What I miss from Android after two weeks on iOS

I’m a mobile developer, I’ve been crafting mobile apps since 2010 both on iOS and Android and I kept switching between the two platforms. I’ve started my career on iOS but then moved to Android because I think it’s a more challenging platform (and I still believe that). After 2 years I wanted to try iOS again, so I’ve sold my Sony Z5 and got an iPhone and after two weeks I want to share my point of view on the difference between the two platforms.

Battery, same issues but difference management

I want to start with the battery, because I think it’s the important thing and the outcome is the same for both platforms: it still sucks. One day, one day and half maybe it’s what you can reach but you need to be very careful, no screen too much on, no too many apps in background, no Facebook.
It’s quite sad, after 6 years the industry hasn’t made any big progress on this and we are sill struggling with it.
Fun fact 1: iOS should be better than Android because has a restricted multitasking (no apps that can wake up when developers want) but at the end of the day, it performs like Android.
Fun fact 2: I’ve uninstalled Facebook on Android and tried to use Chrome because now you can receive push notifications through it, but the tab was consuming more battery than the app. No words really.

Keyboard, let me swipe

First thing that I miss from Android, a proper keyboard! 
First of all, having a swipe keyboard out of the box should be the default nowadays but it’s not on iOS, weird. Suggestions maybe are better on default keyboard of iOS, but really….swiping is faster than typing, that’s it. I’ve been then trying Swype keyboard on iOS but very disappointing: the third-party keyboards don’t seem to work properly on every app (sometimes the keyboard doesn’t even shows up!!!) and sometimes it reverts to the default keyboard for apparently no reason.

Google Now, where are you?

That’s the second thing that I really really (but really!) miss from Android, swipe to left and then I can see all the info that I need right now. Weather forecast, bus stops, news, amazon deliveries, important emails, reminders, my shows on Netflix, etc.. in one place. I’m trying to understand where I can find something similar on iOS, but the ‘Today’ page of the notification panel is very disappointing as it doesn’t change much and holds only widgets. By the way, widgets are better on a launcher than a notification panel. 
So I’ve tried to install the Google Search app on iOS and it’s very bad, consumes a lot of battery and it’s definitely not good as the one on Android.
Fun fact: I keep swiping to the left on the springboard and being disappointed from the Siri suggestions, who cares about the latest apps used? I want to see if my new lego box has been delivered from Amazon!

Notification, close to perfection

I really can’t see any difference between the two platforms, they are in the lock-screen and you can swipe from the top, that’s it. Maybe the only difference is that notification are not dismissible on Android, it’s nice to have some information which has less relevance, but really not a big deal on this.

Performance, not even close

In my opinion, this is still the best thing that you can find on iOS. 
You unlock the phone instantly (never happened in two weeks that my finger hasn’t been recognized), tap on any app and then it works. That’s it.
On my Sony phone, half of the time my finger didn’t let me go in, the app drawer takes always a bit of time to populate all the apps, the animations are laggish and switching between apps is always more painful than iOS.
Fun hope: Google, please…can you add another runtime on Android not based on Java? maybe no garbage collector this time. Thanks.
(Not that) Fun fact: ObjectiveC and swift are 100 times better than Java; android devs, get over this.

Play store vs iOS app store

Ok that’s a bit controversial, I really miss the Google Play Store because I think it’s more clear, beautiful and cheaper than the iOS app store. 
There is a huge “but”: the news and updates on play store suck, really. I never found a good suggestion (quite ironic considering that Google knows all my life), I never cared about those suggestions and most of the time they are the same apps all over again. On iOS instead you can really find something new to try, probably also because there is a bit of iOS-first mentality around, but still as a user that’s what I want.

It’s not a fight, they are not religions

My friends are still making jokes about a senior android dev going around with an iPhone 6s and I definitely don’t blame them, it’s fun :)
But the only way to understand a platform is to use it, that’s it. I will probably go back to Android with the next Nexus iteration (even though, the Nexus 6p isa very good phone) but for now I’m enjoying the responsiveness of iOS and the seamless integration with my macbook. 
I’m still happy that both platforms are around and have pro and cons without a clear winner, the only condition to make them better year after year.

Bonus: let me pay

Apple Pay it’s awesome, Android Pay where are you?