software, should it break or decrease in efficiency you don't throw away something that was 800$.
There are a few good flagships I've seen. (namely most of Huawei) but there are also bad examples like all of Samsung.
If you ever had or know someone who had a J series you can easily tell those are less prown to issues and breaking compared to the S series.
My Google Pixel 1 sometimes crashes from overheating without any heavy program or weather happens. My Nexus 6P had the common issue of shutting down with 15-20% battery estimated (arguably not a crash but same UX).
I too have used iPhone for the entire smartphone trend so far, and I have been considering getting the Pixel 2 as well, mainly since I keep getting locked out of apple accounts, having weird issues on my device with every new iOS update and the fact I'm basically 99% Google eco system now also with Google photo's, things just seem to work far better and with less friction on Google.
I was afraid of the bad quality devices from the past android days, but so far from what I have seen the Pixel seems to hold up.
Yep, exactly the spot I was in. There's definitely been some passing phases of anxiety over whether I've made a huge mistake. :-) But my digital world hasn't collapsed yet, and things are looking good.
I was in this situation also. I had an iPhone6s (and 3 iphones previously) and after the iOS11 updates it started breaking badly. I had to restart it regularly, the experience of playing music/podcasts in my car became almost unusable and I have a long commute.
At that point I started considering Android. I prefer google maps and google play music over apple music. iTunes on the PC is one of the absolute worst things I've ever used.
I just wanted to use my phone without it being annoying and being able to choose default apps was something I'd always envied about Android.
I bought a Pixel2 XL a few months ago. So far it has been great. I don't use facebook on my phone so the possible privacy issues with that weren't a deal breaker.
The notification system is amazing compared to iOS and I get to decide which apps are defaults. Those two things are my favorite things about it. So far the phone has stayed out of my way and I'm happy.
This is my first Android phone. We'll see how it goes long term, but I'm happy I switched today. I'm not against going back, but if my current experience continues I won't.
Apple has great hardware and a (I think) better privacy policy, but the software experience eventually pushed me away. The one exception here is the podcast app on iPhone. I miss it, but haven't taken the time to look for 3rd party podcast apps on the Android (I'm using Google Play Music).
I used to make Android phones and I stopped using our own product after having been a hardcore Android user from the beginning. Had the first Android device that came out, rooted and rooted and rooted after that and built lots of apps for various companies until I got into building the actual OS.
The reason I stopped using our Android product at that time was because of the spyware. I even built a nice backend to host, browse and manage the so called telemetry we collected. Now I dont use Android because Google and I simply don't trust any Android vendor.
I have an iPhone SE because it has a headphone jack. But if the SE 2 doesn't have a headphone jack then this will be my last iPhone. My son wants to replace his iPhone, he's just waiting to see if the SE 2 has a headphone jack as well, or he will be switching to Android.
Some of us like being able to charge our phone and use it to listen to music in our cars using the AUX input of our car stereos. Plus have a wider choice of headphones that don't require constant charging.
And No, a dongle to get lost or broken is not an acceptable compromise.
I own iPhone 5, which is not getting iOS updates anymore. Still works ok though, but the main issue I have with that design is it gets dust on the camera lenses inside the phone case (I don't use extra case). I have replaced it twice in the Apple Store because of the dust, but the last time my 3-month warranty expired before I got sufficient amount of it. Then I bought a repair kit to clean it but managed to crack the glass opening the case, not much but annoying. And in a few weeks there was dust on the lenses again. So I decided to switch to SE and went to Apple Store to have a look on it and guess what, there was dust on the SE lenses right in the store! Well, it's time to switch anyway, so maybe putting some plugs on headphone and lightning jacks would help. Buying Apple Care warranty is actually a good idea for this case, because you can get a new phone every 3-4 months so you don't need to worry about your battery health.
> Apple may have been first movers, but everyone is following.
Well, Google is following, but while Google is the software maker behind Android, they don't own the only, or even biggest, hardware business in that ecosystem. Samsung, OTOH, responded by keeping the jack and bundling higher quality wired headsets than the basic ones everyone used to bundle, but then Samsung also has removable storage on all their flagships, and, on one of flagship line, a stylus, so they pretty clearly aren't on board with the Apple “progress means dropping features” approach.
For headphones you can use that adapter (fiddly) or a 3rd party dongle, or buy something like the ATH-M50x with BAL-M50 bluetooth adapter, which was my daily driver and I loved it (until they got nicked :( )
Just tried checking that out, but apparently it is "Currently Unavailable". Thanks for the recommendation though.
But in any event, it is just something else needing charging, and it isn't only in the car. The headphone jack costs pennies and is universal.
Scrapping it in order to encourage people to buy your Airpods is not simply not good enough - especially for those of us who simply can't wear in-ear buds.
That wasn't the only reason they scrapped it. There is a good argument to be made that the 3.5mm was a redundant port because lightning/USB C are both capable of sending audio (with the assistance of an adapter until lightning/USB C headphones are more common).
I'm thinking of going from android to iPhone for privacy reasons. But, whenever I hold an iPhone that list of notification puts me off, in android they are grouped, meaning 3 new exchange mails is 1 notification, I can pull on the notification to expand the 3 and then even more for every email. Short replies can be done inline in the notification even. I use that constantly. You can also swipe away a notification group. In iOS apparently everything is one notification, that really increases the amount of work handling them significantly.
I did try google-less Lineage [0], but it's pain. Installing and keeping apps up to date is more work and some apps don't have notifications.
So for now I'm on lineage with the nano Gapps package.
I am curious though, with android I can easily ssh into my server, and make tunnels (use it as proxy), use vnc etc. Can you also do that with iOS?
I've been a Panic Prompt user for as long as it's been out, but it's always left me missing something. I wasn't aware of Blink, but plan on checking it out now.
I don't see how Apple is better with privacy. I get it's a big part of their marketing, but it's.... marketing.
Phone still comes with siri, with apps you can't remove, with location tracking.
Apple cloud is, as all clouds, you giving away your data to Apple, so you end up having to trust them blindly.
I know it's not part of their business model so far, but they still collect and own a lot of your data.
As long as a phone comes with apps you can't remove (either if it is from google, apple or whatever manufacturer), I don't see how it can be trusted.
Apple is "better with privacy" because Apple's model is to have you pay for things with your money instead of with your personal data.
If you really have a difficult time distinguishing any difference between Apple's and Google's business models, I don't know how to even begin explaining to you.
I'm not speaking about business model but about privacy. That's two totally different subjects. I agree on the business model part, but it doesn't make apple better than google on privacy. Apple still own a lot of your data gathered through the app installed.
