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Exactly my experience. I finally bit the bullet and switched to the Apple side. There are things I miss from android but I trust Apple not to self sabotage much more than I trust Google these days. Which is weird, and exactly the opposite of the feeling I had 5 years ago.

I'm in this situation right now - was just debating buying an iPhone yesterday after never owning anything from Apple. How do you like it so far?

Not the parent, but I recently switched to an iPhone and I'm liking it.

On Android, I was constantly using new Apps, looking at /r/android for release announcements, and getting excited about all the new releases. Then, at some point, I realized I just wanted a phone that works. That's when I switched to Apple. That's not to say my Pixel didn't do everything my iPhone does. It could do it all and in many cases it could even do it better or in a more customized way. But, it also required effort. Effort to learn the new apps, effort to change all the settings, and effort every time Google decided to change something that I thought was already working just fine.

Then I switched to Apple and I realized I didn't want necessarily want to spend all my time learning my phone, I wanted to spent my time USING it. To me, my iPhone is more like an appliance than a new tech gadget. It doesn't necessarily provide you with all the options and capabilities that an Android phone does, but it absolutely nails its core competencies and is very easy to use. I don't spend a single extra second trying to figure out HOW to use it, it just works.

mostly agree except 3d touch which is clearly the most undiscoverable input method ever conceived.

oh, and shake to undo, which i not once used intentionally.

3D Touch is dead. It’s not in any of the current generation phones. Also in iOS 13, undo is swiping three fingers to the left and redo is swiping three fingers to the right. The shake to undo still works.

I actually think it’s easier. It’s hard to do a three finger swipe while holding the phone.

Does the redo gesture double as 'forward' in browsers? My biggest pet peeve with the new Android update is accidentally swiping back on a webpage and not be able to go forward (or if there a way, I haven't figured it out).

Back in a web browser is just swiping from the left edge with one finger, forward is swiping from the right edge.

Couldn't you use your Android phone as you are using your iPhone? It was your choice after all to go to /r/Android and try out new apps. I am pretty sure you are using the same 90% of apps on iPhone now that you used on your Android. And for the other 10% you could very well have settled on something and be done with it.

I bet you will be looking at /r/Apple in a few months.

I’ve used non-Google devices most of the time, now trying out an iPhone.

Just did a factory reset and restore via iCloud. My fear of loosing my phone, incomplete backups and messed up restore is gone. Works.

Might be possible with Google phones, too. For all the others it’s just messy.

(I‘d agree with you, until I tried it three weeks ago. Working with computers all day, I need others to take care of my personal and pocket computers...)

I have upgraded from Nexus 4 to Nexus 6p to Pixel 3 and have never started off fresh. Have factory reset my phone a couple of times and have been able to restore where I was. So I can't relate to you to what you are saying.

Sort of unrelated - I hate these kinds of comment chains. One clarifies something, other comes up - what about this though. And this whole chain itself when the article is about RCS.

Also disc that I am a Googler.

That's how I tried to use my Pixel but between losing Hangouts, having the UI changed seemingly randomly (how many different homescreen changes are really necessary?), and the constatn bait and switch of Google releasing core apps and dropping them (Allo and Duo), I gave up. Using Nova for my homescreen helped, and I probably could've stuck to Messages but I would lose the ability to see my messages from my computer. I've had my iPhone going on a year now and haven't needed to look at /r/Apple a single time.

I appreciate and agree with lots of your commentary, but just wanted to point out that Messages on the web is a thing now via https://messages.google.com/ and scanning a QR code in the Messages app. (It's one of the things I was looking for after leaving the iMessage ecosystem.)

^ This.

My iPhones usually got janky after using tons of apps but always after jailbreaking them (and installing yet more apps). Same with Android. Stay clean on mobile!

i've been in that boat, too - inherited a 6S after SO upgraded to an 8 and it does everything i need it to except crap battery life (that's after battery replacement last year). there were a few apps that i missed, but not terribly. it takes calls, it makes calls, google maps work, all of these were not reliable on the nexus 5x i switched from. figured setting up would be about as hard as starting from a wiped android and it's about right.

