Some comments on my new phone
Tuesday, 18 December 2018 18:45![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zimenaSo, I've had my new phone for a few weeks now, so it's finally time to comment on the iPhone to Android switch. I had been pondering the switch for a while, because nice Android phones kept coming out... while at the same time I don't like the newer iPhones. For one thing, they are too expensive, and there's also the fact that there is very little noticeable difference between models. If we look beyond the phones themselves, iOS has also remained similar since iOS 7, when the old (and in my opinion cool) design was scrapped in favour of a flatter, whiter, uglier one... but let's not even go into that too much.
In short, I might have wanted to switch for a while - maybe even before I bought the iPhone I had before switching now - but it's a big step because it means not only learning a new environment when everything about the old one is automatically in your fingertips, but also setting up important things like contacts and messages and photos in a completely new way.
All of that ended up going more smoothly than I feared, though. Contacts and photos transferred easily via Google Drive, while messages needed a third-party app to transfer. Either way, it worked well enough. However, even with all the data transferred okay, it took some time to set up everything the way I want it. Some contacts appeared twice or even thrice, others were in the contact list even though they were obviously supposed to not be there. It took me a bit of time to realize that the phone contact list gets populated from various sources, including contacts that I've sent mail to only once, or contacts from messaging apps like Telegram. Once I found out how to turn off that, the contact list went back to being sensible.
Also, during the first couple of days, the menu system and settings kept confusing me to no end, because it wasn't obvious to me which settings were in which sub-menus, so every time I wanted to tweak something, I was clicking on various unnecessary stuff first. Even with Huawei's nifty little search feature for settings, some of them still feel like they are able to "hide" in some sub-menu I'm not quite familiar with yet.
One more important thing after switching is of course my apps. I have not found any important apps that did not also have an Android version, so I had very few problems here. The only problem was the app for our heat pump at home... but that app is also a pain in the ass to set up on iOS, and it still was so on Android, so it's just that app being stupid, it's not about the OS. For some reason, it refuses to discover the local network (which it needs in order to pair with the pump, and send start/stop signals to it). Once it finds the network, it says "connecting" endlessly, without actually connecting. If you restart the process enough times, it just suddenly works - in a way it feels like one of those old games where you have to battle the boss X number of times, then you suddenly win the battle, even though you're just doing the exact same time you've been doing the whole time. So, after X tries and one deletion and reinstallation of the heat pump app, it paired and now works flawlessly.
Also - the good stuff if you are an Android fan: Android (or in some cases specifically Huawei's version of it) has a few major advantages compared to iOS:
* More control over where you put what if you download something from your phone. There's even a file browser, and more advanced ones to download if you want.
* If you want to transfer files to or from the phone, it's like working with regular folders.
* last.fm scrobbling works, and is as easy as downloading a scrobbler app (Good luck scrobbling from iOS, without using an app that also forces you to play your music through it).
* Many, many more customisation options. App drawer can be turned on or off.
* Different navigation options. Gestures are an option, not a requirement.
* Switkey for Android is miles better than the iOS version. The keyboard itself is just better, and you can have more active languages on at the same time.
There might be a few more things I noticed as well, but I can't think of them now.
Also, there are a couple of features I miss from iOS. I keep tapping the top of the screen to go to the top of the current page, and that doesn't work on Android. Even if you scrolled quite far down, you have to scroll back up if you want to go to the top. And also, the favourite sites list when you tapped the address bar in Safari would have little icons for each site, and I practically never typed any URLs for my most visited sites - I just added them to that list, and tapped where I wanted to go. That also works great as a "reminder" to visit certain sites, because you see the logo every time you go to something, even if you weren't thinking of that site specifically. There's no such thing in Chrome for Android. I know there's a favourites list, but it's text based and not such an in-your-face reminder as the icons were. Plus, I don't really use it, I simply start typing the first few letters of the URL I want, and then it comes up as a suggestion.
Sometimes there are things I miss from iOS, and I definitely miss AirPlay, because I can't cast videos from the web to my TV anymore, but overall I'm very satisfied with the new phone.... and there are some things about it that I really love, that I could never have on iOS in a million years.
In short, I might have wanted to switch for a while - maybe even before I bought the iPhone I had before switching now - but it's a big step because it means not only learning a new environment when everything about the old one is automatically in your fingertips, but also setting up important things like contacts and messages and photos in a completely new way.
All of that ended up going more smoothly than I feared, though. Contacts and photos transferred easily via Google Drive, while messages needed a third-party app to transfer. Either way, it worked well enough. However, even with all the data transferred okay, it took some time to set up everything the way I want it. Some contacts appeared twice or even thrice, others were in the contact list even though they were obviously supposed to not be there. It took me a bit of time to realize that the phone contact list gets populated from various sources, including contacts that I've sent mail to only once, or contacts from messaging apps like Telegram. Once I found out how to turn off that, the contact list went back to being sensible.
Also, during the first couple of days, the menu system and settings kept confusing me to no end, because it wasn't obvious to me which settings were in which sub-menus, so every time I wanted to tweak something, I was clicking on various unnecessary stuff first. Even with Huawei's nifty little search feature for settings, some of them still feel like they are able to "hide" in some sub-menu I'm not quite familiar with yet.
One more important thing after switching is of course my apps. I have not found any important apps that did not also have an Android version, so I had very few problems here. The only problem was the app for our heat pump at home... but that app is also a pain in the ass to set up on iOS, and it still was so on Android, so it's just that app being stupid, it's not about the OS. For some reason, it refuses to discover the local network (which it needs in order to pair with the pump, and send start/stop signals to it). Once it finds the network, it says "connecting" endlessly, without actually connecting. If you restart the process enough times, it just suddenly works - in a way it feels like one of those old games where you have to battle the boss X number of times, then you suddenly win the battle, even though you're just doing the exact same time you've been doing the whole time. So, after X tries and one deletion and reinstallation of the heat pump app, it paired and now works flawlessly.
Also - the good stuff if you are an Android fan: Android (or in some cases specifically Huawei's version of it) has a few major advantages compared to iOS:
* More control over where you put what if you download something from your phone. There's even a file browser, and more advanced ones to download if you want.
* If you want to transfer files to or from the phone, it's like working with regular folders.
* last.fm scrobbling works, and is as easy as downloading a scrobbler app (Good luck scrobbling from iOS, without using an app that also forces you to play your music through it).
* Many, many more customisation options. App drawer can be turned on or off.
* Different navigation options. Gestures are an option, not a requirement.
* Switkey for Android is miles better than the iOS version. The keyboard itself is just better, and you can have more active languages on at the same time.
There might be a few more things I noticed as well, but I can't think of them now.
Also, there are a couple of features I miss from iOS. I keep tapping the top of the screen to go to the top of the current page, and that doesn't work on Android. Even if you scrolled quite far down, you have to scroll back up if you want to go to the top. And also, the favourite sites list when you tapped the address bar in Safari would have little icons for each site, and I practically never typed any URLs for my most visited sites - I just added them to that list, and tapped where I wanted to go. That also works great as a "reminder" to visit certain sites, because you see the logo every time you go to something, even if you weren't thinking of that site specifically. There's no such thing in Chrome for Android. I know there's a favourites list, but it's text based and not such an in-your-face reminder as the icons were. Plus, I don't really use it, I simply start typing the first few letters of the URL I want, and then it comes up as a suggestion.
Sometimes there are things I miss from iOS, and I definitely miss AirPlay, because I can't cast videos from the web to my TV anymore, but overall I'm very satisfied with the new phone.... and there are some things about it that I really love, that I could never have on iOS in a million years.