Why I went back to Android from iPhone

I’m a long-time Android power user. I’ve been using Android for about 10 years now and always wondered why some people loved iPhones. So I decided to try one out. My plan was to stick to the phone for 6 months to make sure I gave it a good shot; but after 2 months of using it; I decided it was not worth it and went back to Android.

The phones I compared were an iPhone 7 and a Samsung Galaxy S7.

The iPhone 7 was not all bad. Here are the areas where it felt superior (note they are all hardware related):

• Camera is slightly quicker
• Finger print scanner is quicker

Here is where Android was superior (note they are all software related):

• Back button
  • The placement is the same across apps.
  • You can always reach it with your thumb where the optimal grip of your phone is not jeopardized
    • the iPhone has it at the top left or top right. Both places are not optimal for how common you do this action.
• You can customize the position of your home screen icons.
  • the iPhone only lets you customize the sort, but they are always positioned from top to bottom. And again, the top of the phone is really hard to reach; why do they force their users to use it?
• You can install apps from the web browser
  • On the iPhone, all your app research has to be done either on the phone or on iTunes, none of which let you open multiple tabs at the same time.
• Custom mp3 ringtones are easy to set up.
  • On the iPhone you need iTunes and the ringtone has to be converted to a spceific codec. I was not able to convert my special mp3 ringtone to that format; not sure why.
• Does a better job at embracing the cloud
  • You can access all your photos/documents on any device (pc, phone, tablet) that has a web browser.
    • This means you can go to your buddy’s computer and just log in to a website to see all your photos. Same thing with your documents, spreadsheets, etc.
  • The iPhone also syncs things to the cloud but they are not that easily accessible from devices that are not yours.
• Allows you to install apps that can read/send text messages.
  • This enables magnificent apps like MightyText where you can enter the text message on a web browser running on a desktop and send it through your mobile phone.
  • The iPhone allows you to send text messages from a desktop or laptop but you have to use their apps that only run on Mac OS. This means the desktop or laptop has to be a Mac.
• This one is very worthy of a bullet: You don’t have to use iTunes.
  • Granted that you really only need iTunes to do power user things on your iPhone.

Conclusion:

Both are good phones and operating systems.

The iPhone has superior hardware. If you don’t like to customize things and you use your phone mostly for normal things (phone, calendar, maps); you will prefer this phone.

Android has a superior UI and is way more customizeable. If you are a power user that enjoys tons of app choices; this is definitely the phone for you.