i, Droid?
A longtime user of iPhone, I take the plunge into the world of Android. Will I stay, or will I go?
In 2007, I stood in line for six hours to get myself a device I’d been waiting for a long time. I had always wanted a smartphone, but I’m also a Mac fan, and I wanted something that would sync with my MacBook Pro without requiring complicated or buggy workarounds. My best friend at the time had bought a Motorola Q, and while it was kind of intriguing, the rumors that Apple was about to make a smartphone were too tempting, and I put off buying any other phones. It paid off when my wish came true.
Apple had announced the iPhone a few months earlier, so on June 29th, I stopped by my boss’s office, and informed her I was leaving for the day. I went to the mall and got in line. Six hours later, I walked out with a new iPhone, and I’ve had an iPhone ever since. After the original, I upgraded to an iPhone 4, and then a 4S, and even the iPhone 5.
This cycle, I thought I would try something different. iOS 7 had been announced, and I wasn’t too excited about it. I’d seen some pretty interesting new Android phones, especially the Moto X, which intrigued me with its Active Notification system and touchless voice controls. I decided to give it a try, and suddenly I found myself in a new world of things to learn, hurdles to overcome, and in the end, a choice to make: iOS or Android?
I walked into the local AT&T store (mostly because they were the only one who had the Moto X), and held it in my hand. It felt really nice, more comfortable than the iPhone was. The X has a curved Kevlar back that curves just like my hand does, so it seemed like a natural fit. The screen grabbed my attention right away. Even at only 720p, it’s impressive and big without making the phone itself big, and has a nice wide viewing angle. The software looked easy to get into, and I’d read that Android had really matured quite a bit. I decided to take the plunge, figuring I could try it for a couple weeks, and knowing full well that I would be spending some time getting all my information out of iCloud and into the Google ecosystem. (Of course, now there’s a migration tool.)
All of that wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I created a new account in Contacts on my Mac, plugged in my Gmail credentials, and made a copy of my contacts in that account. Minutes later they were on the Moto X. The calendar was also easy; I exported each calendar, and reimported it in the Gmail account I was signed into. Google Music took almost all my music and made it available for streaming to my phone, for free.
I carried around both phones for a few days as I acclimated myself to the new ecosystem. I found almost all the apps I wanted to use, but was initially a little disappointed that most of the apps I used felt… incomplete. Simple, for instance, makes an app for their online banking service. The Android version of their app is missing some crucial features, while the iPhone version is full-featured and more attractive. I couldn’t find a Tweetbot equivalent on Android, though I did find Plume, which is as close as I could get, but it wasn’t as pretty. I pushed forward, and realized I didn’t really miss some of the features I was used to—as long as I didn’t think too much about it.
One of the really interesting things about Android is that you can customize virtually anything about the OS, without having to break the software to do it. There are launchers galore around that can do all kinds of things, and custom icon packs. While you can do these things on iOS, it requires you to jailbreak, which generally has performance impacts.
I installed Nova Launcher, found a custom icon pack I liked, and made some adjustments to the OS. The animations were cool, and it operated like I thought it should. I also had an endless supply of widgets to try, everything from music control from the home screen to Google Now alerts (more on Google Now later), even news alerts or power controls. I constantly tweaked my homescreen layouts and widgets, eventually settling (for at least a couple of weeks) on a simple layout.
There were so many customization options available that I realized I was spending a lot of time obsessing over widgets, clocks, layouts, other launchers—it bothered me a little bit. As I said, I settled for a couple of weeks and left it alone, although eventually I got bored and messed around some more with other ideas. The possibilities for customization are endless (especially if you’re willing to root).
Android’s OS has become considerably more attractive over the years; I got into it at just the right time. Software design is something that matters to me, and compared to the Android of a couple of years ago, Google had made great strides in refining the user experience. The Play Store is nicely designed, allowing you to move among categories and media types with ease. The UI is generally consistent throughout, allowing you to do the same things in many apps with the same conventions, with a couple of exceptions (though that seems to be every OS).
Something I really appreciated was the OS’s ability to know when you’re using the system “back” button to just get back to the last page or whatever it is you’re doing in that one app, or if you’re going back to another app. For instance, if I’m in Facebook, and I click a link to an article, it opens in Chrome. Once I’m done, I hit the back button, and I go back to Facebook, right where I was. Seems simple, but they could just as easily have had it go back to the previous Chrome page. Instead, it’s app-aware. It’s a subtle but nice touch.
