I’ve been back on the Android train for about eight months now, and I have to say that I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Maybe it’s the fact that I went as close as possible to ‘stock’ Android when choosing my device in selecting the Google Pixel, and didn’t choose the device shooting for something with a unique concept (RIP Moto Mods). I’ve had a few thoughts about what it’s like now vs. when I last had an Android device seven years ago.
Customization: It’s all still there… but Apple has come a long way, but still isn’t there
One thing I’ve always liked about Android is the customizable OS – if I want to add a beta app that hasn’t quite hit the play store, I have the ability to sideload it, or download an executable type file from my system’s browser. DJI Fly for example has been removed from the Play Store, but I was still able to load it from the company’s website via browser. While iOS has come a long way with customization with adding widgets, launchers, and the app drawer, in addition to now allowing 3rd party app stores (unfortunately due to the EU regulations) there are many more features on this front, but it’s still a little lacking.
I’m still a big local music user, and this is somewhere that Apple has Android beaten by far – the iPhone still will sync with a program on your PC and manage media… Android doesn’t even have a native media player anymore for local music. I have about 80gb of Music Synced to my phone, and have been on the hunt for a good quality music player app for the last 8 months, to no avail. AIMP is pretty good, Winamp (yes, I said Winamp) isn’t bad, and Music Player (a 3rd party, pseudo Legacy Google Music Player lookalike) is probably the best I’ve found, but it’s still nowhere near the native app on iOS, which is still nowhere near what I want… which is for Apple to release a damn updated iPod Classic in 2025!
Battery Life: Not a Fair Comparison
I consider myself among the power user community… not necessarily due to my workflow relying heavily on my phone, but I’m a heavy media user. When I’m at my day job I’m often listening to podcasts, audiobooks, or music while I’m working. When I’m at home, I do some photo editing, take photos and videos, generate Canva artwork for a podcast, and scroll social media (a little too much in all honesty). I had the iPhone 14 Pro previously and before that the iPhone 11, and I have to say that their battery performance has never left me too impressed in recent years. With my usage, I should probably have bumped up to the Plus size just to increase that capacity, but I’ve never liked the larger phone. This truly isn’t a fair comparison though as I did opt for the 9 Pro XL with the Pixel, and the larger size it did give me much more battery life. I’ve heard very good things about the new iPhones though, so I’ll just leave this one where it is.
Overall UX: Ctrl+C,Ctrl+V
I said it… it’s a lot of the UX taken from iOS, which in turn is just a lot of UX taken from Android and tweaked… in fact I don’t notice much of a difference anymore. I’m happy Apple added RCS Support, in fact I credit that with why I switched. I wanted a seamless messaging experience between platforms as that’s 90% of what I use my phone for. While there’s still a few issues on the iOS side with RCS, it’s generally good enough. Both platforms copy and improve upon each other in different ways, and I don’t actually think that’s a bad thing, we the consumers are the ones that are going to win from it in the end.
The first thing when I did when I got this phone was run out and buy a MagSafe compatible case – I have a MagSafe charging pad that I use every night (so indirectly my Android phone is charging via Lightning), and I still use my AirPods with this phone, so all of my existing Apple Accessories are able to be used without issue.
All in all, the ‘new’ Android is a generally great user experience – is the hardware going to hold up better than my last two iPhones? I hope so, and if it doesn’t and in two years I’m looking to replace and update my device again will I stay with Android over going back to iOS? Who knows. Dipping back into the Mac infrastructure over Windows at home, I have a little incentive to go back, but everything has become so interchangeable and compatible I’m not sure if it’s really worth it.
Roving On 