I’ve had the iPhone for a few weeks now. Here are my impressions so far.
I initially planned on getting an iPhone SE, because I thought it was the same screen size as the Moto X. Turns out it is actually smaller, which was quite shocking. Even more shocking was that the Moto X and the iPhone 6⁄7 have almost identical dimensions (the former’s screen is bit shorter and wider, and the latter’s is a bit taller and narrower). That’s why I went with a 7 instead of the SE. Typing and navigating one handed feels about as comfortable as it is with the Moto X, (though nothing can beat the overal feel and stability of the Moto X in your hand).
I didn’t realize how many apps Google now has on the iPhone. Almost every stock Android app is here, and most of them look and work identically. Considering the majority of the time on my phone was spent in Google-provided apps, this makes the transition that much more painless.
I used Google Chrome at first, but found it to be a huge battery drain. Switching to Safari hasn’t been that huge a shock.
You know how the iPhone 7 has the weird home button that feels like it moves but actually doesn’t? I hated it when I first tried it. No one told me you could adjust the force feedback. I cranked it up so that it feels like a good, meaty click, and now I don’t mind it.
I thought the idea of waterproofing a phone was silly and pointless, until my wife pointed out that I could use it to record us riding Splash Mountain at Disney World, and suddenly it was like I could read the Matrix or something.
I miss Android’s back button, mostly for web browsing. Some apps support swiping right to move back a section, but it is a crapshoot. As for the other two of Android’s three softkeys, their functionality is replicated by the iPhone’s single home button.
I also miss being able to easily transfer files on and off my device. I used my old Android phones as a dumb storage device on more than one occasion, and now that won’t be an option.
I forgot that you can’t arrange home screen icons wherever you want. I like having my main application icons on the bottom of the screen, to reduce finger movement. The only way I can do this is if I fill the entire home screen up with stuff.
I still think Android’s idea of a separate app drawer is a good idea. It lets you keep a clean, minimalist home screen. If iOS folders opened up to occupy the entire screen (and auto-sorted alphabetically) then Apple could instantly remove this one Google advantage.
As recently as three months ago I was raging about the removal of the headphone jack. I still think it is a bad idea, especially because the phone doesn’t look or feel too thin to accommodate said jack. But I realized that for my own personal use, I only ever use a headphone jack to plug my phone into my car, so I have my little headphone dongle permanently hooked up to the audio cable in my glove box, and life goes on.
While I may not be missing the lack of a headphone jack for music purposes, I am frustrated over the inability to play music and charge the phone at the same time. This makes it difficult to use the phone as a GPS/jukebox in the car. I’ll have to buy one of the many adapters made by third parties.
Without a case on, the phone does feel pretty thin and light, but also very slippery. With a case on, it’s not quite as svelte, but small enough.
It is interesting to see the evolution of iPhone design. The old models basically looked the same as the iPod Touch, which made them a bit hard to take seriously. I felt like the iPhone 4 really improved the size and shape, and that the metal trim made it look a lot more slick, but that the glass back was foolish and fragile. The 5 series fixed all that by using aluminum, and is probably my favorite looking iPhone of all. The 6 series went for rounded corners and a camera that bulged out, and became so thin that you could bend it. It almost felt like a bad joke.
As for the 7, it seems to me like they copied the design of the 6 and took some of the suck out of it. The camera still juts out, but I can’t bend it, and I swear it looks like the corners were tweaked to look just a bit better. Most importantly, I really dig the matte black finish. I know it’s metal, but it looks and feels a lot more like the plastic Android devices I’ve used for six years, and there’s something comforting to that.
iOS 10 sure did add all sorts of crazy Messaging features. I’ll probably grow tired of them after a month or two.
I find myself accessing stuff using the search bar a lot. Maybe the folks behind Gnome 3 and Windows 8 were onto something …
Apple published an app to the Google Play store that can be used to transfer content to an iPhone. It transferred all of my photos and text messages, and later, when I booted up the iPhone, it started to search the App Store for equivalents of any Android apps I was using and began downloading them.
All told, I think the combination of the phone’s look/feel, the Google apps, and my existing familiarity with iOS has made this a very boring and unexciting phone upgrade, which is exactly what I wanted. It isn’t exactly the same as my Moto X, but it also doesn’t feel entirely foreign.