Switched about a year ago, very satisfied with that decision and the whole experience.

Everything just works great, I never need to worry about stuff randomly slowing down or my battery dying midway through the day (mind you, my previous device was a flagship android phone Galaxy S8+, so it isn't like I am comparing my iPhone to a cheap entry-level android device).

First week or two were a bit confusing, because the UI/UX shortcuts and flow are so different from android. But after that, I found things to be more intuitive and efficient. The phone displays zero signs of battery degradation or slowing down, everything is just as blazing fast as it was the day I bought it. Battery lasts me easily over a day of normal usage, almost 2 days if I use it lightly.

OS updates arrive fast and to all phones at the same time, without me having to wait 6+ months for my manufacturer to finally push them. With Android, it was extremely annoying to see all those cool new features that people got, but I have to wait many months for (not even talking about security patches). And that's assuming I will ever receive any kind of OS updates on Android 2+ years after the release.

Also, App Store experience is definitely more refined than the garbage pile that Play Store is.

Switching out iPhones is painless too, as all your session data is included in the (encrypted) backups. So you don't need to log-in again into every single app and set up all your custom settings again when you get a new phone. You just wait until the restore from backup completes, and you are set.

I realize that my take might sound a bit biased, and it probably is, but I am just very glad I've made the jump. My last iPhone before going all android until the last year was iPhone 4, and imo it is miles ahead of where it is used to be in terms of overall user experience.

tl;dr: if you want a solid device that just works well and performs exactly as you want it to, you won't be disappointed. If you want to fully customize your phone, sideload a different OS, do some hacky stuff, then Android would be a better choice.

For some context, I switched the other way, and still use both, and ever so slightly prefer the Pixel 2XL to an iPhone XS. It's probably more the integration of google services than anything, and google has taken some major steps backwards, but theres a ton of little silly features that I enjoy about the Goog.

Like it telling me what song is playing from lock screen, while offline. Certain maps and local features are just better.

I tried a switch and the experience mostly went ok, for some funny reasons:

* Google apps (Calendar, Tasks, GBoard) really helped with the transition and were imo superior to the corresponding native apps

* Used Outlook for mail to ensure that I still got push notifications for imap accounts (vs. polling on the native Mail app)

* Used Resilio Sync to bring my ebooks over to the device vs. pfaffing about with cloud storage

* Was able to find good free apps for ssh and otp

* I appreciated the fact that incognito on Safari appears to have per-tab isolation

It took me a lot of struggling to get the device working as I wanted, so hopefully it helps you somewhat.

I just switched to iPhone after 10 years, and have to say I love it so far.

For me Apple Watch is the star, the battery life is a bit short but it can do everything I need in a wearable device (calendar, notifications, chat) and nothing I don't need which is a bonus.

I would buy a cheaper phone and get the best watch, but your use case might be very different.

I also made the switch somewhat recently, as I've had iPhones as company devices for awhile now. I'm no Apple fan-boy, but at least having a relatively solid feeling device that does what you expect 90% of the time and doesn't change core functionality without at least some warning is a great feeling.

Well hang around long enough and you might see some of that ... but yeah broadly speaking the experience is a lot more stable; you cant take chances with your phone ...

I just replaced my Pixel XL with a used iPhone X last week. One thing that I'm struck by is I don't get the feeling that the device is trying to monopolize my attention. It could just be because I still have more friction with it (due to it being unfamiliar), but I wonder if it's also because Apple and Google have very different business objectives: Apple doesn't have nearly the same interest in the quantity of my engagement with the device.

I have to disagree on that one. One thing iOS does better to not let apps allow notifications by default. But other than that notifications are much better on Android and it's also a lot easier to disable notifications on Android now.

I think it has to do with you being unfamiliar with the phone and more friction that comes with it.

iOS has pretty good notification management now, what's missing?

