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Comment by old-gregg | Hacker News Reader

I've been quite happy with my 6s, going to replace the battery again soon. But eventually iOS updates will cease coming, yet I absolutely cannot live without a headphone jack.

Honest question: how would you even approach the Android? My smartphone is basically a more mobile extension of my laptop: sending document snapshots directly from the phone's camera to my MacOS desktop, starting iMessage conversations with anyone with a phone number on a Mac and continuing on my phone, copy-pasting from my laptop into my phone, etc.

Android seems to be designed to run in "I'm an island" mode, i.e. the phone is one and only computer a user is supposed to use. I understand that my usage pattern isn't what manufacturers (and Google) are optimizing for, but what would be the closest approximation?

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"Android seems to be designed to run in "I'm an island" mode"

Not at all, if anything it is more flexible, as it syncs cloud first, making what's on your phone accessible through a browser on any device, although with numerous sync programs available on the desktop as well. Scan docs into Google Drive (or dropbox) and the file appears in a synced folder on your laptop. Photos can drop straight into Google Photos. I use Android Messages on the web, can drop a chrome app to the Mac desktop if you want, it is seamless with the phone (and Hangouts still works too). I don't have any need for a shared clipboard, (maybe I use things like Google Keep for that?), but I know you can use pushbullet or the like.

Thank you. Sharing files and URLs is going to work just fine.

What about communicating? I tend to avoid typing on my phone, and I heavily rely on the pattern of receiving SMS or iMessage messages on the phone and replying later when I get to my laptop or answering inbound calls on my laptop. These two would be the toughest to lose.

Basically, I loathe interacting with the phone if I have a laptop in front of me. An Android will probably constantly want my attention to answer texts and calls.

Google has jammed up messaging pretty badly, most by rolling out too many products, and not making one clear choice. I'm going to presume you would use Android Messages, unless you are already using Google Voice or Hangouts. If you use Android Messages, you can receive a message on your phone and respond via the Messages for Web web page (which I have as a Chrome desktop app on Mac).

Probably not what you have in mind, but today I saw that KDE interacts well with a phone app to ease device interaction.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kde.kdecon...

I'm an oldtime KDE user and honestly I love using KDE connect. I never used a Apple product so I'm not familiar with how this ecosystem manages device interaction. On the other hand I'm too cheap to use something more than second a hand Lenovo, a Dell tower and a midrange Xiaomi.

In addition to the sibling comments, I use Join by joaoapps on my Android to approximate what you do with my Mac. I am able to push screenshots and photos to immediately download on my Mac, send SMS from my Mac, and automatically send my clipboard to/from my devices. It's a very powerful app that I couldn't live without and would meet a lot of your needs.

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