My experience of moving from Android to iOS

I recently got myself an iPhone 5S, which I was quite skeptical about because I have been an Android user for years now and I wasn't sure if it was a good choice, but it met my set of criteria so I decided to go for it.

Intro (can be skipped)

Reason I changed: Just wanted a new phone which had things that my old phone lacked. A longer battery life, reliability, good apps, a good camera (old one got scratched) and facetime. iP5S and my old phone have the same proportions so it's comfortable to hold for me. Also I wanted to try iOS and see what's it all about now that it is much better. Plus I got a good deal for a gold 5S 16GB for Rs.40000/- in Dubai (Indian price was 50k that time and now it's around 47k)

Competition: Choosing the iP5S was particularly difficult for me because the competition looked too good, the SGS4 had beats headphones (worth >10k) in an offer and I've been drooling over the HTC one from even before it released. Also the fact that I already had two new phones at my disposal, a Nokia Lumia 720 and a LG Google Nexus 4 both bought in 2013. But the SGS4 looked ugly and the HTC though good, I was just too tired of reliability issues with Android. I couldn't live with WMobile OS for too long either but it was pretty neat.

Previous phone: Sony Xperia Arc (ICS) and Nokia N85

I am not going to dwell further into if it was a good choice or a bad one. I might have missed a good deal or overlooked a certain phone. But I'm content with my purchase and I'm happy with that. I just want to lay down the changes I felt from changing to iOS from Android. Do note that I actually went from Xperia Arc to Lumia 720 to Nexus 4 and then back to Arc, only recently shifting to iPhone5S.

So the differences I noticed:

The Bad

1. No Widgets: You can't have widgets so that was a big loss for me. Even the app icons are not live so there's no information on them. The blow was more from the comparison to Nexus 4 rather than my old Arc. But I have been using Android and I know how it turns out in the end, first day you get all the widgets you want and then slowly you delete them one by one over the years to preserve battery life or prevent lagging. So I was not that bitter.

2. No Speed dial: On Android I had direct dial shortcuts for family and friends, on the homescreen. So calling was just pick up the phone and touch the name icon. On iOS I have to go to my Contacts and then to Favourites; I can't clutter the favorites too so I had to choose to keep only a few contacts. This bugged me the most because it takes convenience away. Here I would say WP>Android>Symbain>iOS.

3. Screen Size: The screen size is still small and sometimes it bugs me coming from a bigger Nexus.

4. Dropbox: The fact that annoys me is that even now Dropbox doesn't automatically upload photos. I have to open the app to do it and even then sometimes it goes on in the background and sometimes it doesn't. Far inferior to my experience on the android.

5. Lack of folders is really going to bug you after a few days of usage. Everything falls into on unified category like Photos, Movies, Music, Books etc. Over the years this becomes ginormous.

6. No local apps: You will have to miss out on a few Indian specific apps which are available on the Android like the Dominos app for example but many are available like BMS, HDFC, Airtel Money etc. Sometimes local apps come on Android first and then on iOS so you'll have to live with that.

7. Whatsapp: It is inferior to Android in some ways. The iOS whatsapp app actually has more features which are recently coming to Android too like Blocking last seen, making Profile private etc. But the problem is in the messaging. It has to connect to the internet everytime you open the app. The surprising part is, you see a notification and then when you click it the message takes a few seconds to appear on the screen, even thought the same message was displayed already in the notification. The biggest problem of all, in iOS you can't send the message if you are not connected to the internet; the send button just goes dead. In Android even though you don't have net, you can send the message which gets queued till it connects to the net and it sends it automatically. This is a very annoying trait of iOS Whatsapp. Sometimes I'm messaging and when I walk to the basement with weak signal, I can't respond or que my messages.

8. Keyboard: I feel the iOS keyboard is more accurate than Android mostly due to lack of the lag but then the Android keyboard feels more complete, I have to keep opening the annotations tab to use commas and exclamations, these can be found on the main keyboard of Android. The predictive text is better than android but cancelling a wrong prediction is sometimes a pain. This leads to sending wrong words since iOS will automatically correct it just before you hit enter.

9. Inability to download or transfer files from or to PC. This makes iOS feel like it's still in the 90's. Also no torrent downloads.

10. iTunes is annoying when it is needed to do almost anything with your phone. Transferring music especially.

11. Battery life is good but not great like the old iPhones were. Heavy usage will still see you charging everyday.

12. Selecting multiple photos to delete or send is a pain since you have to select each on individually. On Android you can just delete a folder if you want with all its contents.

The good

1. The fingerprint sensor: This wasn't really a feature I was looking for and I almost dismissed it as a gimmick but it's just amazing. What surprises you is the accuracy of the sensor. This coming from someone who has bad fingerprints which repeatedly get rejected. At first I thought it's just a novelty addition but in daily use, it's very convenient. Even better when your screen lights up with a notification and all you have to do it place your finger on the home button to see the message or call; without even lifting the phone or even pressing the home button. I found this to be more pleasing than the unlock to touch function. It uses touch ID even for apple store purchases so no need to keep entering the password.

2. Central Console (shortcut bar): I love this widget like bar. This is a major reason I switched to iOS. To be able to control wifi, screen brightness, screen orientation, calculator, torch etc just from a single swipe of the screen and not even requiring you to unlock the phone, this is really a very nice iOS 7 feature. It is a better implementation than the widgets on android.

3. Search Bar: This is a very good feature of iOS which I have appreciated for many years now. For some very strange reason the king of searches Google hasn't put one like this in Android. You can search for any app or contact using this. It's very useful in latter years when the number of apps you have might fill multiple pages. This is present even on Symbian but it took ages to search.

