The UI/UX on iOS has improved dramatically in the last few years (especially for springboard, which was what I most hated). Coming from Android to iOS, my phone looks so different from everyone else I know who uses iOS, since their home screens have evolved over years and mine was, “how can I, in 2022, make an iPhone look as much like my Android Home Screen as possible?”
I have one screen with a giant weather widget, and some folders for my most-used apps, plus I have four on my dock.
To the left of the main screen is the “Today View” where I have a number of useful widgets that get me quick access to specific things.
To the right of the main screen is the app drawer equivalent, whatever they call it. To be honest I never use it.
Most of the time when I want to launch an app I just swipe down and type the first few letters. That’s usually sufficient. I find having used this phone for a little over a year I’m now as efficient or more efficient than I was on Android, at least for the task of getting from the home screen to whatever app I want.
This was huge for me, because in my previous experience springboard was TERRIBLE unless the device was jailbroken. Now it’s really nice.
I would still love the level of customization Android has. Major feature I’d like would be for the home screen not to push all widgets and icons to the front and left. I wish it would let me put stuff wherever I want so I could have a larger amount of my wallpaper visible while still having the icons closer to my thumbs.
I know there are widget solutions to this problem, but that’s clunky.
But it’s SO MUCH BETTER now than it used to be. Old springboard, that was basically just the Android app drawer, was terrible.
I use iOS currently. I used Android for many many years, and loved it. I dreaded iOS and its walled garden.
But for various reasons, when my OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Edition died and nothing in the Android world really wowed me at a reasonable pricepoint, and knowing that I would be able to get full-quality images and videos from my family and my wife’s family without them having to change their messaging app to accommodate me, I decided to try iPhone for the first time since like, the 3GS.
I’ve had the 13 Pro Max for over a year now and honestly I love it. It took a lot of getting used to at first. Everything is a bit different, and getting over those differences was frustrating. There are still things I really miss. Android handles notifications better, Android does gestures better (being able to go back from either side of the screen is huge), and OnePlus at least, maybe Android in general, let me open the camera by double-tapping the power button, so I could have the camera loaded by the time it was in position. I’m still much slower on the draw with my iPhone, unfortunately.
But iOS has its advantages, too. The battery life is amazing. The Apple Watch kicks the shit out of every Wear OS watch I owned (and also fixes my issues with notifications). The search function is crazy quick to the point that I hardly ever open apps from their icons in the Home Screen or App Drawer equivalent. Everything is polished and rarely fucks up. And when anything IS wrong, there are local stores that can fix it that day. I had a faulty front camera on my phone originally, it was replaced within the day, didn’t have to send it off for OnePlus to replace it. When the back glass broke they replaced basically the entire phone for $30 or something, again within the day. Integration between devices is beautifully seamless.
Basically I’ve found that both are very good options these days. It’s silly that anyone really cares which device you use.
When I was younger I liked to root my Android phones and use custom ROMs. But it had been years since I had done any of that, and I realized that what I was giving up moving to iOS was much less than I had thought.
I may go back someday. I’ve tried to keep everything in Google still so that I don’t have to give up anything except app purchases if I go back. But for now I’m happy on iOS.
This is me exactly. I was so into flashing custom ROMs and customizing everything. But as I got older I cared less about that and wanted something that just worked well out of the box. Pixels always seemed to have a fatal flaw so I tried the iPhone, I think it was the 8 Plus, and haven’t looked back.
I have no doubt that I could switch to Android and be totally fine, but haven’t had reason to. My iPhone 12 is still solid, I may upgrade this next iteration or next.
knowing that I would be able to get full-quality images and videos from my family and my wife’s family without them having to change their messaging app to accommodate me, I decided to try iPhone for the first time since like, the 3GS.
This is the biggest pain for me, but my solution is different. I just ask them to share a link to an iCloud album, which is also asking them to make albums! So far it has worked pretty well, and they almost all appreciate having an album for related pictures. I think it’s insane that Apple does this on purpose.
Im using a 6T with lineageos. How is your battery life? I still get a full day out of mine (I think only 3-4 hours SOT though). I’m hoping to keep it for a long time (no news phone have piqued my interest!)
I’ve set double tap to launch camera. Not sure if this solution fits your camera needs, but it works really well for me on my 14 pro.if you’re prone to false launching then triple tap is also available
I find my pop socket makes the back tap iffy. I’ve also tried the Apple Watch tap, which does work, but both only work (IIRC) when the phone is already unlocked. With my old OnePlus phones I could double-tap the power button while the phone was coming out of my pocket and have the camera ready as soon as it was up in my hands ready to go. I’m not adept enough with the iPhone’s swipe on the lock screen to do the same thing smoothly.
Probably the feature I miss the most, honestly. It’s SO good for capturing things as they were happening.
Are you me? I had the same phone and upgraded to the 13 Pro Max too. Moved away from iOS after the 3GS too. Nextcloud background photos upload is def the thing I miss most from android. Have all iCloud functionality disabled
When you put it that way, I guess you are right, but you should also consider we have m/Apple, a whole apple community and it's one of the biggest places on kbin.
I know, and I've subscribed to them early on, but my feed is flooded with other communities and I don't recall ever seing amything from /m/Apple...
