Details: I had three Android phones from January
2010 to March 2014, a NexusOne, a Galaxy Nexus, and a Galaxy S4,
running Android 2.2 (Froyo) at first and 4.3 (Jelly Bean) at the end.
The first two phones ran Google GOOG -49.28%-experience
Android, and the S4 had Samsung’s user interface overlay. My new iPhone
is a 5c running iOS 7.1. I originally moved to Android because I was
professionally curious about it, and I decided to switch back when I
bought a new car and discovered that the interoperability of my near-new
Galaxy S4 with the car was miserable (more). Research indicated an iPhone would be much better, and in fact it is.
The switch itself was surprisingly easy. My
Verizon contract ties to a phone number (a “line” in telco-think), not a
phone, so I bought a good used 5c on Amazon, had Verizon substitute it
on the line at no cost, and sold my S4 on eBay: round trip cost about
$150. My Exchange and Google accounts downloaded to the phone, and I had
a back-up of my old iPhone that restored and updated most of my apps.
The key differences I notice between iPhone and Android:
1. The iPhone user interface is much more polished. Google worked
hard to make Jelly Bean quicker and smoother, making substantial
improvements, but iPhone is still better. For example, when I type on
the iPhone, it shows the letter I am trying to type more often, even
though the screen is smaller. I’m guessing this is better software at
work.
2. The iPhone app ecosystem is markedly better. Google Play and the
Apple App Store both have about 1 million apps, and most major apps are
available for both platforms, but, again, the devil lurks in the
details. New apps and updates come out first on iPhone. iPhone apps are
more feature-complete, e.g., the BMW Connect app that allows me to
operate select smartphone apps from the car’s control screen supports
Pandora and Stitcher on iOS and not on Android, and it just works better
on iOS.
3. iOS is stronger at the technical detail level: e.g., when you use
an iPhone with a car, Bluetooth streaming audio works properly, you can
control which contacts get synced to the car over Bluetooth, and if you
have both Bluetooth and a wired connection to the car active, the iPhone
smartly sends phone audio over Bluetooth and streaming-media audio over
the wire, so both work. (In fact, Google-experience Android gets this
right, too, but the Samsung user interface breaks it.) This might be
fixed by an upgrade, but then you have the Android update fubar: six
months post release, Verizon Galaxy S4 users are waiting for Kit Kat
with no news from Verizon, and the update is buggy when you get it.
4. The iPhone camera is just the best: beautiful pictures, and great
features like high dynamic range, which both compensates for some
limitations of simple cameras, and can create attractive images that
remind me of a painting (more).
I miss some Android strengths. The Google apps have more features on
Android, e.g. Google Voice can make itself the default option for
international calls. Android apps can access more of the system
information. This enables, for example, a great signal strength
application that shows the details for the voice, data, and wifi
connections separately, which I have used to diagnose problems. And a
few apps are better on Android: AirWx, a nicely functional weather app
that displays the FAA weather information airline pilots use, has gotten
me home on a few stormy nights by telling me which connection was
likely to work. iPhone has a dumbed-down free version and an expensive
pro version.
Fundamentally, the iPhone is more of a phone, and the top tier
Android phones, like the S4, are a phone/tablet fusion: “phablets”. The
iPhone 5 is slimmer and fits the hand a bit better, but the extra screen
size has important benefits. The Android calendar has a nice “week”
view that iOS lacks on the iPhone but offers on the iPad. The Android
key-pad has an extra line of suggested spellings below the text that I
find useful. And the map and web-browsing experience is simply better
with a bigger screen area. I spend 3-4x more time looking at my phone
than holding it to my ear, so the screen experience matters much more
than the “talking to toast” objection some have to phablets.
So, I’m looking forward to iPhone 6 with a ~5” screen. It will bring
together the strengths of iOS with the one Android phone feature I miss
most.
With that gap closed, I’m struck by what a superior product the
iPhone actually is. Android has developed fast, shown Apple that
(screen) size matters, made the market competitive, and expanded it,
particularly in Asia and at the low end, which is great. Apple has built
and nurtured the advantages with which it launched the smartphone era:
user experience, hardware design and performance, and its app and media
ecosystem. It’s developed into a top-10 global consumer brand, and most
important, it has a large set of loyal and affluent customers who pay up
for phones and software, keeping its ecosystem on top.
We are early in the smartphone era. As long as
Apple can stay significantly better and take care of its customers, it
has a long way to run.
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