Ask HN: Is shifting to an Apple iPhone worth? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is shifting to an Apple iPhone worth?

13 pointsstereoradonc39 comments

I have a Samsung Galaxy and I am happy with it. One reason I am considering an iPhone is for FaceTime calls (nothing on Android has similar quality). It can also serve as a replacement for non-android/non-WhatsApp contacts on iMessage (I don't use WhatsApp). The camera is subjective and gimmicky. Apple Maps has improved considerably. Build quality is acceptable (not as good as Galaxy) but again subjective. What is your take on this? Should I consider only for these issues or is there a a larger issue at play?

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Phones have largely plateaued. Within the next few years there will be very little to differentiate them anymore. Just get whatever you're most comfortable with, and don't bother spending a lot of money on it. It's a tool; think about what you actually use it for and you'll know what you need.

Thanks! This is a good reality check!

For some of us this is not an easy decision.

Samsung galaxies have treated me phenomenally over the years. Far better than any phone I've ever owned.

Every year though, I hope they take out the uninstallabe Facebook utilities on the phone and they never do, so I'm put in a position where I need to put my morals first, and move to another phone.

I'm not sure I want to go back to the iPhone ecosystem, but I feel like it's the only other option.

Camera is really the only thing I care about in a phone, so I'm stuck now either buying a phone I don't want or settling for a sub-par camera.

Camera on the Ultras is phenomenal. You have to check them out to use them effectively.

> FaceTime calls (nothing on Android has similar quality)

Not as popular, but Google Duo can do 1080p calls since sometime in 2020 (https://www.xda-developers.com/google-duo-galaxy-s20-1080p-v...) About the same time Apple bumped Facetime up from 720p as well.

Also, we're probably a year or two away from Apple opening the iMessage in some way to Android users, or shifting significantly to RCS on their terms to avoid the EU enforcing the same.

+1 for Duo, it works quite well and is cross-platform.

Also a great tool for tech support as you can share your screen. Has saved me tons of time when helping older family members.

The only thing I want improved is a better process for going from an ongoing phone call to a video call.

I don’t know if you would consider it worth it, but I switched from Android to iPhone last year so I can talk about my experience.

- I love that the choice of phone is easy to do. The flagship was the iPhone 12. Easy. Initially I wanted to buy a high end Android but couldn’t figure out what the flagships were. So I decided I was going to give iPhones a try instead. - iPhones do feel premium. The box is great. The hardware is amazing. I used it without a case for a few months and it’s incredibly « sticky » in the hand. The first case I bought was actually more slippery than the bare phone. I got a case anyway because the materials still make the phone fragile: if it falls, it breaks, period. - the camera is amazing. I’m not huge on taking pictures, that’s not my thing. Or that’s what I said before getting an iPhone, now I’ve taken thousands of pics in the past years. Before the iPhone, I had Google Pixels and found the camera great at the time. It was not. iPhones cameras are amazing, and you actually feel like the pictures you take can become real memories, because they won’t look ugly in a few years. - if your close ones have an iPhone, just go for it. Being able to share photos that easily with family members, FaceTime, and all that stuff, even if they’re not savvy, has no equivalent on Android - it just works. I use all the basic apps (calendar, mail, notes, even Safari!) because they work good enough, they’re beautiful. Even Apple Maps works great now (I even use it instead of Waze because it keeps telling me to use crappy roads) - And finally, I’ve come to hate Google as a company and try to not use them anywhere. I decided to pay for iCloud+ (1€/month) and that gives me access to iCloud mail. I use it with a custom domain and that allows me to switch gradually from gmail to something more in my control. If I’m tired of Apple one day, I’ll just switch somewhere else easily.

I used an iPhone 3GS and then an iPhone 4. Since then I have been using Android phones, Motorola, HTC & Oppo. I don't feel any reason to spend lots more for the latest iPhones.

Of course, if most people you communicate with use iPhones, then there are some compatability benefits. You can connect to FaceTime calls from Android. I've never used iMessage, so I don't know how it is "better" than SMS + eMail, etc.

My major reason for sticking with Android is that the phones don't get obsoleted as fast as iPhones. I can still install the latest version of Chrome on a Moto Razr/V.

Got it! Create a new link on Facetime App on iPad, and then share it with non Apple users. Cheers! Thanks!I wasn't aware of it.

That’s surprising, I thought apple provided iOS updates and security updates much longer than Android phones — i thought there was some issues where Googles update had to be pushed by the manufacturer and they tend to drop support much sooner. Did I misunderstand that support timeframe?

Samsung is now committed to providing it for 5 years (2 years of security updates). It's fine.

