I am hoping this is the right forum for my questions. I have been using Android for the last 6 years, but a series of issues (namely 5 and 6 below) with my last phone (Sony Z3) are prompting me to consider switching to an iphone.
Can you please help me understand a few points? I appreciate some things may well have changed since the last time I used an Iphone (a company-provided 3GS) and this is precisely why I am asking for clarifications here.
Please note: I have zero interest whatsoever in entering into flames ? I am merely trying to get some answers to determine if an Iphone can meet my requirements; I fully appreciate that some of the points which are important to me may be totally irrelevant to other people, of course.
1) Push email. My email is with www.fastmail.net, not with gmail. In the past, iphones did not support imap idle. Do they now? Even if they still don?t, I should be able to get push email with fastmail?s own app: https://blog.fastmail.com/2015/07/17/push-email-now-available-in-ios-mail/ Incidentally, I quite never understood Apple?s claim that imap idle causes battery drain; I had older Androids lasting up to 2 days with imap idle on.
2) Widgets. The fact that the Iphone 3gs didn?t support widgets was a big driver in my decision not to buy an Iphone as my personal phone. I understand Iphones now have widgets, but how similar/different to Android are they? The main thing I am interested in is having a summary of my calendar appointments (from my gmail calendar), to-do list (I currently use Remember the Milk but can switch to another app) and weather forecast on my home screen. Do iphones now support this? If they don?t, what would be the closest I could get with an iphone? Also, do widgets refresh continuously or only when you tap/open them?
3) Backing up apps and restoring data. How would this work on an iphone? With Android, it used to be the case that you had to be rooted to backup the data and settings of your apps. There are now apps (Helios) which let you backup data even without being rooted, but, most importantly, many apps let you export and restore settings. How about iphones? How easy is it to backup and restore? Note I will not be jailbreaking the phone (because of the warranty, but mostly because I need to install Good to connect to my work email, which doesn?t work with rooted/jailbroken phones).
4) External storage. I hate the fact that iphones do not support external microsd cards as I have > 130 GBs of music + watch movies on flights. Do iphones at least support any kind of USB OTG storage? Is it possible to connect something like a thumb drive with movies on it and play the movies from the iphone? This would be convenient on a flight, for example.
5) Wakelocks. One of my most common issue with Android over the years is with apps misbehaving and causing partial wakelocks, i.e. apps waking up the phone from its idle status thus draining battery. Sometimes it was because of a setting I had chosen (too frequent updates on a weather app) but more often than not it was just apps going nuts for no apparent reason. Identifying these issues on Android is a huge pain: you typically need to be rooted and, even then, you typically identify the service (e.g. Google?s location services) but finding the app which called it (a weather app? Or another of the 200 apps I have installed?) is often almost impossible, leaving you with no choice but to reset the phone, wiping everything and wasting at least a few hours restoring all apps settings etc. Does anything similar exist with iOS? If I have installed an app which misbehaves, or if I have set the wrong settings, how easy is it to identify this app with IOS, without resetting the whole phone?
6) Google play store stuck on ?download pending?. This is another issue which has caused me lots of grief with Android, and I?m not the only one. Every now and then the play store (the system through which you search for and install apps) goes nuts and doesn?t let you download anything any more, remaining stuck at ?download pending?. Sometimes clearing the cache of the google apps helps, some other times it does not. I have had to reset my Sony Z3 3 times over the last 10 days because of these last 2 issues, and I?ll have to do it yet once more today. Is anything comparable known to happen with Iphones?
7) App folders. I have lots of apps. With an iphone, what would be the best way to sort them into folders / categories? I don?t want to scroll through my list of 100+ apps: I want to have them grouped into ?internet?, ?maps?, ?news?, etc. With Android I do this with Folder Organizer - Customize your Android Home
8) Possibly the hardest question: what else would you recommend I should keep in mind? What are the key pros/ cons / differences vs Androids? Can you think of some issues I am unlikely to encounter with Iphones and, conversely, some problems which are more common on Iphones than on Androids?