If you want to use a smartphone, you basically get to decide who you trust more with the device that holds a lot of your digital life: Apple or Google. I know how Apple makes its money, and I know how Google makes its money. This makes the decision very, very easy.
Your argument basically is "yeah, I know one of these companies is already actively exploiting my data for profit and the other isn't, but hypothetically they might some day in the future so that means they're indistinguishable from each other today". Which makes it close to impossible to treat you as arguing honestly and in good faith.
I use neither of those and host my own services, but I know I'm a control freak on that.
My point is that an object that you don't control can't be trusted for privacy, that's all. Both iphones and stock android phone fits in this category, you don't control any of those.
Edit :
If Apple change it's business model and decide to use the data gathered, what do you do?
It's exactly the problem of privacy, having control of the data you consider private. Controlling data over time is a really important part.
Apple probably made like $500 selling me an iPhone X. If they sell my data, I won't buy another one. I guess I'm stuck trusting capitalism in that I think Apple would rather keep making $500 every couple years than $50 once.
What? You can completely disable siri, remove almost all apps (excluding phone, clock and stuff like that) and completely disable location tracking. Also, you can use it without logging into icloud, or disable sync.
You can do exactly the same on an android phone packed with google apps (I'm not sure if you can pass the login process without a google account though), but by default it's not like this.
In both situation, the apps aren't really removed if I'm not mistaken.
If I'm also not mistaken, you have the obligation to use the apple store to install app, so the app you are using are tracked. Even installing an app can give some very personal information (depending on the app of course).
Grouping notifications is something that iOS can do, but it's up to the app to do it and most don't.
I don't see why you couldn't SSH into your server with the right iOS app. Not sure how easy it will be to use it as a proxy, but there are VPN apps on iOS so I imagine it's possible.
iOS won't let an app keep a socket open very long once it's out of the foreground. (In generally backgrounding on iOS is unreliable. It's a double-edged sword: it keeps rogue or badly written apps from burning down your battery.) People who do a lot of SSHing generally use something like screen on a remote host.
(Actually, using something like Blink and mosh seems like a better idea. See some of the comments below.)
> I don't see why you couldn't SSH into your server with the right iOS app. Not sure how easy it will be to use it as a proxy, but there are VPN apps on iOS so I imagine it's possible.
Prompt by Panic is the best one I've tried; I run most of my sessions inside tmux, so they persist on disconnect.
I feel like the pros and cons of iPhone vs Android phones are pretty well known and stable now. I feel like we've had this discussion with the same comments a dozen times before. It all comes down to their business model and design philosophies.
I think the most important thing is not be too locked into one device. If possible, try others for a couple of months at least.
On a side note, I really wish Jolla were more successful. We really need a third option.
I've used stock Android, and yes, I'd call it buggier than iOS. It's much less fluid and apps often just stop responding completely. It's not terrible, but in my experience it's just been worse than iOS overall.
7.1, I believe? I guess you can't call it stock, since it was LineageOS 14.1, but it's close enough. If you're being picky I've used actual "stock" Android Marshmallow and it's had the same issues.
I've managed to destroy my Pixel 2 a few days ago, and for the time being switched to an iPhone 6.
Some of the difficulties I'm having are due to habits or not knowing how to do stuff in iOS, but all in all, the Pixel 2 and latest Android are so good, iOS really feels like a step backwards. It used to be more polished than Android, but that's not true anymore as well. It just feels clunky and primitive compared to the Pixel.
As a long time Android user and current pixel owner I wonder about how well Android does with degraded hardware. My Pixel has not only gotten slower and slower but the battery life is horrible. Yes, I use the phone all the time but it's really bad. Aside - I wonder if the crappy boxer email app required by work is a source of pain.
I don't see iPhone user's charge their phones as much as I do, or carry around an external battery pack like I do.
I develop on Macs, and really like using iOS devices. The iPad is my tablet of choice.... But I've always stuck with Android phones, since the G1 (and a lot of jokes at the time).
I think it's because the app interoperability was designed in from the start, something that only appeared gradually in iOS.
I find a lot of value in workflow companion apps. So when I get a text message, it gets archived to Gmail with a label so it's searchable. And every incoming/outgoing/missed call puts an entry with the details and timestamp in my calendar, so I can look back for reference.
> So when I get a text message, it gets archived to Gmail with a label so it's searchable. And every incoming/outgoing/missed call puts an entry with the details and timestamp in my calendar, so I can look back for reference.
With iOS, these all get synced across your devices through Continuity. They're not really searchable because Apple hasn't figured out a way to do search right, but they're there.
> hen I get a text message, it gets archived to Gmail with a label so it's searchable. And every incoming/outgoing/missed call puts an entry with the details and timestamp in my calendar
What? I have used Android phones for many years and had no idea that is possible. Teach me your ways!
I found two apps a while ago which have been pretty reliable.
One is Backup to Gmail [1] for the text messages. The other one is called Calltrack for the calendar things.
It's nice to have it all integrated and searchable inside Gmail and Google Calendar.
[1] Just checked the Play store, and I think it's called SMS Backup+ now. There are a few alternatives too...
Speaking of app interoperability, I can never go back to ios simply because I have an app called gentle alarm that plays a shuffled playlist from my music app to wake me up in the morning. After all these years, ios still doesn't give access to users music, and there's no way to set a playlist for built in alarms.
One of the author's frustrations is actually already present in iOS:
> There’s a super-easy clear all link which is fantastic and hits at my #1 pet peeve w/ iOS’s design: the iOS notifications give me more work to do, not less
If you force touch on the topmost (x) in the iOS notification dropdown, you get an option to clear all notifications.
However, I only recently discovered this myself, after using each iOS since beta 1, so it's not exactly a discoverable feature.
Apple has always done this, and it's frustrating. Another good example is how they've always only had one mouse button on desktop, because they claimed that having two or more was too complicated for users.
Well ... the problem is that having more than one button is actually useful, and when the buttons are hardware buttons at least they are discoverable. Instead, there's lots of functionality hidden behind Control-clicking and Option-clicking and maybe more that is very hard to discover on your own (and this goes back to the pre-OS X days even).
Force touch is similar in that the overall discoverable interface is too simple, and then the added functionality on top of that is way too hidden.
Thank you kind sir! The force touch (x) is a god send and I never knew about it. I was just grumbling to myself yesterday about having to hit all these X's.
My biggest issue with the iPhone is all the hidden force touch controls that are never taught. I've had 3 different android phones and always come back to iphone.