4. Apps: I have observed this for years that many a times some good apps come out only on iOS and sometimes the same app has a better version on iOS than on Android. Ofc I know the reasons, fragmentation and stuff but this has remained true even today even though the gap between the two has come down. Also sometimes the same app runs better on iOS than Android. Only if you own a popular Android like the SGS2 or SGS4 will you get a comparable experience.

5. Silence toggle switch: I find the physical hardware switch on the iPhone to toggle between Silent/Ringer mode to be quite a neat thoughtful addition.

- These five points above are what really put iOS apart for me from Android and helped me make the choice, the rest below are just minor points

6. itunes: Although I hated itunes in the beginning and still do about the music sync part, I realised that it was actually a very useful software. I was doing my yearly backup/format for my Xperia and iPod when I realised that I will have to redownload all my apps on the droid and had to download some new apps to backup my messages etc. The ipod however was just a format and then connect to PC > Sync with itunes affair. It was pretty simple and saved me bandwidth too. Both OSes have cloud backup though which I use sometimes due to it's convenience. But itunes restores your apps in the exact order they were in so it never feels like you had to download them again.

7. After the iPhone battery is drained it will turn off. Then when you put it on charging you don't have to manually turn it on, it will automatically turn itself on. I want this feature in Android too since the droids die more in real life usage

8. Apple predictive text is better than on Android when it comes to names. It will recognise names from your contacts and auto fill them. On the Android it was actually very inconvenient since Indian names are not recognised so well and also the contacts are not taken into account by the keyboard.

9. Camera folder: The unified camera folder is actually pretty convenient when you have to find a recent photo. Android puts each photo in a different folder based on its source, this can lead to searching for a particular pic quite inconvenient later on.

10. Camera is much better than the Samung phones which I checked before making my purchase. But I'm sure it will pale in comparison to the Xperias and Lumias.

11: Android needs a screen orientation shortcut or widget

12. No more infamous android lag. I'm sure it will or has been reduced/rectified but I can't risk it anymore. The OS seems rugged and reliable, and is a breeze to use due to it's simplicity.

13. Other minor ones are that the iPhone 5S really looks good and is well designed. Also you can flaunt it if you are into that. Or that it has better resale value than other phones. I didn't consider these points but they come with it so it's a good thing.

Edit: 13/4: More points:

14. Accessories: The iPhones has more accessories than any other phone out there. Sometimes in certain shops the iP accessories outnumber the ones for every other phone combined. This ofcourse mostly includes cases. Personally I always wanted that official ferrari case which I could finally get for my phone. The best functional case I have seen is however the one for S4 with the window(?) or something similar.

15. iPhone also has more hardware accessories. Stuff like the Parrot Drone and such first had only iP support which is irrelevant now but even today some of them like RC cars etc are only iPhone supported. There are more examples like fitness bands, medical devices, certain kickstarter projects etc, end up being iphone exclusive.

After using multiple OSes I've realised that no one is perfect and you will have to sacrifice some to gain some, so it all boils down to personal choice. Sometimes even Symbian feels better, you have removable storage and you can install apps on SD cards, it has a call recorder, it has a log of how many messages/calls made, it has a log of each call, you can organise messages into folders, it had wifi tethering years before Android/iOS, torrent etc

So these are just random things I noticed. Maybe the list will grow as I keep using my phone more. I hope that sums up a peaceful transition from a droid to an apple.

Good day

Very nicely put. Do add some pics and photo samples from your 5S

BTW there is a workaround for getting Speed Dial on iOS.

See this

*www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R-dgKfH7oU

I have Speed Dial set up this way on my mom's Iphone. And you don't need to have Data connection for it to work. There are some apps too that allow you to further improve the experience by adding pics as speed dial icon etc but not sure if they work on iOS 7.1. Haven't tried them yet

^ That looks like a nice alternative. Thanks for the info. Even I searched for apps which could do that but couldn't find any. Hopefully it will be an addition in the future.

Lol, I thought about posting a topic about my one week usage of iPhone 5S, but thought it might butthurt lot of users, but here we go

good read

That is actually the most neatly written article over the comparisons of iOS with Android. Even though I prefer Android over iOS I would say one of the main reason is cost. User experience wise iOS is way polished than Android. No doubt Android users enjoy more freedom to tinker with the OS but then it brings with it some glitches that usually leaves a bitter taste in mouth.

Whatsapp bug is a very serious one. But since its an app, I guess future update will fix that.

Predictive text and auto correction of Apple are very well known to have created one of the most funny conversations of all time. Do share if you find yourself in such situations as these: Damn You Auto Correct! » Funny iPhone Fails and Autocorrect Horror Stories

Have you tried using a wrong finger in fingerprint scanner? Does it detect it as a wrong one? Just curious.

Central control is inspired by Android, you can't deny that.

Auto starting the phone after putting it to charge is something that Android can learn. Just hoping its not patented by Apple.

Android does have screen orientation shortcut on drop down toggle bar.

Lag does occur even on high end devices sometimes. This is something Android haven't been successfull in getting rid of. That, or that I have really over did apps in my Nexus 7. xD

Nevertheless, great article.

Good read mate.

Vyom said:
That is actually the most neatly written article over the comparisons of iOS with Android. Even though I prefer Android over iOS I would say one of the main reason is cost. User experience wise iOS is way polished than Android. No doubt Android users enjoy more freedom to tinker with the OS but then it brings with it some glitches that usually leaves a bitter taste in mouth.

Whatsapp bug is a very serious one. But since its an app, I guess future update will fix that.

Predictive text and auto correction of Apple are very well known to have created one of the most funny conversations of all time. Do share if you find yourself in such situations as these: Damn You Auto Correct! » Funny iPhone Fails and Autocorrect Horror Stories

Have you tried using a wrong finger in fingerprint scanner? Does it detect it as a wrong one? Just curious.
Central control is inspired by Android, you can't deny that.

