Comment by terrywang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by terrywang | Hacker News Reader

I've been an Android user since Nexus S (Android 2.3), Nexus 4, Nexus 5, all the way up to Nexus 5X (7.1.x).

The LG made Nexus 5X bricked (suddenly rebooted and never boots again) at 13 months old due to a known hardware fault, there is a lawsuit against LG in California https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/lg-bootloop-defe...

My Nexus 5 had power button issue (it automatically switch off, sigh...) Nexus 4 build quality was bad, too.

I lost 3-4 days worth of photos (was travelling and didn't backup). Luckily I was able to boot once (out of 40 attempt) after it bricked by giving it some heat (thermal issue). Backed up the photos before it quickly died again (there are videos on YouTube to fix the problem using heat gun), finally I decided I've had enough with crappy Nexus phones (I am fine with Android though). Pixel / Pixel XL is more expensive than iPhone 7 or plus, really cannot justify.

Finally I've moved to iOS again, after 6-7 years as I decided not to manually flash phone OS and root any more (I have my Arch Linux workstations and MBPs). My requirements for a phone comes down to: - Reliable hardware and high quality finish - Strong hardware based/accelerated encryption - Fingerprint recognition and authentication - Stable and Swift OS (greatly improved with APFS, regained faith in Apple) - Good camera - the best camera is the one with you - Long battery life (ideally support both fast charge and wireless charge)

The iPhone 7 Plus meets all. So far I've been on it for 2 weeks. iOS definitely has better attention to details and better UX at the cost of more control over the OS, a lot of apps on Android that doesn't support fingerprint authentication support that on iOS, I was surprised to find out.

The only complains are that 1. there is no HN client as good as Materialistic (let me know if you know any...) 2. no strongSwan native client (Gboard has introduced more language support so it's no longer a big concern). Other than that I am happy.

Anecdotally, I have a similar timeline of phones (Nexus 4, 5, 5x) except for the fact that they are all still running fine (the Nexus 4 now runs as a wifi-only portable music player paired to a bluetooth speaker).

My SO, on the other hand, has gone through 4 iPhones in the meantime and all either having to be replaced due to cracks in the glass' front/back or hardware issues.

That being said, I do like the general feeling of an iPhone in my hands, it feels well-built and that is what a lot of people are looking for. But as a hacker I could never own an iPhone. Whenever I've used my SO's phones over the years (iPhone 4s, 5 and now 6s) I've just been extremely frustrated with the piss-poor UX. It has definitely improved in the last 2-4 years due to 'borrowing' a lot from Android in terms of notifications and sharing data between apps but it simply does not even get close to the ease of use of Android (particularly in the 'doing things' department).

As an example of what I mean: a couple of years ago, if you wanted to upload a picture you were viewing to Dropbox (or anywhere really) you had to close the photo viewer, go to the app you wanted to share the picture with, find the picture you were looking at previously by browsing through the gallery again and then share the picture. Things like this have improved but the flow is still often quite cumbersome and I often run into similar hurdles when trying to perform very common tasks, I believe Instagram still opens up any location in Apple Maps without an option to choose an other map app for example. The notification screen, while better than it was before, is also awful compared to Android.

I agree with most of your points. I'll probably sell the Nexus 5 (running LineageOS 14.1 now) and get a Mi 6 as a backup phone.

I used to run AOSP (stock) and root because of the camera optimization. I found it frustrating when Google introduced monthly security update. It has become a burden (especially when the Nexus 5X randomly failed to boot - that was in fact a sign of the hardware issue, I didn't realize at that time). root didn't give me too much other than playing around in Termux plus GNU tools, Titanium backup, Greenify and ES File Explorer/Manager.

I wouldn't call myself hacker but I am a 15+ year Linux power user and veteran, I cannot live without root on a workstation/laptop. But I keep asking myself the question: do I really need root on a phone? My answer is no for now. I'd rather spend time with family or playing StarCraft: Brood War with friends than flushing the phone...).

Losing the Nexus 5X for 2 days made me reconsider the phone I really need, ended up with an iPhone 7 Plus (cannot justify to buy a Pixel XL...). Reliability, data integrity/security, automatic backup, quality of hardware (camera) matter a lot more.

I have iPad Air and iPad Pro at home so I've been witnessing iOS making progress, borrowing lots of Android design to improve UX. I'd say iOS 10.3.1 is a very good one, APFS definitely is a huge plus (it'll make macOS great again) while the equivalent for Android I don't see it coming.

BTW: All above is personal experience and opinion based on my use cases.

> do I really need root on a phone? My answer is no for now.

I very much agree on this point. I started on Android 1.5 (Samsung Galaxy) and back then and for the next several years you simply always had a better experience after rooting and putting a custom ROM on your phone. It was fun and exciting and empowering. Right now my Nexus 5x is not rooted (although the bootloader is unlocked, just in case) and running stock. I have not seen a valid reason to use a custom ROM since Android 5 and rooting, although useful in some cases (AdBlocking is a big one), is just not worth the effort anymore in my opinion.

I use the built in VPN client to connect to StrongSwan servers on a regular basis. It works just fine.

I like minihack better than materialistic.

iOS supports IKEv2 VPNs natively, no need for an app.

strongSwan for Android offers a lot more than just IKEv2.

- support for MOBIKE -> automatically reconnect when switching connectivity - importing JSON format VPN profiles via HTTPS - easy X509 certificate import - 1 click IKEv2 + RSA authentication with X509 authentication

I am yet to figure out how to best do IKEv2 + X509 authentication on iOS 10.3.1 and adjust strongSwan accordingly.

Minihack is great hn client

anecdotally i had in Malaysia noname Spice smartphone, never had hardware issue, then i had in China Amoi smartphone, never had hardware issue, then I had Lenovo, never had hardware issue, now I have more than year Xiaomi, no hardware issue

what exactly have these anecdotes to do with quality of Android smartphone and switching to iPhone?

also for that matter i use mobile phones 20 years, must have more than 20 of them (in 00s i used to have two phones at same time and switch them every year), guess how many got broken? zero

So _that's_ why they replaced my 5X out of warranty at no charge.

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