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Comment by princevegeta89 | Hacker News Reader

Tried an iPhone for a month when my Samsung S21 went in for repair. The perceived sheer lack of features and big UX gaps and missing features instantly made me profoundly dislike iPhone.

Just my opinion.

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I started with a first-generation iPhone to replace a series of Palm Treos, and have had various iPhones since then. I've tried a few Android devices, and felt like the interface was more confusing. I'm sure I could learn it with putting in some time, but maybe it's largely a matter of what one is used to?

This was a big issue for me. I got a galaxy S3 when it came out to replace my iPhone, and it was a pretty miserable experience. Way too much need for customization, very few preinstalled apps, and really the device just became a time suck and using it. I don’t want my phone to require a lot of my time.

The iPhone has been really great at doing what I need it to do, without absorbing my time tweaking, or learning. It does have limitations, I wish to God I could get rid of Apple Maps and set google maps as default, but that’s Apple for you.

I personally consider "very few preinstalled apps" a big plus! Uninstalling useless apps (if they are even uninstallable) is always a drag.

To each it's own I guess...

I like vanilla Android and currently own a Motorola exactly because of this. Installing just what you need is trivial anyway.

Can you be more specific? I feel that an iPhone user might say the same about android if they were to switch.

A few off the top of my head.

The keyboard swiping is off the charts awful compared to Android. It has no idea what word I want unless I'm incredibly specific, it recommends words I'm highly unlikely to use, adds punctuation almost randomly in its word suggestions, gives me multiple choices from the same stem.

You can't just press the cursor into the middle of a word, you have to do the hold and swipe thing.

You can't record your own calls. WTF, it's my phone?! I guess I'm supposed to just buy another iphone to record the audio onto from via its microphone.

As far as I can work out, Facebook messenger links don't open, full stop. Unless your default browser is Safari.

Want to choose how many icons you have on your screen? Nope. Smaller font size? Nope. Long press on an image to do a Google image search? Nope, not even to open in a new tab.

> Smaller font size? Nope.

You can do that actually.

> Long press on an image to do a Google image search? Nope, not even to open in a new tab.

It won't be as convenient as a simple context menu option, but technically you can use a Shortcuts app to create a shortcut for reverse image search.

Sure, one missing simple feature is to be able to use keypad to do alphabetical search (for contacts) at the same time. Ex: You could not type "42779" for "HARRY". There is also nothing like Secure Folder on iOS as well AFAIK.

I used Android for years and despite liking the theoretical flexibility in practice the iPhone is better for the way I actually use the thing.

I agree here. Android is really fun to tinker with different interesting features, hidden options, all kinds of customization etc.

But my iPhone just works.

The back button is so engrained in my use of my phone now I honestly can't consider another way of using a phone anymore. Reaching across the phone to the other side (for righties) or hitting a manual button, or even the double tap on the back, just can't compare to the ease of hitting back on Android.

UX gaps? Are you talking about android? The UX is highly inconsistent in vanilla android let alone across apps…

How is that a bad thing? I remember android 2.x apps having the coolest UIs, nowadays android apps all use the same boring material design components. You can still find some 2.x apps on the play store though, they're a refreshing blast from the past.

Websites still have a bit of originality, given the vast variety of UI frameworks (and now canvas apps allow for even more versatility).

You're missing a huge point: Even though all those apps had different looks and feels and even did things differently, Back always GOES BACK. It's a global interaction and just makes so many things so much easier than a la cart back buttons for each interaction in random places, or whatever "gestures" are.

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