I switched from iOS to Android. Here’s why.

Eight years of loyally using Apple’s revolutionary mobile product finally came to an end. — VIDEO

Identifying as an Apple fanboy in 2007 was not something I did, but in honest retrospect, I probably should have. Apple products were enthralling to use. They felt more alive… more human than their competitors. Not to mention their premium build quality. Doesn’t that sound like a fanboy? Ya.

By 2007 my iSnobbery was in full swing. I purchased their all in one iMac, which were best in class by far. OSX was snappy and made mundane tasks like minimizing and maximizing windows fun with clever animations. And my first gen iPod nano transported me into the future one click wheel gesture at a time.

Then, it happened.

Steve Jobs at the iPhone announcement keynote.

The iPhone.

It was as if Steve Jobs crammed Disney’s Tomorrowland into a aluminum case. I wanted it as soon as I saw it. Unfortunately my boss at the time — who happened to pay for my phone and was somewhat of an Apple hater — wouldn’t let me get it because the iPhone wasn’t “enterprise ready.” First world problems.

I missed out on owning the original iPhone but not its child: the iPhone 3G. It was worth the wait, even after cracking my screen three months in (funny and painful story). But around the same time a new competitor entered the mobile market: Google’s Android.

Meant nothing to me.

Android was this confused, laggy, aesthetically challenged operating system which looked like a different kind of mess on each equally mediocre piece of hardware it could be found running on. Though a developer’s dream, due to its software flexibility, it was a designer’s nightmare. “Let the nerds tinker,” I often thought, “I’ll stick with the beautiful device.” Soon, finding less ugly and laggy Android devices became possible. Less ugly or not, I was firmly glued to the iPhone and Apple’s software ecosystem.

iTunes was a big part of Apple’s hook. Over the years I spent around $2000 on music and apps alone. Migrating music to Android was possible, if you wanted to spend an inordinate amount of time moving songs — once Apple’s highly restrictive DRM was lifted of course — while trying to organize and link hundreds of album artwork images. Apps, which for me at the time were mostly graphic intensive games, would be lost. Neither were good options.

Year after year I decided to stay put, see what the innovators (i.e., Apple) had up their sleeves, and hope they remained technology’s smartphone cutting edge.

A little taller. A little wider. A little thinner. A little more power. A little less skeuomorphic. A little more bright color. Little. Little. Little. “Small moves, Ellie. Small moves.” Excuse the reference, I’m a big Contact fan.

Perhaps little has been the prudent move since 2007, as their bottom line seems to indicate, but prudent can often mean stagnant. Stagnant can often mean boring. From then to now many things happened which made spending a lot of money on boring less and less tolerable for me.

Here are some of those things in no particular order:

1. All of the applications I used on a daily basis were available on both platforms.
2. The music industry shifted to a streaming-dominant model. iTunes went from being the industry standard to one of many options (e.g., Spotify, Google Play, etc.)
3. I played my purchased mobile games less and less as time went on.
4. Apple’s profit margin seems to have become a barrier to innovation and has made product dilution (i.e., tons of different iPhone models with different specifications instead of focusing on significant progress of one model) an easy way to make a lot of cash. It’s hard to know how much, if any at all, the death of Steve Jobs has to do with their current product philosophy.
5. Google dominated Apple in the cloud services department. .Mac and MobileMe failed, and iCloud was too little too late for me. Nearly all the web services on my iPhone (e.g., web, maps, storage, email, business tools, etc.) were designed and developed by Google, and I was happy with what they offered.
6. The Nexus line of phones gave Google a way to show off stock Android. Apple revolutionized the cell phone industry by taking charge over service providers, and giving users a “stock” experience. Nexus was Google’s way of doing the same. It was well received and inspired other major manufacturers (e.g., Samsung) to minimize their divergence from the “stock” standard. Google even made it possible for non-Nexus phones to adorn a nearly stock experience by releasing something called Google Now Launcher.
7. Google introduced a modern and elegant design language — material design — for designers and developers to follow, so as to provide a more unified user experience across relevant apps. Having a defined design language was something I always appreciated from Apple.
8. While taking the best industrial design cues from Apple, other companies have manufactured equivalently premium hardware (in many ways arguably better) with unique additions. Most notably are Samsung’s S7 Edge and Huawei’s Nexus 6P.

All of those reasons stewed in my head for a couple years, but it was a final few that compelled me to take up my consumer duty and walk away from the iPhone for a while (decided on the S7 Edge).

I can comfortably use my phone.

I held on to my iPhone 5 for an extra six months because the iPhone 6 didn’t seem worth the upgrade, and the 6 plus was/is huge. My hands are pretty small, so when I finally caved for the 5.5 inch 6 plus, I had to develop a precarious shimmy technique to use it. Sound familiar?

Holding the S7 Edge was a shock. Because of the practically bezel-less design and curved glass, Samsung was able to fit a 5.5 inch screen in the footprint (pretty much) of a 4.7 inch iPhone 6. I’ve gained a huge amount of comfort without giving up any screen size. In fact, my screen resolution has nearly doubled, and black levels on the lively AMOLED display are astounding.

I can play retro games without hacking.

An emulator app and some file transfers, both things you can’t do on an iPhone without jailbreaking the operating system, let me play Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and most other retro consoles at my leisure.

This is a big deal for someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s. There’s just something wonderful about seeing the classic Italian plumber hero, hearing the “SEGA” jingle, and being able to run n’ gun with Contra anytime, anywhere. All without voiding a warranty.

I can see my wallpaper.

We smartphone users see our home screen upwards of 100 times per day. That’s a lot of times seeing the same app icons, names, and layout. Wallpapers are a great way to personalize phones, but there’s a problem on iOS.

Quite often key aspects of your chosen wallpaper are covered up by app icons you can realistically do nothing about (you can jailbreak, but even then it’s a cludge). Instead of her face being covered up because… Apple… now I can see her. And I’ve lost precisely zero efficiency.

Also, I had been using that basic home screen for over a year. That means I saw those app icons and labels more than 35,000 times. Quarter of a million times after seven years. I know a phone icon will open my phone app. The bird? Yup, Twitter. Got it. The forced labels are painfully redundant — nevermind a bit of an eyesore — on a device seen thousands of times over.

In my humble opinion, Apple’s iPhone is no longer the more alive… more human option. Steve Jobs proudly and accurately argued in 2007 that the iPhone was five years ahead of competitors. “Five years ahead” was nearly nine years ago. Many have caught up.

That being said, walking away from iPhone may be the first steps back. It may take 5 years, or 10, but I’m sure Cupertino will find another way to make me want it as soon as I see it.

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