Switching from Android to iPhone 5s — the first night

First in a series tracking the experience of converting from Android to iOS

9 min readNov 8, 2013

Introduction

Last night I purchased an iPhone 5s (white/silver) form the Verizon store in Atlanta. As my thoughts and feelings about things such as these are fleeting and dynamic, I decided to write a series of posts describing my experience using the iPhone after coming from 3+ years of using Android phones.

Over the years I’ve read some articles explaining why the author switched between Android and iOS or their first impressions after the switch but never a piece (or series) tracking the experience over a period of time.

I have been using Android phones and devices since April 29th, 2010, the day the HTC Droid Incredible was released for Verizon. This was when the iPhone 3GS ruled the day and you could not pair an iPhone with Verizon service. November of 2011 I upgraded to the Galaxy Nexus (G-Nex) on Verizon which I subsequently upgraded to the iPhone 5s last night. Additionally, I have a first generation Nexus 7 tablet which I purchased last year.

The first night and next morning

At the Verizon store

The very first experience I had was before the sales woman even opened the box; looking at cases. Over the years I looked with jealous eyes at the wide array of cases for the iPhone and was excited at finally getting to choose one myself. Sadly, the Verizon store had a limited selection so I chose a very cheap case with plans to hit the Apple Store this weekend and get an upgrade. But even this cheap Belkin Grip Candy Sheer case ($15) is superior to the Speck case I periodically used with the G-Nex. With the case, the iPhone is still svelte and aesthetically pleasing while being provided ample protection. With the Speck case, my G-Nex was pretty hefty but it did look pretty nice and certainly felt protected.

The purchasing and contact migration process took far longer than expected and I was running late to meet some people. When I got the iPhone in my hands, I immediately found one of my friends in the contacts and fired off a text message to tell him I was on my way…or so I thought. What I actually did was send him and email with an attached text file, containing my message.

After finishing the purchase, I called my friend as I walked to my car. During the conversation I opened the car charger and replaced the micro USB charger. I say this because I found myself feeling like I needed to “aim” the speaker and microphone at my ear and mouth while I was moving around and switching hands. I imagine this was just a result of two years of muscle memory being confused by the smaller device. Interesting side note, I was talking to my buddy on his brand new Nexus 5. All in all, the phone call went great, seems like the iPhone 5s works pretty well as a phone.

I plugged my phone into the charger and started driving. While driving I installed TuneIn Radio, Google Music (3rd party) and Spotify apps (Kids don’t try this at home!). Attempting to attach the iPhone to the 3.5mm (headphone size) connector to my car stereo was a fail. The case didn’t allow the jack to fully be inserted, so I just listened to the regular radio. I know I’m weird. I listen to the radio a lot, both internet and “terrestrial”.

I’ll end this story-style presentation and summarize some of the highlights form my first evening and morning experiences with the new phone.

