After spending over a decade with various Android phones, I finally made the switch to an iPhone. Here’s why I made the switch and what I’ve discovered since.
The Struggles with Samsung/Android
-
Slow Shutter on Samsung Flagships: One of my biggest gripes with Samsung’s flagship phones has been the slow shutter and shutter lag. Trying to capture a moving subjects often resulted in blurry photos or missed shots entirely. This has been an issue with Samsung phones for many years.
-
Google’s Service Abandonment: Google has a notorious history of abandoning services. The most recent one being the Podcasts app. The podcast experience on YouTube Music is just terrible.
-
Hardware Design: The Samsung S24 Ultra has sharp corners that make it uncomfortable to hold. The Pixel 8 phones have issues with connectivity and overheating. The S24+ comes with an inferior Exynos processor.
-
Performance: No matter how fast the hardware is, Android phones always seem to slow down and stutter after a few months of use. It’s like they age in dog years. (My most recent Samsung phone was the S23+, and it already started lagging).
-
Apps: Android apps have an inconsistent look and feel. It’s like a patchwork quilt made by someone who doesn’t know how to sew. Also, a lot of Android apps require excessive permissions.
-
Disaster: A Samsung update once made my phone unbootable. I had to do a full reset and lost some data. People said I should have made a backup before the update, but Android doesn't provide an easy way to completely backup the phone. That was the last straw.
The iPhone Revelation
-
Shortcuts: The Shortcuts app on iPhone is a game-changer. It automates tasks in ways I never thought possible.
-
Face ID: Face ID on the iPhone is leagues ahead of Samsung’s version and even better than Touch ID. It’s fast, reliable, and just works. With the amount of unlocks I need everyday, this turns out to be more impactful than I expected.
-
Files App: The Files app is actually useful, and it has built-in support for Windows file shares.
-
Look & Feel: Everything on iOS feels smoother and more premium. The animations, the UI design – it’s all just so polished.
-
Audio: It’s much easier to select audio output in-app when connected to multiple Bluetooth devices and AirPlay.
-
Driving: CarPlay is a joy to use compared to Android Auto. Plus, Apple Maps has better voice directions.
-
Emulators: Emulators are now possible to use on iPhone without jailbreaking.
Switching to iPhone has been a breath of fresh air. While Android gave me more freedom and customizations. The consistency, reliability, and overall experience of iOS have won me over.
What was your experience switching to/from "the dark side"?
I switched to an iPhone after having many similar hangups with Android devices over the years. Biggest for me was how little update/software support Android phones got. I think they're better these days (or so I hope) but they had awful support for years. Buying a brand new Android phone and only getting 1 OS update and 2 years of security updates was not uncommon and I have several old Android phones in a drawer that succumbed to that fate.
My experiences with iOS have largely been positive but I do have some issues which annoy me constantly:
Apple's ecosystem is great and is so polished and tightly integrated, but trying to do anything outside of that ecosystem is incredibly painful. You are actively punished when trying to do anything outside Apple's box. Even something as simple as transferring music files from your PC to your phone is frustrating at best and impossible at worst.
Every. Goddamn. App. is a subscription. The app store is almost completely useless and I practically never use it. I'm not joking when I say that the vast majority of downloadable apps are subscription-based, and usually a WEEKLY subscription instead of monthly. Sorry, but I'm not paying $5/week for a goddamn calculator or weather app. This means that using an iPhone can be very frustrating if the stock apps don't suit your needs. This reason alone is enough to make me want to jump ship again sometimes.
iCloud sucks. No other way to word this, really. It's a relic of bygone times and Apple really needs to overhaul it and make it more useful in the modern day. Everything from the clunky, Fisherprice UI to the base storage which barely has enough gigabytes to hold a single fart. On one hand upgraded storage is only a few bucks a month. On the other hand I'm goddamn tired of subscriptions.
I never encountered weekly subscriptions on apps I am interested in. But I have to agree that the App Store is shit. The apps on my phone I mostly found somewhere else like Mastodon or blogs. Our I just use built-in apps from Apple.
So you’re only complaint here is that it isn’t free and you don’t care for the UI. That sounds more like a personal preference and that you don’t wanna pay for it. Not that iCloud actually sucks.