One of the best things about Android for me is Google Now, which collates information you care about automatically and alerts you to it when you need to know about it.
Let’s say you buy a movie ticket online and the confirmation with the date and time come through to your Gmail account. Google Now sees the email and the date and time, and invisibly remembers the event. The night of your movie, there’s an accident on your route to the theater, backing traffic up for twenty minutes. Google Now will alert you that you need to leave early to arrive on time. Or maybe you’ve been researching an author that you like; Google Now can remind you when a new book by that writer has been released. Appointments, events, topics of research, shopping lists appearing automatically when you arrive at the grocery store—Google Now is always on top of it. It learns places you visit frequently, can tell you about local events if you’re looking for something to do, and keeps you updated on news that it learns you’re interested in. It is probably the most important feature of Android to me.
That being said, Google Now’s ability to handle personal information and voice commands on the phone itself lacked some features I appreciated with Siri on iOS. Google Now can assist you with sending a text message, but it requires you to look at the screen and confirm the message with a press. This is particularly vexing because the Moto X is supposed to have “touchless voice controls,” but I often have to touch it to confirm something. Some of my frustration with this is offset by the fact that I can address third party apps (like searching Rdio for music). I did find that it’s not very good at finding the music I tell it to play in the Google Music app, which is also disappointing, as these are things I have become accustomed to using. Overall, though, Google Now is a pretty great app and is improving all the time.
Google Now is also on iOS, but as of right now it doesn’t have push notifications like it does on Android.
After spending a couple of months on Android and barely touching the iPhone or iPad (I picked up a 2013 Nexus 7 to immerse myself in the Android experience), I decided it was time to see if I was truly converted. This week, I’ve been using iOS exclusively, reasoning that if I am an Android convert, I will eschew the iOS experience in the newest release for my Moto X.
At first, it was a difficult transition, as I’d forgotten how to do a lot of things by muscle memory. I had to retrain myself in using the iOS keyboard and where to find settings, but it came back quickly. The first few hours I kept wanting to pick up my Moto X, but I forced myself to keep it locked away in my bag. I certainly missed that big screen, though.
My immediate reaction to using iOS again was that I really missed the design of the apps I use every day. Tweetbot, Hue, and Simple are apps I use all the time and they are just so much better than the apps I have to use for those same things on Android, mostly because on Android they’re incomplete and clunky. This is, of course, the fault of the app developers, not of Google, though it has been argued that because Apple provides better development tools, they may share in the credit for the better versions of these apps.
As I used my iPhone and iPad for a few days, I realized that the simple design of the apps I use all the time is important to me, more than even I realized. I, like a lot of us, use my phone all the time—for texting, news consumption, looking up information, banking, whatever—and when I’m on a device all the time, the way it looks as well as the design of the user experience matters to me. While I might not enjoy the look of every single icon in the new iOS, or not have Google Now push notifications, I found over the course of a few days that I didn’t want to pick up my Android phone anymore, or my Android tablet, and that I felt more comfortable and at home with the design of the devices I’d always used.
There are other reasons, too. Voice commands are something I actually use. Maybe you don’t, and that’s fine, but I do, and Siri is so much better at doing the things I expect voice controls to do. Like Google Now, she’s always improving. Another reason has partly to do with the ecosystem. My music library of purchased albums sounds better on iOS, in part due to the remastering of much of it specifically for iTunes.
Other touches, like superior panorama photos (and photos in general), compared at least to the Moto X, and an operating system designed the way that I like (fonts, icons, etc.), helped me see that I wanted to come back to iOS. Heck, even the boundless customization options, in the end, ultimately detracted from the Android experience for me. It’s something a lot of people will love, but it caused me to spend so much time tinkering when I should have been doing other things.
Last night, I made up my mind. I posted to my friends on Facebook that I had some Android gadgets for sale. I reorganized all my accounts on my iPhone and iPad, got all my syncing back in order with my Macs, and already I feel at home.
Do I think it was a waste of time and money to switch for only a couple of months? Absolutely not. I couldn’t know exactly what I was missing if I hadn’t given it a fair shake. There’s plenty about Android that will draw people to the platform, and choice is always a positive. You just need to know what it is about your personal technology that you care about, and for me, it took trying something new to figure out what that was.
