Comment by OkGoDoIt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by OkGoDoIt | Hacker News Reader

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I agree, I made the switch a few years ago when I couldn't find a single good Android phone that wasn't huge (and yes, I tried the Sony Z3 Compact, it had way too many issues). The iPhone SE had just come out with flagship specs and one of the best cameras on the market, so I made the jump. It was painful for a while but now I'm sure I'd feel the same pain switching back.

My main complaint about iOS is text entry. Both the keyboard and voice input are incredibly bad compared to Android, even compared to Android of 3 years ago. I still struggle to type accurately or voicetype without having to make a ton of corrections. And there are better 3rd party keyboards (including GBoard) but they tend to be slow and awkward due to iOS limitations, plus then you lose voice typing completely which is not acceptable to me. If I could have an iPhone with the native Android keyboard and voice typing I'd be super happy.

Oh I agree on the text input completely. Google's keyboard on Android is like a mind reader when you do swipe/gesture typing. If there's one thing I miss dearly in Android to this day it's exactly that.

iPhone has the Google keyboard in the app store. I use Swype keyboard though.

I know and use it. But it's much less precise than its Android counterpart due to Apple not giving it the exact touch sensor readings. As a result, it's not that good. :(

On iOS, 3rd party keyboards block access to the voice typing function which is a dealbreaker for me. At least on my iPhone SE, it takes so long to switch between a 3rd party keyboard and the iOS keyboard to use voice typing that it's too painful to be worth it.

On iPhone X it is still there.

Does it upload everything you type to Google? "For your convenience" and "to improve our services", of course. It'd be ironic to switch to iPhone for privacy but keylog yourself in the process.

No, it doesn't. Third party keyboards have two levels of access and they come pre-installed with the much more limited one (no access to internet whatsoever, no matter if you're on WiFi or 3G/4G).

Doesn't stop Google's keyboard to periodically pester you to give it full access "to get the full experience" (or something along the lines) but if you don't, it will never get or send a single byte to Google's servers.

Trust me, I researched. I too didn't want the huge irony you mentioned to hit me. And it doesn't.

> plus then you lose voice typing completely which is not acceptable to me

I use GBoard on iOS, and on the iPhone XS with iOS12, you can still use the native voice typing while using GBoard

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