Thanks a lot!
Can you please help me understand a few points? I appreciate some things may well have changed since the last time I used an Iphone (a company-provided 3GS) and this is precisely why I am asking for clarifications here.
Please note: I have zero interest whatsoever in entering into flames ? I am merely trying to get some answers to determine if an Iphone can meet my requirements; I fully appreciate that some of the points which are important to me may be totally irrelevant to other people, of course.
1) Push email. My email is with www.fastmail.net, not with gmail. In the past, iphones did not support imap idle. Do they now? Even if they still don?t, I should be able to get push email with fastmail?s own app: https://blog.fastmail.com/2015/07/17/push-email-now-available-in-ios-mail/ Incidentally, I quite never understood Apple?s claim that imap idle causes battery drain; I had older Androids lasting up to 2 days with imap idle on.
2) Widgets. The fact that the Iphone 3gs didn?t support widgets was a big driver in my decision not to buy an Iphone as my personal phone. I understand Iphones now have widgets, but how similar/different to Android are they? The main thing I am interested in is having a summary of my calendar appointments (from my gmail calendar), to-do list (I currently use Remember the Milk but can switch to another app) and weather forecast on my home screen. Do iphones now support this? If they don?t, what would be the closest I could get with an iphone? Also, do widgets refresh continuously or only when you tap/open them?
3) Backing up apps and restoring data. How would this work on an iphone? With Android, it used to be the case that you had to be rooted to backup the data and settings of your apps. There are now apps (Helios) which let you backup data even without being rooted, but, most importantly, many apps let you export and restore settings. How about iphones? How easy is it to backup and restore? Note I will not be jailbreaking the phone (because of the warranty, but mostly because I need to install Good to connect to my work email, which doesn?t work with rooted/jailbroken phones).
4) External storage. I hate the fact that iphones do not support external microsd cards as I have > 130 GBs of music + watch movies on flights. Do iphones at least support any kind of USB OTG storage? Is it possible to connect something like a thumb drive with movies on it and play the movies from the iphone? This would be convenient on a flight, for example.
5) Wakelocks. One of my most common issue with Android over the years is with apps misbehaving and causing partial wakelocks, i.e. apps waking up the phone from its idle status thus draining battery. Sometimes it was because of a setting I had chosen (too frequent updates on a weather app) but more often than not it was just apps going nuts for no apparent reason. Identifying these issues on Android is a huge pain: you typically need to be rooted and, even then, you typically identify the service (e.g. Google?s location services) but finding the app which called it (a weather app? Or another of the 200 apps I have installed?) is often almost impossible, leaving you with no choice but to reset the phone, wiping everything and wasting at least a few hours restoring all apps settings etc. Does anything similar exist with iOS? If I have installed an app which misbehaves, or if I have set the wrong settings, how easy is it to identify this app with IOS, without resetting the whole phone?
6) Google play store stuck on ?download pending?. This is another issue which has caused me lots of grief with Android, and I?m not the only one. Every now and then the play store (the system through which you search for and install apps) goes nuts and doesn?t let you download anything any more, remaining stuck at ?download pending?. Sometimes clearing the cache of the google apps helps, some other times it does not. I have had to reset my Sony Z3 3 times over the last 10 days because of these last 2 issues, and I?ll have to do it yet once more today. Is anything comparable known to happen with Iphones?
7) App folders. I have lots of apps. With an iphone, what would be the best way to sort them into folders / categories? I don?t want to scroll through my list of 100+ apps: I want to have them grouped into ?internet?, ?maps?, ?news?, etc. With Android I do this with Folder Organizer - Customize your Android Home
8) Possibly the hardest question: what else would you recommend I should keep in mind? What are the key pros/ cons / differences vs Androids? Can you think of some issues I am unlikely to encounter with Iphones and, conversely, some problems which are more common on Iphones than on Androids?
Thanks a lot!