Got an iPhone some months ago because it was cheaper than getting a Pixel or S24 and I hate it.
The apps suck, sideloading sucks ass because of both apple restrictions and the lack of modded apps, browsing sucks because the adblockers suck because the extensions suck, FOSS is pretty much dead of iOS, call spam detection sucks, keyboard sucks.
I never saw an ad on android for the past three years because of how good my setup was with modded apps and Firefox+uBlock but iOS is pure Advertisement Hell.
The OS visuals and responsiveness are better than most android skins but 60Hz is trash as well and 4GB ram means that I can not even open like 3 tabs at once without the others shutting down.
The photo management sucks the most. Any photo I save goes straight to my Camera Roll and has ZERO organization which memes no more epic funny memes are getting saved on my phone anymore.
The integration with Google Photos is also non-existent and images get saved only when I manually sync them and I will never buy iCloud because I hate the locked down apple ecosystem.
Modded apps also suck and nothing is as good as revanced plus the 7 day refresh limit sucks because of course apple wants 99$ per year to have the godlike ability to install your own apps.
Airdrop is maybe the only positive I remember about this. And maybe the battery life which is better than my previous phone’s battery.
I always buy a new $200-ish Android phone every 4 years. The huge benefit is that I don’t have to stress my $2000 phone breaking. Repairs are way cheaper. Also FOSS apps are cool and good. I guess posher friends than me have gotten used to the iOS ecosystem. I’m not gonna give them a hard time for it, but it’s an expensive addiction.
Current phone? Looking to get my next £200 android, lol.
Still rocking my 3 year 11 month old Pixel 5 with no issues, Google lists a few refurbished ones at about $150 though I can’t speak to what that experience would be like since I got mine new and managed to not break it this whole time.
Samsung A15. Seems fine. Don’t want to 100% recommend it, as I’m not a full hardware spec nerd, and someone may know better.
How’s the camera?
Seems OK. My gf said it takes good photos. I am so not a photo person, tho. I’d look online for a better answer.
I have a pixel 6 rn and am pretty happy with it. Just checked backmarket and they’re going for ~$160 USD. Solid battery, pretty quick, great camera, no 3rd party bloat, 128GB ssd. You could do a lot worse for the price
Doesn’t it have a lot of bloat cos of the Google stuff?
The google-branded phones (Nexus / Pixel) are aimed towards developers. While they ship with the full suite of Google applications, the real reason anybody buys these phones is to plug them in to ADB, unlock the bootloader, and flash custom firmware.
Google phones are known for being basically just pure stock android without much bloat. That’s like the entire purpose of their existence.
Graphene OS.
Fyi you can save images to your files instead of the camera roll. That way you get more traditional file management (eg you can make a meme folder and save images to it).
Idk if I agree about the apps, most apps are nicer on iphone imo, mainly because developers seem to care more about iphones. But there are some gems on Android.
The ad blockers suck on iphones, and side loading sucks as well. Hoping the eu regulations put an end to that shit.
I think a lot of your issues come from not being used to it. At this point both platforms are so similar that outside of the side loading issues they’re basically the same.
ad blockers suck on iphones
can use an encrypted dns provider with adblocking for no install, no root, all app, no battery drain, no resource adblocking
https://github.com/paulmillr/encrypted-dns
pick one that has adblocking, also better privacy
(AdGuard, Blah, Mullvad, PubHole)
https://libredns.gr also has an iOS profile for blocking adsthese also can be added to android dns for no resource no install no root adblocking and privacy
Blah, PubHole, Libre - all independent and support openNIC domains regular dns does not
AdGuard, Mullvad - corporate, in theory should have better uptimes so usually recommend for normies but using the above three for years and never had issues, ymmvAlso there is organization in the photos app (Albums), you just have to go into the photos app after you’ve saved an image.
IIRC you can also auto sync albums with NextCloud
Yeah going from android takes a lot to get used to. I went from iOS (iPhone 3G) to Android (HTC EVO 3D) then back to iOS (iPhone 6) and I’ve never looked back. I’ve still always kept at least one android phone around, and carry that phone with me almost everywhere.
But you couldn’t pay me to go back to using Android as my main phone OS. To the point that I paid nearly twice the price of my iPhone to import a model with a physical SIM card slot.
It sounds like you bought the wrong phone
but ur messages are blue!
I mean they’re the ultimate normie phones because they’re so fixed and easy to pick up. So I think you either go all in on the ecosystem or you get a different phone. Apple can suck my ass no doubt but none of this is a secret lol.
The notifications also suck and there is no notification channels like in Android so either turn all notifications off or get spammed.
The customization is also bare minimum and there are no launchers I could use like Niagara which change the way one uses their phone.
The functionality you’re looking for is part of “focus” I think.
