1y ago

Android to iPhone, whats it like? (Update)

I’m here to give an update to my journey from an Android to an iPhone after much debate in a previous post (from a different account). TLDR at the bottom.

If you’d like to see the old post: Click Here

For those wondering on details, I switched from a Galaxy Note 10+ to an iPhone 12 Pro Max. I won’t explain my reasons for model choice but it was a balance of price, size, and features in that order.

I’ll discuss my main pros and cons in sections here, going from what is most important to me to least important.

USER INTERFACE The user interface and experience on android isn’t awful, but I don’t think there’s much contest here. I said in my other post that apple has an advantage here and I was absolutely right. iOS has smooth animations for everything, is quicker for searching and finding apps, and just plain looks better to me. And while the android toolbar provides many more buttons for quick actions, I never used many of them. Most of the usable settings are here on iPhone in that easy drop down menu. Even long presses on icons to quickly change settings is here. And the mute button on the side is and has always been a no brained for me, should be standard on every phone.

I come from Samsung and their OneUI so I recognize this could be better on other phones, but I was plagued with some stutter in animations and slow app indexing through their search bar. The UI always felt a little clunky and that’s clear with how much was changed in OneUI versions. Things were often easier to access, sure, but the common actions I was taking reduce to simpler menus. Not only that but scaling is very wrong on android phones for some reason. I had my text somewhat smaller because if I blew it up, it looked very strange to me.

iMESSAGE AND FACETIME This was another big reason to switch because a lot of my friends have iPhones and use iMessage frequently. I can tell you that this is a problem specific to the US but so far I do enjoy the maturity of having a put together messaging app. Only recently has Google created something even close where before each android phone had their own app and it was a massive headache. As I stated, having RCS on android and iOS communicate would be big in bringing me back to android but until that happens, the social cost is not worth it to me. I know other apps fill that void in other countries but I couldn’t get my friends to migrate. Aside from that though, it’s one of the best messaging apps I’ve used and FaceTime seems more stable than most video apps.

APPLE ECOSYSTEM

Now look, I know how it works and they stock you in a walled garden. But consider that other companies do the exact same and *sometimes * the benefits can be worth it. For instance, my partner has an Apple HomePod speaker. It’s incredibly easy to stream music to it and as a plus, the Siri assistant has gotten much better. I can’t pick this apart by each strand, but the smoothness of the connections to my devices has definitely improved. I used to fail just to cast YouTube to my Tv on android for random reasons. It would take a couple tries. Now, first try every time. Same with the speaker. No fiddling with Bluetooth with this one. And the menu to change what device is playing sound is miles better than on my android phone.

VOICE ASSISTANT

This one is unexpected, but I’ve enjoyed the voice assistant a lot more. This is something that should be current across android phones so I feel comfortable speaking on it. If you’ve used SIRI previously, it used to suck. Like a lot. Google was miles ahead by every metric. Now though? I can ask Siri to play music and it knows what app Im asking for and doesn’t take up to 15 seconds to phone home and do the task. It’s faster. Much faster.

The only area in which Siri suffers is when asking for web based questions. Other than that, it works better for the much more common tasks I do.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

I mentioned Siri but the real benefit is with CarPlay. Where to start? CarPlay is quite a bit ahead here as well. It starts up on my head unit in about 1/5th the time before the warnings even disappear. And the interface is simple and knows where to put things. Putting the time near the driver and putting the app bar on the left near where I sit just seems like the way to go. So yeah, CarPlay is smooth and even has easy ways to make it wireless with unofficial dongles. Can’t say the same for android auto.

Charging times are worse on the iPhone but it’s not that bad and the phone does last me longer. My battery in my old phone was a bit older though, so I’ll call it even.

Grudges

I hate the lightning connector, it’s a PITA compared to UsbC but I don’t interact with it often, only for charging. And MagSafe would solve most problems and can be used with cases unlike my android phones wireless charging.

The Home Screen is a sticking point as well but mostly just for app arrangement. Otherwise, the widgets are perfectly fine. Better than fine actually because the Home Screen implements the widgets well even if space is limited. I’ve noticed that the apps that I use frequently also have more and better widgets on iOS than on android. I noticed it specifically with TickTick but overall the systems are fairly similar but with less customization of widget size and placement on iOS.

Last comment is that I understand this isn’t for everyone, we all have our own use cases. This isn’t a phone war, just here as reference for those wanting to switch or considering it. If you haven’t used iOS for a sustained period in recent years, understand that your perspective may be out of date because mine certainly was.

Thanks for reading!

