I’ve been using Android phones since 2010. I still remember getting the Motorola Droid in the early spring. My first night with it, I ended up just staring at it as it sat on a table, marveling at the fact that so much technology was crammed into such a small device. I remember loading emulators on it and being able to play real games using the slide out keyboard. I bought the dock and used it as a morning alarm clock and news reader. I eagerly anticipated new OS updates and all the features they would bring. It felt like I was part of the future.
More importantly, I felt like I was part of a special club. Back then I would listen to the very earliest episodes of the Android Central podcast, which at the time began every episode with a listener-provided voicemail in which they enthusiastically announced which Android phone they owned and welcomed listeners to the show. Every week the hosts had information on a new phone that was around the corner. Everyone - the hosts (and website writers), the podcast listeners, the article commenters - were excited about Android and what it could bring as an alternatie to the iPhone. I declared myself to be an Android user for life.
Technically, I’m still an Android fan, but no longer a user for life. As of today, I’m using an iPhone 7.
This is not a switch that I was happy to make. The phone I replaced - a 1st generation Moto X - is still the best mobile phone I’ve ever had. It felt great in my hand, it still ran apps smoothly on three year old hardware, and while it didn’t provide a 100% pure Android experience, that’s only because Motorola added a few genuinely useful apps (the UI, on the other hand, was blissfully pure Android, free of any skins). The only reason why I even replaced it was because the battery life had gone to absolute trash, and I am genuinely sad to put it to rest.
But why switch to an iPhone? There a few reasons actually, most of which boil down to the fact that I’m not super happy with where Android is at present, and I felt like I needed to take a break.
Disclaimer - I can’t believe I have to write this part, but people tend to overreact to everything and anything on the Internet. This post is not an attempt to curse out Android and wish for its demise. Nor am I going to question anyone’s tastes or preferences. I simply want to describe my own issues, frustrations and preferences, knowing full well that they may not match up with anyone else in the world. If you don’t have problems with the things I found issue with, that’s cool.
Choices
You used to have a ton of options when it came to Android phone vendors. Nowadays you still do, but not in the same way. HTC and LG are still technically around, but both keep losing money on their smartphone divisions. Neither looks like they’ll be able to remain a player for much longer. Sony still makes great devices, but you can’t find them in the States. And as I said before, the future doesn’t look bright for Motorola.
That leaves Samsung as the only one of the old Android guard that is still doing well for themselves. And while I hear that they’ve finally made a decent UI out of their Touchwiz skin, and their hardware has always been solid, I’m still not a fan. Even if I could get used to Touchwiz, Samsung is a little too obsessed with gimmicks in their efforts to stand out next to Apple (rumor has it they may consider putting 6 or even 8 GB of ram in the next Galaxy phone, as if that was a sane and practical thing to do in a device with a small battery).
So if you don’t go for Samsung, or the one or two decent phones from LG and HTC, what are your other options? These days most of your alternatives are from Chinese brands like Huawei, ZTE and Xiaomi, none of which I trust to be all that reliable (and may not be all that safe either).
Technically there is one other option - Google themselves. Buuuuut …..
Google Phones
For years, Android fans convinced themselves that Google’s Nexus phones were flagships, but in reality, they never really were. They were midrange phones that were meant to act as a sort of baseline for the future crop of phones that would run the next version of Android. That singular focus on being a developer’s testing ground meant that most iterations of the Nexus had hardware compromises and/or software quirks. But since they ran stock Android, we twisted ourselves into accepting these problems.
Only recently has Google started selling premium phones at premium prices, and yet they’re still not without flaws. The Nexus 6p had a bug in which the phone would shut off before the batter fully drained. Not only was it not fixed, but it shows up again in their brand new Pixel, along with a bunch of other quirky behaviors.
How the hell does this happen? How the heck does the creator of Android write buggy versions of Android? My guess is that this will continue to happen until, like Apple, they start to design the hardware and software in tandem, and in house, rather than contracting the hardware bit out to other manufacturers.
Gimmicks
There are phones with VR accessories. Phones with swappable backs filled with gizmos, and phones that get bigger and bigger and bigger.
I don’t want any of that. I just want a phone with good features and performance, that fits well in my small hands. Apple still sells that kind of phone, but Android vendors don’t, and it doesn’t look like they will any time soon.
Software Updates
Android phone makers and mobile carriers have decided that they don’t care all that much about patching devices. Seriously, at least one of them has come out and said as much. This despite the fact that more and more vulnerabilities are being found in the OS. This does not sit well with me, and I don’t see it getting any better in the future. Google’s promised to do something about it, but so far it’s been all talk. This blatant disregard for user’s security is appalling.