I thought they added notification channels or something similar? Huh I guess not
I don’t know what you mean by notification channels but you can control which notifications you want and which apps can do so
Just like android it’s down to the app to implement that functionality. Android manages this in system settings, iOS does it in the apps settings.
Not every app supports it on iOS, but it’s the same story for Android.
I have been considering switching to Apple and this post helped me, thank you 🙂
Windows phone 8 will always be superior I will die on this hill
I raise you oneplus 6/6T, which is the best device for mobile Linux.
I still have a oneplus 5t sitting around somewhere, that good with mobile linux as well?
tbh since mobile linux (postmarketos and similar) is so niche and underdeveloped, and ARM (especially smartphone-oriented platforms) is an unstandardized mess of blobs, OP6 is the best device - it has the best support that is currently available for a powerful device. Good support also exists for pinephone and other linux-first devices, but they are much less powerful, while any other device with a similar processor (even the same processor) would have less support.
In particular, OP5T has less stuff working than OP6 and only three people listed as its users. So… proceed only if you really, really want to.
The proprietary hellscape that is phones.
I picked up a windows phone for $40 right around its death and I honestly loved that thing. It had a shitty CPU but damn did it feel snappy™️ for the price.
If only it had apps.
Interesting, I daily drove a Lumia for a couple years and I distinctly remember being excited for (the upgrade from 8) and then happy with windows 10 mobile. The experimental was top notch, the lack of apps not so much.
I only had one Windows phone, but I remember liking it. It’s just a shame about how bad the software support was.
Yep, and those Nokia windows phones were top notch hardware too, for their time. I used my windows phone until the digitizer gave out, tried a couple android phones, and ended up on Apple. Then I got into phone repair, and I know I made the right decision from what was available after seeing the internals of every brand of phone, but I still miss my windows phone a lot. Nothing comes close to that Home Screen.
Yeah, I had to switch to iOS recently, for reasons that I won’t get into, and it blows.
People say the UI on these things is preferable, but you can’t even reorganize your homescreen without having to solve a list ordering puzzle. And the settings app is a maze; good luck figuring out which of the three password pages the thing you want is on. And you can’t install real Firefox so you can’t have a real ad blocker.
You probably could have done some research beforehand and learned all of this before wasting your time and money just to be aggravated.
I bought it because I urgently needed a phone and an iPhone was literally the cheapest phone I could get at that time with good performance.
Yeah fair enough, I guess my phone use case is also much different than most because anything more than messaging, doomscrolling, and quick google searches, I just pivot over to my computer. Most people use their phone primarily, so some of the gripes with iPhone are lost on me.
100% agree. I’ve had one over a year now for work and I really do not understand why people will defend these things like they’re personally offended.
I have yet to find a single function that’s better than my android
I switched iOS to Android and in general preferred the user experience on iOS out of the box, but the inability to load what you want to load is a non starter. I know the blue text thing is a meme as well but I did lose a couple of group chats which unfortunately has value. Hopefully regulators address this.
I think iOS has recently implemented RCS support? messages still green, but should be fully functional
The next iOS adds it. It’s available and fully functional in the beta if you feel like installing it.
https://github.com/paulmillr/encrypted-dns
pick one that has adblocking, also better privacy
(AdGuard, Blah, Mullvad, PubHole)
https://libredns.gr also has an iOS profile for blocking adsthese also can be added to android dns for no resource no install no root adblocking and privacy
Blah, PubHole, Libre - all independent and support openNIC domains regular dns does not
AdGuard, Mullvad - corporate, in theory should have better uptimes so usually recommend for normies but using the above three for years and never had issues, ymmvIdk why anyone would want better functionality from a smartphone because i personally hate having it be the center of my tech life.
I dont want put someone’s spaghetti code on my phone, i dealt with enough of that when you could jailbreak these things. That experience sucked. Nothing worked well together, and the novelty of it wore off.
The ads suck, but every app is just it own browser to a webapp, so the ad blockers feel like barricading a freestanding door.
The camera is awful for stills, i carry a point-and-shoot most of the time anyway because i cant turn off the processing i loathe so much.
I never use airdrop because my experience has been there’s always one wonder app in the ecosystem that doesnt work for me.
Android’s os looks miserable to navigate, but being able to load someone else’s poorly designed, thought up, and/or implemented navigation browser is a nonstarter.
Some things that might help you:
Idk what blocker you’re using, but you want a dns adblocker. If you want to figure it out yourself go ahead, but if you’d prefer a recommendation I can do that too.
When you’re in your photos app you can tap select in the upper right hand corner, kind of half tap and drag to select a bunch of them, then add to album using the bottom left button.
You can choose what pictures get backed up to iCloud. There’s only like 5gb or something on it by default, so you’ll probably want to.
If you’re not using iCloud for phone backups then make manual backups. You will be unhappy if you need backup and don’t have one.
