Considering switch from Android to Iphone: some questions

[dave gomez]

Depending what phone your on ? Android is way better in my opinion I just switched but it was mostly for FaceTime that's about it

 

[ItnStln]

Depending what phone your on ? Android is way better in my opinion I just switched but it was mostly for FaceTime that's about it

FaceTime is the only reason I switched because my iPhone using girlfriend refused to download Google Hangouts or Skype.

 

[David Butt]

One more point: is the iphone storage accessible like a removable hard drive if I connect it to my PC (I have a PC and won't be moving to a Mac)? Or is it only accessible through Itunes? Can I only store music and videos, or any file? Are there file managers to navigate and manage all the files and folders?

No, other than the photos app, which will appear on your PC as a camera, the file system is not accessible. You can use tools such as Dropbox, One Drive and iCloud to manage files in various ways, and have access to them on your iPhone, but you cannot use the iPhone as if it were a thumb drive.

How does sync work? When I had an ipod, I remember hating the fact that, if it was synced to my PC with itunes, I couldn't connect it to another PC to add/remove/copy songs, or I'd lose the sync; in the end I used Media Monkey rather than Itunes because of this. Has this changed, or do Iphones work in a similar way? If the approach hasn't changed, do you know of alternative software for PCs instead of itunes?

Largely unchanged, except you can keep your backup in iCloud, and manage your content through your phone.

 

[garfieldthecat]

Thank you all for taking the time to reply.
In the end I have decided to replace my phone with another Android.

In order of importance, these are the reasons why I have decided I?m better off with Android. Of course it is a very subjective list ? I appreciate that what is important to me may be irrelevant to others, and viceversa:

• No dual-sim iphones exist. Of course I have always known; I wondered if other points could make up for this, but in my opinion they don?t. I find dual sim useful because I have both my private and my work sim on the phone, without taking two devices with me.
• Lack of proper widgets, i.e. no option to have a snapshot of my calendar, weather forecasts etc on my home screen as soon as I turn the screen on.
• Lack of microsd card.
• No mid-size screen: my ideal screem size is around 5.1-5.2??; iphones come in 4.7??or 5.5?? (too small or too big for me). As for point 1, I have always knows, of course.
• A PC cannot access an iphone as if it were a thumb drive, the way it accesses an Android phone.
• No imap idle support for push email; the only ways to get proper push mail for my private account would be to use fastmail?s app (I won?t change email provider). I have never understood the comments that imap idle is a battery drain: I have been using it for 6 years with no clear detrimental effect on my Androids.

The aspects I like about iphones, but which have not convinced me to switch, are:

• More standardised OS, easier to update. I hate that every manufacturer messes with Android and that the interface can vary substantially from one phone to another; it is also dysfunctional that updates take forever to be available on some phones. I understand phone manufacturers want you to upgrade, but at least basic security patches should be made available sooner.
• Connected to the above: I understand Iphone users rarely have incentives not to upgrade, whereas with Androids it?s not uncommon to end up with a worse functioning device (and worse battery life) after a major upgrade of the OS on your phone.
• Based on your clarifications (thanks!), I prefer iOS? implementation of multitasking and background apps, because with IOS you can set which apps can run/refresh in the background. With Android you can?t; with properly coded apps it?s not an issue, but I have had cases of apps starting up when I don?t want them to, and consume battery and data for no reason .
• Better app (and related data) backups. In the early days of Android you had to root (jailbreak) to backup apps properly. Now it?s easier to backup apps without being rooted but it seems it?s still easier for iphone users. I find idiotic that many Android apps don?t have a feature to export settings, and many that do force you to save and import setting files to a specific folder, ie you have to find/move the backup file to Android/data/MyObscureApp/MyObscureSubfodlers/Data/Backup ? you can?t just tell the app to read the file from your dropbox

As I mentioned in the original post, I had a number of issues with my previous Android phone (Sony Z3 dual sim), and I lsot count of the number of times I had to reset it in a week or so. I decided to stick to Android (ordering a Sony Z5 dual sim) because of the points above, and because, in the 6 years I have been using Android on 6 devices, only twice did I have such an unstable phone: once, when I upgraded my Galaxy Note 1 from the Gingebread OS to Ice Cream Sandwich (the battery life halved; I fixed it by restoring a nandroid backup (image, I was rooted) of the Gingerbread installation), and now.


Luckily, neither Apple nor Android has a monopoly, so we can choose freely based on our preferences, and almost all the main apps are available for both platforms.

 

[garfieldthecat]

PS After getting a new Sony Z5 running Android Marshamllow (v6), I found out that Marshmallow breaks push email notifications, because it 'freezes' apps after a period of inactivity, preventing them from syncing, and therefore causing push to stop working. This partial solution works for me: Marshmallow?s Doze broke push notifications: my fix is preventing Doze with MacroDroid | Android Forums but the whole situation is crazy and frustrating. One more brownie point for iOS vs Android! This hasn't tipped the scale in favour of iOS for me just yet, but, if Google keeps messing up with its OS like this, I may change my mind!