I got an iPhone X after having a 6+ (and several others back to the second-gen iPhone, the 3G). I immediately turned off Force Touch.
I find the cognitive load of having three unknown things happen at any time (touch, long touch, force touch, plus who knows whatever else kind of touch they may have) way, way too high, and the value non-existent.
It was also nearly impossible for me to know what did what, or how to get a long-touch separated from a force-touch.
I would be 100% content if Force Touch entirely disappeared. I don't see the problem it addresses and experienced first hand problems it causes. Example: I could hardly figure out how to move apps around in springboard (or whatever the home screen is called these days) or cancel apps in the task switcher with it on.
Maybe I'm a luddite, but I would really have preferred an iPhone 6+ "v2" with the same CPU and camera as the iPhone X - but none of the other stuff it brought (like color-changing OLED screen, nigh unusable Face ID, lack of a 3.5mm audio port). But, when your boss generously gives you an iPhone X it would be disrespectful not to use it.
My Mom who is 77, has had a few Androids. Always calling her Sons to help fix her phone. She bought cheap phones for a couple of hundred dollars, but always limited the Ram, but had plenty of storage.
WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook would constantly fill it up and many times you'd have to clear out all the apps, clear the storage on the phone, etc, etc. Then I would have to explain to her that whilst she had a 64GB Sim, none of the Apps could be installed on there, etc, etc. She's not technical enough to understand what Google does on each update. She just wants a working phone.
Now before I get replies. My time is mission critical, I can't spend 1 hour debugging a phone and talking to someone who just wants to use a device as non-technical as possible as anything complicated with be forgotten.
I made her get an iPhone 6. Installed all her favoriate apps and waited. Never heard from her again.
She's 77, calls all over the world, has all her friends on messager and whatsApp, she uses grammerly and surfs the web and even navigates via GPS using google maps.
The Phone. Just works.
I. Being the technical one in the family. Gets left alone LOL.
In the family, 3 of Us have an iPhone. 2, Dad and 1 brother have an Android. All they have is problems, but they are too stubborn to get an iPhone. Oh well...
My wife once bought an 8 GB iPhone 4, and regretted it pretty much immediately. That was a horrible experience, and I was stunned that apple would sell such a thing.
So far I've learned it pans out this way for iOS devices:
- 16 GB: the bare minimum for any sort of user. Don't expect to be taking a lot of pictures or use a lot of apps without a lot of storage twiddling.
- 32 GB: fine for regular app use, avoid if you want to take a lot of pictures. I find this to be the sweet spot for coffee table iPads.
- 64 GB: the baseline for people who take a lot of pictures and videos. Anything less and there's too much storage management involved.
The number of people who discover this too late is absurd, and the fact that you can't jam a MicroSD in the iPhone, even if only for photo storage, is still incredibly dumb.
I had a 16GB iPhone 6 for years, and when I went to upgrade to an iPhone 8 recently, I was upset that the 16GB wasn't an option anymore. I have no need for 64GB of storage (the new minimum on the 8), because my phone is a phone, not a computer.
Android itself takes up 9GB on my Pixel 2. 4.7GB is taken up by the apps and whatever they are storing (Chrome takes up the most, with 1GB). I also have 4GB in music.
I don't consider myself a heavy storage user but 16GB is a really easy bar to cross.
It's because the hardware isn't any cheaper for Apple to have manufactured. They still arbitrarily inflate the prices, which makes it seem like 16gb would be much cheaper to manufacture than 64gb, but that is only a facade.
Sounds like you just needed to buy Mom an Android device with decent storage - and/or maybe a "flagship" device that isn't left hung out to dry.
I too have family with shitty Androids. My Mom runs an iPhone 5 that is so far behind she's afraid to update it at this point (holding out for new iPhone) I also have family with flagship Android devices - completely different exp.
> and/or maybe a "flagship" device that isn't left hung out to dry.
I think you are missing the point there. She's on a fixed income.
The iPhone 6 is on contract. When she got it, it was £0 down and £17.99 a month. Compared that to a much higher costs per month for a flagship phone.
Not only that, once the 2 years has been up. She'll just get another contract and an iPhone 8. Rinse and repeat and she'll always have a decent iPhone. It doesn't need to be the best one.
Also, she isn't a power user. A flagship phone is completely wasted on her.
Not sure what a 64GB _sim_ is? Did you mean a memory card? Or is it some funky US thing I haven't heard about before. Sim cards here have marginal storage at best.
But to the point: Glad to hear that her situation improved when going from a $200 to a $800 phone (or whatever those cost), but I wonder what the story had been if she had gone to a $800 Android instead - with e.g. 128GB of internal storage.
> My time is mission critical, I can't spend 1 hour debugging a phone and talking to someone who just wants to use a device as non-technical as possible as anything complicated with be forgotten.
This is off topic and the stuff of downvotes, but you're not talking about "someone," you're talking about your mother. I value my time as much as the next developer, but I would hope to never be so busy that I can't take an hour to help one of my parents, and I would encourage anyone who feels similarly to consider their priorities if they can't take an hour for a loved one - assuming, of course, that you have a good relationship with your mom.
> but you're not talking about "someone," you're talking about your mother.
You are exactly right. Of course I help her with other issues whenever I can. But when an issue comes up again and again and again and it becomes a contentious issue because of the "phone". Not only that, when relatives from abroad want to communicate and they can't because of an app that is failing. The whole thing becomes a more serious issue. Something had to change.
Now there are no problems. In fact, she does more things with this phone than other before. Like facetime-ing, etc. She says it's just so much easier to use than before.
You are certainly right, but I concur with the author - it's not the time for your mother, it's the valuable time stolen from you and your mother by a device, demanding the regular maintenance.
You give them a poor android with 16Go at max, and on the other way give them an iphone with 64Go and yes you can install application on the SD, if you paid for a correct phone.
The phone just works apply the same with Android users regarding Iphone users.
It's always funny to read these stories because I also got tired of the cheap android phones that filled up instantly. Bought a 400€ Nokia and everything just works meanwhile all my friends iphones have all kinds of problems with the hardware
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 342 ms ] threadThe 6s's crappy camera made me decide it was time to upgrade to something with a good camera, and I was able to get a Pixel 2 for way less than an iPhone 8 so that's the route I took. If the cost was around the same I would have stuck with iPhone for the wireless charging.
Can’t wait to go back to be honest. Part of the problem was that iOS 11 was super buggy at the beginning. That really soured me to start and I haven’t found anything particularly worth changing my mind over since.