TL;DR iOS has its ups and downs but from my perspective, most of what I said in my original post stands as good reasons to buy an Apple device. My main sticking points are repairability, walled garden apps, and initial price. Other than that, I’ve converted to iOS and I don’t miss many features of Android and I suspect that for all but the tech tinkerers, an iPhone is the way to go in the US.

80 comments

I still can't believe people are moving to iPhone over the stupid message bubble colours, rather than just using WhatsApp.
- I don't know anyone actually using WhatsApp - and considering who makes it, I'm not tempted to start on my own. Of course there are other, better alternatives, but you still have to convince others to use what you would like to use. That is an uphill battle - especially with tech illiterate users in your family.
  
  Everyone in the UK is on it. Even my boomer parents and older relatives in their 60s and 70s. Maybe we're just more tech savvy here?
- I think the problem is nothing just bubble colors, but indeed is weird to have this monopolistic approach on messaging
- People in eg Europe often text with people across borders, what with countries being small and borders just being a line on the map. International sms used to be expensive AF. So WhatsApp was a very logical solution to this. Unlimited sms was most often only for national messages.

I cannot handle the lack of a unified control scheme and app logic in iOS. I don't understand how all apple users just ignore that.
In android back is back. In every single app. It always does what you expect. It goes back.
I iOS sometimes it goes back, sometimes it goes up. Sometimes it's on the bottom, sometimes it's on the upper top left (why the actual f would you place it there...), sometimes it's wherever. It depends on the apps it seems?
App settings are sometimes in the apps themselves and sometimes buried twenty menus deep in the phone settings menu. Where is the logic in that?
Those two points alone hold me back from using an iPhone or iPad. (there's others, but I could live with those). It's frustratingly complex to use compared to the relative simplicity of an Android.
- Every time I grab my son's or my grandma's iPhone to help them with something I run into this lack of universal "back" functionality and it drives me absolutely crazy.
- Most people use a gesture - swipe from the left edge of the screen. Or from the bottom if you want to leave the app.
  
  This works most of the time, but not all of the time. Even in official apple apps some menus don't let you swipe from the left to go back.
  I use gesture navigation on Android. It has some upsides and downsides compared to iOS, but it works 100% of the time, no exceptions.
  
  Yeah, I know this gestures, they're not the same...
  iPhone users always tell me about those. They have never used the superior android implementation for any real stretch of time and don't know what they're missing tbh...
  iOS does a lot right. Navigating the OS itself is not one of them though imo.
  
  Yeah problem is that is usually works. It work often enough that you get used to it. But then an app comes along that doesn't use it and its infuriating. Android has ALWAYS had a os based back button, so implementing gestures means they just work.
- Oh my god! Thank you. I just made my post about those exact same two gripes. Its so rare to see people complain about it and I really don't understand why.
  I'm glad I'm not the only one