I made the switch a month ago, and while I miss some things from Android (e.g. a clean way to change default apps, and a nice share menu/framework), the overall experience is so much better I am regretting not switching two years ago with a iPhone SE, instead of getting my previous One Plus 5.

And regarding Messaging, in EU the default is pretty much Whatsapp anyway, with some pockets of Viber and Telegram, so iMessage or Google Hangout was never a real option here.

Pretty much exactly the path I took. I truly believed Google was set to change the world for the better. I had every Nexus device (and pre-Nexus with the Magic and Dream), watched every Google move with anticipation, etc. The 6P was the last Nexus I owned -- miserable battery life and poor experience that it brought -- though I held on with Android a bit longer with the Galaxy line.

I developed several apps on the platform with the motivation that I was helping a good product thrive.

The Pixel line has always been just a sad runner-up to Apple, but always with completely deluded prices. The oft talked about "Reality Distortion Field" best applies to Google's hardware products now, where they've created a succession of miserable entrants at bizarrely unrealistic prices.

Now I'm typing on a Macbook Pro with my iPhone 11 beside it. I use gmail out of legacy inertia, but aside from that Google just is not a compelling part of my life. I once truly believed they were a super innovative company that was trying to escape their ad revenue stream. Now I believe they're a very committed ad company desperately trying to push ads further afield.

We often hear about all the great engineers at Google, but their project managers must be some of the worst in the industry. So many half baked and forgotten projects that wasn't good enough when they came out, left with few and slow upgrades, and then killed off. How many messaging apps have Google launched and killed? How many WearOS watches have they sold? How's the Android tablet ecosystem? How did the Nexus rebranding to Pixel go? They seem to lack any interest in polish and usability, beyond removing features and adding whitespace and larger margins.

You would have to be crazy to adapt any new service from them, be it Messages, Stadia, or buying last year's phone for this year's price.

The state of NDK is a good example.

It appeared that the Android team was kind of forced to support C++ for game developers, and they did an half baked release with Android 2.0.

Using headers and toolchains different than what regular Android (internal Google teams) were using, thus took them all the way up to release 14 to actually provide unified headers.

Bionic wasn't fully ISO C compliant and has been being improved throughout all the NDK and Android releases.

Back when they decided to drop Eclipse there wasn't a roadmap for C++ support going forward, and they were kind of rescued after JetBrains decided to create CLion, which they took up to integrate into Android Studio, almost two years later.

There were two reboots for new build system tools, until they decided to keep ndk-build around and settle with CMake as alternative.

Even though the NDK APIs are written in C++ (or C++ wrappers over JNI calls), they are exposed as extern "C" to userspace, thus being more prone to unsafe coding pratices.

Only now they are starting to think about supporting NDK package management, so far each Android NDK developer using AARs had to come up with in-house solutions to package NDK libraries across projects.

Small rant, plenty of other stuff to complain about. However I would also like to add that the (apparently) small NDK team has improved the experience a lot, when comparing with what the Android 2.0 NDK state started from.

The 3a is properly priced. I hope they keep the -a thing going. I can't imagine a world where I'd pay $600+ for a phone. We're at the point now where all you're buying is a new battery and 18 more months of security updates. More RAM, faster CPU, what's the point? I'm not playing high end games, content creation, or compiling software on my phone.

If they don't keep -a going, then they've blown it. The Nexus line was great.

They've also already totally blown it with all the texting bullshit. Hangouts is awesome. Carrier based texting is a significant step backwards.

I agree with the sentiment of being down on Google, but I just bought a Pixel 4 XL to replace my Pixel XL. They're not perfect, but they're phones that I can get, unlock, root, and actually have some sense of ownership over without any shenanigans.

