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Comment by anfogoat | Hacker News Reader

I've had the worst time since switching to the OnePlus 3 and from what I've read the OS on this phone is very close to stock Android.

The only way to have a good experience with email, calendars and contacts is to use Google Apps – which I refuse to migrate to. The stock apps have no support for IMAP IDLE, CardDAV, or CalDAV. You have to resort to 3rd party apps for these and they are without fail either slow, buggy, very unappealing visually, or all three.

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Have you tried using third party apps on the iPhone? You can't change the default browser, mail client, maps app, etc. on iOS. At least it's possible to switch the defaults to 3rd party apps on Android.

You're right about the core apps on iOS. In principle, Android seems preferable to iOS.

But it sounds like the core apps on iOS work the way they want them to, whereas the alternatives on Android are all lacking. So being able to change is a nice option, but if you don't use it, doesn't really add much.

> But it sounds like the core apps on iOS work the way they want them to, whereas the alternatives on Android are all lacking.

It doesn't make sense to compare the core apps on iOS to the alternatives on Android. The core apps on Android are just as good as (I would say better than) the core apps on iOS.

This is absolutely true -- I'm on a nexus 5/android 6.

There's no native caldav. I use a paid client called caldav-sync which is mediocre. For a while on android 5/lollipop, you had to install a second app (free from the same author) to prevent settings being wiped during OS upgrades/patches. When I upgraded to android 6 I couldn't figure out why calendars weren't syncing until I discovered caldav-sync decided to sync every 6 hours instead of every 5 minutes. The whole thing feels and works like a hack.

Using the gmail app as an imap client for fastmail is crap, particularly if you access the email account from a desktop. The Gmail app regularly desyncs from the state of your email. It has recently decided to announce old emails as new. If you move/delete an email in fastmail from the web client on your desktop, you have to manually tell gmail to sync or it won't notice, even hours after the fact.

I was hoping for a cheap nexus replacement and was also looking at the OnePlus 3. Dual sims are nice too. That's too bad that you don't like it...

I should clarify. Except for Android's lack of support for good email/cal/contact syncing, I've got no major complaints about the OnePlus itself.

I used Aquamail & Davdroid (paid on Play,free on F-droid) for that combo (before my hosting got ActiveSync, for which I another excellent client app called Nine), was working without issues you write about.

The problem with ActiveSync -- which you may be aware of? -- is it gives the server the rights to remote wipe your phone! Great if you control the server and are really (really really really) sure it will never be hacked...

Thanks for the Davdroid recommendation!

Nine allows you to specify a variety of security-related options including local passcodes, internal app data encryption, and whether the security policy (remote wipe capability) is applied at the application level or at the device level.

I believe many of the other third-party Exchange-connecting apps have the same type of options.

Actually, when I was doing my research, Nine was the only app that allowed you to limit the Exchange policies to app-only level, not device-wide. That's the reason why I ended up using it.

TouchDown, one of the oldest (which does not automatically imply best) should also allow this, though their description isn't quite as clear: "Corporate Data Separation: TouchDown keeps your corporate data separate from your personal data. Without TouchDown, your employer can actually flatten your phone to factory defaults. With TouchDown, they can only remove corporate data belonging to them, leaving behind your personal information."

I might have skipped TouchDown at the time, because 1) it does not integrate with the native calendar and contacts (or at least the screenshots imply that it is a built-in functionality), 2) it looks like from Gingerbread era, 3) has separate versions for phone and tablet.

Nine had neither of these issues.

I had similar problems to those described above and aquamail did alleviate it but at the cost of major battery life. I ended up going back to Gmail since that worked so much better.

I was very surprised to see Android lacking support for CalDav out-of-the-box. Seemed like an obvious feature for a calendar app, yet no provider. So while it might not be much; there are CardDav/CalDav-adapters on f-droid.org, they are free software and work very good in my experience. It integrates so it allows you to use the stock calendar app.

In the end, though, I think the idea with phones like these is that they work "best" if you use the services that the manufacturer supplies, be it Apple or Google. If you use Gmail, Google Drive, Google everything, it's got a lot to offer.

That seems to be an Apple specialty, because Windows software always lacked that as well.

it is quite close to stock android and i think it is quite unfortunate that it is not actually stock android. your critique, while somewhat valid, is not of the oneplus3 but of google's applications.

Yeah, I think it's probably sensible advice to say that if you want to stay away from Google apps and services, you're better off with iOS.

Try getting an IMAP PUSH on iOS or staying logged in to XMPP or SSH all day and you'll take that back pretty damn quick. How about not wanting to use their phone app and use SIP instead?

These are things I find necessary for day-to-day stuff, but which are simply impossible on iOS. If you want good 3rd party integration, Android is your only option in many cases. You just have to find the good apps.

I'm not a heavy iOS user, and I hadn't considered that sort of thing, but I can see your point.

While that's part of your every day routine, I think you'd have to agree that a lot of that is pretty niche.

Niche, maybe, but we're talking about integration with 3rd party stuff and that's exactly what this is.

K9 mail I find to be tolerable. A shame sunrise calendar is no more.

That's quite tangential.

How surprising is it really that Android sucks if you refuse to use Google services? Where have you been the last 3-5 years?

I guess I should have know. It's just that out of the two I would have expected Apple to be the one forcing you into their ecosystem, yet on iOS I had no trouble having a great experience in respect to email, contacts and calendars without signing into iCloud.

They're both all about forcing you into their ecosystem. The difference is that Apple's business is (mostly) about their hardware ecosystem, while Google's is (mostly) about their online services ecosystem.

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