Let's give this a shot. We were flooding the Pixel thread with iPhone X discussion, so I have put together this "Non-denominational" thread for iOS/Android phone discussion. We are an interesting bunch of fence sitters and we should have a general discussion thread.
Key thread goals
- Honest Discussion of iOS/Android phones
- Judgement-free(ish) discussion of various alternatives to iOS
- Owner impressions of why they use the phones they use
I think I finally gave in to iOS permanently, well I say permanently but I really mean the foreseeable future. I had many reasons for going this route, but I had been leaning towards it more and more the past 2 years.
1) hardware design: Gone are the glory days of the Note series IMO, that was one of the major reasons I stayed on Android. The glorious huge, 16:9 phablet without curved edges is now gone, and I cannot stand the current Note 8. Other android phones are enticing, even without a 16:9 ratio, but very slow OS updates and a lack of a stylus won't win me over. Apple, IMO, really got the X hardware right, although it's too small and I can't wait for a X-plus version. Granted it has the same weird narrow aspect ratio and that's a negative, but with the non curved edges I can deal with it. I expected at least Google to give them a run for their money, but they released the piss poor pixel 2.
2) widgets: This was a big one for me, to be able to squeeze in several widgets in a home screen and see, at a glance, all of my information. After being on iOS for a while I've come to appreciate the organized and uniform look and feel of iOS widgets. Although iOS widgets are still far inferior to Android widgets, just something about android widgets turned me off after trying to get back on android this past year. They were just disjointed, different styles, fonts, padding, functionality, coloring, background, etc etc made me find my home screens ugly and inelegant. Don't get me wrong, iOS ultra boring icon grid doesn't exactly set me on fire, but at least its consistent.
3) ecosystem: There really is no easy replacement for Apple's ecosystem. My wife and kids have facetime, we have an apple TV at home, etc. Every single family member or other person we see has Apple, sometimes I wonder if android phones exist in the wild. So every time I'm over a family members house and want to put up my kids pictures/movies onscreen, there is always an Apple TV there. I really like imessage as well. I think Google is doing themselves a huge disservice by having so many overlapping apps that do the same thing, but don't mesh together. Google needs to just consolidate them all into 1 or 2 apps, messaging, video, google voice, etc. There are things in the google ecosystem I miss, with google voice integration being chief among them, and also things like having waze on android auto, but I've learned to live without them.
Also in terms of ecosystem, I prefer the apple watch and how it interfaces with iOS. I also didn't feel like selling my 2 SS watches and trying to figure out how to replace them on android.
So I'm pretty thrilled with my X, like I said my only gripe is how small it is and wish for a plus version. To me it's the most bezel free phone out of any other phone except maybe the Essential. I know in reality it's not if you add up the bezel percentage, but Apple really designed it to feel like no bezels. I don't love the notch, but it honestly disappears very quickly and it's also free space IMO because the status bar is up there.
What will pull me away? Well a 16:9 phone with no bezels and no curved edges would have a very good chance, but then it would have to have rapid OS updates and preferably a stylus. A foldable phone might, but we won't see one for 5-10 years and I don't include next year's "bendable" phones in that category, although I'm withholding judgment until I actually see one. It's actually a huge relief to just settle on one phone and not be constantly feeling anxiety when trying to decide on a phone.