I also just went there and the newest posts are mostly days apart from each other...
So "one of the biggest" might be true for the subscriber count, but threadwise not so much activity there.
Which is a bummer, honestly... I'm not a huge fan, but I'd still love to be up-to-date on their stuff.
Well, that is obviously because Kbin is new, smaller than something like Reddit, other communities that may flood your feed is mainly because they are generic, while m/apple is well, focused on Apple and it's products, it has more to do with having less users to post on a community that is more specific.
MacOS doesn’t have the same level of lock down as their mobile devices do. Apple also sets the trends so there’s great interest in what they do, since their moves are those that other companies will follow good or bad.
Decisions iphones make also influences decisions Android makes like removing headphone jacks, expandable storage, and notches. There’s a lot of interest in seeing what Apple is up to from everyone, since they set the standards.
Using my iPad and then seeing how difficult it was to find apps that didn’t have ads, apps I could buy outright, and so many subscription only options was what turned me away. And then how incompatible it is requiring work arounds to access the file system if you aren’t using air drop compared to Android where just plugging it into any system and giving permission lets you see files beyond just pics and videos you took, and move files back and forth with ease.
And how difficult it was to find Foss apps without something like F-droid. And because of that I noticed apps I took for granted on Android creates a system where you are having to spend more money and then being up sold subscriptions because of lack of options. It felt like a very gacha like environment. It felt so much like dealing with some scummy sales person.
If I own a phone I think I should have the ability to do what I want with it, like installing sideloaded apps and customizing it however I want. There’s also much more choice in hardware.
That said, there’s some neat features on iOS that I’m a little jelly of.
Android is, in my opinion, the "best of what's currently available." Mind you, this does not imply that it is "good".
I dearly miss PalmOS and the Tungsten and Treo product lines, as well as the Psion brand. Those terrific PDA's had features that modern phones still lack. Conversely, I think modern phones come with a plethora of features that aren't really positive. But then, I'm not really a fan of the whole style where you can barely touch a device anywhere without operating it in some way. This is just my personal opinion.
The #1 reason why I would never choose Apple's products is that, while they excel at what you're supposed to use them for, their platform is way too locked down for my taste. As a device owner, I want the ability to customise stuff and install (and remove!) whatever the hell I want (including ads!), and Android delivers that in far greater measure than Apple.
My first smartphone was an iPhone. Most things were counter intuative. I also had to jailbreak it to do the things I wanted. A lot of it was basic stuff. The one I remember was that I wanted to use certain Bluetooth devices that would only work when jailbroken.
Once I tried Android there was no turning back. I've used Apple devices for work and it is still counter intuative but things like Bluetooth are less restrictive at least. Still you shouldn't have to try to break or hack the system you're on to get basic settings that aren't available by default.
Android. I like being able to install apps from places other than the official app store. Do I do it often on my phone? No. But I also have an Android-powered retro handheld gaming doodad (Retroid Pocket 3) and that's full of all kinds of homebrew, from Sonic fangames to emulators to a sourceport of Mario 64 that could never be gotten from the Apple appstore.
Do I like Android? Yes, but as much as I used to. I used to really look forward to exploring a new version of the OS, but over the past five years or so there's been a steady march to iOS-ify it and dumb it down. Now, when I install a new version of Android, I get a sinking feeling in my stomach as I see all the nifty stuff being removed :(
It depends on a lot. I currently have an iPhone, and I like it, but I've never had an Android phone that was my daily driver.
If I switched, what would I feel like I'm giving up, without having any experiential knowledge of what it would be like?
iMessage and privacy. Or at least the perception of privacy.
Preface to state that blackberry 10 and Microsoft Windows phones were much better than iOS and Android for almost everything except getting devs to build apps on their platforms.
I like the idea of Android. I want there to be an open ecosystem and different types of devices that can look similar or look different.
It’s a real pain in the ass to manage Android. There was admin mode, now there’s enterprise mode. Also there’s Knox, with various options and licensing that overlap with your mdm. Oh and gmail enterprise is the email app but you need to include chrome, unless you’re using Knox but oh yeah never mind that was deprecated you’ll be using gmail. Also the dual-profile thing isn’t very seamless. Also depending on the phone vendor, model, and OS version the UI will be different. Good luck teaching anyone the changes or talking them through screens.
It’s so bad that Microsoft developed Outlook for Android and app-level management to largely ignore the nonsense that was managing android devices.
Over on iOS, the UI has largely remained the same since release. MDM isn’t great but it’s gotten better. It’s a breeze to manage compared to iOS. Apps are pretty consistent in design.
Windows phones never really got around to MDM, but blackberry phones were always easy to manage.
IOS is simple better for enterprise and most non-technical users that need a smartphone and have no interest in customizing it.
I've never liked how much apple locks down their operating systems... It takes so much effort to install any software that's not on the app store, and last time I used an iPhone you couldn't even put app icons wherever you wanted on the home screen.
But being totally honest, I use Android because Android phones are way cheaper, I couldn't afford any remotely recent Apple device even if I wanted one.
Being able to side load apps, especially things like revanced for YouTube premium bypassing has been amazing. Nowadays everyone is trying to extract dollar from you, having these apps helps you get a great experience without being smashed with 15s ads after you've watched 5m of content
Add comment