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Comment by gibspaulding | Hacker News Reader

Can you speak some about OSMAnd? I've used it and MapsMe some, and while the navigation works fine, I often have issues actually finding the places I'm searching for. Typing in an exact address is hit or miss and searching for something like the nearest grocery store can be even worse.

Are there any tricks or supplemental apps you would suggest?

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Provided that OpenStreetMap data in your area contains house numbers (in not all places is this available), OSMAnd works fine for finding exact address. The only catch is that you need to choose the city, then choose the street, then choose the house number. This is exactly how car GPS units worked for many years, but I know people today have been spoiled by Google Maps and expect the address to be found if they just type it in as freeform text.

Searching for the nearest grocery store in OSMAnd is trivial: go to Search and then tap on the shopping basket icon: a list of nearby shops will appear, sorted based on how close they are to your current position. Of course, the grocery store needs to already been added to OpenStreetMap. If it isn't there yet, you can always sign for some an OSM editor account and add it yourself (but be aware that with great power comes great responsibility).

While not an app that itself provides supplemental data, I can recommend the app StreetComplete (not affiliated - just a happy user) if you like OSM. It "game-ifies" the process of correcting and adding to OSM data by presenting little challenges and questions about nearby objects - e.g. "What is this building called?" or "Is there an ACME Corp. in this shopping center?"

Ironically, you can use the Google Maps mobile web-app without Google Services, and it's inherently sandboxed by the browser. And it actually works quite well for a web app: the user experience was better than the native OSMAnd app, last time I checked.

It will obviously know what you search for and click on, but it'll only know your location if you explicitly give it out, and without the Services Google won't be able to reach its fingers into the rest of your system. So it can be a reasonable compromise.

That said: Apple Maps was probably the thing I appreciated the most when I finally relented and just got an iPhone :P

How was your experience switching from Android to iPhone? The last time I used an iPhone was the iPhone 4, but I've been seriously considering switching back for privacy reasons.

Overall, it's been fantastic. Six years ago or so I was really into playing with all of the ways you can customize Android, but more recently (I switched 2 years ago), I realized I just wanted a phone that would work. And for the most part, that's what I got: a phone that does phone stuff, and does it well (and still does it, 2 years later, just as well as the day I bought it). And does so with the most privacy that you can reasonably find these days without giving up those basic features of modern life or constantly fighting and fiddling with your device.

My main complaints:

1) The notifications UX is not as good. It gets the job done, but it just feels overall clunkier and worse. There's also a bizarre separation between your lock-screen and the "Notification Center" pull-down. I almost never use the latter, but whenever I open it there's always a random notification from like a week earlier that had been dismissed from my lock screen but was still hanging around there. This doesn't really matter in practice but it's very weird.

2) It sounds like a tiny thing, but the Clock app is not as good. It lacks a couple of really nice little features like early-dismissal of alarms and a confirmation whenever you turn one on ("Alarm set for 8h 23m from now").

But really that's about it. Apple Maps works great (at least in the urban area where I live), despite the memes. Customer support is great. The granular app permissions are extra great. And mainly, it's just nice to know that you can be a full participant in modern society, and you can expect your device to simply work, without also having your every step tracked. Knowing you won't buy a pair of headphones only to find out you can't use them because they require an app, which requires Google Services, which you don't have (this actually happened to me).

Edit: I should point out that I wasn't using microG, so I don't know how much that changes the experience. YMMV.

Thanks!

That’s my experience with notifications as well, but I also still miss having a separate LED to show pending notifications when the screen is off.

I did like having a notification LED, but I don't miss it as much as I thought I would. And anyway, those are becoming less common on Android devices too.

FWIW you can configure your iPhone to flash the camera LED when you get a notification. Not quite the same thing because it isn't passive, but it's something.

> I realized I just wanted a phone that would work. And for the most part, that's what I got: a phone that does phone stuff, and does it well (and still does it, 2 years later, just as well as the day I bought it).

I certainly don't intend to wax lyrical about Android devices but it does do phone stuff and does it pretty well. Android versions usually make sweeping changes to the UI so mine is a bit dated but it does what I paid for.

I do agree that tracking by private corporations is big no and collectively we should push back hard but whether it be google or apple or samsung or microsoft, all of them give nigh 2cents worth a damn about our privacy. We are their products as the now popular maxim goes.

The only phone with some privacy is a Nokia 3310.

> We are their products as the now popular maxim goes.

But this isn’t true for Apple. They sell their services and don’t depend on ad revenue.

> but it does do phone stuff and does it pretty well

It does, if you have Google Services. If you don't want Google Services, you're going to have a crippled device. Apple is the only company that has any financial incentive not to spy on you, so while I don't take them 100% at their word, I accept that they're the best I'm going to get in that regard.

Basically, pick two:

- A fully-functioning smartphone

- Reasonable privacy

- Customizability

I see OP has answered already but I also want to chime in and say that moving from (mostly flagship) Samsung and Sony phones (paid for by my employers) to a midrange iPhone XR has been a massive upgrade:

For the first time since Samsung SII I don't have to wait for the camera (or anything) to open.

Unlike on Android suggestions makes sense:

- Logged in with my 15 year old gmail account Android would suggest, at 4 in the morning: "send Telegram message to <random friend>" or "call CTO at customer".

- My 1 year old iPhone mostly suggest harmless things like "take the usual route home", "it is time to leave", "send Telegram message to <my beautiful wife>". On Saturday however it surprised me by being slightly more advanced: I had plotted an appointment to pick up something I had agreed to buy somewhere 40 minutes from home. Afterwards my iPhone suggested I should send my wife a message that I was on my way home. The message was even almost correct: it used "my" abbreviations but was a little bit to posh otherwise.

I use Here maps along with OsmAnd and they work fine for me. But I'm in EU and OSM data is quite solid here though.

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