Verizon
Verizon’s service and speed is amazing. Everything else about them is depressingly awful. Aside from their prices and policies, Verizon insists on doing their own testing for phone updates.
This means that most Verizon Android phones don’t get all the software updates they might receive on another carrier. If Phone A gets three OS upgrades in its lifetime, it may only two (or even one!) on Verizon.
What makes this extra frustrating is that despite Verizon insisting on doing its own extra testing, the updates its phones do get still manage to have crippling bugs. My Moto X had a bug that hurt the battery life significantly. If it was capable of upgrading to Android Lollipop, it would have been fixed, but Verizon won’t make it so.
I’m tired of phone updates being a three-ring circus between Google, phone makers, and carriers. It never works out well for me.
Custom ROMs
I once installed Cyanogenmod on my OG Droid. It helped get the phone to the two year mark, and for that I was thankful.
I was this close to installing it on my Moto X to try and salvage the battery, but just as soon as I was ready to do it, Cyanogen’s corporate parent shut down and took the project with it. Since we don’t know how long it will take for them to get back on their feet that option is a no-go.
As for other custom ROMs, I’m just not interested. Cyanogen was big and well known. It felt trustworthy. Most other custom jobs lack the same level of communication and transparency. They sound like they’re hacked together by a handful of hobbyists who may or may not understand everything they are messing around with. And to this day I am still blown away by just how shady the rooting/custom ROM community can be. So let me get this straight, Random XDA Forum User, you want me to download and run this random binary you posted on Mediafire, and place this ZIP file with no checksum onto my phone? What could possibly go wrong?
It’s funny - these guys act like they’re the most tech savvy phone users around. But as someone who writes software for a living, I’ve yet to come across a colleague who’s big into flashing Android ROMs. The true experts know that the scene is a security minefield.
The Future
I don’t have that “secret club” feeling anymore when it comes to Android anymore. At least not when I look at where it is heading. As I mentioned already, I see devices that are obsessed with gimmicks and crappy custom UI’s.
But what about the new Pixel? It’s a genuine flagship phone, but it looks like Google is going all in on putting as much data as possible in the cloud, and using AI to drive as much of the device’s functionality as possible.
This concerns me a bit. It isn’t a lack of trust (you could easily accuse me of trusting Google far too much). Rather, it makes me wonder whether this is a sign that the future of Android is going to be a lot less, well, free. If everything starts to be AI driven and cloud based, will there be a future in which Google decides that Android doens’t need so much freedom within the actual hardware? Will we still be able to run text editors or move things around in the file system?
So why Apple?
That about sums up my frustrations with Android right now. But why switch platforms entirely? Why not just bite the bullet and get a Galaxy S7 like everyone else?
Reason #1 is that when it comes to phones, I’m the same as with computers. I’m OS agnostic. Sure, I prefer some OS’es over others, but I can work comfortably in all. The switch to iOS has almost no learning curve.
With that out of the picture, the main reason boils down to that old Apple saying of “it just works”. It might be true that iPhones are pricey, and it might be true that not every hardware spec is industry leading. But at the same time, it’s one of the only phones I can think of that you can look at and say “nothing about this truly sucks”. The screen, the battery, the camera, and the performance can all, in the worse case scenario, be described as “pretty good”, and are usually quite a bit better than that.
On top of that, Apple gets to push updates and patches directly, and they’ve proven that they will support their devices for years. If you take good care of your device, an iPhone has amazing resale value. My wife used an iPhone 5 for three years (and very well might have been able to stretch it out four), and when she finally traded it in she got two hundred bucks for her trouble.
In comparison, when I tried to feed my OG Droid into a cell phone trade in kiosk three years after buying it, it said the device had zero dollars worth of value.
Basically, I felt like if I got an iPhone, I wouldn’t have to worry about replacing my mobile phone for a good, long while. I could take it on vacation and not worry about constantly recharging it, and I could take good pictures on the first try. If I was away from my wife, I could Facetime her without having to have my laptop around, and she could have fun sending me stickers and emojis and other silly things that we both find cute. In other words, I figured this might be a chance to have a phone that didn’t stress me out. Heck, Apple even figured out how to take the stress out of paying for it with their upgrade/payment plan.
Hopefully it works out as well as I hope. If not, so be it. And either way, I’m hoping that the Android market finds a way to appeal to me again, because I’d sure like for the Secret Club to come back.