Auto starting the phone after putting it to charge is something that Android can learn. Just hoping its not patented by Apple.

Android does have screen orientation shortcut on drop down toggle bar.

Lag does occur even on high end devices sometimes. This is something Android haven't been successfull in getting rid of. That, or that I have really over did apps in my Nexus 7. xD

Nevertheless, great article.

In comparison iOS does seem a lot more polished than Android. A lot of thought seems to have gone into simpler tasks when it comes to iOS, Android in comparison feels a little rough but with Android you do however feel like you can do anything.

I had a few funny moments myself with autotext. I do use the iPad so I'm aware how annoying it can get but on the iphone which is used even more for communication it is leading to even more awkwardness. But it's normal for now.

The finger print scanner doesn't mess up. It knows when you are touching it with the wrong finger

It rejects it right away

I think I missed the screen orientation thing on the android. Will fire up my nexus and check it out. Nevertheless it is only a good thing that such feature is available on both the OSes.

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whatthefrak said:
Lol, I thought about posting a topic about my one week usage of iPhone 5S, but thought it might butthurt lot of users, but here we go

One week is very less time to check out a phone. I too had the same problem in the first few weeks of my usage. I really missed the comfort my old phone provided. This happened to not just the iP5S but even the lumia 720 and the Nexus 4 that I used for a while. In fact whether it be iOS 7 or Bada OS, you won't be happy with either if you moving from your old phone to them. I'm sure after that week when you started using your old phone back you must have felt like coming from hell to heaven.

This is why I waited a good two months before writing this article. I didn't want me to keep going Android is so much better in this, so much better in that etc etc. I would have just posted a biased article just a month ago and determined Android is God.

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snap said:
good read

xtremevicky said:
Good read mate.

Thanks guys

My opinions towards "The Good" of iOS which you mentioned :

1. Agree with you, its even better than S5

2. Not sure what it is ...... But Android had something similar for years. Now there are lockscreen widgets too

3. You can search your phone with Google Now, it uses data though, but I'm pretty sure iOS too sucks data, as average data usage is more in iOS

4. Apps are good in both. Ofcourse you must have a flagship to get best experience, as all devs can't fine tune their apps for all phones (there are many different android devices compared to 3-4 iPhone models)

5. Pressing power button for few seconds gives a dialog box with option to silent your phone in Touchwiz (and in custom ROMs)

6. It sucks (I frustrated while helping out a friend with his iPhone 4 & at last I told him not to ask me again for any help with Apple devices )

7. Few android phones (like Z1 C) have better battery life, performance, for cheaper price

8. I use Swiftkey

9. In Gallery of android, its clubbed in the same folder (I use Camera 360 app also)

10. I agree, iPhones have good camera

11. (Explain this one)

12. Nowadays there aren't much lags. I always suggest my friends to restart their smartphones once a day, if possible (my friend's XOLO A500S runs smooth)

13. I agree iPhones have good resale value & are good for show off (no offence). But their is a company named HTC which has similar characteristics

I like the compactness of iPhones (but 4" is small). For me 4.3- 4.5" is ideal size for phones, so Z1C seems to be the only flagship grade phone which is good for me (Hoping to shift to Z2 Compact after a year, as my N4 seems a bit big)

Sarath said:
I recently got myself an iPhone 5S, which I was quite skeptical about because I have been an Android user for years now and I wasn't sure if it was a good choice, but it met my set of criteria so I decided to go for it.

Intro (can be skipped)

Reason I changed: Just wanted a new phone which had things that my old phone lacked. A longer battery life, reliability, good apps, a good camera (old one got scratched) and facetime. iP5S and my old phone have the same proportions so it's comfortable to hold for me. Also I wanted to try iOS and see what's it all about now that it is much better. Plus I got a good deal for a gold 5S 16GB for Rs.40000/- in Dubai (Indian price was 50k that time and now it's around 47k)

Competition: Choosing the iP5S was particularly difficult for me because the competition looked too good, the SGS4 had beats headphones (worth >10k) in an offer and I've been drooling over the HTC one from even before it released. Also the fact that I already had two new phones at my disposal, a Nokia Lumia 720 and a LG Google Nexus 4 both bought in 2013. But the SGS4 looked ugly and the HTC though good, I was just too tired of reliability issues with Android. I couldn't live with WMobile OS for too long either but it was pretty neat.

Previous phone: Sony Xperia Arc (ICS) and Nokia N85

I am not going to dwell further into if it was a good choice or a bad one. I might have missed a good deal or overlooked a certain phone. But I'm content with my purchase and I'm happy with that. I just want to lay down the changes I felt from changing to iOS from Android. Do note that I actually went from Xperia Arc to Lumia 720 to Nexus 4 and then back to Arc, only recently shifting to iPhone5S.

So the differences I noticed:

The Bad

1. No Widgets: You can't have widgets so that was a big loss for me. Even the app icons are not live so there's no information on them. The blow was more from the comparison to Nexus 4 rather than my old Arc. But I have been using Android and I know how it turns out in the end, first day you get all the widgets you want and then slowly you delete them one by one over the years to preserve battery life or prevent lagging. So I was not that bitter.

2. No Speed dial: On Android I had direct dial shortcuts for family and friends, on the homescreen. So calling was just pick up the phone and touch the name icon. On iOS I have to go to my Contacts and then to Favourites; I can't clutter the favorites too so I had to choose to keep only a few contacts. This bugged me the most because it takes convenience away. Here I would say WP>Android>Symbain>iOS.

3. Screen Size: The screen size is still small and sometimes it bugs me coming from a bigger Nexus.

4. Dropbox: The fact that annoys me is that even now Dropbox doesn't automatically upload photos. I have to open the app to do it and even then sometimes it goes on in the background and sometimes it doesn't. Far inferior to my experience on the android.

