At the very tail end of 2016, I switched for Android to iPhone, which I wrote about in a post named No Longer Doin` the Robot. Slightly over four years later, I’m finally ready for a new phone. I’m still sticking with Apple, but I thought it would be interesting to revisit that old post to see how the state of the mobile phone has changed, and whether any of my complaints/predictions/etc panned out.
I lied about the Moto X
Back in 2016 I had this to say about the Moto X, the last Anrdoid phone I ever owned:
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.
If you read the rest of the post, you can tell that I was in a weird state of denial about switching off of Android, despite having a laundry list of complaints. That explains the passage above, because most of what I wrote there wasn’t actually true. I did like the form factor and the feel of the phone, but it was not still running apps smoothly when I got rid of it. Even after doing a factory reset, it still wasn’t even close to as snappy as when it was brand new. The upgrade to Android KitKat simply brought the Moto X to its knees.
I also find it suspect that I never mentioned how the slow performance killed my favorite feature - the ability to activate the camera with a flick of the wrist. When the phone was new, the camera fired up in less than a second, but by the time I was done with it it took upwards of ten seconds, which made it worthless.
The only thing about that passage that is true is that the battery life was trash.
About Android Phone Variety
I complained about how the Android market was dominated by Samsung at the high end, and Chinese firms like Huawei and Xiaomi on the lower end. This wasn’t entirely off the mark. Trade restrictions against China mean many of their phones simply cannot be sold in America, but they’re still popular in other parts of the world. As for Samsung, their dominance has only grown. The company that once only sold one or two Galaxy phones now has a dizzying number of different models.
Case in point - I went to Verizon’s website and shopped for Android phones. Out of the first eleven devices shown, nine are from Samsung, and two are from Google:
Granted, if you keep scrolling you will eventually see a few devices from Nokia, LG, and Motorola, but they are all swimming in a sea of even more Samsung phones.
To be fair, Samsung seems to have gotten pretty good at this whole smartphone thing. They support their devices with updates (as best they can), and their custom UI is good enough that no one clowns on it any more. Years ago Samsung desperately wanted to be Android’s equivalent to Apple, but they always came up short. After years of trying, however, they’ve pretty much done it. Their phones are fast, feature rich, and they look pretty. Heck, they even managed to mimic Apple’s website:
All of which is to say that using a Samsung phone nowadays seems to be a much better experience than it was in the past. But I still find it sad to see how much more limited your choices are when it comes to Android phones. It was kind of fun to find one that fit your needs, or even your personality. Now it’s basically a matter of “how much phone can I afford?”
To be clear, that’s the case with iPhones as well. My point is that Android has one less differentiating factor to compete with.
Oneplus
One brand I haven't mentioned is Oneplus. I doubted whether the company would last after its initial [Oneplus 1 phone](https://www.oneplus.com/support/spec/oneplus-one), but they've grown into a reliable vendor that seems to be doing a great job.About Pixel Phones
In my 2016 post, I wrote some bizarre things about Google’s then-new Pixel phone:
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.
I have no idea where I got this notion from. Sure, the Pixel had some updated version of Google’s Siri-knockoff, and they were providing “unlimited” storage on Google Photos, but beyond that there wasn’t really anything about it that was different than any other flagship phone.
Since then, however, the state of the Pixel brand has never been all that great. They went from not-quite-flagship quality devices being sold at flagship prices, to even-less-than-flagship quality at midrange prices, to actually putting in a slower processor into the Pixel 5 than the one included in the Pixel 4. They’ve also flip-flopped between phones facial recgonition, phones with fingerprint sensors, etc.
TL:DR - Google has no idea what to do with the Pixel line, and no one seems to be happy with it.
About Software Updates
The state of software updates on Android really isn’t any better than it was four years ago. Google’s pixel line still doesn’t provide as many years of support and updates as Apple gives to every single iPhone model. By December of 2020, the best vendors could do is promise that things will get better, but still not as good as Apple, which is just pathetic at this point.
About Apple
I had this to say about iPhone hardware back in 2017:
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.
That passage is less true than it was four years ago. There are still individual features that some Android phones do better, but Apple’s caught up enough that the differences are largely negligible. Meanwhile, Apple has scorched past everyone when it comes to the quality of their mobile chipsets.
This comparison of flagship phones from last year does a good job of spelling it all out. Basically, Samsung makes the best screen, and Google makes the best camera, but the gap in quality compared to what is in the iPhone 12 is not enough to be a difference maker. When you throw in the fact that Apple also caught up to the competition when it comes to smaller quality-of-life features (like wireless charging, waterproofing, fast charging, etc), and made the leap to 5G, nowadays it’s a lot harder for Android fans to argue that they’re getting a better bang for their buck.
Bottom line, even though prices have gone up across the board, Apple’s phones are arguably the most competitive they’ve ever been.
Predictions about the iPhone 7
This is what I hoped to get out of my switch to the iPhone:
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.
So, were my hopes and dreams fulfilled? I’ll explain more in a followup post, but the short answer is - yes, absolutely.