iPhone or Android?

iPhone or Android? This question plagues many smartphone users. After nearly seven years of using devices with the Android operating system, I finally got bored. Various overlays, fancy ROMs or colorful widgets – nothing was able to surprise me and dealing with the phone became a normal activity, not a pleasure. Submitting to the entire marketing craze, I decided to answer the iPhone or Android question differently than before and give the giant from Cupertino a chance. The decision was made – the purchase of the iPhone 8.

The first thing that catches your eye after switching from Android to iPhone are nice animations and a sense of system coherence. The feeling of “pampering” the user does not decrease when we add the Taptic Engine, which perfectly simulates the use of mechanical buttons, and the brilliant 3D Touch – a function that detects the pressure on the screen, enriching the possibilities of operating the system and applications with additional action. I quickly made 3D Touch a constant companion, allowing, for example: to quickly “see” what is on the next search result, or what someone’s Instagram profile looks like without actually visiting it. Very useful and definitely facilitates the exploration of the system itself, some applications and websites.

Another thing is the quality of the general equipment of the phone. When dealing with a lot of android flagships, it was different in terms of hardware – a better camera balanced the mediocre quality of a speaker or microphone. Everything is top here. Stereo speakers with great sound allow you to listen to music with complete pleasure, excellent microphones will be able to record an interview on a windy day, and a high-quality camera will take a decent photo and video recording, no matter how bad conditions we make it work. All this, enclosed in a glass casing that looks phenomenal and leaves no doubts – this is a premium product in our hands.

But are you sure?

In addition to the lack of a notification LED, no headphone input or a medium-speed fingerprint reader, the low-resolution screen is one of the first major disadvantages that catch the eye after switching from an Android flagship. Fortunately, visible pixels and a not-so-sharp image quickly fall into oblivion, covered with a coat of habituation to the displayed image. Battery life is a bit worse, because it is harder to get used to. Escaping in the blink of an eye, battery percentages can be felt especially when using LTE, not allowing you to forget about the existence of the charger for a long time.

Another troublesome drawback is the RAM deficit. iPhone 8 has 2GB. While this amount is sufficient for the smooth operation of the iOS system, it is clearly lacking in the case of multitasking. The phone notoriously does not keep applications in the background, reloading them as soon as they fall to a slightly further place in the application stack, which significantly improves the comfort of working on several programs at the same time. Including listening to music – because during intensive work, the music player running in the background could stop. As the old Chinese proverb says – If you have too little framework, you have too little framework, and no Apple optimization will help you with that.

Using Android, I got used to the fact that in 99% of situations I can do without a computer. iOS has failed in the field of updating the music library on the phone – requiring the use of iTunes every time. This one was able to split music albums in half and lose album covers – a much more difficult process than simply uploading a private collection to a memory card or downloading music from the cloud to the phone’s memory (in iOS such an action would be completely impossible). It is worth bearing in mind when choosing an iPhone or Android, if, like me, you still listen to music like in the days of simple mp3 players – without using music streaming services.

iPhone or Android? – Without the Apple ecosystem, using the iPhone is not that convenient

The closed form of the iOS system, when using the iPhone, definitely grinds the most and raises the most doubts when we ask ourselves – iPhone or Android. We do not have access to the actual memory of the device, and the iPhone connected to the computer displays only the folder with the photos taken. The application for unpacking RAR and ZIP archives sees something else, the loaded file manager of Applowski sees something else, another file manager downloaded from the App Store sees something else, and the system tries to encourage us to use iCloud at every step. You can get used to it, although if you are not sitting in the full Applowski ecosystem it will still be very uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, in the matter of making the phone itself, I cannot do without complaining. While the iPhone looks phenomenal out of the box, the glass used in it scratches almost just looking at it. Noticeable scratches that appear after a few days of contact of the phone with a wooden desk top, prompted me to buy a silicone case from Apple and a tempered glass glued to the screen. In terms of stamina alone, that didn’t help. Already at the first fall, from just half a meter, the pavement painfully verified Apple’s claims about “the strongest glass ever used in a smartphone.” As life has shown, despite the manufacturer’s assurances – glass is always glass and gravity is gravity. This is a big inconvenience, considering the exorbitant prices of repairing a broken housing.

After three weeks with an Apple device, I feel internally torn in terms of – iPhone or Android. Android habits clash with the desire to interact with the top iPhone equipment, somewhat limited by the closed form of the iOS system. Will I keep him? – I do not know. It is definitely the hardest to get used to the fact that while spending a lot of money, with the expectation of receiving a real “firecracker”, I received, at most, an average mobile phone.