I recently switched myself, my wife, and my mom from old Moto X4 Android phones to slightly newer, but not current iPhones (X, XS, and 11 Pro). It's been a few months now (maybe 3 or so?). Honestly, I'm not that happy with them. I think I'll stick to it mainly for privacy, security, and environmental reasons - iPhones are supported with security updates for way, way, way longer than the vast majority of Android phones. Like two or three times as long, in some cases. This offsets the price factor, maintains security for longer, and reduces electronic waste by making the phones viable for longer. By my calculations, I actually come out ahead with iPhones with regard to price. I like that iPhones let you remove most, maybe even all the built-in apps that come pre-installed. I also like that they give you an actual indication of your battery health.
Having said that, many other aspects of iPhones have been a hassle or just plain sucked:
The keyboard sucks. Poor editing, poor layout without a number row, not able to turn off the stupid app bar or whatever they call it on the top row.
The messaging app sucks. First, don't forget that it's Apple's intransigence now that's preventing iMessage from being interoperable with Android, and I say this as someone who has come to dislike and avoid Google as much as possible. I hope that the EU forcing them to make messaging interoperable will yield some real improvements with this. Second, the messaging app doesn't show dates and times on messages by default. I have to pull each message to the side to see this info. Third, there appears to be no search function within a message thread, what a pain. Finally, I also found out that iPhones aren't able to do anything whatsoever with certain common attachments from text messages. I had messages received from Android phones with AMR files in them (audio recording files). The iPhone was completely unable to open them, I couldn't find even an app that could open them, and the damn phone wouldn't let me forward the text message to an email! I ended up having to go back to the Android and forward the text to email in order to be able to open the attachments. Completely unacceptable.
The connectivity with PCs sucks. They allow you to see your photos (only the photos and videos, nothing else) when connected through USB, but it barely works. My photo transfers fail most of the time, and it seems to be impossible to let my photo manager delete the photos from the phone after transferring them. Yeah, iTunes is supposed to work, but you can't manage two different phones with different iCloud accounts on one Windows login. Besides, iTunes itself sucks. Their replacement app for this, Apple Mobile Devices I think it was called, only supports Windows 11, not Windows 10.
The offline PDF storage and reading sucks. I was going to an event that I knew was going to be away from mobile networks and prepared for this by jumping through all the hoops (I'm not kidding) that it took to actually download PDFs locally to the phone so that they were available offline. These PDFs held the map and event guides. I get there, offline, and try to open the PDFs that I painstakingly had downloaded offline. Well, wouldn't you know it, the damn built-in app for reading the PDFs needed internet connectivity! Thankfully it wasn't a life or death situation, but still, how frustrating and disappointing.
The official community support site sucks. The impression I've had in researching the issues above is that someone will give some incredibly lame answer that doesn't really resolve the issue and instead papers it over, that answer will be marked as the correct answer, and it's end of story. You need to find discussions on other unofficial forums for real discussions of technical issues.
This is all I can think of for now. There's probably more, but you get the idea.
- I like this kind of input because it displays use cases and problems that I haven't thought of which is exactly why I made the post, so thanks for saying all this and taking the time for that.
  That being said, I'm not trying to fight but I'll give my perspective of how I feel about the issues you raised as an average user just to provide some context in case anyone is concerned about this stuff.
  The keyboard is absolutely something that, if android keyboards are a must for you, you might be upset by. I have yet to customize my keyboard at all so I'm trying the default layout for now. I don't mind the app bar because it isn't any worse than the few keyboards I used on android. Swipe to text works fine for me but autocorrect does occasionally get words wrong. Not any worse than my android keyboards though (I've tried all the major ones out there too). However, I'm fine with my typing pace on iOS, so that doesn't bother me. I have a couple UX complaints with it but nothing to make me ditch the phone. Might just take time for me to get comfy.
  As for messaging, I noted a lot of what you said in the previous post I made. Not having RCS is their fault, it sucks, but if the EU gets it figured out it may tempt me back to Android. I don't mind the messaging app so far because it does provide a lot of functionality for socializing that Googles alternatives just don't have or are done poorly. Not everyone will use the entire messaging app but a lot of the complaints are niche to me. Ive never even heard of AMR files. Also I believe searching for messages is being added but I agree that its absence is rather odd.
  Connectivity does suck. Hopefully it will improve on newer models but again, I hardly ever have a reason to connect my phone directly to my PC. I back up all of my photos over wifi so I have no need. In fact, my previous phone was used only a handful of times for file transfer. So it isn't important to me and I don't think its important to average users, but its a good note and I hope a switch to USB-C will improve that.
  Also your situation with PDFs is odd. I've had the opposite experience as I actually took a short vacation the past week with my device. It brought up and stored the event emails, tickets (in the wallet) and maps that I needed for the event pretty easily. I definitely had to open a couple of PDFs but maybe it used my connection. So I'll say that I'm not sure what thats about but I'd bet an app can solve that problem.
  Your last point is a mixed bag. Community support is hard to find but if you've ever looked at forums asking google how to fix something its pretty much the exact same thing. Only difference is that a workaround is usually possible but requires a bit more effort. Like uninstalling their default apps for instance. Or changing the per-app notification sound (may be fixed now idk). When I tried to search for those things, all the google responses just said "pound sand, we'll add it to our totally real feature request list". Still, adaptability is more an Android thing for sure.
  