Why unlock and root? Because I can take full-disk images and restore the phone to an exact bit-for-bit copy. I can use apps like TitaniumBackup and bring over app+data piecemeal or swap out data profiles. I can use F-Droid to manage open-source apps and know that I'm getting something that I can crack open or modify if needed. I can get real insight into what the phone is doing via something like SystemPanel 2 or, worst-case, adb shell and figuring it out myself. I can copy the database from any app without dealing with Content Providers. I can install Magisk modules that give me a decent native shell and use Termux to install other utilities that I need. And ultimately, if I need something not accommodated by stock, I can install a custom ROM.

I don't know how much of that is possible on an iPhone, but from what I hear, it's not much. That may be an OK option if you're willing to lock into the Apple ecosystem and take whatever they give you in exchange for feeling like your phone "just works", but if it's that important, you don't need to give up control -- just grab a cheap flip phone that will always "just work" while you retain the freedom and ability to get what you need out of your $1k pocket computer.

I think "just works" is way overblown. My friend just got a new iPhone 11 upgrading from 6s. FaceId is great, but you HAVE to swipe up after you unlock. There is no option, no setting to just jump to the home screen. Does it "just work"? I guess if that's the definition of working. It's been just a week and she is can't live with it.

Other "just works" - always deep link to Apple Maps, Safari and other Apple apps. How is this still a thing in a "Pro" phone?

Honestly I have been considering iPhone because of the longevity of their devices now that cameras have caught up with Pixels and added battery capacities but I can't deal with this locked down, spoon fed version of an OS. I think iPhone "just works" the way Apple wants and not how the user wants.

Disc: Googler.

No offense but it shows you haven't actually used one. By default any notifications on the phone are locked down. I can see I got a text message but I can't see the info. If I look at the phone it shows who the text is from and the contents of the text (or whatever notification we're talking about). If I swipe up I can use the phone. This experience is so far above and beyond anything google has offered to date I don't even know where to begin.

Google is so far behind on faceID it's laughable. And this is coming from someone who switched from an iPhone 6 to a Pixel and stuck with google all the way until the Pixel 4. Sorry - the hardware is getting worse, not better. And the spying/data collection has become too much. When you've got a CIO that says he'd let any house guest know he's got devices recording them and would suggest anyone that has google devices in their house do the same - you lost me.

> This experience is so far above and beyond anything google has offered to date I don't even know where to begin.

I know about notifications being hidden when locked and expanded/shown only when you unlock. On Android, you can hide notification details from certain apps and show the details for others. For some apps I am okay to not worry about seeing the details of the notifications without unlocking the device. I don't unlock my phone to only see notifications, I have disabled most of the notifications and I unlock to do something actively. So more often than not, I want to get there without an extra step. So having an option there is the right thing. Pixel phone also gave an option do either - go to home screen or just show notifications.

> Google is so far behind on faceID it's laughable

I actually hate FaceID and like fingerprint unlock better so I don't really care about that. But by so far behind, you mean not caring if the eyes are open, sure they are far behind.

> the hardware is getting worse, not better

I didn't use P1 or P2 and jumped on P3 from 6P, I like it and didn't feel the hardware got worse. P4 battery life is bad (to say the least) but P4XL doesn't seem to have those issues.

You brought up other issues with Android/Pixel but conveniently forgot to respond how iOS is crippling options itself. Don't even want to start with all browsers being wrappers of Safari.

I am not going to respond further in this chain.

>I actually hate FaceID and like fingerprint unlock better so I don't really care about that. But by so far behind, you mean not caring if the eyes are open, sure they are far behind.

I guess it doesn't really matter if you prefer touch unlock, it's gone from the Pixel 4 with no signs of ever coming back. But with a really, REALLY bad implementation. Oh, someone can murder me and unlock my $1,000+ phone? Solid decision by that product manager...

>You brought up other issues with Android/Pixel but conveniently forgot to respond how iOS is crippling options itself. Don't even want to start with all browsers being wrappers of Safari.

I'm more than happy to give up a little choice in exchange for not having every aspect of my life uploaded to google's servers with a promise they won't do anything I don't like with it.

