Aka: Why I switched from Android to IOS

[TL:DR]: This will be a long one… I’m a Geek. iPhone wins for Camera Speed, Continuity, and Performance.

After some 10+ years as an Android phone user (with a very early sprinkling of Blackberry and Palm, for work), I have made the jump to the iPhone. Technically, as I am writing this, I have both on my desk, because I still consider it a “trial” until I sell the Android (currently a Samsung Note 4)… but I’ve basically made up my mind. It was a long, hard, process; with months of “research” (aka, watching benchmarks and reviews). I think a ton of the reviews focused on specs and quantifiable parallels in both. But what I REALLY wanted was a review of someone like me, who has made the switch after so long. Since I couldn’t find one, I decided to take the gamble. I bought an iPhone 6 Plus (closest match to my beastly Samsung Note 4), and just jumped head-first into using every day.

First, What I miss about Android… that isn’t covered below:

  • Layout control. I am anal-retentive about the ergonomics of my icons. Having icons/folders auto-arranged drives me crazy… but I’m slowly getting over it. I’ll claim that as a mental health win.
  • Widgets. Silly to most, but you get used to these things. Specifically I hate having multiple swipes/clicks to get to my music. Yes, 1 swipe (IOS 7+) is too much when you spent years with all music controls on your home screen.
  • ROOTING. Yes, I am a tinkerer, and I like to root my phones… generally within days of purchasing. I however went through 3 dead phones from rooting-gone-bad, so will refrain from jailbreaking my phone that cost half a month of mortgage.
  • Clearing All Background Apps. Again, theLazy in me… but swiping up for every app running in the background is annoying a hell. Android had a “clear all”-like button.
  • Better Custom Keyboards. While there are cool things about the iPhone keyboard, after 3 months I still type like a n00b. Swype isn’t even the same as it was on Android. And don’t get me started on the crappy auto-suggest completion (and subsequently CORRECTING the inevitable incorrect completion) and poor implementation of Custom Dictionary. I actually type code snippets in emails in my job, so this has become very frustrating.
  • Watches. The Samsung wearables kick soo much a$$. We (iPhone users) are just NOW getting iWatch… while Samsung has had 2+ years to iterate and improve. I’m not a fan of the look of the iWatch either… but I’m sure eventually I’ll get one.
  • Google Voice Search. Siri just plain sucks… enough said.

Now Reason’s I switched over Core features.

Camera quality:

So this was my primary factor for the longest. Being a once-photographer (“once-” because I shamefully have not been shooting much for years), besides email, the camera is my most-used feature. Besides the spec bloat, with most Android Flagship phones having higher MegaPixels, I focused a lot on the lenses and metering. For the non-photographer folks out there, Metering is big. It is what gets you that nice balance of light and shadow, as well as color matching.

Why I switched So while my Note 4 has 16MP and the iPhone 6+ only has 8MP, the Meteringand Speed-to-Picture were such a big difference, it was worth it. First the Metering is Faster, more accurate, and more control (not counting Samsung camera app specifics). The Speed to Picture – a made up metric of how long it takes from screen off to snapping a picture – was night-and-day different. My Note 4 would take at least 20 seconds some times. And anyone with kids knows that you probably definitely lost the shot by then.

Continuity:

One thing I’ve come to love a ton with Android is – and this is totally geek – the ability to control my phone on my laptop screen. While I’m working during the day, I can have a virtual phone on my desktop, and respond to SMS’s, and – I admit – play my NES Emulator during “break times”. Also, since Google Hangouts/Chat syncs well with the Web (for history), desktop (I use Adium on Mac), and mobile, I have access – for the most part – to my chats everywhere.

Why I switched While Google Hangouts/Chat gave me a near-continuity, it had its gaps. Incoming messages synced across all very well, but not outgoing. So I was losing context in cases where I was responding on my phone. Now I’m anal-retentive with log files, and have 15 years worth of Chat/Email logs, and have become quite skilled at merging them… its a painful process that I’d like to avoid. Enter Messages. Unfortunately, I can’t say that Messages fixes the cross device outgoing message gap, it gives me the same level of incoming sync as Google did. The gain here was SMS. With Messages, I can now view my SMS’s on my desktop. I have co-workers who like to text me while I’m doing remote demos, and I miss those most of the time since the screen turns off constantly with the Android Mirroring. There is also the gain of starting Email / Docs on Laptop/Phone and picking up on the other. Thats cool, but the reality is that I will rarely be editing a document on my phone. That may change if I ever geek-splurge and get an iPad though. Another small factor in here – and totally geek -, is that Push notifications come in on the iPhone a good 10 seconds before the Note.