Things I like:
* typing feels much nicer, no lag in character input
* phone runs much cooler, does not make hand sweaty to hold
* far fewer random freezes or lag
* password management much better by default, every app with important information has faceid which is quite nice
* I prefer the photos taken by the iPhone camera
* I find tethering on iPhone works more consistently
Things I don’t like:
* no back button
* some Google apps for iOS don’t seem as good as their android counterparts. YouTube app keeps getting buggy updates, Inbox still doesn’t support full iPhone X screen.
* Prefer Android’s notification system
* A bunch of apps have video playback issues, I suspect there’s an OS level bug
Google is simply sabotaging iOS with all of that. There's no way Google can't afford to pay developers to fix that. They just want to annoy people. My solution was to quit as many Google services as I could.
This is huge for me. I feel like every Android phone has some kind of lag when typing and scrolling. It's really annoying me to the point of sticking with iOS even thought I'd love to switch to Android.
Apps are more consistent, and generally better designed. Wider range of apps, far less crap.
Restrictions on background tasks and what apps are allowed to do mean a couple of things I had on Android can't be duplicated on iOS (eg a WiFi signal strength thing - no huge loss)
Apple focus on privacy, along with granular app notification and data restrictions are marvellous, as is the way apps request permissions, and it just works. Apps make less of a land grab as a result. Android was still fundamentally broken in that area when I left.
iOS feels slicker than any version of Android despite clearly having some feature-itis and clumsiness (e.g. timestamps on SMS and iMessage are hidden off screen). Android isn't free of this, but never feels (across multiple versions of Android) like they put much thought into joining it all up apart from joining up data harvesting of course.
Trivia: iTunes is a mess, but it does what you need. iOS still lacks a dark mode that I would really prefer. SE keeps a headphone socket so all is well with the world. :)
No intention of going back to Android.
This is one of the reasons I also ditched Android for an iPhone.
And here's something that should make people go "WTF?!" that I read recently here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16871340
I had an HTC Hero, an HTC Desire and a Galaxy Nexus before I jumped to the iPhone. I forked out more than I normally would have for a phone when I bought my Galaxy Nexus under the assumption that it would receive regular OS updates being a Nexus device. Nope; stuck on Android 4.3 and was eventually forced to install a glitchy 4.4 custom ROM. There were never any decent ROMs for later Android versions so I gave up on the whole platform.
The way that I put it is that the iPhone is a better smart phone; Android is a better pocket computer. If you want something which is basically a small communications device, which does one thing at a time & gets out of your way, then you probably want an iPhone. If you want a flexible, capable device which does many different things and respects your choices, then you want Android.
Things I like about iOS: on brand-new hardware, it feels snappier than Android on similarly brand-new hardware; the experience within a single app is less distracting.
Things I like about Android: real Firefox; headphone jacks; ability to sideload apps; open source apps; back button; task switching; less lock-in (iCloud, I’m looking at you); doesn’t make me want to chuck the phone at a wall after using it for three minutes.
I trust Apple more than Google, but I trust me even more than Apple, and with Android I can have a mostly Google-free existence, while with an iPhone I cannot have an Apple-free existence. For me, the choice is easy.
My two issues with iOS: - Siri is absolute trash. I've given up on using it for text messages. Even when just using it for timers it fucks up. It's basically a 50/50 chance it will interpret things like "3 and a half minutes" as "3 to a half minutes". Whenever it does this it then says something like "I don't understand what time you want". I literally never had Google mess up a timer. - Apple insistence on making you use their apps has gotten better, but it's still annoying. I still run into cases where it tries to open links in Safari (my default browser is chrome) or open directions in Maps ( I use Google maps).
Outside of those things I really love iOS.
My biggest reasons for switching was horrid privacy controls on Android(which have improved since I left) and device degrading rates. Every Android phone or tablet I owned would slow down terribly and have a noticeable dip in battery quality within 1 1/2 years. It was like clockwork. Luckily this hasn't been the case for me on iOS. I will hit the two year mark with this phone in the summer and it's still running and holding a charge like the day I got it. I used to get a new phone every two year religiously but this is the first time I am going wait it out.
At the time I switched (Nexus 5) there were abundant issues with the Android OS from a memory leak issue that required rebooting the phone periodically to design flaws such as Android's UI rendering de-prioritization. Much lower quality of apps in general. Much worse customer service experience (you can't just walk into an Apple store and get an issue fixed). Much worse hardware quality (part of the reason I switched back was because the Nexus 5 charging port stopped working and started emitting smoke. For a while i was charging purely through the Qi charger. I've never had an iPhone break on me, and any other issues were always resolved for free at the Apple store) Not sure if these are fixed, but I cannot switch back as it's basically impossible to use Android without Google services and consolidating all my data with Google. If google wants me to give me data they're going to have to pay me more.
The vast majority of people can't do that anyhow due to the rarity of Apple stores. For example there are two on the island of Ireland, for a population of seven million.
Most people have to get the i-devices fixed by a third-party just like they do with Android.
I can’t imagine it’s gotten any better.
But if you want to play the latest games , install your bank's app or use voice agent then you'll need Google Play and an account.
Yes it's possible, but i wouldn't call it a "high quality android experience"
I have an iPhone 6S+, and it works almost flawlessly - animation is still good, very few app glitches, and even the original battery is in decent shape.
I'd like to hear how Androids from that era fare compared to iPhones from that era - because I plan on having my next phone for at least this long.
What I am trying to say is that it's not easy to compare android with iOS because of all the devices. There aren't many Samsung Sx devices still alive from that time, yet my (never heard of) oppo still does a great job
I replaced my battery and the phone sped way up. Unfortunately, after the battery replacement, the new battery health UI doesn't work, saying it can't communicate w/ the battery.
I can write an older version of this review, so it may be a bit out of date now. I owned the iPhone 1, 3g, 4, 4s, got tired of waiting for a larger less expensive phone, and moved to Android. I had the HTC One X, Nexus 4, and Nexus 5 (also a Nexus 7 tablet). I move back to the iPhone for the 6, and have had the 6s, 7+, and now the X.
The One X was almost a disaster that forced me to switch back. As soon as I had to deal with carrier and HTC crap, I immediately thought mistake but made it work and decided to never get another non-Google Android phone.
IMO, Google hit a sweet spot with the Nexus line because they were priced well and performed well. I had nagging issues with them, but for the price I dealt with them. The build quality was also not quite the same as the iPhone, but again at that price they were great. On my value recommendation quite a few friends left their iPhones and gave the Nexus line a shot (all have since moved back to the iPhone).