  Thanks. I'm not trying to fight either, but just relate my experience with the switch so far. I would be happy if I could feel that iPhones were all around superior to Android like some people do because my general views on Google have become very negative, but I've run into too many silly issues that prevent me from feeling that way. I presume that the people that post that iPhones are great and Android is terrible either haven't run into any similar issues (limited uses of the phones?), haven't used Android at least in the last few years, or are trolling, or are brainwashed. I think anyone giving an honest comparison (like I think you're doing) would say that they are both completely mixed bags.
  Just to add some clarifications and new points:
  My keyboard usage is very basic. I don't use swipe gestures, didn't use any custom keyboard apps on Android, and don't do anything out of the ordinary. I continue to struggle with editing functionality on iPhone, like once it highlights a partially written word and gives a wrong auto-correct suggestion, I have a super hard time undoing that selection. I have to tap all over the place to get it to unhighlight. Could be user error though. I also continue to hit those app bar buttons at the top of the keyboard in the middle of typing, causing a big interruption in the process.
  AMR files are or at least used to be what Google uses for audio files embedded in SMS/MMS messages. I found out that iOS dropped support for the format years ago. Seems like a big interoperability issue to me.
  How do you do the Wi-Fi photos transfer from your phone to computer? I would like to do something similar.
  Your experience with PDFs may have used an internet connection when it came time to open them, if one was available. When I tried to do the same by using I think the Apple Books app (for the first time, which may have been my issue) it said it needed a connection. Maybe the connection was only required to set up that app. Maybe siri would actually be useful in getting things properly set up. I've avoided doing anything with that so far.
  One other issue that I forgot to mention in my previous post: serious overheating issues on iPhones. Like my phone has shutdown in the middle of maps navigation (while charging and also playing music), and also in the middle of a video call. I have a TPU case on it, which apparently is a problem? But this never happened with my Moto X4. Admittedly that was a mid-range phone at the time it was released, while these iPhones are near the top of the range if not at the top. Maybe top range phones run hot because of faster CPUs. It still seems odd though.
- Why won't you just use a 3rd party keyboard and messaging app if you loathe those? It's not like apple forces anyone to stick with the stock apps if you don't like them. I use Gboard and Whatsapp/Messenger and they are pretty much what you would get on android as well!
  
  Good point. I had forgotten that I had briefly looked at the 3rd party keyboards on iOS, but I think I either decided to give the built-in keyboard for a while and then forgot to try the others, or if I didn't see any caught my eye. Gboard would be out since I'm trying to degoogle, but I need to look into this again. Thanks for reminding me.

I made the switch too earlier this year from a Samsung Galaxy S10e to an iPhone 12 and I agree to all of your points.
The only thing I liked much more on Android were the notifications. Android's notification are so much more flexible with the option to customise each different kind of notification for each app, to have silent notifications and "collapsed" ones that do not show a marker in the status bar.
Speaking of that, it is annoying that on iOS there is no indicator in the status bar if you have a notification, so that you always have to pull down to check for new ones.
Beside that, Apple ecosystem is so incredibly well integrated and in my opinions feels overall smoother than Android.
EDIT: changed tone a little bit
- I generally agree about notifications being a little better on Android, but I think I've used iOS for long enough that I've made it work for me regardless. On iOS, I've found that the best way to see when an app needs your attention is to be very intentional about which ones get notification badges, and make sure those apps are visible on your first home screen and/or dock.
  Once that's set up, you probably won't need notification center as much, or you might only check it when you see a badge on an app you care about. I'd still love to see a couple more options (maybe utilizing the dynamic island?), but this gets the job done.
  
  I always see people mention notifications not being good on iOS, and maybe I’m in the minority but why do people really care about them? What benefit am I missing from constantly being bombarded by notifications?
  Like I only have notifications on for messages and phone calls, and once a month for a week turn on outlook for when I’m on call.
  I’m just not sure what people need besides a line or two about what the email is or message says and the iOS covers that, whether in the card that pops down or in the Notification Center.
- I switched a few months ago and this for me has been a bit of a pain point.
  As you say even a dot at the top would be adequate to show there's notifications. Just like the apple watch!
  
  As you say even a dot at the top would be adequate to show there’s notifications
  That red dot on my Apple watch is always there. I always have notifications.
- It’s interesting you bring that up. It annoys me slightly about the notifications but also I thought that my android phone spammed me with them. And they all got equal priority. So at least iPhone does do that better. I think for me it’s about equal there as well because I never took time on android to customize the notifications and I’d rather they all just act consistently.

Can't believe I saw no mention of adblockers in this thread yet. On android you can get firefox set up with ublock origin and also other add ons, including dark reader and sponsorblock. Firefox on ios doesn't have that functionality.
Adblocker that I can control is way too big of a functionality. I can never go over to ios.
- On IOS there is not much point in using Firefox, because it's just an UI shell for Safari with crippled functionality at that. I hope EU law will make real Firefox a possibility.
- Right, but you can sort of get around this with installing a profile on ios. I use nextdns and on Android, you just specify the dns address, but on ios you have to install a profile and in certain situations a cert. That's kind of risky from a privacy point of view, but i pay for the service, so that gives me some comfort. It also blocks all the os level tracking, which is nice. My partner complains that they can't watch an ad in a game for an extra turn now... Lol but also paramount plus doesn't work. :⁠-⁠\ ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯
- Firefox unfortunately doesn’t, but at least Safari does… as well as a few other extensions.
  