[Pusedo-] Physical Buttons

Ok, so this is one where Android clearly wins. The iPhone has one button, but it has TouchID… more on that in a bit. One hangup I’ve had – and its a big one after 10 years of habit – is the lack of a Back Button. For those of you who are native iPhone users, this may not seem like a big deal, but its HUGE when it becomes a core means of User Experience. I am still frustrated with this, and am even looking at writing my own app to compensate (and you know its frustrating when it un-lazifies me). My S4 and Note4 not only had a physical Home button, but also capacitive-touch Back and Options/Expose buttons. This makes for a great flow for power users, especially when you have custom actions associated with them.

Why I switched: So it would seem that there is no hope for the physical buttons, but I predict that eventually Apple will make physical – or at least capacitive-touch – buttons back in style. TouchID is pretty awesome, and crazy accurate/flexible. The fingerprint recognition on my Samsung devices are pretty glitchy. Actually being able to unlock my phone (and eventually apps/app-authentications) with TouchID is way cool. Then we come back to my “… even looking at writing my own app to compensate” comment. My thought was about adding Gestures to TouchID. I noticed that when I was doing the TouchID setup, that it noticed movement. Wether it is active movement, or 2 quick snapshots and a comparison, its still doable. Then I came across this post, talking about an Apple Patent to apply Gestures:http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/11/25/touch-id-patent-reveals-gesture-based-controls/. I guess now I just have to be patient.

Performance

If you haven’t sent me 100 droid-fanboi flames yet, you’ll probably do it now… but I’ll say it: The iPhone [6 Plus] whoops the S4 and Note4 ‘s butts. Yep, I said it. Now I’m not talking any kind of scientific measurements like PhoneArena’s. I’m talking about the “Mondo’s-blood-boils-when-dealing-with-lag” measurement.

So the first counter everyone is going to bring up is “IOS just shows you a snapshot of the app while its loading in the background to make you THINK it is faster”.  And my response is: “HELLLZ YES!!! That is called SMART!!!”. Coming from my UX background, its not always about REAL speed, but perceived speed. You can have 2X the processing power, but if you can’t utilize it fully – because of OS-level abstractions so that the OS runs on all kinds of hardware, or even from back programming – then it won’t matter a bit. A site with a small file on a slow CDN is probably still going to have a perceived faster experience than a site with a huge file on a faster CDN. This is why Time to First Paint and time from First Paint to DOM Interactive is so vital for website performance measurements… its all about the User’s Experience and Perception.

Why I switched: So again, it is ALL about perception here… ok, really, just mostly… but that matters most to ME. There are LOTS of instances where IOS “mathematically” performs better, and that is because there are less OS-level abstractions, and a limited set of hardware to support. “Metal” was one of the greatest things for game developers serious about tuningwriting for performance. I have been WAY less frustrated with application lag with IOS than ANY android phone I’ve ever touched (including the new S6). And I put it through some extreme tests of running everything I could, without ever clearing a background process, for well over a month.

Other small reasons:

  • Cases… yes, I am picky so more options matter

— Funny enough, I ended up with a $5 one from the dollar store

  • Apps. Deny it all you want, but more companies invest in developing for IOS first! Hell, even as an Android user, so did I. It’s because of the market base, less cost due from fragmentation, and because of most IOS’s user’s willingness to pay for apps vs. the Android Free mentality.
  • Charging Cables. Yes this is a double-edged sword, because Apple charges a rediculous amount for cables… but everywhere I go, SOMEONE has at least one flavor of cable handy. Granted in the last 3-4 years, most Android devices have standardized on micro-usb, there are still exceptions, and too much history to forget.
  • Headphones. More headphones have built-in controls that only [fully] work with iPhone… now I can use them all.

— I love my Bose Over Ears.

  • Pins. Yes, dropping a pin for family/co-workers is awesome. My sales reps and I use it a lot when coordinating where to meet up while traveling.