My main issues were around performance, camera quality, general quirks (a google process would randomly spin out of control causing the phone to really heat up and be fully out of battery in about 10 minutes). If I didn't notice this happening, then I would end up with no phone until I charged again. This issue along with Google moving the price up near flagship is what caused me to look at the iPhone again (I can write an entire other rant about how Google destroyed my perfectly working N7 with an update).
I looked at some of the other manufacture flagship Android phones and IMHO, none are worth the flagship pricing. The build quality is just not the same as with the iPhone at that price. And since Google decided to go flagship also, I decided to give the iPhone a shot again. Once back on the iPhone, only then I realized how much I took for granted all the things that just worked. At this point, I doubt I'll ever try Android again. iMessage, Continuity, my Apple Watch, etc... all rely on the iPhone now. Plus, I think my point is still true that even the latest Pixel2XL screen is not as nice looking at the screen on my X. I've looked at the them side by side and even the Android people in the office agree.
I'm sure someone will come along and say I'm an idiot and Android is the best thing ever (I'm sure it is for a lot of people), but you asked for opinions from someone who used both extensively :)
I just exchanged an older Samsung Galaxy S-line phone with a new Nokia with Android One, and it's the best Android experience I ever had.
¹ really HMD
This is a curious point, especially considering the recent FB Android app revelations about lots and lots of things the phone was doing that nobody realised, things that cannot happen on iOS due to stricter privacy enforcement.
I suppose no month is complete without an iOS/Android flame war, but hopefully that won't happen here. For what it's worth, smart phones are all pretty darn awesome and if there is one key distinguishing factor that seems to persist across generations of devices, it's privacy and security, of which Apple is far different. If that doesn't matter to you, pick a year, any year, and you will find one or the other platform to offer features that the other lacks.
> it's privacy and security, of which Apple is far different
I simply don't trust Google to act in my interests when it comes to use of very private data by them or how their operating system permits use of that data.
Frankly, I think Android is great. I love myriad things about it:
- Set a default e-mail app
- Set a default browser that isn't Safari (my kingdom to use Firefox Mobile with all of its attendant add-ins on my iPhone)
- Put icons wherever I want, like the author mentions
- A WILDLY better--in my opinion--notification system, again like the author mentions
- Themes, widgets, and other customizations
- Automation with things like Tasker
- Background tasks
I'm gonna stop here because I could keep going for much longer. But the point remains that my iPhone and iPad do 90% of what I want on a day-to-day basis and I'm used to the quirks and, more importantly, Apple has shown a propensity to keep what it knows about me primarily on my own devices or, when actually transmitted to Apple, under much more restrictive policies than Google has.
I'd love it of Apple could do both, the astounding customization of Android with the privacy and security features of iOS. But maybe you don't get one with the other for some inherent reason. I'm not sure, so I stick with the one in which I'm more confident.
That's bad
As an example, if you monitor biomedical sensors on your body, the app needs a way to reliably run in the background without being shot down.
Someone should redesign them, someone should rewrite OS support for them, and someone should pay for all that?
- Data is needed for real time alerting features for the user (e.g. low blood glucose).
- Data needs to be uploaded to cloud services in real time so carers have access to that data so they can also be alerted.
Both of these requirements require timely access to data. A delay can mean the difference between no real impact and "this user is now in hospital".
I find it interesting how you can't expand your horizon to see that these features are useful to somebody that's not you.
Yep, I'm definitely being careful. E.g., not installing Facebook or Messenger. I guess I _do_ have more confidence in Apple's dedication to privacy and security. Even with their recent security lapses in MacOS.
My experience with Chromebooks gave me a lot of confidence in Google's understanding of security and privacy.
No lots of people realized them, and lots of people have been talking about them for years just no one really payed attention until now.
When you install FB or any other app you get a nice list of things the App is allowed to do, if you do not want the app to do those things you should not install the app.
The problem is most people simply ignore this list and click "install" with out questioning why a Flashlight app would need access to your call history...
With Android the user is in control, Some/Most people can not handle that responsibility.
For a person that is concerned about privacy, Using facebook at all seems counter intuitive...
For me while I do supports Apple's take on user privacy, I do not support their Business Practices of being rabidly anti-repair, anti-ownership, and anti-consumer. It is my device not Apple's, the the fact that Apple wants completely control over a device have I bought from them for about $1,000 is a non-starter for me, I can control my privacy in other ways I do not need my phone OS to do that for me.
This is actually a fairly recent change to Android. It did not used to provide you with these choices. It demonstrates that user privacy is a bit of an afterthought with Android.
For Apple, these kinds of user choices have been there since the start.
If you continue to install those apps you only have yourself to blame IMO
I have all kinds of apps that do not do this, only asking for permissions they need
> You declare that your app needs a permission by listing the permission in the app manifest and then requesting that the user approve each permission at runtime (on Android 6.0 and higher).
> Beginning with Android 6.0 (API level 23), users can revoke permissions from any app at any time
[0] https://developer.android.com/training/permissions/requestin...
if by "recent" you mean "almost since the beginning" then sure.
The app permissions system has gotten better over time, more fine grained, ability to deny permissions while still install the app, and other features, but the basic list of "if you install this app it gets X access" has been there for a long long time, v2 or v3 if I remember correctly
I do not believe the first version if iOS has the ability to reject specific permissions either.
Then it just got progressively slower with crappier battery life. Switched to a different Android phone (from a Galaxy to an Xperia, and then a newer generation Galaxy).
Back to iPhone now. Will probably never get Android again.
- The phone is too smart. E.g. it transforms your voice messages into text messages which is magic but also pings you after you visit something "Hey, wanna rate the store you just visited?" "Hey, you took pictures of this place today, wanna share them?".
- The pictures are outstanding, particularly in low light. The portrait mode works much better than on the iPhone X.
- Third-party apps are not as polished, e.g. Instagram Stories do not work well.
- The design is good but placement of the buttons is awful. After a month I was still shutting down my phone while taking a picture because you can press on the volume button to shoot which is right next to the power button.
- Project Fi is perfect (the price is the only downside I've found and it is a subjective argument) and should have an Apple counterpart, not only Apple SIM on the iPad.
All in all I liked it and it was great to go back to Android for a month, but I went back to the iPhone. I have an Apple ecosystem and the iPhone is just too well integrated to leave it. It feels like the Pixel is one of the few Google hardware devices that is not an experiment but Apple offers me an entire ecosystem that is coherent and enjoyable for my daily life.
