Apple

I got a 15 pro this year. This is my first apple phone.

I agree with your Android "struggle" list completely and would add that every single model I ever owned (especially the Google phones) had some unbelievable hardware issue that made using the phone a maddening experience. From calling that wouldn't work at all to black screen on wakeup that wouldn't go away, every time I bought a new phone it felt like the timer had begun on finding what new exciting awful hardware bug was going to present itself and whether Google would warranty replace it.

I agree with most of your iphone revelation comments. Face ID is miles better than anything I ever experienced on Android. Look and feel is definitely better. The audio switching is as easy as it gets. Carplay is... fine. I don't like the work flow better and some of the decisions are weird when moving from app to app within apps, but I'm used to them now and don't see them as often.

What I disagree about:

• Shortcuts is a shadow of what I could do with Tasker. It's like eating baby food after having a Michelin rated meal. It's fine. It's not the end of the world and Shortcuts covers the use cases of most things, but man it was jarring to see what it couldn't do when compared to Tasker.
• Apple Maps sucks and boy I've tried.
• Comparing emulation is crazy talk. There's a billion emulators available on Android and Apple doesn't have what Android had a decade ago.

What I like about apple that you didn't mention:

• Integration of apple stuff: it all works out of the box as you'd expect. This wasn't always the case with Android and having it all just work is pretty great.
• Apple stores are cool for getting stuff fixed quick. Kid broke their screen and we had it swapped in an hour. No calling around to see if my local shops had my Android phone screen in stock.

What I hate about apple that you didn't mention:

• No custom launchers. I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT. I can't believe people put up with this shit.
• Apple people and their obsession with text messaging using the Messages app. My god, texting has always sucked and apple people still use it.
• I miss Fdroid every single day. Sometimes I don't need a super slick app with a subscription for some simple thing. I just need a little app that does a little thing.
• EVERY APP IS A SUBSCRIPTION FOR GOD'S SAKE EVERY SINGLE DAMN ONE

I continue to be baffled that "anyone can grab your phone, point it at your face, and have access to everything" is somehow a feature and not a critical vulnerability. In the US, you can be compelled to unlock a device using biometrics, but not a password, under the 5th Amendment.

I, too, have abandoned Samsung.

Not going over to iPhone, though, screw that noise. The one time I tried it was on an iPad and yeah, no, screw most of that UX. Plus I'm not giving Apple money. I'm on an Android phone with a 3.5mm jack and a SD card slot, like nature intended.

These look like all Samsung issues and not Android issues

I have a Pixel 8 and don't have connectivity or overheating issues. I say this as it's 38°C right now 🥵

The lack of being able to use extensions in Firefox on iOS is a deal breaker for me.

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.

Is OP an Apple shill? Does OP know that Samsung is not Android and viceversa?

I switched to an iPhone after having many similar hangups with Android devices over the years. Biggest for me was how little update/software support Android phones got. I think they're better these days (or so I hope) but they had awful support for years. Buying a brand new Android phone and only getting 1 OS update and 2 years of security updates was not uncommon and I have several old Android phones in a drawer that succumbed to that fate.

My experiences with iOS have largely been positive but I do have some issues which annoy me constantly:

1. Apple's ecosystem is great and is so polished and tightly integrated, but trying to do anything outside of that ecosystem is incredibly painful. You are actively punished when trying to do anything outside Apple's box. Even something as simple as transferring music files from your PC to your phone is frustrating at best and impossible at worst.

2. Every. Goddamn. App. is a subscription. The app store is almost completely useless and I practically never use it. I'm not joking when I say that the vast majority of downloadable apps are subscription-based, and usually a WEEKLY subscription instead of monthly. Sorry, but I'm not paying $5/week for a goddamn calculator or weather app. This means that using an iPhone can be very frustrating if the stock apps don't suit your needs. This reason alone is enough to make me want to jump ship again sometimes.

3. iCloud sucks. No other way to word this, really. It's a relic of bygone times and Apple really needs to overhaul it and make it more useful in the modern day. Everything from the clunky, Fisherprice UI to the base storage which barely has enough gigabytes to hold a single fart. On one hand upgraded storage is only a few bucks a month. On the other hand I'm goddamn tired of subscriptions.

I dont know what was your problem with slowdowns. I've been rocking s8plus and now s22ultra and the only times when either were restarted was an update. I can agree with your point about design but its basically a different approach to development as with iphone you must use certain elements whereas with android you can do what you want.

No idea why Samsung is seen as the best manufacturer of Android phones. Bloated crap.

file manager ruins any apple experience

Having moved to iPhone fairly recently I do like the overall experience, however Face ID is by far the biggest downside over a good under screen fingerprint scanner.

