I’m not throwing this phone away before it breaks. And I don’t want android, I want a Fairphone or something.
Fairphones run Android, don’t they?
I’m not sure, I’m not too tech savvy myself.
(Yes, they do!)
Spent a fortune on apps that are also accessible to my family who also have iPhones, and this gives me good parental controls. Switching would be a massive ball ache for not much reward if any.
I originally switched because there was still a small flagship iPhone. However I stayed because it works just fine and iMessage worked better than SMS for whatever that time period was before people moved to other messaging apps.
Now I use an Android phone for work and don’t really see enough advantage for me to switch.
I actually switched from Android to iPhone maybe a year and a half ago, after I got an iPad to take notes on for university and really enjoyed using it.
- I hate Google
- I mostly like how iOS works
- I mostly don’t like how Android works, it has a lot of rough edges and jank (imo, partially resulting from stock apps sucking or just not being there at all but there not being enough low level access for third party apps to provide a well integrated replacement)
- Shortcuts/Automation is amazing
- Builtin Calendar/Contacts/Reminders apps are amazing and especially lets me connect to my DAV server without any hassle
- Nobody has built anything that comes close to Apple’s cross-device interactions (but I guess that’s also Apple’s and Google’s fault for locking the systems down)
- A consistent look and feel across the system is very important to me and iOS apps seem to care more about that. Even Google’s own apps used different visual styles sometimes last I used it
- The hardware and OS looks nice without being overly flashy, it just hits that sweet spot of “pleasant design”
- If I want to develop apps I really don’t want to touch anything related to Java
Used to have android phones but iphone just works better for me and I do like the ecosystem. Yes its a walled garden but it works pretty damn well and reliably.
Don’t want to, I’m used to it.
I don’t really care about phones and my parents give me their old iPhones for free.
Google
Because I’m already using an Android phone.
Used to use android, but switched to iPhone when the 12 came out. I simply don’t care about the flexibility anymore… I used to tinker a lot, but now I personally don’t find it amusing. And even if I did want to tinker, the Shortcuts app provides a lot of cool features. iOS is refined, sleek, and I enjoy the UI. AirPlay works miles better than anything on android. CarPlay is a better experience. The ecosystem just works. Apple Maps street view is available in places google maps isn’t. I’m currently on the 15 pro max, and the design and feel of the phone is awesome. Probably a handful of other things that don’t immediately come to mind.
What’s stopping you as an android user from switching to iPhone?
I asked this the other day…
I meant it more as a joke
I would prefer to go in the opposite direction and have a completely open source phone rather than more closed down.
When I was looking at replacing my phone, I was considering an iPhone. But the major thing that stopped me was the lightning port.
The other major thing now is Firefox. It is simply better on android than iOS. It is by far the most used app on my phone, and not being able to use the extensions I do on android is a significantly worse experience.
I also really like my current phone, it has a marvelous bit of technology called a 3.5mm headphone jack and is amazing.
People on Lemmy tend to hate walled gardens.
The original reason I switched from android to iOS is because iPhone’s consistently work well and smoothly, all receive the same updates at the same time, and you’d get more updates out of them which helps them last longer. I just didn’t feel like dealing with the hassle of only getting 2 software updates on a major flagship (which was slowed by 6 months to a year by carriers having to apply their own patches) all for a phone that didn’t work too well to begin with.
Android has come a long way since then and I can pretty confidently say I’d be more than happy switching to a Pixel or Galaxy S phone these days. I’d even argue their phones are generally nicer in terms of design, and I love that they are more open for customization and other fun uses (ex. Game emulation, termux, mobox, etc).
The main thing stopping me is that Apple’s integration is just too convenient to beat. Everything syncs seamlessly between iPhone / iPad / Mac and it genuinely feels like they are extensions of each other rather than separate independent devices. Android just doesn’t offer enough for me to justify it over the Apple ecosystem.
That being said I do have an android phone I bought used on eBay for some of the fun stuff I mentioned above. I highly recommend it to any Apple users who don’t feel like fully switching to android
I remember in the bad old days of the early to mid 2000s, Apple was pushing software updates considerably past the ability of their hardware to actually run it. I had a 5th Gen iPod Touch and after about two and a half years of owning it, it had become basically a brick. Non-responsive UI more often than not and it took upwards of 8 minutes just to reboot the thing, because they were pushing software updates to it intended for a device 2-3 generations ahead. And this was not an isolated incident. I’m convinced it was on purpose, intended to push people to buy the new models.
