Hello everyone! My IPhone has been slowing down as of late. For whatever reason… I was very close to buying a Samsung Galaxy a while ago because I was very tired of the limits of the IPhone and Apple’s BS basically. Now I am considering it again.
The only thing is leaving the ‘Apple Ecosystem’ feels like more trouble than it’s worth. (1000% intentional). My family all has IPhones. I also I recently bought a watch for some health and wellness help.
Basically what I’m asking here is for a conversation about making the switch! Have you done it? If not, is there some pros and cons you could share anyway? What’re your thoughts?
I’ve dealt with many family members and friends regarding such changes. First off, I’d say the fact that you’re on this forum likely makes you someone unlikely to be strongly negatively affected by the transition. That said, I think it’s reasonable to expect friction regardless of how savvy one is.
Pros:
Being more technologically agnostic, independent / self-sufficient. By going through with this, you’d be gaining some of the autonomy / control over your possessions. I.e. “You own your stuff, they don’t own you”.
Android is significantly more “open”, i.e. more freedom. It can make doing a lot of things via a smartphone easier.
Cons:
That freedom that Android provides can also feel overwhelming, and when someone is undergoing the process of “learning how the same stuff, again, but in a different way”, it can be too much. People I’ve helped have lives, jobs, families that suck up 99% of their time and when they deal with tech / their phones, they don’t want freedom, they want “it. just. werks.”
Some essential apps sometimes don’t translate / transfer easily (some messaging apps for example), things that people rely on for family or work and that can be a whole drama all by itself. I’ve literally had to salvage situations where a single app caused so much distress, people come to me begging to undo their attempt at a transition.
Should you do it? I say yes, everyone should, in an ideal world… But that ain’t reality so the real question is: Can you? How much do you really want to? Do you know you’ll have the time and/or discipline / resilience to stick it through.
My #1 piece of advice, and what I tell my graduating students with regards to this topic: TIMING, and the time you have to set aside, makes the biggest difference. Whether for phone or OS, this is not something I’d recommend without planning and certainly not before important events (usually big tests in their case), but think a big move maybe in your case.
I think it’s wonderful to be more techy and knowledgeable and skilled, but I’ve seen this go sideways too many times to not be wary.
personally im looking forward to switch from android to iphone, but they’re too pricy for me.
unless the watch you got is an apple watch, you should be fine, because apple watches only work with iphones.
many pople will tell you android is more “open” but i never really cared personally i just use apps and thats it. the only thing thats easier on android is sideloading, but EU is gonna force apple to let you do that on iphone too.
I made this change in 2019, haven’t looked back. I love the customization available, I prefer USB-C (though obviously apple is going to that anyway), my s10e has a microSD slot and headphone jack, I couldn’t be happier tbh. I also love how easy it is to download non-appstore apps. I feel like it’s so much easier to understand why my phone does the things it does.
I’m an Android man, with everything about my phone hacked entirely to hell. I can recommend Android to anyone - if you’re not interested in the flexibility and installing custom OSes and all that, it’s just a stable operating system that does everything you need it to do, and it does give you a couple of extra options.
It is a hassle to switch; my advice is to find someone who’s experienced with Android to give you a hand. I usually volunteer my day to help someone switch - first copy all the data from the iPhone to a laptop (Apple really don’t want you doing that!), meanwhile set up the OS with all the desired apps ans options, then finally transfer data for SMS, call history, wifi networks, Signal, WhatsApp, all that. I prefer doing it manually because I’ve seen the automatic options go wrong too often.
One nice thing about switching phones is that you can keep using the old phone while you’re setting up the new one - so while it’s all pretty finicky, if there’s stuff that’s still not working you can just take a break, keep using the iPhone, and continue on tomorrow without the irritation of having to use a half-working phone.
Wow, thanks for such a long and well thought out response! There were a lot of things I didn’t even consider; this will definitely help in my decision making process. I would/will definitely need to do some research on all of the things that I want need on my phone.
Oooh yes I definitely need a “doula” before I do it lol The last thing I need is to lose any data!
Also, having a phone ‘hacked to hell’ sounds like a DREAM to me!
I think everyone already gave helpful replies and I rarely use Apple products, so I cannot comment much. There is one thing that I feel is important to emphasize though:
Unless you are going to buy an already “de-Googled” smartphone or “do-it-yourself” by taking the time to install and learn about something like /e/OS or GrapheneOS, then to some extent, you are really just trading one “closed system” for another.
There are certainly more hardware options, so Android phones can be more “open” and “user-friendly” (not to mention “cheaper”!), but that depends on how we approach it. To do much of anything “right out of the box” (e.g.: using and installing applications) is probably going to require a Google account, and the default file navigation is usually “a hot mess” that hides a lot of what is actually going on. There might be a lot of pre-installed garbage that is hard to get rid of too. Like most tech, it is a trade-off between privacy and “convenience”.
Therefore, I highly recommend learning how to sideload APKs and exploring the F-Droid client before trying to buy apps through Google Play if you are going with just a “plain vanilla” Android phone. It will probably save you some money and will be a good foundation for hacking up your phone in other ways if you want to learn more.
Also, finding a decent Apple Watch alternative might be challenging. But, to be honest, that is a subject that I am a lot less familiar with as I have never used a smartwatch or any app that requires it.
I found it annoying that, for example, I couldn’t remove the google search from the default home screen, but it’s possible to replace the home screen (or launcher) completely. Weird, but significantly more open than what you get from Apple.
I do have f-droid, but I think they have incorrect, unhelpful notions about what “software freedom” ought to be and hassle developers unnecessarily. As a result there are many great open source apps you won’t find there.
I might consider an alternate OS when the device is no longer supported by the official releases, but I don’t want to give up access to apps that want secure boot attestation, like from my stockbroker and bank.
For sure. That’s reasonable. I also agree that there are quite a few good open source apps that one will not find on F-Droid. However, I do think that it is a good starting point for someone using apps outside of Google Play for the first time. It is easy to set up and can “whet one’s appetite” for customizing more aspects of their Android experience.
To be honest, I started using F-Droid because I found it a bit frustrating that I could not find something as simple as a basic voice recorder app within all of the options on Google Play at the time that were not heavily ad-supported or had questionable data collection. There seems to be a lot of “apps” that are little more than money grabs or spyware. People new to Android, or those who have not explored much beyond the default options, might not realize to what extent. Or at least, I know that I didn’t when I first started playing around with it.
There were a lot of things I didn’t even consider; this will definitely help in my decision making process. I would/will definitely need to do some research on all of the things that I want need on my phone.