5. Lack of folders is really going to bug you after a few days of usage. Everything falls into on unified category like Photos, Movies, Music, Books etc. Over the years this becomes ginormous.

6. No local apps: You will have to miss out on a few Indian specific apps which are available on the Android like the Dominos app for example but many are available like BMS, HDFC, Airtel Money etc. Sometimes local apps come on Android first and then on iOS so you'll have to live with that.

7. Whatsapp: It is inferior to Android in some ways. The iOS whatsapp app actually has more features which are recently coming to Android too like Blocking last seen, making Profile private etc. But the problem is in the messaging. It has to connect to the internet everytime you open the app. The surprising part is, you see a notification and then when you click it the message takes a few seconds to appear on the screen, even thought the same message was displayed already in the notification. The biggest problem of all, in iOS you can't send the message if you are not connected to the internet; the send button just goes dead. In Android even though you don't have net, you can send the message which gets queued till it connects to the net and it sends it automatically. This is a very annoying trait of iOS Whatsapp. Sometimes I'm messaging and when I walk to the basement with weak signal, I can't respond or que my messages.

8. Keyboard: I feel the iOS keyboard is more accurate than Android mostly due to lack of the lag but then the Android keyboard feels more complete, I have to keep opening the annotations tab to use commas and exclamations, these can be found on the main keyboard of Android. The predictive text is better than android but cancelling a wrong prediction is sometimes a pain. This leads to sending wrong words since iOS will automatically correct it just before you hit enter.

9. Inability to download or transfer files from or to PC. This makes iOS feel like it's still in the 90's. Also no torrent downloads.

10. iTunes is annoying when it is needed to do almost anything with your phone. Transferring music especially.

11. Battery life is good but not great like the old iPhones were. Heavy usage will still see you charging everyday.

12. Selecting multiple photos to delete or send is a pain since you have to select each on individually. On Android you can just delete a folder if you want with all its contents.

The good

1. The fingerprint sensor: This wasn't really a feature I was looking for and I almost dismissed it as a gimmick but it's just amazing. What surprises you is the accuracy of the sensor. This coming from someone who has bad fingerprints which repeatedly get rejected. At first I thought it's just a novelty addition but in daily use, it's very convenient. Even better when your screen lights up with a notification and all you have to do it place your finger on the home button to see the message or call; without even lifting the phone or even pressing the home button. I found this to be more pleasing than the unlock to touch function. It uses touch ID even for apple store purchases so no need to keep entering the password.

-- Agreed, although can't say I miss that feature much.

2. Central Console (shortcut bar): I love this widget like bar. This is a major reason I switched to iOS. To be able to control wifi, screen brightness, screen orientation, calculator, torch etc just from a single swipe of the screen and not even requiring you to unlock the phone, this is really a very nice iOS 7 feature. It is a better implementation than the widgets on android.

-- I'm not sure what you are saying here, in android there is the shortcut bar, you can just drag it down with a swipe and control a lot of things, you don't need the widgets. I think I am not getting the correct idea from what you're saying.

3. Search Bar: This is a very good feature of iOS which I have appreciated for many years now. For some very strange reason the king of searches Google hasn't put one like this in Android. You can search for any app or contact using this. It's very useful in latter years when the number of apps you have might fill multiple pages. This is present even on Symbian but it took ages to search.

-- This has been an android since ages, there's a google search bar, you can search apps, contacts, music etc through this. Basically you can search your entire phone using this, you can even open settings directly. Searching local content like apps work in offline too.

4. Apps: I have observed this for years that many a times some good apps come out only on iOS and sometimes the same app has a better version on iOS than on Android. Ofc I know the reasons, fragmentation and stuff but this has remained true even today even though the gap between the two has come down. Also sometimes the same app runs better on iOS than Android. Only if you own a popular Android like the SGS2 or SGS4 will you get a comparable experience.

-- I've yet to seen an app that supports SGS2/4 etc and not others. Android apps either support platforms(like 4.0+), hardware(games might not run on low end phones), or locations(opera beta is US only). And now a days, most essential apps come to android as soon as it lands on iphone

5. Silence toggle switch: I find the physical hardware switch on the iPhone to toggle between Silent/Ringer mode to be quite a neat thoughtful addition.

-- Android doesn't have this, but pressing down the volume key for 2-3 secs achieves this. There's a vibration nod when silent mode is activated(atleast for my phone).

- These five points above are what really put iOS apart for me from Android and helped me make the choice, the rest below are just minor points

6. itunes: Although I hated itunes in the beginning and still do about the music sync part, I realised that it was actually a very useful software. I was doing my yearly backup/format for my Xperia and iPod when I realised that I will have to redownload all my apps on the droid and had to download some new apps to backup my messages etc. The ipod however was just a format and then connect to PC > Sync with itunes affair. It was pretty simple and saved me bandwidth too. Both OSes have cloud backup though which I use sometimes due to it's convenience. But itunes restores your apps in the exact order they were in so it never feels like you had to download them again.

-- Android lacks this, due to platform fragmentation google can't release a master app, but its vendor specific, LG has a desktop app that can take all kinds of backups like what you've mentioned, but its LG only, small vendors like micromax etc does not have a similar app, so point is justified.

7. After the iPhone battery is drained it will turn off. Then when you put it on charging you don't have to manually turn it on, it will automatically turn itself on. I want this feature in Android too since the droids die more in real life usage

-- Haven't tested this feature, cause I've yet to encounter a situation like this, I just charge my phone once every 2-3 days.

8. Apple predictive text is better than on Android when it comes to names. It will recognise names from your contacts and auto fill them. On the Android it was actually very inconvenient since Indian names are not recognised so well and also the contacts are not taken into account by the keyboard.