> I'm more than happy to give up a little choice in exchange for not having every aspect of my life uploaded to google's servers with a promise they won't do anything I don't like with it.

Android is the platform that gives you some actual control over this. Buy a Pixel, trivial bootloader unlock, and then install Replicant [0] or any of the several other privacy-first ROMs.

If you don't want to go that far, you can replace Google's proprietary APIs/system services with components from MicroG [1]. There are many implementations of the location APIs that can be configured to ping back to a personal server or log to a local file rather than submitting the data to Google, for example. Pull up F-Droid and they're all over the place.

If you want to stop an app from talking to the outside world, get NetGuard (100% free software, buy the pro version instead of chickening out and building it yourself to save 8 bucks) or AFWall+. These are advanced apps that allow users to control and monitor network activity closely, applying rules that allow/disallow network access at given times or on given connections (e.g., "never let Signal use my work's wifi network"), reports consumption, and even allows the user to collect pcaps.

There are many similar options for all kinds of things on Android. I admit that I have never used an iOS device full-time, but it's always because every time I consider it and start to do any of the basic research to see if any of this is tenable, the answer is always an immediate and loud "no, Daddy Apple wouldn't let anything bad happen, so all of that is silly". Please let me know if things have changed.

The point is that it's your choice how much you're going to disclose/transfer on [unlockable] Android hardware. On an iPhone, you are stuck with "Apple knows best". If you actually care about control of your data, it seems you'd prefer the platform that gives you control over it, rather than the one that just says "Hey, we're not as bad as Google, so you can trust us!"

[0] https://replicant.us/

[1] https://microg.org/

> FaceId is great, but you HAVE to swipe up after you unlock.

No you just swipe up. You don’t unlock and then do something, you just do. That’s the whole point. When I pick up my iPhone I just swipe up. The unlocking of the phone is something that just happens to happen. You don’t pick up the phone “wait” for it to unlock, and then swipe to the home screen. That defeats the whole purpose.

Very similar experience here. I'm gathering energy to try leaving Google/Android all together for whatever awaits me with a pinephone (not yet available afaik). https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

Thinking that I much prefer an interesting "how to do x thing I want to add to my experience" over an "oh I'm being corralled into undesired xyz by Google again, how to maintain / return to normal functions"

pinephone will be my next phone, ubports on nexus 5 has been pretty good too.

That said I feel like we're going into this weird place where you have to have a cell phone even though every day i feel like wanting to have one less and less.

Agree re "have to have a cell phone".

When I check for an example of a person participating in society (US) without any phone, I come up empty handed. Then try with me to even describe a setup where a person could reasonably participate but not need a phone. I am vaguely certain this is actually not possible (credit/transportation etc). Perhaps the dire wolf citizen of privacy is pulling this off..but what a high bar to set on an entire population, without their informed consent. Similarly it may be an impossibly high bar on regulators to provide a "life doesn't require a phone number" consumer option.

I guess a person could fashion "phone number to email as a service" where you get an unanswerable "phone number" which just forwards transcribed content to an email?

I actually know a couple of people who simply don't own cell phones at all. They're certainly an extreme minority, but their lives aren't any harder for it. The only repercussion is that they can't get/send calls or texts when they're out and about.

>I guess a person could fashion "phone number to email as a service" where you get an unanswerable "phone number" which just forwards transcribed content to an email?

You've just described how SMS works for me under Voip.ms. All messages are available to be replied to via email, and starting conversations from their (albeit imperfect and slightly clunky) webpage or (much better) Android app

> That said I feel like we're going into this weird place where you have to have a cell phone even though every day i feel like wanting to have one less and less.

I hear you. I reached that place a couple of years ago.

My current smartphone probably has 2 or 3 years of life left in it, so I'm considering that as a deadline for coming up with an alternate plan. In thinking about it, the main thing I like about having a smartphone is having a personal computer in my pocket. So...