Lol, yeah, that's taken some getting used to. I bet they did that so that the phone would work smoothly in the VR headset. It is supported on the left side edge, and doesn't work the other way around because the buttons get pressed.
Funny, I always hated this. I could never figure out just where the back button would take me.
There are too many contexts where "back" doesn't make sense or have a single meaning to make including it as a hard button rather than in the app chrome a good decision.
iPhone might not be latest and greatest. But the overall package is better. Definitely not perfect - I've experienced a disabled Phone app on iPhone where I would not have been able to call 911 had I needed it - but all my i-devices have been glitch resistant in a way none of my Android devices ever were.
It was about 6 month ago and I could not be more happy. I have phone that just works, never glitched, not once in 6 months, never sttutered with animation or anything. Yes, it is less extensible, has less options, but actually I like that now better. I wan`t it to work good, work well and be reliable.
One major additional benefit is that I use iPhone less than Android phone, and it spams and pings me less. At first iPhone, notifications felt overly simplistic, but now I love them. There are no permanent notifications/icons that some android app can put there, and I can just scroll from the lock screen and see without clicking/opening everything that happened. Also, I can disable every notification/spam per app, disabled all bubbles (red circle numbers over app icons) except for messaging apps. This way I feel that I don`t expect dopamine dose from my phone, and I use it only when I really need something.
You can do this on Android as well
>> Nexus started to glitch like any other Android top phone after 1 year of use ... 6 month ago and I could not be more happy. I have phone that just works, never glitched
hmmm, Anyone else see a issue with these 2 statements?
You can also disable notifications per app on Android.
I think a high end Android phone is going to be very similar to an iPhone. Personally, I like the Pixel's camera better, I think it has a better touch id to unlock, the voice assistant is much better, and there is a better integration with Google maps in my experience. All that, plus I can root my phone if I need to.
Google Photos doesn't seem to have this.
Notes also works really nicely for loads of stuff.
When you open the Photos app on iOS you have a beautiful map with clustered thumbnails.
http://tinyimg.io/i/d4DRgIT.png
http://tinyimg.io/i/0lVO6KC.png
It's useful enough that I could find out the exact spot I slept by the river Seine years ago based on scrolling around Berlin on the map for 5 minutes until I found the photo, taken several years ago on a completely different iPhone, then go back there recently and recreate the picture.
You're taking too many photos. Honestly ask yourself, how often do you go back and look at old photos? Maybe you do, but for me, I realized that I never do. So I stopped taking them.
I had plenty of problems answering phone calls on my iPhone -- it would be glitchy and unresponsive and I'd miss calls.
Even more annoying about the iPhone is the always growing "Other" space on the phone. I was constantly short on disk space with no way of knowing what the cause was or how to clean it up.
The bluetooth stack would crash every week disconnecting all my bluetooth devices temporarily. Very annoying when you have a smartwatch.
My wife's iPhone screen doesn't turn off after she uses Siri sometimes -- it'll just say on all night long.
The entire iPhone 6 (non-S) line was total garbage. Tons of people bought these and had nothing but problems.
My point isn't so much to rag on iPhones -- they're actually really solid devices -- and I highly recommend them to non-technical users pretty much exclusively. They are hands down better than the vast majority of Android devices.
But I switched from iPhone to Android on this last cycle and couldn't be happier -- this article covers much of what's good about it. But I love the flexibility and a lot of little touches that iOS devices don't have. And I think all devices have different problems. My Android phone is not glitch free either.
1. Nagging for Apple paid services
2. Gestures changing every month and becoming increasingly complicated with small variations doing different things, inconsistent experience between iPad and iPhone
3. Audio jack
4. Anything that involves editing is a catastrophe. Selecting an element of a table on a web page or trying to copy the text of a link (not the url) is nearly impossible.
5. Auto correct introducing more errors than it corrects.
6. iTunes on Windows which is still the only way to sync my music to the iPhone is just completely broken.
Which is why I am tempted to move. I can see some candidates for an iPhone replacement but the iPad Pro 10.5 doesn’t seem to have any competitor (large-ish screen with high refresh rate).
Why would the phone's gesture controls change for you every month?
Was widely reported but never properly resolved, so that was the cue for replacement.
That's because they are dead.
Hm? There is a very simple Storage page in the Settings that shows you exactly how much storage each app is taking up (including things the app is storing) and it is ordered by size so you can immediately see what's using up your space and delete it if necessary. I have an old 16GB iPhone that is still chugging along after 7 years and is my daily phone but it is a bit lacking of space and this Storage area is a simple fix.
Yes, you can see which app takes how much space. Then what? There is no way to control or clean up that space. You can hope that an app has a setting somewhere that let's you delete old data, and that's it.
The biggest offender? Apple's own Photos app especially with iCloud and Photo Stream: there's exactly zero ways to make it give up space (unless you "want to delete photos from all connected devices")
- Offload Unused Apps
- Auto Delete Old Conversations
Or I can manually offload apps one by one.
I think you are referring to the iCloud Storage settings on the iPhone when talking about deleting photos from all connected devices.
Probably the confusion is because they decided to put two storages: General > iPhone Storage (managing local storage) and Accounts > iCloud > iCloud Storage.
The last one (iCloud Storage) manages the iCloud so if you delete something from iCloud it will delete it from all devices.
edit: formatting
And then you have stuff like "Photos X GB", "Facebook X GB" etc. There are no ways to control that.
Anyway, I'd genuinely be interested in how Android or Android apps solve his problem in better ways.
For a lot of the other issues, it seems like this is a problem with the apps though, not the OS. If Facebook or a podcast app is hogging space, it's up to the app to provide options to manage it's data.
Heh, I'm a programmer, and I'm scared to touch anything in that app :)
With iOS device, you can't really do that.
Lol, I had an "Other" folder for the growing set of iOS apps that I didn't use but couldn't delete.
Which actually means “hide the icon”.
I deleted iTunes, music app, the games center, and other built-ins on my iPhone and I cannot re-open them again without reinstalling them, so this seems to do more than just remove the icon.
iPad also crippled by iOS7.
Friend bought iPhone7 and 7plus, 7 had broken GPS out of the box, 7plus had power and volume down buttons break down after several weeks of usage.
Not the ideal quality for sure, especially for that price tag.
I'm quite happy to use Android on a tablet. It's far closer to a "traditional" operating system in terms of the amount of control you get over everything.
To me, no headphone jack means no phone.
In someways phones like the S7E give Android a bad name.
I doubt that an Android phone would become unusable in the first 2 years.