When picking up the phone and holding it in front of my face it works perfectly well, but that’s probably less than 50% of the unlocks I do.

Most of the time the phone would lie flat on a desk, on a nightstand, couch armrest etc. I can see and interact with the screen just fine, but the phone can’t see me properly. Making me pick the phone to quickly check a notification.

I’m probably entering my password about 4-5x as much as my old phone because of that

Can't say the android phones I've used have slowed down over the years ( mainly one plus ). I always stayed away from Samsung and the sort because they add too much bloat.

Not to mention that an update changed the power button to "activate bixby" and the constant harassing OD the Samsung app.

I bought the latest Samsung tablet and its underwhelming compared to the precious Samsung tablet I had. At this point I wish I had bought an iPad instead :/

For me add the fact that the AirTag network is vastly larger and more mature than Tile or another other service. And Apple Pay works better* and I was sold

* anecdotal personal experience, ymmv

I’ve used tons of different phones (both Android and iOS) and although I always defended Android in almost every past conversation, I ended up using an iPhone, here’s why:

• On Android the base system that provides all the functionality comes from Google and if you try to remove Google services from Android, your phone is basically crippled. I don’t need to get into how hungry Google is for your personal data.
• Pixels advertise features that they do not have and they probably will never have. Some Pixels have the feature X, but you go buy the same exact model again and bam you don’t have feature X on that phone for some reason. (Also the Pixel launcher has a non removable Google search bar which I hated)
• Samsungs are great mini PCs you can carry, especially with DeX, but why do I have Samsung suite + Microsoft suite + Google suite of apps on one phone? You can’t remove Samsung apps, so you take a photo, view it through Samsung gallery and backup through Google Photos which is very inconvenient.
• Android overall has more personality, although your options are more and more limited each day due to bad hardware offered by brands. You want performance, you need a Samsung and then you get your data collected by all the big tech.
• I’ve had multiple call, audio or app issues with many Android vendors, never had an issue with an iPhone.
• iPhones are stupid and I hate the fact that I have to use it because Android makers are incompetent. iPhones work really well if people around you also use Apple devices (especially for US)
• You pay almost the same price for a new Pixel 8 and a new iPhone 15. You get an experimental chip with the Pixel that is generations behind in terms of performance and you FEEL IT. I felt my Samsung S24 was A LOT faster in terms of performance compared to my iPhone 15, but since the Android system never became coherent, using iOS feels smoother.
• Main reason I’m on an iPhone is getting away from Google (especially with all the AI features coming our way). But I hate that Apple tries to lock you into their ecosystem every step of the way. You can’t access Apple services on an Android (except with a browser, which sucks). Google services work great, but knowing that Google logs my every interaction, file and input feels like hell when you think about it.
• Being in the cyberspace myself, I am aware that there is no such things as privacy online anymore, but at least with an iPhone, if Google pulls a stupid stunt I can just go back to iPhone’s services.

TL;DR Every phone is the same, Android in general is faster for getting things done, and although iOS is limited, it gets done whatever it can get done with no issues. It’s a matter of who you want to give your data to and I think we all know Google’s not to be trusted.

My experience switching to iPhone 4 years ago after only android is texting is incredibly more annoying due to terrible autocorrect and prediction on iphone

I hate how the files app doesn't give me access to shit.

The file apps on android aren't perfect due to no root access but it's leagues ahead of the awful iOS app.

They usually support SMB shares too.

My take on the list: seems most issues are related to Samsung specifically. I've never owned a Samsung Android so I can't really relate to them. I don't really see the performance issue happening with mid tier androids though - I'm using a Motorola edge 20 and it is still just as fast as it was two years ago. Weaker decides definitely have this problem, but a flagship is not supposed to. Might be related to Samsung bloatware, maybe.

Complaints about apps and Google abandoning services is 100% real. I don't mind the inconsistent look and feel tho, I even kinda like it - I wouldn't like it if everything on my phone looked the same year after year (I tend to switch launchers and icon/theme sets from time to time). Also not a fan of the extra animations Apple tends to have (I'm saying this based on osx as I haven't actively used any iOS in a while). I've probably even tweaked the animation settings on my phone back when I got it to speed them up. Still, Apple's app ecosystem is miles ahead of android's in almost every way. Even though apps can do much more on Android than on iOS, the store is trash and Apple's isn't (store itself still has some issues but the average app on it is much better).

I'm curious about this shortcuts app. I vaguely remember hearing about it when it came out but I'm not sure what it can do, I'm gonna check it out. Can't comment on some other items as I don't drive, don't take many pictures, don't use my face to unlock and only really use one Bluetooth audio device.