Is this still a problem? I switched to Android and never looked back round about 2008.
I had a similar situation with that exact iPod and the original iPad mini. They just weren’t meant to handle iOS 9 and it was made significantly worse by aging batteries.
I’d say it’s definitely not as bad as it used to be, today’s devices are far more capable in terms of processing power. For the most part if a device can’t handle a new software feature they just don’t get it in the new update. I’m sure it’s not 100% perfect, and there’s bound to be isolated incidents, but I never had any issues with slow downs on my iPhone 6S or iPhone X (outside of battery problems, which were fully resolved once the batteries were replaced)
At this point the only reason I upgrade my phones is aging batteries and/or dwindling replacement battery support. That being said Apple makes official battery replacements a bit of a pain (which could be viewed as intentional to help encourage new iPhone sales).
tbf Samsung has a decent-ish ecosystem as well…
as long as all your devices are Samsung onesthere’s stuff like automatic earbud switching, dragging files between devices, “continue work on other device”, Samsung seamless codec for audio etc
Not an iPhone user but if there’s one thing that is making me want to switch it’s the ads and bloatware. Spending $1000+ on a device that shows ads inside the system apps and includes software like ESPN and Facebook that you can’t uninstall without serious technical know-how is insane. Are the profit margins really that bad on smartphone hardware??
I think there is a core reason for everyone. Strong reliable basics.
I want to FOSS everything and I moved to a Samsung phone as a start but even basic things such as weather app are not good. There is a weather widget for Samsung but no stand alone app for some reason.
Other things like apple notes, I don’t even know which cloud based note taking app can replace that, Obsidian is a hassle to sync, OneDrive is slow as hell, Google keep is pretty much the only viable alternative.
Then I have to look for a to-do list app again same problems, I don’t want a subscription and Microsoft To-do is literally the only option with online sync that I could find.
Now there are things like Apple’s Journal app, like… there is pretty much nothing that is both free and reliable. I am even open to one time purchase options but I feel everything is a free tier with subscription options.
Apple literally does one thing, strong reliable basics. Their notes app is simple as hell, but it works reliably and I know it is not randomly going to disappear/get dropped in 2 years.
Thank you for a solid response. I hate that android users say their phone is better in every way and yet they can not mimic the simplicity of a bare bones Apple phone. I don’t need all the hacker shit that android users love to brag about.
My Samsung phone shipped with Samsung Notes on it, which works perfectly as a basic notes app and while not FOSS, so far as I can tell if you haven’t logged into a Samsung account the contents stay local. You can also just deny internet permissions to the app if you’re paranoid about it. But if you want a cloud sync it supports that with a Samsung account, can’t speak on that feature very much as I don’t use it.
Accuweather has both an app and a widget I’ve been using with zero problems for almost a decade.
I use Keep Notes for cloud sync notes and to-do lists shared in real time with my partner and family.
I don’t use a Journal app, but from some brief searching Obsidian seems to do most of what you’ll want out of it, and could also serve as a generic notes app.
I either already had all of these installed or, in the case of Obsidian, found it within about 2 minutes of brief searching. (Looked up what the Journal app does -> “hmm, this sounds like Onenote” -> there is no Libre office Onenote alternative -> didn’t Evernote used to be good? -> Evernote has enshittified, Obsidian is the best rated replacement).
At the risk of maybe sounding like an asshole, I really don’t understand your complaints here. All of these suggestions either came baked into my OS or were very easy to find on the app store. Keep Notes was the only one I had to be introduced to and only that because I had no use for a multi-user-sync list or notes app beforehand.
iMessage is encrypted in transit by default when talking to other iPhone users, and 95% of my contacts use iPhones. That is the ONLY reason I use an iPhone.
Apple keeps the encryption keys and they can access all of your messages, if they feel like it. signal is encrypted by default and just saves when you created and when you last logged in to your account.
At least in the US it is very difficult to convince people to switch from text messaging to another service. The way iPhone does it by default with other iPhones is really the only way it happens for most users.
so its not encryption, but network effects that keep you from switching…
I use Android but I’m pointing out that encryption behind Apple is better than SMS.
sorry, I thought you were the previous comment, my bad. as for encryption: yes it is better, as SMS is not emcrypted at all…
No worries! I totally understand the confusion and I can often be difficult to interpret.