-- This is a hit or miss thing, for some names, if the starting letters do not point to english words, it will give the name soon, like say Arjun, but for other names that are similar to english words it won't give the name till last letter or two. Also the prediction improves as you keep using the phone, even without adding words to library, I use a lot of Bengali words written in english when typing, now a days most of the words shows up in my prediction.

9. Camera folder: The unified camera folder is actually pretty convenient when you have to find a recent photo. Android puts each photo in a different folder based on its source, this can lead to searching for a particular pic quite inconvenient later on.

-- This is actually better imho, I have over a thousand photos in my phone, some are from camera, some are from facebook, some from bluetooth, some are made by apps(photo editing apps), the segregation helps to get to the correct photo very quickly.

10. Camera is much better than the Samung phones which I checked before making my purchase. But I'm sure it will pale in comparison to the Xperias and Lumias.

-- Agreed somewhat, however most modern flagship android cameras will blow the iphone away(G2, S5, Z1/Z2). Lumias are in another different level altogether.

11: Android needs a screen orientation shortcut or widget

-- Its there, in dropdown menu, was there in my old LG L9 as well.

12. No more infamous android lag. I'm sure it will or has been reduced/rectified but I can't risk it anymore. The OS seems rugged and reliable, and is a breeze to use due to it's simplicity.

-- Most lag is gone with Kitkat, even for low end phones. But I think ios does have a slight upperhand here.

13. Other minor ones are that the iPhone 5S really looks good and is well designed. Also you can flaunt it if you are into that. Or that it has better resale value than other phones. I didn't consider these points but they come with it so it's a good thing.

-- Agreed with the resale value. As far as design goes, HTC One, Xperia Z2 etc are no slouch.

After using multiple OSes I've realised that no one is perfect and you will have to sacrifice some to gain some, so it all boils down to personal choice. Sometimes even Symbian feels better, you have removable storage and you can install apps on SD cards, it has a call recorder, it has a log of how many messages/calls made, it has a log of each call, you can organise messages into folders, it had wifi tethering years before Android/iOS, torrent etc

So these are just random things I noticed. Maybe the list will grow as I keep using my phone more. I hope that sums up a peaceful transition from a droid to an apple.

Good day

Good constructive review, I've added a few points above, feel free to provide feedback on them.

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anupam_pb said:
My opinions towards "The Good" of iOS which you mentioned :

1. Agree with you, its even better than S5

2. Not sure what it is ...... But Android had something similar for years. Now there are lockscreen widgets too

3. You can search your phone with Google Now, it uses data though, but I'm pretty sure iOS too sucks data, as average data usage is more in iOS

4. Apps are good in both. Ofcourse you must have a flagship to get best experience, as all devs can't fine tune their apps for all phones (there are many different android devices compared to 3-4 iPhone models)

5. Pressing power button for few seconds gives a dialog box with option to silent your phone in Touchwiz (and in custom ROMs)

6. It sucks (I frustrated while helping out a friend with his iPhone 4 & at last I told him not to ask me again for any help with Apple devices )

7. Few android phones (like Z1 C) have better battery life, performance, for cheaper price

8. I use Swiftkey

9. In Gallery of android, its clubbed in the same folder (I use Camera 360 app also)

10. I agree, iPhones have good camera

11. (Explain this one)

12. Nowadays there aren't much lags. I always suggest my friends to restart their smartphones once a day, if possible (my friend's XOLO A500S runs smooth)

13. I agree iPhones have good resale value & are good for show off (no offence). But their is a company named HTC which has similar characteristics

I like the compactness of iPhones (but 4" is small). For me 4.3- 4.5" is ideal size for phones, so Z1C seems to be the only flagship grade phone which is good for me (Hoping to shift to Z2 Compact after a year, as my N4 seems a bit big)

Local content search works in offline too.

tkin said:
Good constructive review, I've added a few points above, feel free to provide feedback on them.

- - - Updated - - -

Local content search works in offline too.

There r some 3rd party android pc suites. I use Moborobo

Local content search doesn't work offline for me after installing custom ROM (offline language pack is installed & offline voice dictation works fine)

I see most your Pros with iOS covered in LG G2.

May be you should have compared apples to apples.

And for battery life, i get a day's (24-27hrs) worth with my daily usage and sometimes close to 44 hours with minimal usage.

Small screen is a big no for me. Anything below 4.7 inches is like half the user experience down the drain.

I think tkin already replied in detail. Gosh, if I had the time in world to write all that.

how the central console / shortcut bar evolved over the ages / os versions
in the beginning there was swipe to unlock
then one icon and a vertical upwards swipe that got camera out was added, instead of just a horizontal swipe to unlock
this functionality was later extended to wi-fi, screen brightness, music etc. if something is running, the relevant control option shows up without having to unlock the screen. hope that explains the feature.

Anorion said:
how the central console / shortcut bar evolved over the ages / os versions
in the beginning there was swipe to unlock
then one icon and a vertical upwards swipe that got camera out was added, instead of just a horizontal swipe to unlock
this functionality was later extended to wi-fi, screen brightness, music etc. if something is running, the relevant control option shows up without having to unlock the screen. hope that explains the feature.

I think I got it, in Android there is a similar feature, if an app is running it can place a widget on the lockscreen automatically, like Media Players(even 3rd party players like poweramp) usually place a widget on lockscreen when its running, there is no swipe without unlocking the screen, ofcourse one can manually add widgets to lockscreens(7 screens are available I think).

Something like this
*cdn.androidbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/art.jpg

Faun said:
I see most your Pros with iOS covered in LG G2.

May be you should have compared apples to apples.

And for battery life, i get a day's (24-27hrs) worth with my daily usage and sometimes close to 44 hours with minimal usage.

