fury
Well-known member
I have tried to go the other direction, and had a whole list of stumbling blocks similar to your own. You simply can't go from Android to iPhone or vice versa and expect them to fit the same use case. They are different designs with their own set of goals. Apple aims for a simple, valuable user experience. There's generally a very good reason for a particular limitation, whether it be for security, simplicity, preventing a bad user experience, or otherwise. And within the guidelines they set, they try to make the experience delightful, consistent, and easy. Not a whole lot of controls, just a simple button tap or two to take a good picture, record a quick memo, or shoot a presentation off to a coworker.
For instance, customization. I know on Android you can even change the launcher and the dialer if you wanted to, and probably could get yourself in a lot of trouble if you didn't know what you were doing. Apple very intentionally limits how much you can customize so that it's really hard to get the iPhone into a state where you can't use it or can't figure out what's going on. But what is it that you actually want to customize? I mean, you can have an incredibly unique experience tailored specifically to you on an iPhone by installing and using your favorite apps and letting them populate the widget area to the left of the home screen, or the proactive assistance features littered through the system. It takes some time for it to learn what you do, since it isn't stored on the cloud as it would be with, for instance, Google Now. iOS 10's getting better at it, and as time goes on I'm sure they'll be opening up even more extensions to developers. They do these things slowly but surely to make it more powerful without making it harder to use, and without opening up too many bugs. Doing it the "right" way, as some would say.
To me, a back button that always takes up space is not nearly as useful as thoughtfully designed apps that accept back gestures from just about anywhere on the screen. In many apps, a swipe from the left side of the screen toward the right navigates backward. On the 6s and 7, a "deep" swipe from the left switches back and forth between the most recently used apps (3D touch app switching). In some apps, like Twitter for instance, when viewing a photo from someone's post, you can get back to the previous view just by throwing the image up or down. I like that better than having to reach a button that's always in the same spot, since I don't have to move my thumb from the app. On the other hand, I can appreciate Android's approach to a universal "back" stack and kinda feel like the deep link back/forward arrows iOS threw into last version are a bit wonky and cause conflicts with actual back buttons in the nav bars.
I'm no photographer, but I've generally had better luck with getting great photos on an iPhone than I have with an Android. Any phone can take a bad picture, and these days most phones can also take good pictures. This is very much dependent on where and what you're shooting. Low light is pretty hard for any phone save for maybe the Lumia 1520. I have enough of a problem with the camera bump as it is, I don't want a big 5" lens hanging off of my phone that it needs to be able to take in a lot of light, so that's one area which will always be a problem for phones until somebody breaks the laws of physics. In many reviews I read, the iPhone's camera is consistently praised because of the decisions Apple makes with regard to automatic image processing and post processing. Again, that goes to Apple's goal of the simple and consistent user experience. Push a button, take a picture, and that picture is usually pretty good without having to fart around with it. Pro camera apps might add some manual controls that are to your liking if you prefer--these are even getting RAW support nowadays.
Keyboard is highly subjective, as with many other things. You can try a new keyboard app, or you can give it some time and practice. I've been an iPhone user since the original, so I'm pretty well used to the keyboard, and find it hard to try any others besides the native keyboard. Those swiping keyboards, for instance. I can't seem to retrain my brain to use them, though I've got friends and family that swear by them and will hammer out a text or email easy peasy. I don't know that they're any faster than me with my old fashioned iPhone keyboard. Especially when I know what I want to say.
Downloading--you can, it's just not a shared downloads folder. You have to copy it to each app you want to use it in, due to sandboxing. Apps are heavily sandboxed to prevent a lot of security and privacy issues. And it really just depends on what you want to download and if there's a better way to do it anyway. Want to download and mark up a PDF? Download the file in Safari, tap "Open in", tap the app. Music? Well, record industry will never let Apple let you download from a page and put right on the phone's library. But some apps can store files and play whatever you want. I've got some music I play from within the OneDrive app--not pretty, but works. And for whatever reason iTunes on the Mac and PC is the biggest piece of crap Apple has ever made, so dragging and dropping music onto your phone is like pulling teeth. But music streaming services are rampant now anyway and are a much better experience. Ringtones? You're kinda screwed there, but can make them for free on a Mac, sideload them through iTunes on Mac or PC. For the rest of the miscellaneous, I just stick with cloud storage apps like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.
Sideloading apps, again, security issue, but also piracy, user experience, and maybe a little bit protecting a huge revenue stream (wouldn't you want to keep making billions of dollars?). On Android, it is as easy as a checkbox and then you can just go download apps to your heart's content. Apps from another store, perhaps substandard quality apps, or illegal/altered apps. And the user experience of the third party store might not be that great (I still haven't figured out Amazon's underground app on Android, to be honest--sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and it never has any indication of why something isn't working, it just kinda looks "off" and doesn't have any way for me to download the app or explain why I can't). Jailbreakers can occasionally get in there and install all kinds of tweaks and non-Apple-authorized apps, but at the same time, that's an avenue of attack. An attack that could quite possibly strike gold, considering how much stuff lives on someone's personal smartphone. As such, Apple is obligated and incented to close those holes and make them harder to break into.
Ultimately, your phone is extremely personal to you, and your preferences and taste will vary. All of your points are perfectly valid points for someone coming from that perspective with the great freedom that you get on Android. It's a different ballgame over here in the reality distortion field. Can you find ways around the things that you're stumbling on, and have a better experience within the choices and compromises Apple makes? Maybe.
I found a generally reliable phone in the iPhone that is built exceptionally well, tends to work the way I'd expect it to work and in few enough steps. On top of that, Apple stands behind it with really good customer service. I couldn't find that with Android yet, though some have come pretty damn close in some of those categories. Battery life is never good enough for me, but it never will be. I am sufficiently blown away nonetheless that we all walk around with supercomputers in our pocket, connecting instantly with people and information and entertainment all around the world. That you only have to plug them in a few times a day is quite frankly amazing. These days, you can't really get a terrible phone. No matter what badge is on the back.
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