There's a request a support call button in settings, I pressed it and 2 mins later a native english speaker called me back, 12 minutes later (which included getting my address details), Google was express shipping a replacement from part which arrived 42 hours later (HK - Melbourne, Australia).
That's awesome on so many levels. Just having "call me i need your help" on the phone is so obvious and yet unexpected.
And then actually having strong customer support is ... ungoogle-like
wow
I think a reasonable expectation is that if you want customer service, you should actually be a paying customer (one way or the other).
Whenever someone complains about bad customer service, my response from now on is going to be "And how much are you paying for the product?"
1. It demands my attention too much. Updates, problems, weirdness, random crashes.
2. I don’t trust any android handset vendor to look after me. I’ve had a handset abandoned by the vendor before I’d even bought it despite assurances otherwise. A promise is worth nothing now.
3. Poor control of data collection and privacy. I feel like I am being milked constantly for my whereabouts and information.
No thanks.
[a] https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/161704/turn-off-...
2. I’m in the UK. Forget it. We have good laws. Law should be a last resort but would have to be first call to get anything useful out.
3. And the 9,000,000 other places it does the same thing.
Honestly the last straw was when I was sitting down having a shit and it asked me to rate the public toilet and suggested taking a photo. So I did and for 6 months there was a picture of my excrement and a review on the Internet.
There are a few good flagships I've seen. (namely most of Huawei) but there are also bad examples like all of Samsung.
If you ever had or know someone who had a J series you can easily tell those are less prown to issues and breaking compared to the S series.
I was afraid of the bad quality devices from the past android days, but so far from what I have seen the Pixel seems to hold up.
At that point I started considering Android. I prefer google maps and google play music over apple music. iTunes on the PC is one of the absolute worst things I've ever used.
I just wanted to use my phone without it being annoying and being able to choose default apps was something I'd always envied about Android.
I bought a Pixel2 XL a few months ago. So far it has been great. I don't use facebook on my phone so the possible privacy issues with that weren't a deal breaker.
The notification system is amazing compared to iOS and I get to decide which apps are defaults. Those two things are my favorite things about it. So far the phone has stayed out of my way and I'm happy.
This is my first Android phone. We'll see how it goes long term, but I'm happy I switched today. I'm not against going back, but if my current experience continues I won't.
Apple has great hardware and a (I think) better privacy policy, but the software experience eventually pushed me away. The one exception here is the podcast app on iPhone. I miss it, but haven't taken the time to look for 3rd party podcast apps on the Android (I'm using Google Play Music).
The reason I stopped using our Android product at that time was because of the spyware. I even built a nice backend to host, browse and manage the so called telemetry we collected. Now I dont use Android because Google and I simply don't trust any Android vendor.
I miss an alternative to iPhone...
From the top of my head:
- Jolla https://jolla.com/ only shares the drivers with Android - Replicant https://www.replicant.us/ only shares AOSP with Android, making this community project reputable in my eyes - Librem 5 https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ will share nothing with Android when it comes
The two issues with those is lesser hardware and app selection, but this is what happens to the third contender in the current situation.
Some of us like being able to charge our phone and use it to listen to music in our cars using the AUX input of our car stereos. Plus have a wider choice of headphones that don't require constant charging.
And No, a dongle to get lost or broken is not an acceptable compromise.
They look similar from a distance, so I hadn't thought about it. It was a pleasant surprise to see on the new phone.
Well, Google is following, but while Google is the software maker behind Android, they don't own the only, or even biggest, hardware business in that ecosystem. Samsung, OTOH, responded by keeping the jack and bundling higher quality wired headsets than the basic ones everyone used to bundle, but then Samsung also has removable storage on all their flagships, and, on one of flagship line, a stylus, so they pretty clearly aren't on board with the Apple “progress means dropping features” approach.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-SoundSync-Bluetooth-handsfree...
Anker do one now!
For headphones you can use that adapter (fiddly) or a 3rd party dongle, or buy something like the ATH-M50x with BAL-M50 bluetooth adapter, which was my daily driver and I loved it (until they got nicked :( )
But in any event, it is just something else needing charging, and it isn't only in the car. The headphone jack costs pennies and is universal.
Scrapping it in order to encourage people to buy your Airpods is not simply not good enough - especially for those of us who simply can't wear in-ear buds.
I did try google-less Lineage [0], but it's pain. Installing and keeping apps up to date is more work and some apps don't have notifications.
So for now I'm on lineage with the nano Gapps package.
I am curious though, with android I can easily ssh into my server, and make tunnels (use it as proxy), use vnc etc. Can you also do that with iOS?
[0] https://lineage.microg.org/
It offers in-app purchases for some subscription feature (https://www.termius.com/pricing ) but I've never needed or wanted them.
https://github.com/blinksh/blink
I know it's not part of their business model so far, but they still collect and own a lot of your data.
As long as a phone comes with apps you can't remove (either if it is from google, apple or whatever manufacturer), I don't see how it can be trusted.
If you really have a difficult time distinguishing any difference between Apple's and Google's business models, I don't know how to even begin explaining to you.
If you want to use a smartphone, you basically get to decide who you trust more with the device that holds a lot of your digital life: Apple or Google. I know how Apple makes its money, and I know how Google makes its money. This makes the decision very, very easy.
Your argument basically is "yeah, I know one of these companies is already actively exploiting my data for profit and the other isn't, but hypothetically they might some day in the future so that means they're indistinguishable from each other today". Which makes it close to impossible to treat you as arguing honestly and in good faith.
My point is that an object that you don't control can't be trusted for privacy, that's all. Both iphones and stock android phone fits in this category, you don't control any of those.
Edit : If Apple change it's business model and decide to use the data gathered, what do you do? It's exactly the problem of privacy, having control of the data you consider private. Controlling data over time is a really important part.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio...
If I'm also not mistaken, you have the obligation to use the apple store to install app, so the app you are using are tracked. Even installing an app can give some very personal information (depending on the app of course).
Grouping notifications is something that iOS can do, but it's up to the app to do it and most don't.
I don't see why you couldn't SSH into your server with the right iOS app. Not sure how easy it will be to use it as a proxy, but there are VPN apps on iOS so I imagine it's possible.
(Actually, using something like Blink and mosh seems like a better idea. See some of the comments below.)
Prompt by Panic is the best one I've tried; I run most of my sessions inside tmux, so they persist on disconnect.
I think the most important thing is not be too locked into one device. If possible, try others for a couple of months at least.
On a side note, I really wish Jolla were more successful. We really need a third option.