Small screen is a big no for me. Anything below 4.7 inches is like half the user experience down the drain.

I think tkin already replied in detail. Gosh, if I had the time in world to write all that.

What apples to apples? iPhone 5s is 1.5 time costlier than a G2(both 32GB editions). Its like Apples to Bananas

I have just tried to give my experience of how the migration affected me. It might be different for different users. I can't compare it to the latest phones as I don't have access to them. Even my Nexus 4 hasn't been upgraded to Kitkat yet. My friend was telling me it has vastly improved the Android experience so I'm a little excited to see how it is.
I can't compare my phone to the latest android flagships as even my friends don't own them anymore.

One thing I did notice between the two OSes is that the gap between them is minimal. Todays smartphones are mostly about apps rather than the core phone features and since both the platforms are quite mature the apps also seem similar, so the end user experience is the same for 3rd party apps on both.

- - - Updated - - -

Added a few more points. I totally forgot some more pros for iPhone

droid mind doesn't let me say niceties about the iphone

BTW clarifying about apps for both platforms. In my experience I have seen two trends.

1. Apps released for both iOS and Android always follow this pattern w.r.t. user experience. iPhone + SGS2,3,4 > Other flagships from HTC, LG > The rest of the android world > NO idea where WM stands
Some times the same app will come with the features first on iPhone and then to android. This has reduced after the popularity of the Samsung galaxy series, so it's like iPhones and Galaxies are at the top of the pyramid now.
It's a pity that sometimes better phones like (in my personal opinion) the nexus 4,5, LG G2, HTC One are ignored because of the sheep effect.
( I know this for years now because I my brother uses an iPhone and some of my friends do and it used to baffle me as to why the same app on two flagships is different. The dev page always had the same note about android fragmentation and stuff but seriously as an end user it's not my problem)

2. Apps sometimes, really good ones, tend to be iPhone exclusive. Here too the developers to put it bluntly say, that they are making enough profit on the iOS platform that they don't care about releasing it on Android and having to waste their time dealing with android fragmentation. In fact I remember going to one such app, I think it was a game, and posted on their page petitioning for the games release on android and then ranting at them telling them that they are "idiots" for ignoring a platform as large as Android. But end of the day again as an end user I don't care about the economics of the game, all I know is I have a phone which has a bigger screen, more RAM, more processing power and a higher resolution but still can't have that particular game/app. There were quite a few such apps but right now I can only remember Clash of Clans to quote.

--------------------------------

But having said that Android has apps which iOS will never have because of the limitations of iOS. I can't give a comprehensive list but in my experience I have used an app which mimics a mouse and keyboard for PC, basically you can use your phone as an input device for the PC (my KB and Mouse died so...), then downloading torrents and watching them on the phone itself in .mkv format, an all format player, youtube downloader...I can't remember more but there were a few more crazy apps that I was so excited about when I had just started using Android and used to tease my brother with because he couldn't even download an mp3 on his uber expensive iphone (35k was insane for a phone back then for us)
I do miss these apps.

Also Android has sales, personally I have so many quality apps and games, I have some of the popular games like Fruit ninja, cut the rope, world of goo, some angry bird games, a few fps games, some racer games (don't rem names) all bought legally. And not because I had loads in my wallet but because of the sales. I got each of them for just 5bucks. Five Indian rupees.
End of the day iOS might have the same apps or even better apps but what's the point if you cannot afford them. I am yet to see a similar sale on the App store.

So my experience with apps has been better in Android than in iOS but that again is my biased opinion due to my paid library being stuck on the google OS.

^

Install the app called "appsgonefree" Pretty useful

I see more iphones in my office. Almost every one got one here in NZ. Don't get the hype. Fiddled with iphone 4s but couldn't feel any wow effect in that.

Two reasons I see:
1. It's got good resale value.
2. Status symbol.

^^..Agree.

Faun said:
I see more iphones in my office. Almost every one got one here in NZ. Don't get the hype. Fiddled with iphone 4s but couldn't feel any wow effect in that.

Two reasons I see:
1. It's got good resale value.
2. Status symbol.

Dead on the target right there, even I was contemplating to buy an iPhone some time back. Then G2 came out

hello iOS has regular price drops. sales every day. android may have promotions, but on iOS price drops all the way to free! www.thinkdigit.com/forum/mobile-games/162500-ios-price-drops-time-sensitive.html

pricing compared of top games, some time from last year. check out massive savings on ios.

*i.imgur.com/1ivtQ3K.jpg

also, some quotes from devs on why they prefer iOS. this is way back in 2011, a few of these titles eventually did release for droids, but google has not done anything towards rectifying some of the underlying problems (fragmentation, widely varying standards of hardware used by OEMs). nfgworld.com/mb/post/3720

even if people use iphones as a status symbol, does not change the fact that the device itself is a work horse and not a show pony

Anorion said:
even if people use iphones as a status symbol, does not change the fact that the device itself is a work horse and not a show pony

But android phones have way better performance per cost value. The difference between an android phone and an iphone with comparable performances is a huge chunk of money. I think that adds much to the show pony factor.

hmm... it's not the same at all
apple makes phones that look good from inside as well. at the very least the aluminum on iphones is beaten thinner than others. most of the "design" is not what you see but whats inside the device, and the process used to make it. time.com/jonathan-ive-apple-interview/

On price, Ive points out that developing life-changing products that we could not have imagined before but when we see them we want at once, is very expensive. What’s more, manufacturing them the Apple way, often to tolerances far higher than needed, costs a bomb. “We don’t take so long and make the way we make for fiscal reasons. Quite the reverse,” he laughs. Ive picks up his iPhone to demonstrate how technically complex its construction is. “The body is made from a single piece of machined aluminium,” he says, sticking to the British pronunciation Jobs used to tease him about. “The whole thing is polished first to a mirror finish and then is very finely textured, except for the Apple logo. The chamfers [smoothed-off edges] are cut with diamond-tipped cutters. The cutters don’t usually last very long, so we had to figure out a way of mass-manufacturing long-lasting ones. The camera cover is sapphire crystal. Look at the details around the sim-card slot. It’s extraordinary!”