  But then you have to use Safari

I have to respectfully disagree with many of the points you mentioned, and I believe it really boils down to the different android phone models that can provide a very different user experience.
I have been using my Xiaomi Mi 11 for a maybe 18 months now, and going through some of your points but from this phone's perspective:
iOS has smooth animations for everything, is quicker for searching and finding apps, and just plain looks better to me - the Miui interface is renowned / notorious for being a copycat of the iOS interface, so I actually see no big difference from the iOS interface. But Android being Android, it is highly customizable, and with my phone rooted, I actually have the iOS's own San Francisco system font installed (I hated Android's default roboto font), and have customized the main page to have two news update widgets just the way I wanted it. My background is an animated waterfall that to me looks stunning (created from my own video shot during a hiking trip). I know it is subjective, but honestly I see it the other way around. Android, with the right phone model and when setup right, can have butter smooth animations for everything, is just as quick if not quicker for searching and finding apps (I literally have the apps organized in their respective folders, never difficult to find), and it just plain looks better to me especially with the animated background of my own choice.
some stutter in animations and slow app indexing through their search bar - ... yeah it probably has something to do with your old phone. No problem whatsoever over here. 120Mhz refresh rate. Butter smooth all day long.
iMESSAGE AND FACETIME - can't comment here. Facetime especially can be a headache if everyone else is using an iPhone.
Voice Assistant - haven't tried Siri for years. But I have been using Google Assistant both in Android Auto and (to a lesser extent) on the phone itself. No complaints there. I have a Google Nest Audio device too and thought it integrates well with my phone and my smart home (turning lights on/off, activating the home alarm system, interfacing with Home Assistant, etc)
CarPlay is quite a bit ahead here as well - hmm this is where I am really quite confused. My wireless Android Auto works extremely well with my vehicle. It starts up as soon as I enter my car in like less than one second with a totally seamless process (as in I do not need to do anything at all). With the coolwalk version of AA (released for more than 6 months already I believe), it actually has everything you mentioned that are available on Carplay: No warning message, time IS near the driver, app bar IS on the right where I sit (we have steering wheels on the right side). My AA IS smooth and is already wireless without any need for any dongle. And since my phone is rooted, I can even tweak my AA to play videos which is nice when your car is parked and you are waiting for someone for instance. Here is a snapshot:
- I agree, there's some unnecessary exaggeration as well lol. A full minute to phone home to play music? Definitely not, sometimes for lights but my partners iphone does the same so I think that's our bulbs.
  
  Apologies, its an exaggeration on the 'full minute' part of the spectrum but I have noticed that the assistant is faster by quite a bit. I'll change that part. While using the assistant and asking it to play music in my car, it would often take up to 30 seconds to get from me finishing saying the prompt, it uploading to google, coming back, and playing the music I want. Siri takes about 10 seconds at most.
  I have had many times where the assistant just gave up on me though, especially while driving. It would stop my music when I summoned it for about 20 seconds, appear to be listening, and then tell me that it was sorry and couldn't complete my request or would say nothing and resume the music. I got so frustrated with the assistant in my car that I stopped using it entirely. Could just be my experience, seems like some people think Auto and the assistant work just fine for them.
- I really appreciate your response, it’s exactly what I was hoping to add to the post here. I want people to hear what is working for others in the Android ecosystem. I’m just hoping to add some valuable input about why I didn’t want to be on android anymore and how that went.
  To respond though, the animations thing like you said had to do with my phone slowing down. Why? No clue. I don’t think it was my fault, I don’t mess with my phone and I kept my apps minimal and storage wasn’t close to full. I’m not saying it’s impossible to get smooth animations on android, my phone used to have them, but I will say that most UI features animate more consistently and nicer out of the box with iPhone. I’ll also give a nod to what I said about people who tinker. That was me and I enjoyed the freedom of android for a long time. But I didn’t want to spend the time to get it perfect anymore. I setup my phone in a couple of days how I wanted it and now I don’t feel the need to touch very much on it. Different strokes. I should also note though that my phone was only about 3 or 4 years old at that point and was chugging more than I expect at that mark.
  The assistant thing is anecdotal, but Google does a pretty decent job. Unfortunately their integrations with my model of choice were subpar so I didn’t enjoy using it but I can see why people would prefer one or the other. I like the simplicity of Siri I guess (common theme) whereas Google has built an assistant with a million gizmos to it. I’ll get back to you on the smart home stuff eventually :)
  CarPlay is going to be another anecdote. My car is not old, a 2017, but I don’t have a similar interface. Maybe it’s the smaller screen or something? But it’s only changed UI like once I think. Either way, for me and my car it works better and I commented what I did as I noticed it. So I guess YMMV on that.
  It’s always seemed to me like android prioritizes new and flashy stuff and easily forgets their older legacy devices. Support being hit or miss is why I gave up android, but it could just be on Samsungs side. Just a thought, Cheers!

