To set the stage as my choice of device is based on productivity vs. collaboration with friends and family. I run a business where I get hundreds of notifications via email, WhatsApp, Teams, Text, IG, and LinkedIn. I don’t have one game on my phone and the top 3 apps I use are email, calendar, and teams. I only have a father who has iOS for reasons that don’t exist anymore because the physical button was removed, but he’s now comfortable and can’t change. I do have an Apple laptop and an iPad for app testing, but don’t use it on a regular basis.

The main reasons to switch:
1 – Friends constantly made jokes about owning one
2 – Meeting people at events asking to share information or images/videos was frustrating as you get the “Oh, you don’t have an iPhone”
3 – Using iMessage with my father to help with tasks on his phone (screen share) and see him
4 – My social media team has requested iPhone video because it has better quality (Technically, the Pro Max does)

Major concerns that stopped me from continuing to use iOS

  • Apple is a two-handed device when navigating.
    • The back button is on the upper left corner, so when I am in an app like WhatsApp, send a message to someone, and then have to go back to my list, I have to figure out how to get my thumb to the uppermost left corner if I didn’t want to use my other hand.
  • Since the back button is on the bottom right (which you can change to left) navigating within an app is much quicker and possible with one hand.
  • Apple navigation and alerts are in the same place
    • Since the back button is on the upper left corner, when I get messages and I am working I very often tap the back button but not quick enough that a notification comes in, so then that app opens up.
  • No Finger Scanner or Swipe pattern to unlock: iOS only has face ID (which Android has Face unlock as well) and PIN (Min 6 numbers). 90% of my day, my phone is sitting on my desk, at a table at dinner, or center console in the car. The only way Face ID works if I have to pick it up, but that’s super inconvenient having to do that almost every 15 minutes (Max timeout). Since this is enabled it looks for that first then waits a few seconds and the pin pad comes up and typing in a 6-digit number takes a second or two more. Add all of this time to unlock the phone throughout the day, it’s very frustrating.
    • Samsung has: Smart lock that keeps it unlocked when it’s at home, when I’m walking, or when I have my watch on, so it doesn’t lock. Samsung also has a fingerprint reader so if it does lock in a restaurant, I can just casually put my finger on it, unlock it glance, and then look away. The swipe pattern helps because if you have gloves on, you can still quickly open your device by touching the screen once vs. 6 times.
    • NOTE: This significantly decreased my use of the device, which then stopped me from responding to things as quickly as I do with Samsung.
  • No Fast Charging: Over the 9 days I did two-weekend trips and also had one production show to attend. When I am running around, I had to bring a power brick with me because I wasn’t in one location for an hour + to charge my phone.
    • With Samsung, within 20 minutes I have almost a full charge from dead that allows me to get to the next day.
  • No Split screen: Since the iPad does it, I thought iPhones would have this feature. I do have all my passwords encrypted in my contacts and they are very complex. I use the split screen often to look at contacts on top and log into the thing on the bottom. For apps like Financial once you take the focus off the screen the password gets reset, so iOS you can to remember in one go or else you can’t put it in.

Minor annoyances

  • Unable to scan QR code to add Wi-Fi to setup my devices.
  • Many apps/sites when I type my password, I am unable to see the text that I typed in to see if I made an error
  • Calendar invites go into the “inbox” in the calendar app
  • Notifications block on going activities. When you are in a call their top active screen shows up and when notifications are coming in it blocks this. This is a problem when a phone call comes in and you get notifications at the same time, you have to swipe away before answering.
  • When driving and in Car Play, Siri can’t do a lot of things like open apps or write messages (Google can)
  • 100X Zoom, I am a hunter and use the camera to see animals I needed to use my binoculars the 5x zoom does almost nothing.
  • The calendar doesn’t have a week view. So if I want to tell someone these are the times I am free, I have to swipe between each day or plan my own day knowing what I have that week.
  • Native email app, when I delete a message after reading it, it goes to the next message vs. going back to the inbox as Outlook would do.
  • If I want to share a file in iMessage, I can’t do it in iMessage I have to go to the file and send it.
  • I could not shoot in 1:1 aspect video ratio with the video app

Just things I didn’t like

  • Phone felt and looked so old to me. It had a large black bezel around the edge, considering I haven’t seen an edge since pre-Note10
  • When setting up email, they don’t have an option for office 365, still called “Exchange” feels like it’s just not up to date
  • The main notification screen gets super crowded really quickly due to the size and the way they are layered out that it really wasn’t useful. You have to scroll vs. see everything at once.
  • My Nest devices were much slower to ring on my phone and show video
  • The phone vibrates off the desk with no notifications. It’s a thing! Without a case, there’s micro-vibrations that if it’s somewhat slanted it will move off the table. It dropped so many times like this and even out of my tree stand. (I didn’t get the case because I purchased Apple Care and for $30 to get it fixed, I was willing to take the chance)

Things I liked:

  • Their support was hands down the best I have ever experienced across ANY customer support.
    • Once UPS rang my doorbell, I received an email to setup a free 30 min session
    • The 30 min session was with a live person in the US who spent 1 hour going over all of my issues above and more. She did show many settings that fix a lot of my other concerns.
    • I called to get support, within 15 minutes I was talking to someone and they did a quick screenshare to help sort out the problem
  • Wi-Fi scan be shared wirelessly to other iPhone users without having to scan anything.
  • They have the option to split out the notifications from ones that have time associated with it vs. general alerts
  • To log into their site they have a QR code that then uses face ID to authenticate, which is really slick
  • I like that they have face ID to log into apps without touching the phone
  • If someone is on silent mode, I can tell that in iMessage
  • If you are in an app and it takes you out to the browser, it shows the name of the app that you came from/still in technically
  • When you get a new text from someone who has an iPhone their phone and contact info shows, so there’s no guessing.
  • I loved how welcoming everyone was that had iPhones that were relieved that we can now chat in green and iMessage. People would text me because in their contacts, my text showed green.
  • Car play visually looked amazing and thought it was much better than Android Auto (Just because of the way it looked) However going back to Android Auto there was more features, but just didn’t look good.

Overall:
On the side, I do help people get organized and have done public speaking engagements on managing your inbox. I never realized until I switched why more iOS users had problems with more emails and text messages being unread or how they work. I feel that both devices will get the job done, but Android is going to get it done quickly and faster making you more productive… unless your work relies on the Apple ecosystem of syncing between phone, laptop, tablet or you are connected with your family for sharing content. However, it’s only more productive if you are trained on how to use Android, that’s where Samsung I feel loses the game because with Apple there was someone from day one to show me how to make the device work for me. If we had 1 on 1 training and help people find the features that would help them optimize their device for them, we would gain more and keep more Android Users.