Anorion said:
hmm... it's not the same at all
apple makes phones that look good from inside as well. at the very least the aluminum on iphones is beaten thinner than others. most of the "design" is not what you see but whats inside the device, and the process used to make it. time.com/jonathan-ive-apple-interview/

So its pretty much clear that apple asks a lumpsum of money for their devices due to their design and finish, not because of its hardware, I'm sure there are metaphors for this....

it's just so hilarious to see people using android trying their best to belittle iOS advantages over android well I have a close to 3 year old igadget(iPad 2) and lemme tell u it's still almost as good as new (ok maybe a bit over statement) but it really holding up fabulously and don't forget the timely updates

Superayush said:
it's just so hilarious to see people using android trying their best to belittle iOS advantages over android well I have a close to 3 year old igadget(iPad 2) and lemme tell u it's still almost as good as new (ok maybe a bit over statement) but it really holding up fabulously and don't forget the timely updates

I have a nokia 5800XM from last decade which is not good as new because the way I had used it(I sort of battle tested it), but it still works, gives me two days battery back up, has 3g and takes photos. And I got updates even 2 yrs back. My friend has a 5800Xm which he used very cautiously and its as good as new. By definition Nokia 5800XM is the best smartphone ever made.

Hmm quite immature interpretation of what I meant but I understand that hatred towards apple is so deeply instilled among the masses that it's no point explaining them :/ anyways coincidently I also had nokia 5233..it was seriously great phone ...but sadly I lost it

....

the hatred is not particularly towards apple but the snobby users. anyway we are spoiling a good thread which had constructive criticisms rather the half baked opinions

R

randomuser111

Re: My experience of moving from Android to iOS
^

Install the app called "appsgonefree" Pretty useful

hey random

moved away from sony ?

Ain't the comparison should be between nexus and play edition phones vs iPhones?I am actually gone the other way from op(ie. iOS to Android)and honestly a Nexus 5 is as snappy as 5s except the camera....tried xperia Z1 c also...it is good,but N5 is better overall and probably the only phone which gives 5s a decent competition (5s wins with the very nice camera but given the price difference that is understandable)

Anorion said:
hello iOS has regular price drops. sales every day. android may have promotions, but on iOS price drops all the way to free! www.thinkdigit.com/forum/mobile-games/162500-ios-price-drops-time-sensitive.html

pricing compared of top games, some time from last year. check out massive savings on ios.

*i.imgur.com/1ivtQ3K.jpg

also, some quotes from devs on why they prefer iOS. this is way back in 2011, a few of these titles eventually did release for droids, but google has not done anything towards rectifying some of the underlying problems (fragmentation, widely varying standards of hardware used by OEMs). nfgworld.com/mb/post/3720

even if people use iphones as a status symbol, does not change the fact that the device itself is a work horse and not a show pony

I'm not saying iOS doesn't have sales just that google brings it to such affordable levels. The only free game I snagged on the iOS was Plants vs Zombies which went free a about 2 years ago for only a week. There are a few such games but rare (I don't even rem the rest).

imho iphone are only for rich people who have plenty to spend on these kind of stuff for me i m happy with my nokia's symbian.............

red dragon said:
Ain't the comparison should be between nexus and play edition phones vs iPhones?I am actually gone the other way from op(ie. iOS to Android)and honestly a Nexus 5 is as snappy as 5s except the camera....tried xperia Z1 c also...it is good,but N5 is better overall and probably the only phone which gives 5s a decent competition (5s wins with the very nice camera but given the price difference that is understandable)

I compared G2 with N5. Preferred G2 over that. It's like N5 with more refinements.

Sarath said:
I'm not saying iOS doesn't have sales just that google brings it to such affordable levels. The only free game I snagged on the iOS was Plants vs Zombies which went free a about 2 years ago for only a week. There are a few such games but rare (I don't even rem the rest).

eh? the price drops to FREE is positively common, which does not happen on Play. How much more affordable you want? you didnt check img I attached to compare the sale prices of top games in iOS and Play? see side by side comparison, many top apps that became free on iOS never had any kind of promotions on Play

this includes all promotions on both stores
*i.imgur.com/1ivtQ3K.jpg

if you want to verify yourself, look at price histories of top apps in AppShopper (for iOS) and AppBrain (for droids)

for those who think that iPhones are overpriced/not VFM/desirable/ aspirational etc. I got 2009 3GS in 2011 for 19K, still using it. Lemme know any droid from 2009 or even 2011 that I could continue using normally to this date, in similar price range. Symbian yes, droid no.

If I were given the S2 I used almost three years ago, I would have been perfectly happy with it. The Gingerbread one, not ICS. It is still THE MOST stable and BUG FREE Android I have ever used. Whatever nowadays kids will say, KitKat blah blah....what really has changed? I don't care if it sounds crazy, but the S4 I used, with stock Gingerbread and Siyah with Interactive governor is very very much comparable with my S4's sodding KitKat. The advantage of S2 was it was more compact. Had a far better build quality (FAR) and even when it was released I paid 30.9k for that instead of S4's 34.5k after three months of release.
To me, the clear winner is S2. And that was released in Feb, 2011. So moot point above

Besides, with Android one advantage is clear, you are free. And I hate being a prisoner of some idiotic brand

The only ecosystem which has changed vastly in past couple of years is Windows Phone. Look at how they were, and how they are now. Android, all bark no bite. The pathetic part about Android is, the phones of nowadays have 100% or better hardware, and performance improvement is 10-15%, MAX. And with much more BUGS. Absolutely no comment about that other player.

tkin said:
I have a nokia 5800XM from last decade which is not good as new because the way I had used it(I sort of battle tested it), but it still works, gives me two days battery back up, has 3g and takes photos. And I got updates even 2 yrs back. My friend has a 5800Xm which he used very cautiously and its as good as new. By definition Nokia 5800XM is the best smartphone ever made.