I don't think one can really compare an iphone + iOS to an "Android" phone. Iphone is a specific matching of hardware and software in one neat package. Android on the other hand is a baseline OS that most phone manufacturers modify a great deal. To me it makes more sense then to compare an iphone to your Samsung with OneUI, or a Xiaomi with MiUi, or a pixel with googles pixel os. There is almost as much difference (on the user side) between those android-based devices as there is between any of them and an iphone. It doesn't really make sense to me as a comparison. Regarding your qualm about animations, I recently had to use an iphone for a few minutes and I was appalled at how slow the animations are. It felt like it took nearly a whole second to switch tabs on safari or open the settings drawer. On my pixel with graphene os, I have changed the animation speed to be much faster, and it takes maybe a quarter of a second to do those same actions. Ofc I didn't time anything but the iOS animations felt like slow motion compared to my phone. I don't know much about iOS, but I assume it isn't possible to change those animation speeds.
- On my pixel with graphene os, I have changed the animation speed to be much faster, and it takes maybe a quarter of a second to do those same actions. Ofc I didn’t time anything but the iOS animations felt like slow motion compared to my phone
  iPhone developer here.
  The default animation speed on iOS is 0.2 seconds. I agree, faster would be nicer... but it's already less than a quarter of a second. Personally I like animations closer to 0.05 seconds... but that's not the norm on the platform and in fact changing it is difficult.
  Anyway I don't think that's what OP was talking about, I think they meant the smoothness of the animations, not the speed of them? A 0.2 second animation is 48 animation frames on a modern high end iPhone. On a lot of android phones it would be significantly less than that, especially Samsung (and they said they're coming from Samsung) which has a reputation for dropping frames in animations.
  Samsung's issue is a combination of not caring enough to get the software right and also choosing to use hardware that has a tendency to throttle itself to avoid overheating. The techniques Apple does are not rocket science, Samsung could make their animations run smoothly and reliably. They choose not to assign developer resources to that task. And it shows.
- I think it’s less about the speed of the animations and just the consistency of them animating in the OS. I mean, even settings in the menu animate nicely with sliding toggles and page swipe gestures. Those may exist on some android phones or can be added, I don’t know, but I noticed them since my Note definitely did far less animation. I know it’s not for everyone, but the iOS animations seem on the snappier side to me. I also used to remove them on my android phone and I put them back because it caused issues for me with some apps just looking rough when they launched. So yes, YMMV.
  And it’s a great point about the specific android OS. So yeah take this as a comparison of OneUI on a 3.5 year old phone compared to an almost 3 year old iPhone. If I was to go back to android, it would not be back to Samsung. Both phones I bought from them were overpriced and aged rather poorly imo.
  My objective isn’t to crap all over these phones or a certain OS. Each has their downsides. More my point was that if you switch off of a similar OS or have some of the issues I had and go to an iPhone, what might you expect?
  So yeah, blame Samsung but for me it won’t make a difference until someone forces RCS as a standard which may very well bring me back to android. Just thought I’d see what it’s like after nearly a decade since I’ve used an iPhone. The last iPhone I had was an iPhone 5.

I used the iPhone 12 mini for about a year before I gave up and went back to android. Some of my thoughts:
I don't actually understand your comment about apps being easier to find. There is no way to organize them alphabetically. You can't choose which folders they go in. It's only "easier" because people default to searching for apps. Which is very annoying to me personally. My GF does it that way. But I really don't like it.
I am a little jealous of IOS widgets and the ecosystem. While I haven't tried a pixel watch yet, the apple watch is absolutely amazing and it's the only real reason for me considering to go back.
My two biggest gripes is that there is a serious inconsistency in their apps. I never hear people talk about it. But some apps, have their settings inside the actual apps. Other apps are you tied into the apple settings app. Most apps use gesture navigation. Some, especially older ones, don't react to it and still rely on a back button in the top left. Which was a good option when the phone were sub 5", but not anymore.
Other stuff, while the ecosystem is great, being locked into it is extremely annoying. Not being able to put a torrent app on the phone is annoying. There's still a lot of things you cant do.
Maybe I'll buy the iPhone 16, I seem to try it out every 4 or 5 years. But I doubt they'll fix anything other than the back button, because no one really complains about it.
- The App Library grouping of apps is automatic but when you add apps to the Home Screen, you can drag one onto another to group them in a folder and then name that folder whatever you like.
- Also there is an alphabetic sorting in the App Library when you tap on the sort field:

Please don't start a pointless fanboy war. We're better than that on Lemmy.
- Read through the post, OP mentioned a few times that this isn't about a phone war. It's just one persons experience going from Android to iPhone; what worked well and what didn't.
  I think a lot of folks have picked an ecosystem and never strayed from it; seeing a post like this helps fill the gaps of their curiosity. Being exposed to other people's experiences and experience a change yourself is a good thing.
  At the end of the day phones are just tools to help you go about your day to day. We don't have to foam at the mouth over a discussion like this. iPhones are very good devices and have great synergy with other Apple devices and apps. Android is a very customizable experience which has many great phones at very good prices. You can't go wrong with either IMO.
  
  Thanks for the precision. My comment was actually towards people who might be a little too passionate in the comment section 😉
  
  I fully realize OP isn't trying to start a phone war, but there seems to be a few misconceptions in his original post, like hinting on something that do not exist in Android Auto when in fact AA has many of those features built in, that make me cringe a little. I just feel it would be nice if some of the factual info can be corrected...
- I’m not a fanboy, quite the opposite if you read my original post. I’ve been on android for a long time before this. So not trying to circlejerk. I felt like this could be valuable insight for people wishing to change platforms. I even put at the bottom of one or both of my posts that I don’t want a platform war, that’s dumb and isn’t the point.

I used to fail just to cast YouTube to my TV on android for random reasons. It would take a couple tries. Now, first try every time.
This is an interesting situation because my household has the exact opposite problem, where Android phones cast YouTube to the TV seamlessly and Apple phones take a solid 15-30 seconds to recognize the TV at all (Roku SmartTV).
- That is odd. But I can definitely tell you that most of the solutions for casting your phone to a tv never worked for me on android. Smart cast almost never worked for me at all. But I will slightly miss the Dex software which was occasionally useful.
  I think the best solution for me was getting an NVIDIA shield and using 3rd party apps anyways. It’s better than casting and works more consistently.

I have a friend who used Android, switched to iPhone, and just got an S23 today because iPhone kept doing things with the OS, not putting calls through the phone piece and offloading apps when he told them to not.
That said my wife switched from Android to iPhone about 7 years ago and loves it still. She won't go back. Overall she cares less about the tech stuff than my friend does.
I've been tempted to switch but things like Apple automatically offloading your apps that could have been removed from the store and then not putting them back counts me out entirely. Like I had an app, you deemed it too big to keep on my device so you just nuked it without ensuring you can reinstall it? Hard pass on that. That's one of the major straws that broke my friend who used some sort of Manga app that was removed from the app store. I likely won't have any issues like that but the thought of that sort of control from Apple drives me away. I trust Apple or Google about the same which is none at all. Both have shown they are only in it for the money.
Lastly, I wouldn't say iPhone or Android is the definitive way to go in the US. I can understand your point of view but even from a basic standpoint, I feel like neither do things all that differently to justify one or the other for everyone. Realistically people should just try both out and figure out what works best for them.
- You can turn off automatic offloading. I agree through that it’s bullshit that it can offload an app that is no longer available on the store.

Why would you use first party messaging apps? Who the hell still sends sms? Just use signal. Easy fix.
- Android user here, and I think this is a pretty pointless comment.
  They already explicitly mentioned how they can't convince their social circle to use anything but first-party messaging. It's like if someone says "I couldn't convince my friends to go to the movie theater" and I were to respond with "who the hell still goes to the movies??? I just watch from my plex server and invite everyone to my house to watch movies." Aka, it's a non-answer.
- Most Americans. And it’s not SMS, it’s messages through iMessage. More people use iPhones in America, and installing another app to talk to one or two people with Androids is not something people want to do. I use signal to talk to two close friends because one of them has an android. Otherwise, we’d just use iMessage and not install another app. Everyone else in my life has an iPhone. And this is the same for my age group (younger than 35).

I get the appeal of iOS when everybody around you uses it as well. But in my personal bubble, most people don’t and I find myself using my 14 Pro more as a stand-alone “computer”, rather than a interconnected device amongst others in the ecosystem. Thing is, and it doesn’t matter what anybody tells you: iPhones suck hard at this. You know how modern games come bare bone and will sell you everything as DLC’s? This is how iOS feels like.
Despite this, I actually like this device. But the idea of having to spend more and more and more to have a enjoyable experience frightens me. It’s the reason why I avoided getting a MacBook so far, instead opting for a Windows Laptop and simply dealing with the inconvenience of transferring data via cable or 3rd party software.
- The only reason I chose this phone is because I determined that the interconnected apps and services were more worth it in my social circle. Without that, the value proposition basically becomes even to me.
  I guess my thing is that technology is important to me and at some point having tech work better overall even if it’s more expensive is more important to me. Plus a lot of Apple stuff is well made and has great resale value so it becomes more manageable that way.