Battery: It is already obvious that the battery life blows away the G-Nex. This was such a huge pain point and part of the confluence of reasons I switched to iPhone. Some newer Android phones have good to even great battery life but this is a big bump up for me.
Speed: In general the iPhone is much smoother/snappier than the 2 year old G-nex. One of the difficulties making this comparison is the age disparity between the two phones. That being said, I also have a theory that iOS devices age far more gracefully than Android.
Fingerprint Scanner: I had to look up online how to setup the fingerprint scanner. I also haven’t figured out how to use the fingerprint scanner for iTunes purchases. Unlocking with the fingerprint fails periodically; thus far this feature has not been helpful.
Lock screen: The lock screen and notifications look very nice and seem to give me all the useful information I need. I prefer the look of it to the Android lock screen.
Lock screen — camera: While typing this (11am the next morning) I figured out how to swipe up from the lock screen to quickly access the camera. This is a little wonky as it depends where you’re finger is located at the bottom whether you swipe up for quick settings or the camera. I prefer Android’s method of swiping to the side for the camera.
Home screen: I dislike iOS’s app icon grid. In short, I’ve found the process of arranging apps on iOS painfully slow and basically just gave up without attempting to create a single folder. I prefer Android’s pattern where I have access to an app drawer where I can select from any app and place it anywhere on my home screen or on the secondary screens (not sure what those are called?). I don’t have to drag from one screen to the other, sometimes spanning several screens. The process gets even more convenient on Android when I’m using the Nova Launcher. To achieve the same layout as I did on my G-Nex will take several times longer on iOS. When an app is installed it can be several screens away from the screen you want it to be. You have to long press the icon and drag it from screen to screen. Occasionally, I found default apps returned to the home screen and bumped out the apps I had moved in their place. I would assume that once things get settled, this won’t matter much but it’s not fun right now.
Widgets: I’d prefer to still have the Google search widget and some clock+weather widget but I don’t mind too much. To compensate I’ve put the Google Now app on my home screen. I hardly used Google Now on my Android Phone but I’ve already found myself using it on the iPhone. THAT is unexpected. The universal use of notification badges is cool on iOS, something I wished would have been in Android.
Migrating accounts and data: I’ve only migrated my main Google email address over to the default mail app and the fancy Mailbox app and so far it seems fine. Unless there’s some friction, I’ll probably use Mailbox as my main email app. Google Hangouts seems to actually be better on iOS. At least it runs more smoothly on my iPhone than the G-Nex. Hangouts always felt slow and clunky and I avoided using it as much as possible on the G-Nex. I believe I need to use Hangouts for “gchatting” with friends that don’t have iOS? I’ve tried a 3rd party google music app, which is surprisingly nice, though I don’t think it supports the paid Google music stuff.
Music: Not much to report, yet. The third party Google Music app works but not with my paid subscription. I’ll most likely move to Spotify which I had been considering anyway. The iTunes radio is also a possibility but I don’t believe any of my iOS-using friends have that, don’t think I’ll be blazing that trail.
Text Input Boxes?!!!?: I have found it exceedingly difficult to click on a text input box and open up a keyboard. I normally have to click several times to trigger the keyboard. Are my fingers too big? Does the skin on my fingertips not hold enough charge to trigger this action?
No back button: This reminds me of Apple’s silly one button mouse. For years I listened to people tell me it was “just as easy” to hold down the control key and click as it is to right click on a mouse. WRONG. While it may occasionally trigger an unexpected action, the ever-present back button on Android is something I’m constantly missing in hour 16 of my first day with an iPhone. I have probably clicked the home button 25 times already, returning me to the home screen when I really wanted to step back one screen in the app I had just been using.
Alarm: I was woken up by the vibrating of the iPhone but the alarm sound was basically silent. This is because I turned the volume of my phone down. I didn’t expect the overall phone volume to control the alarm volume. Upon learning this, I have not figured out how to uncouple these two volumes. I’m sure this is possible, it would seem insane to not be able to turn off my notification sounds while I sleep but still have an audible alarm sound to wake me up…right??
Siri: I haven’t figured out how to do regular, text searches so I’ve defaulted to Siri. Siri is pretty slow and “she” gives me Bing search results but I guess it’s worked so far. I’m sure I’ll figure out how to do normal text search soon and I like the google search/now app a lot as well.
Camera: The slow mo video recording seems really cool. I’ve only played with it a bit but it was pretty easy to figure out. I haven’t taken many stills yet but I’m excited at the prospect of a huge upgrade in camera hardware in the iPhone. I also downloaded VSCO Cam which seems cool and isn’t available for Android.
iOS only apps: At some point I may summarize my reasons for switching to iPhone, one of them is access to the latest new apps. I am a software developer (mostly web) and tend to hear about every new startup launch. That being said, in the first 16 hours, I can’t seem to think of many of these “iOS only” apps to download. I have a ton of other stuff crowding that out at the moment though with getting used to iOS and getting all the standard apps setup.
Speaker: The iPhone 5s’s speaker is much louder and clearer than the G-Nex. This is appreciated as I am one of those weirdos that plays music and listens to the radio on through my phone’s speakers while I’m getting ready in the morning, cooking dinner, etc.
Notification Pulldown: It is a little too busy for me so far but I expect to get used to it. In Android there were clearly delineated notifications and nothing broke from that pattern. In iOS, there is a large date, a largely empty calendar, a bunch of stock prices and I can swipe to a tab labeled “all” which seems to show more traditional notifications. There’s a third tab labeled “missed” with ostensibly notifications I “missed.” I’d really like the battery indicator to have a percentage on it, not just the microscopic icon. Hopefully that is in the settings, somewhere.
Screen: I’ve dropped from a 4.7" to a 4.0" screen and thus far don’t seem to mind. Honestly, it’s more of the physical feeling in the hand that is odd to me. Watching YouTube or looking at Instagram or Facebook hasn’t been an issue at all. When taking a picture with the iPhone, the image looks brilliant in the view finder. Casually using the two phones I don’t notice a significant disparity in the quality either, though I’m sure the 5s’s screen wins that contest if examined closely.

First 16 hour summary

Not surprisingly, I’ve had some friction figuring things out in iOS 7 but expect within a couple days to be pretty comfortable. The main apps I used on Android were: Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, SMS Messaging, Hangouts, Google Music, Google Currents, ESPN Fantasy Football, Hacker News (third party), Dots and ESPN Score Center. Oh,…and OKCupid. :*) The biggest change will be switching to Spotify. The ESPN Score Center app kept crashing on iOS so I’ll probably replace it with something else for my sports scores and such. Not a big deal.

I’m enjoying the compact size of the iPhone 5s in the case. The G-Nex was great uncased but as I said, the Speck case added a good deal of bulk. I’ve gone all morning with the iPhone unplugged (9am-2pm), something I’d never do with the G-Nex. The iPhone still appears to be around 75% (damn numberless icon) whereas the G-Nex would be huffing and puffing around 25% by now. My iPhone friends used to complain about the battery life of their iPhone 5, they have no idea.

There’s the first impressions, I’m sure I’ll figure a lot of this stuff out and hopefully a lot of the pain points will fade away and I’ll tell you in subsequent posts. If they don’t, I’ll sell this nasty little beast and buy a Galaxy Note 3. HAH.