Some of the difficulties I'm having are due to habits or not knowing how to do stuff in iOS, but all in all, the Pixel 2 and latest Android are so good, iOS really feels like a step backwards. It used to be more polished than Android, but that's not true anymore as well. It just feels clunky and primitive compared to the Pixel.
I don't see iPhone user's charge their phones as much as I do, or carry around an external battery pack like I do.
I think it's because the app interoperability was designed in from the start, something that only appeared gradually in iOS. I find a lot of value in workflow companion apps. So when I get a text message, it gets archived to Gmail with a label so it's searchable. And every incoming/outgoing/missed call puts an entry with the details and timestamp in my calendar, so I can look back for reference.
With iOS, these all get synced across your devices through Continuity. They're not really searchable because Apple hasn't figured out a way to do search right, but they're there.
Now that's a cool trick. How exactly do you do that?
What? I have used Android phones for many years and had no idea that is possible. Teach me your ways!
It's nice to have it all integrated and searchable inside Gmail and Google Calendar.
[1] Just checked the Play store, and I think it's called SMS Backup+ now. There are a few alternatives too...
> There’s a super-easy clear all link which is fantastic and hits at my #1 pet peeve w/ iOS’s design: the iOS notifications give me more work to do, not less
If you force touch on the topmost (x) in the iOS notification dropdown, you get an option to clear all notifications.
However, I only recently discovered this myself, after using each iOS since beta 1, so it's not exactly a discoverable feature.
Well ... the problem is that having more than one button is actually useful, and when the buttons are hardware buttons at least they are discoverable. Instead, there's lots of functionality hidden behind Control-clicking and Option-clicking and maybe more that is very hard to discover on your own (and this goes back to the pre-OS X days even).
Force touch is similar in that the overall discoverable interface is too simple, and then the added functionality on top of that is way too hidden.
It’s a good idea but it’s discoverability is terrible. This is a perfect example of that.
My biggest issue with the iPhone is all the hidden force touch controls that are never taught. I've had 3 different android phones and always come back to iphone.
I find the cognitive load of having three unknown things happen at any time (touch, long touch, force touch, plus who knows whatever else kind of touch they may have) way, way too high, and the value non-existent.
It was also nearly impossible for me to know what did what, or how to get a long-touch separated from a force-touch.
I would be 100% content if Force Touch entirely disappeared. I don't see the problem it addresses and experienced first hand problems it causes. Example: I could hardly figure out how to move apps around in springboard (or whatever the home screen is called these days) or cancel apps in the task switcher with it on.
Maybe I'm a luddite, but I would really have preferred an iPhone 6+ "v2" with the same CPU and camera as the iPhone X - but none of the other stuff it brought (like color-changing OLED screen, nigh unusable Face ID, lack of a 3.5mm audio port). But, when your boss generously gives you an iPhone X it would be disrespectful not to use it.
My Mom who is 77, has had a few Androids. Always calling her Sons to help fix her phone. She bought cheap phones for a couple of hundred dollars, but always limited the Ram, but had plenty of storage.
WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook would constantly fill it up and many times you'd have to clear out all the apps, clear the storage on the phone, etc, etc. Then I would have to explain to her that whilst she had a 64GB Sim, none of the Apps could be installed on there, etc, etc. She's not technical enough to understand what Google does on each update. She just wants a working phone.
Now before I get replies. My time is mission critical, I can't spend 1 hour debugging a phone and talking to someone who just wants to use a device as non-technical as possible as anything complicated with be forgotten.
I made her get an iPhone 6. Installed all her favoriate apps and waited. Never heard from her again.
She's 77, calls all over the world, has all her friends on messager and whatsApp, she uses grammerly and surfs the web and even navigates via GPS using google maps.
The Phone. Just works.
I. Being the technical one in the family. Gets left alone LOL.
In the family, 3 of Us have an iPhone. 2, Dad and 1 brother have an Android. All they have is problems, but they are too stubborn to get an iPhone. Oh well...
So far I've learned it pans out this way for iOS devices:
- 16 GB: the bare minimum for any sort of user. Don't expect to be taking a lot of pictures or use a lot of apps without a lot of storage twiddling.
- 32 GB: fine for regular app use, avoid if you want to take a lot of pictures. I find this to be the sweet spot for coffee table iPads.
- 64 GB: the baseline for people who take a lot of pictures and videos. Anything less and there's too much storage management involved.
I don't consider myself a heavy storage user but 16GB is a really easy bar to cross.
I believe it's due to the fact that apps don't clear caches as often if there's plenty of space left.
I too have family with shitty Androids. My Mom runs an iPhone 5 that is so far behind she's afraid to update it at this point (holding out for new iPhone) I also have family with flagship Android devices - completely different exp.
I think you are missing the point there. She's on a fixed income. The iPhone 6 is on contract. When she got it, it was £0 down and £17.99 a month. Compared that to a much higher costs per month for a flagship phone.
Not only that, once the 2 years has been up. She'll just get another contract and an iPhone 8. Rinse and repeat and she'll always have a decent iPhone. It doesn't need to be the best one.
Also, she isn't a power user. A flagship phone is completely wasted on her.
I have an Android phone (not a super cheap one, but a modest Moto G, substantially less expensive than an iPhone) and it's trouble-free.
Edit: also, don't get the phone from a carrier. It will be loaded with bloatware, a lot of which you can't remove.
I think I found the actual problem.
But to the point: Glad to hear that her situation improved when going from a $200 to a $800 phone (or whatever those cost), but I wonder what the story had been if she had gone to a $800 Android instead - with e.g. 128GB of internal storage.
You might want to check up on her to make sure it's just the phone.
You want to know something else? I hardly ever use my iPhone and she's become a much better user.
This is off topic and the stuff of downvotes, but you're not talking about "someone," you're talking about your mother. I value my time as much as the next developer, but I would hope to never be so busy that I can't take an hour to help one of my parents, and I would encourage anyone who feels similarly to consider their priorities if they can't take an hour for a loved one - assuming, of course, that you have a good relationship with your mom.
You are exactly right. Of course I help her with other issues whenever I can. But when an issue comes up again and again and again and it becomes a contentious issue because of the "phone". Not only that, when relatives from abroad want to communicate and they can't because of an app that is failing. The whole thing becomes a more serious issue. Something had to change.
Now there are no problems. In fact, she does more things with this phone than other before. Like facetime-ing, etc. She says it's just so much easier to use than before.
Such. Random. Punctuation.
You give them a poor android with 16Go at max, and on the other way give them an iphone with 64Go and yes you can install application on the SD, if you paid for a correct phone.
The phone just works apply the same with Android users regarding Iphone users.