All great points.
I used to like to tinker on my phones but I got out of the habit. Android is better for that. The only other thing I would add is when I had Android phones (up until about 3 years ago and been using them since the late 2010s) I was always looking forward to that next upgrade time. The phone was slowing down or other issues that would crop up like that. Updates would stop coming and we’re slow to begin with. My company buys my phones now. So I got my first iPhone just over 3 years ago cause that is what they provide. We are allowed to get one every two years. I went past my 2 year upgrade and never even noticed. My boss had to tell me to upgrade a few months past the 2 year mark to get it into the current year budget. I would have happily kept using the original. Worked just like the day I got it. My kid uses it now. Still gets updates.
Sorry. That was a bit more text than I intended hehe.

I have very different priorities. I'll never use anything with a walled garden, that isn't hackable. I've also weaned myself almost completely off Google services and apps at this point. Also I can get a brand new unlocked Android phone that does everything I want with decent specs and almost stock Android (minimal bloat) for under $200. The only positive that really interests me that was mentioned in this thread is the longer security support.

How does the lightning connector bother you? I have less trouble out of phones with lightning connectors than phones with usbc…
- Everything else in my life is USB-C now - my laptop, my Steam Deck, my ear buds etc. My wife and I are both Android so we only have to have one charging cable anywhere in the house or our bags.
  
  Add to that the fact that iPhone will switch to USB-C in max 2 years and people with any iPhone sold today will have to deal with a legacy connector.
- I have devices that already use USB C so now I have to have two cables in the same location where before I only needed one. And also transfer and charging speeds are much slower with lightning. I think my phone takes much longer to charge, especially at lower battery percentages.
  Overall, pretty much every device should have USB C by now. Apple only stays this way to further lock people into the ecosystem.
  
  I like lightning for durability. the extra wire is a bummer though. never noticed slower charging or transfers.

I also switched from Android to iOS.
Regarding Siri: I find SiriKit lacks too many features in comparison to Google Assistant. Controling any navigation software aside from Apple Maps? No chance. Which, especially in the car, is a big bummer. Even the integration of media apps is worse. I could tell Google Assistant something like "play on Deezer" and it would delegate the search to deezer. I could then tell it to "play on Digitally Imported" and it would start the di.fm app and play the channel there. And so on. Siri, if I am lucky, uses the current default player and then complains "cannot find Digitally Imported on ..." or, worse, it falls back to Apple Music for which I don't even have a subscription.
So in short: in the car I find Siri worse than Google Assistant. But CarPlay in general works very well and smooth.
Two other points I prefer on iOS over Android:
Pretty long update cycles. Finding Android phones that deliver (major!) updates over 6 or 7 years is quite a challenge. Not impossible, but it's very hard.
Full backup. Using iTunes to backup the phone includes everything and I can simply replay it back to the next phone (or to the same after a reset). It will just work. On Android that either requires you to root the phone first with different shady methods or hope that the vendor ships some backup/restore solution ... but then you are also often in a vendor lock-in.
(And with the right tools I can even modify the backup, essentially accessing and changing "protected" file of apps, that would also require root on Android.)
I feel like I have to tinker a lot less with my iPhone than I had to with my Androids before that. And I was sick of that. I already tinker a lot on my notebooks and desktops, but my phone should please just work and leave me alone otherwise.
- I think these are accurate. Siri is better at being summoned and doing quick tasks but I feel like Google has a lot more features.
  And for having to tinker less, absolutely true so far

Switched from a pixel 5 to an iPhone 13 Pro 2 years ago when google removed smart home integration from the power menu. Other than the way iOS handles notifications I have no regrets, picked up a 14 pro max a few months ago and have been loving the full days worth of battery life, something I never achieved on any other phone.

I hate the lightning connector, it’s a PITA compared to UsbC but I don’t interact with it often, only for charging.
Do yourself a favor and get a magsafe charger. It's far better than USB or Lightning.

I've said for years that Siri is simply better than Google Assistant for actually controlling your phone. Music being the best example because Google Assistant is determined to funnel you into as many Google services as possible.

I switched when I was much younger. I understood the customizability of Android, but ultimately favored access to iMessage over it. Also, the built-in UI of Apple somehow feels better to me than the Android UI. It was an unfortunately significant part of my switching decision.

I switched long ago and never looked back

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