NOKIA is the best build almost all phone have been used for more than 5 years.But Nokia 5800XM is nothing compared to iPhones

*www.troll.me/images/bush/nice-try-nokia.jpg

let's just accept some things, and demolish some common myths. we can have meaningful discussion about apple, only after moving past these stumbling blocks. these show up in every. single. thread.

1. switching from one ecosystem to another needs a lot of getting used to. we form habits while using a device, even muscle memories, and these are powerful. have seen n number of people trying to press phantom back and menu buttons on my iphone. one of them even had an ipod touch.

2. sure apple products are expensive. a big problem is how we attach status to phones here. this includes oems, tech reporters, and end users. while everyone else calls these devices high end, or premium, here we call it stuff like desirable, classy, aspirational. Other OEMs use this perception more than apple. the Lava Iris pro is an example. For apple users, not only is the price easily justified, they are willing to pay for it. it's not a problem for users, so why should others have a problem with it. and the price has been steady since launch. no surprises in apple pricing. for once and for all, let's stop pointing out how expensive these phones are. everyone knows. this next point might be a little controversial, there is another side to it, which is "dumping" but at least one side is that refurbed, second hand, last year's or last to last year's phones are an option that is easily accommodated in mid range budgets. it may be debatable if apple is selling unsold stock in India or intentionally using such a lineup instead of a range of devices every year, without getting into all that, just pointing out that an apple device is within reach if someone really wants one.

3. the closed ecosystem, is not a trap, it is a non-issue for users. we accept that it was a design decision, with the pay off being reliability and stability. for some no file manager can need getting used to. for others, having to go through lists of assorted items can need getting used to. Sure it's great how android manages files, much more easier practically in real world local scenarios. agreed. no BT file transfer is a dealbreaker. also agreed. Jailbreak is an option for such problems, if they really do come in the way. never needed to use iTunes after OS 5, but when I used to, it was great to just set up podcasts, listen to them, and they get automatically deleted and new ones downloaded. This might seem intrusive for many, not their particular usage scenario, but it's dead convenient at least for some. Assuming the closed ecosystem is inherently bad is not healthy for tech. There must be benefits of a walled garden too, it is a good idea to be at least aware of these benefits as an alternative to open ecosystems. One way to see this is that at least piracy of video, text and audio is a lot less on iOS, consequently we get more goodies and stuff and exclusives because publishers trust in iOS user's willingness (or laziness) that leads us to consume content. This is changing, and will change going forward as people and publishers understand the issues involved. But iOS has spent a long time as established when others are emerging.

4. It's not possible to feel the magic after a few hours or even a few days of fiddling around. For both android and iOS, imo the services and apps are much more critical than the device itself, as already pointed out. It took me a good 3-4 years to understand and use the ecosystem, but im sure most, if not all of these apply equally to droids as well. check price drops on appshopper every 8 hours. looking forward to deals by store itself. consuming podcasts and syncing kindle accounts. using cloud to store data. deleting apps after playing them then downloading them again to play. purchasing random in-game items. choosing to preserve some devices with certain OS versions that work best on those devices along with a bouquet of apps that would not work on those devices if they were updated. getting promotional give-away codes from touch-arcade forums. listening to 10 albums every day from flyte when it shut down. watching developers fix bugs hours after they are reported on forums. downloading a game I had purchased from past purchases history after finding out that the game had been pulled from the indian app store (project 83ll3).

I

I think cost is the most important factor.
Also, flexibility and customization by android are far superior. Root, Custom ROM, Recovery are awesome.
I can do almost all things with my android that I can do with my Laptop and sometimes even more!

Search Bar: App search is there on most Android phones. However its not combined with contact list. Google needs to copy this feature from iOS

Silence toggle switch : Personally, i find it a pain to use the IP5's silence switch,dunno about iP5S , but IP5 is really hard and is very difficult to use single handed. I always use both hands to push the toggle up / down

Camera folder: Isnt that the same with all Androids and WinMo phones? Showing the last snap as soon as you open your Gallery..

mikael_schiffer said:
Search Bar: App search is there on most Android phones. However its not combined with contact list. Google needs to copy this feature from iOS

The google search bar can search both within contacts and apps.

*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=14186&d=1397579081

mikael_schiffer said:
Search Bar: App search is there on most Android phones. However its not combined with contact list. Google needs to copy this feature from iOS

Silence toggle switch : Personally, i find it a pain to use the IP5's silence switch,dunno about iP5S , but IP5 is really hard and is very difficult to use single handed. I always use both hands to push the toggle up / down

Camera folder: Isnt that the same with all Androids and WinMo phones? Showing the last snap as soon as you open your Gallery..

Saiyan answered the first question.

As for your second question look at my post: *www.thinkdigit.com/forum/mobiles-tablets/182749-my-experience-moving-android-ios.html#post2096050

Third one: Yes.

D

I would rather consider buying a windows phone than an ios.
One of my friend having i5 was facing difficulties when filling online University forms which i think is a very basic feature for a smartphone.
Apple just complicates things in the name of security and the iTunes part i hate the most.
I would stick to phones where i can copy paste the files from pc and start playing them.

Even though if I own a iphone/ios device, I will have my droid as primary. The only reason is ROM/support. When I get bored download a Rom and install and enjoy.