Some Android phone manufacturers are terrible in releasing security updates. Even within the same brand different models are updated, or not, to different cadence. In my experience you are pretty much stuck with the version of Android that the phone was released with.

When upgrading Android apps, they seem to be less dependent upon having the latest version of Android in order to run. At least that has been my experience. I keep all my old phones and tablets and test webapps that I write with the most recent version of Chrome that I can still load onto them.

IPhone don't have the pro mode for camera and that sucks. Google maps are better than Apple maps in terms of accuracy. Google maps even tell u if there is a speed trap ahead even though I think it may be a bit late.

I also hate how intrusive apple is with shit like iTunes. I just don't see a reason to switch to iPhone just for FaceTime. Just tell ppl to se whatsapp calls.

If you want “pro mode” for the iPhone camera, you probably just want to install Halide. It has a lot more controls than the default camera app. It is appropriate that the default camera app is aimed at simplicity while leaving room for more advanced third-parties.

Keep in mind that there is currently no full adblocking solution on iOS.

There are some adblocking tools but non with proper cosmetic adblocking, meaning that you can not hide ads on social media platforms like facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, reddit, Instagram, etc.

I am required to work with a current iphone for work reasons and I just made it a habit to never use it for content consumption because of that major flaw.

If that's not an issue for you (or you only use it for calling/texting anyway) I think it's a great device: fast, robustly built and nice to look at.

use brave browser and not apps?

I agree. The iOS ad blocking is weird. I used Adguard on someone's device and I was stupefied with the poor results. Safari is really bad, and it hasn't seen any innovation in years. My content consumption isn't much on the phone, but when I do, I need to have things working or what's the point of having one. Thanks for the insights!

Depends on who you are. iPhones are for people that have no clue what a file is. If you know, it might not be for you. Switching from samsung to iphone was like beeing dumped in a desert, feature wise. People say that the battery lasts longer. Of course it does, you can't do anything with that phone. For example, you can't arrange the app icons anyway you want, they snap to the top. You can't have apps that rotate periodically the background. You can't have a shortcut to a picture. There is a workarround with an official apple app, where you have to input the name of the picture file which is hard given that they hide that info from you.

With 50% signal you can't make a phone call because the device lies about the real signal level. You see, when the device has no signal, people will blame the device, if the device lies that it has signal, the people will blame the network (because the calls fails). And there are many more issues like this. I still feel robed that I bought an iphone (the best there was) and I wish people would have warned me about it.

There's reason iphone is no 1 in us an nowere else: it has to do will limited access to education, so simpler devices are "best". In the rest of the world is about social signalling: I can afford it. If you had access to good education and you don't care about social signalling then there is no point in buying one as there are much better devices with android. Even my ten year old samsung has more features than the iphone.

For someone who knows what a file is, it looks like you made an uninformed decision. It’s well known that iPhone doesn’t allow for much customization.

Do schools give out iPhones? Never heard of that. I’ve seen them give out iPads and that’s because android tablets are trash. ChromeOS is decent enough.

> There's reason iphone is no 1 in us an nowere else: it has to do will limited access to education, so simpler devices are "best".

Oh, so Americans are dumb?

>In the rest of the world is about social signalling: I can afford it. If you had access to good education and you don't care about social signalling

LOL. Who is signaling now?

This reason swore me off this iPhone. Thanks. I have factored in my decision NOT to get one now.

I love my iPhone after switching a couple years back, but the only reason I do is because I can jailbreak it.

In first place I would rank a jailbroken iPhone, Android in second, normal iPhone in third.

Some reasons: no ads in most places, piracy, ability to change UI to my liking. Example: stock ios alarm app takes 3 clicks to change the alarm time, with a tweak it just takes one. There's a large and thriving community. The only limitation is that you need to be on one of the compatible ios and model versions, so I'm stuck on ios 14.3 for now.

> The only limitation is that you need to be on one of the vulnerable ios and model versions, so I'm stuck on ios 14.3 for now.

Fixed that for you.

Yes that's correct, the jailbreak itself uses these vulnerabilities.

Prioritize which features are important then look at the phones.

I have switched about 7 months ago due to issues with my Galaxy S10. I can't definitively say that I would recommend it, but I can say is that I personally don't regret it. The biggest benefits of the iPhone are for me

UI consistency: The OS apps are very consistent in terms of their UI patterns and overall user experience. Its not perfect (as some people claim), but it is significantly better than the weird mixture of OEM and Google apps you get with Android phones that aren't pixels. Not only are the preinstalled apps better, the apps from the store are also more consistent in terms of platform specific UX patterns (again, not perfect but significantly better)

General app quality: the accessibility of the Play Store (and the overall Android platform) certainly has its benefit, but unfortunately it often also leads to bad quality applications. While I don't particularly like Apples strict walled garden approach I'll have to admit that the apps tend to be higher quality than Android ones. A drawback is that the vast majority of iOS apps are paid. Being paid isn't really a problem, but the fact that everyone is moving to subscriptions is certainly starting to become one.