First, I badly want out of the Android ecosystem, so I going to carry a real pocket computer that runs real Linux. That will be my primary device.

I'll supplement that with the dumbest feature phone that I can find that will allow tethering data connections, and use that for texting, backup internet access, and emergency phone calls.

It's not going phoneless, but it's as close to that as I can get without missing out on functionality that matters to me.

>First, I badly want out of the Android ecosystem, so I going to carry a real pocket computer that runs real Linux.

Contender: https://pocket.popcorncomputer.com/

Yeah, I'd already investigated that, but it doesn't meet my needs. The Gemini might, but I have to investigate a couple of things. If that doesn't work for me, then I'll just build my own.

PinePhone preorders open up tonight for the Brave Heart edition! Less than 10 hours as of my comment post! https://www.pine64.org/

I was, to a lesser degree, on the same path as you (Nexus 4, 5X, Pixel, Pixel 2 currently). Almost signed up for Fi, but decided not to after talking to a few people.

My next phone will be an iPhone, for pretty much the reasons you stated. As soon as they launch 5-6" iPhone with an OLED screen that doesn't have three goofy looking cameras on the back, I'm in.

> As soon as they launch 5-6" iPhone with an OLED screen that doesn't have three goofy looking cameras on the back, I'm in.

Wouldn't that be an iPhone X, or more recently iPhone XS?

That may be the case, looking into it again. I might have been mislead by Apple's proprietary marketing terms for their screen (what the hell is "retina" anyway?)

Not gonna lie, Apple's phone models confuse me.

> which also let you do all of those things from your computer was an awesome experience

FWIW this has been replaced by https://messages.google.com, but you have to use the messages app, and the phone has to be online. It's still way better than texting on a touch keyboard.

I owned several Nexus phones (the ones that were properly priced) and overall it was clear that Google never cared to launch a finished product, all of them showing some serious software bugs, and sometimes even hardware issues. I assumed it was part of the deal, and Google has pretty generous customer service policies at least.

Sadly the situation hasn't really improved with the Pixels and I can't justify buying such half-assed phones. Not at these prices at least.

I bought an Essential when Amazon was clearing their inventory but I wonder what I'll get next. Nokia's are almost there but not quite. Unfortunately I cannot stand iOS and the iPhone lineup so that's not an option.

Oneplus is probably your best option.

I've owned a number of OnePlus phones - 3 or 4 at this point - and am tapping this post out on a new OP7 Pro. I really like the hardware, and no device has ever felt poorly made or unfinished, nor have they broken down on me. OS updates are relatively fast for a non-Google manufacturer, too, though they could be faster. The price has been creeping up as the rest of the market gets more premium, but even this new flagship phone is significantly cheaper than an equivalent iPhone.

I'm resigned to OP beaming everything I do to PLA military intelligence or whatever, but frankly I don't do much on my phone anyway besides surf and YouTube.

Customer service has been great whenever I've needed it, which hasn't been much.

I went the Hangouts+pure data plan route, 10 bucks per month and I've had spam filtering and a single and/IM/video call/voice call/phone call account available on any device I sign into regardless if my phone was turned off 3 states over or not.

It sucks they are dropping it and there is nothing like this experience available. Even Apple requires pairing to a phone (that is actively online) to send SMS.

Not to mention the fact that the pixel 4 looks to be a big disappointment for the money. I was planning on getting a pixel as I don't want another Samsung (vendor crap-ware and bixby drives me insane), but now that I've seen it... looks like I'll be going back to Apple again after five years of Android.

I guess you're on apple stuff then? my nexus 6 just broke and im on an old 5x thats barely funtional. the pixels all look atrocious with no end in sight.

The pixel 3a has been a pretty nice device at a good price (299 with Google Fi - you can cancel the latter after one day and still keep the discount according to their reps). It is a mid-range device though.

The 5X is probably the worst Nexus ever, it was a low end device that is so frustrating to use that it probably made many people to switch to iPhone :-).