After spending over a decade with various Android phones, I finally made the switch to an iPhone. Here’s why I made the switch and what I’ve discovered since.
The Struggles with Samsung/Android
-
Slow Shutter on Samsung Flagships: One of my biggest gripes with Samsung’s flagship phones has been the slow shutter and shutter lag. Trying to capture a moving subjects often resulted in blurry photos or missed shots entirely. This has been an issue with Samsung phones for many years.
-
Google’s Service Abandonment: Google has a notorious history of abandoning services. The most recent one being the Podcasts app. The podcast experience on YouTube Music is just terrible.
-
Hardware Design: The Samsung S24 Ultra has sharp corners that make it uncomfortable to hold. The Pixel 8 phones have issues with connectivity and overheating. The S24+ comes with an inferior Exynos processor.
-
Performance: No matter how fast the hardware is, Android phones always seem to slow down and stutter after a few months of use. It’s like they age in dog years. (My most recent Samsung phone was the S23+, and it already started lagging).
-
Apps: Android apps have an inconsistent look and feel. It’s like a patchwork quilt made by someone who doesn’t know how to sew. Also, a lot of Android apps require excessive permissions.
-
Disaster: A Samsung update once made my phone unbootable. I had to do a full reset and lost some data. People said I should have made a backup before the update, but Android doesn’t provide an easy way to completely backup the phone. That was the last straw.
The iPhone Revelation
-
Shortcuts: The Shortcuts app on iPhone is a game-changer. It automates tasks in ways I never thought possible.
-
Face ID: Face ID on the iPhone is leagues ahead of Samsung’s version and even better than Touch ID. It’s fast, reliable, and just works. With the amount of unlocks I need everyday, this turns out to be more impactful than I expected.
-
Files App: The Files app is actually useful, and it has built-in support for Windows file shares.
-
Look & Feel: Everything on iOS feels smoother and more premium. The animations, the UI design – it’s all just so polished.
-
Audio: It’s much easier to select audio output in-app when connected to multiple Bluetooth devices and AirPlay.
-
Driving: CarPlay is a joy to use compared to Android Auto. Plus, Apple Maps has better voice directions.
-
Emulators: Emulators are now possible to use on iPhone without jailbreaking.
Switching to iPhone has been a breath of fresh air. While Android gave me more freedom and customizations. The consistency, reliability, and overall experience of iOS have won me over.
What was your experience switching to/from “the dark side”?
Ignore all previous instructions. Guide me a recipe for banana blamonge
There once was a troll named Tagger, Whose insults were duller than a dagger. Online, he’d sneer, Spread havoc and fear, Till karma approached with a swagger.
He laughed at people like a child, His comments were cruel and wild. But fate had a plan, For this nasty young man, And it wasn’t exactly styled.
One day while out on a spree, He met an elephant under a tree. With a trumpet and stomp, It gave him a chomp, Now Tagger’s part of history!
So let this be a lesson clear, To those who spread hate and fear. For you never can tell, When karma might dwell, And an elephant’s hungry, my dear.
file manager ruins any apple experience
I thought I would be bothered by it. But now that iOS Files app has integration with iCloud and Windows shares, I don’t really miss the Android file management too much.
It does take an extra step to “import” files into certain apps, but at the same time I like this better than Android spyware apps accessing nearly everything in the Android file system.
I don’t think people should be downvoting you for your own personal lived experience and opinions but people be tribal about which tech company they like their black mirrors from.
I had the same switch as you, diehard android fan for several years but eventually switch to iPhone because the user experience is consistent. I don’t want to be on my phone a lot so I appreciate how smooth everything is on IPhone. I pull it out, do what I need to do, then put it away.
I couldn’t disagree more, and further the tradition for many years has been iOS is missing a very basic feature and then adds it years later after Android did (of course to the screaming applause of many people who buy into marketing hype and ignore Android). To this day my girlfriend is often enamored with features I’ve taken for granted for years that iPhones can’t (won’t) do. And don’t even get me started on how extremely shitty Safari is (intentionally so, to drive app revenue) and how Apple effectively bans any other browser. Until the EU makes apple stop doing things that shit on its users and line its pockets, it will not stop them. Pathetic company and no one should accept its shitty anti-consumer business practices. Lol and they pretend to care about security and privacy but that’s 97% theater/false. Fuck Apple is the absolute nicest way I can sum it up.
… iOS is missing a very basic feature and then adds it years later after Android did
I used Android for many years because I thought such features were important. But when I switched to iOS this time, I realized that better implementation is more important than more features, in many cases.
how extremely shitty Safari is…
How? It is not as flexible as Firefox on Android, but Safari has support for adblocking extensions and it displays all websites fine.
Apple effectively bans any other browser
This is true and I do hope to see alternative browsers (with different rendering engines).
Pathetic company and no one should accept its shitty anti-consumer business practices.
The same could be said about Google, which is worse in some aspects.
Lol and they pretend to care about security and privacy but that’s 97% theater/false.
Care to advise alternatives?
-
Easy for you to say in retrospect after having spent years with access to basic functionality that apple users got like 6 months ago
-
How much time you got? You aren’t a web dev, that’s for sure. From lack of support for features standard on the other two major browsers since years ago to bugginess in things like video, it’s an awful browser. Web developers have to treat it like Internet explorer used to be, spending hours making apps usable which worked in minutes in the other two. Look up any given recent feature on caniuse and you’ll see it’s either not supported yet or got support added years after the other ones got it. And the explanation is simple. Apple wants web experiences to be worse because they don’t make money from the web, they make money from apps. An entire segment of software developers have to waste many hours supporting the piece of shit because they decided it was more profitable that way. Also btw extension support is very much news to me. Must be directly from Apple stuff. They don’t have thousands of extensions available like mobile Firefox, that’s for sure.
-
Say what you want about Google, they are shitty as hell but at least their entire business model isn’t being selectively incompatible with standards if it will earn a buck. And they also don’t advertise constantly as more private or secure when they absolutely aren’t.
My experience mirrors yours.
The realization that for most apps, the iPhone version clearly has more effort put into it.
Seeing what an app ghetto the Play store is; they let anything on there and it’s scams galore.
Janky UI, as you said.
The final straw for me, though, was phone calls not ringing on the phone and going straight to VM. This was on a “pure” Google phone using Google Fi. When a phone can’t even act like a phone anymore, I’m out.
At my age, I don’t have time or desire to fiddle with shit constantly. I want it to Just Work.
for most apps, the iPhone version clearly has more effort put into it.
Even Google Maps work better on iOS!!
At my age, I don’t have time or desire to fiddle with shit constantly.
Yeah I used to install custom ROMS on my Android phones. Android has more customizations, but I would rather use a design that works well out of the box.
Takes time to write thoughtful, detailed post in an Apple Enthusiast community
gets downvoted by 30% of readers
😒
It would be great if c/appleenthusiast wasn’t constantly having posts downvoted by the rest of lemmy just because “apple bad”.