Overall reliability: the overall platform feels much more reliable than on my last Android. I've been a heavy Android Auto user before. But just 30 minutes of being connected heated up my phone so bad the CPU throttled like crazy for the next 45min making a lot of apps incredibly slow. My iPhone never had those issues and it feels like it doesn't even warm up with CarPlay. CarPlay also tends to be much more reliable than Android Auto ever was for me.

If switching will benefit you largely depends on you specifically. But since smartphones have largely plateaued over the last few years, you won't gain a whole lot, but you won't loose much either (unless you are super into the open source aspect of android)

I went over to android from iPhone fully after 2018. For work (apps) I needed an iPhone and the company shipped me a 13 max. Although I like the openness of the android a lot better (it’s not Linux but at least I can run a compiler on it), the 13 max is the nicer phone for me. Objectively my android phone specs are more or less the same, but subjectively, the iPhone simply outperforms it in every way. The android camera is better on paper but it really isn’t to me. And that goes for most things on this phone. So now I always bring my android and iPhone both (with different sim cards), however, I use the iPhone more. A lot more. The android has one thing that is vastly better; battery life and fast charge. The iPhone battery life is awful for a 1500$ phone and it charges so slowly compared to the Samsung flagship phones.

I switched to Android recently because iPhone battery life out of the box is complete shit.

Now I have a phone that has a 13,200mAh battery that truly lasts for days.

Not sure why the downvotes; I basically have that experience too. iPhones work well for people who don't really use there phone that much. I basically run most of my businesses purely from the phone and the iPhone is at 20% when the Android is at 80% with the same usage.

Another reason why I'll stick with Android now. Thanks!

Definitely, personally I have not looked back since shifting to iPhone 2 years ago. I prefer Apple’s privacy model over android, specifically noting hide my email, private relay and the App Store privacy details. The notch was actually putting me off getting a iPhone, but It’s not even noticeable anymore

It is important to note that if you depend on WhatsApp then there is no straightforward, dependable means of transferring WhatsApp from Android to iOS (the other direction does have an accepted solution). You will have to pay for a third party application of questionable trustworthiness.

I use Telegram! Syncs automatically over the cloud. No hassle. Sweet. Simple.

I switched to an iPhone in 2019 or 2020 after about 10 years on Android (I did own the original iPhone). Overall I’m very happy with the decision. I became increasingly frustrated with Google’s data monopoly on android, and of manufacturers attempts to get a piece of the pie too (it seems like every phone had the play store, and the OEM store, and repeat that for various apps and services).

I’m a Mac user so switching had massively improved integration for me.

Same here, except for me, the reason to switch to iPhone after many years with Android is:

a) Google managed to shove an update onto my phone even though I did not have wireless configured and had it set to not use cellular for data. I only used it as a phone.

b) after their imposed update, all kinds of shit broke. Speech to text became terrible. When viewing a photo, I couldn't zoom it: it would crash the photo app.

c) Google kept asking for permissions that didn't make sense to me.

I tried doing another update but things didn't improve. The phone was circa 2017 and I think they just don't test their software on older devices. I have up and switched to iPhone and have been very happy with it. The one thing I did like better about Android is putting one-touch phone numbers on the home screen. With iPhone I have to click the phone icon, Favorites, then the number. Maybe there's a way to put them on the the iPhone home screen, but for me, a phone is really just a phone, so I don't get all crazy with figuring out the features.

For me it's not an option, since some of my must-have apps are nonexistent on iOS and they won't be anytime soon unless Apple opens the door to sideloading.

There’s a third option: a Linux phone.

Granted it’s not going to function 100% worry-free as a daily driver just yet. But if Linux is your thing, a Linux phone may bring things to the table that you’re not going to get from Android or Apple.

Example: longevity. A Linux phone whose drivers have been mainlined will benefit from many years of updates, both kernel and userland.

You don’t buy iphone for the hardware, you buy it for the ios.

So the right question is not whether you happy with samsung, but with Android.

From my experience most of the ios apps and features are way better for me as an end user (not as a hacker) than android swamp.

If you want to switch to using FaceTime, you should check if the people you will be communicating with are using Apple products. If they aren’t then you won’t be able to use FaceTime for that.

I don't like Google and I don't want them having my data so the choice for me was easy.

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