Takes time to write thoughtful, detailed post in an Apple Enthusiast community

gets downvoted by 30% of readers

😒

I went from iphone to a pixel 5 a while back. Love every bit of the Android ecosystem. I bought it for degoogling and now have GrapheneOS on it, it has been fucking amazing.

My friend just went from iphone 11 to moto razr and also is loving every bit of the Android experience.

Samsung is shit, bloatware and all that, don't buy Samsungs.

Apple devices could literally be the best device ever created and they should still never be purchased because Apple is a garbage company.

The shit state of the world right now is largely because we keep giving garbage companies our money because they make the shiny shit we like to be distracted by.

The absolute strategy of the billionaire corporate class is "who cares if the world burns as long as we collect all the money and keep people looking down at their screens so they don't notice."

Fuck them. And fuck anyone who keeps the status quo going by shelling out for their shit. And doubly fuck anyone who then shills for them on social media.

I have the 15 Pro Max after using Samsung for many years.

No one has mentioned the keyboard here.

I can type decent enough, however, having to go back and forth for numbers, letters, and symbols is frustrating at best.

The gallery app is not as easy as Samsung, imo. Instead of moving something to its own album I have everything stuck in “recents”. Hopefully, I will never forget to immediately move any photo to the proper album.

Photo editing on Samsung has more options.

iCloud wants to sync everything even when you tell it not to. I have documents hiding in there somewhere and apparently not even Apple can figure out where they are.

Spotlight search is amazing.

Adguard with Safari is not too bad. Reader mode is nicer, imo

I found the files app decent enough.

Overall a decent phone. Could it use improvement, yes. I look forward to ios18.

Few months ago I switched to an iPhone 15 Pro Max after being on Android for years. I think I briefly tried an iPhone 6s back in the day? For maybe a month and gave up. I only switched because I happened to be able to get the phone without having to pay anything down, and the one good thing I've always heard about iPhone is the camera. Going to be honest, I despise iOS as much as I remember. Navigating around is a nightmare. The number of times I try to use the android back gesture, only for nothing to happen, is in the dozens of times per day. The fact that there is no dedicated back button or gesture, unless a specific app graciously decides you get to have one(in the most inconvenient location possible), is obscene. Back on Android, not only do I get said feature, I can tweak and customize it to my liking. And for that matter, I can do the same to pretty much the entire UI. The nearly non-customizable UI on iOS is infuriating. The fact that I can't seem to predict which volume is about to be adjusted when I hit the volume buttons is even more infuriating. As is the phone's insistence on not switching audio devices when it should. Or refusing to connect to Bluetooth headphones or other devices automatically, constantly forcing me to going into the settings and do it manually. And just countless other things I absolutely hate about this thing. The only thing I have found to be an improvement is the battery life, which after a full day is still at 90% when I am ready to go to bed. But that's only because I just don't touch the phone anymore. I check an email or two during the day, and the phone otherwise just sits in my pocket untouched. Switching to an iPhone is probably the single biggest technology-related mistake I've made in years. And that's coming from someone who is running Arch as the only OS on my gaming laptop, and owns multiple VR headset and AR/XR glasses.

I'm glad other people seem to like their iPhones, but I absolutely despise this thing, and oh my god am I desperate to get the hell back onto Android at the first opportunity. I got this through Boost Infinite, so I'm hoping that when it's time, they'll let me "upgrade" to the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Which is the phone I wanted to begin with, but they were conveniently only advertising the iPhone at the time, so I didn't know they had other phones.

Moral of the the story is, if you tend to do any customization at all when you get a new Android phone, you're probably going to hate iPhone. If you tend to just log in your email account and use the phone as it comes, you might fare better. In either case, do what you have to, to get your hands on a borrowed iPhone and spend some time with it before even considering making the switch.

I kinda wish ios had a fdroid equivalent. Apples $99 yearly dev fee basically forces apps to rely on subscriptions or advertising (rarely one time iap).

I had an iPhone 4 for years. Got drunk on st pattys and dropped it and screwed it all up so figured I’ll go get a new phone. Got a Samsung s9… believe I had the iPhone for ~6-7 years.

The s9 was great at first but after a few months it slowed drastically. Year later I ditched that phone because if I didn’t reboot it daily it ran like shit. Tried a non-Samsung android, I think it was the asus phone. Same shit, few months in it starts shitting the bed.

Went and got another iPhone around 2019 and I’m only on my second iPhone since switching from android and only reason I switched was I wanted some of the features on the current iPhone and Verizon had a deal where I got a free watch for upgrading.