Disclaimer: Wall of anecdotal text incoming, tl;dr at the bottom.
So I’ve been using iPhone’s and iPad’s and even the occasional iPod Touch pretty much since the inception of iOS, we’re talking from the very start here, I had a first generation iPod Touch, a iPhone 3G, 3GS, iPhone 5, hell, I’ve owned ever single iPad, except the 4 and the Mini Retina and of course I have an Apple TV for Airplay. Needless to say, I was a pretty devout Apple user. In fact, I’ve only “betrayed” Apple exactly twice before, I replaced the 3GS with a Samsung Galaxy S II and used that for well over a year before returning to Apple after getting annoyed with the sluggishness, the lack of certain Apps I got used to using and most importantly the crappy support as far as software updates go (when Android 4 was released it took months upon months for that to come to the S2, and my country (Netherlands) was amongst the last to get it due to some localization issues). I also got the first Nexus 7, which was a lot better, but too suffered a lot from sluggishness. I didn’t care much about how “open” my device is, and I don’t want to spend hours upon hours rooting my device and installing custom mods to get the best experience, I’m lazy, I want a device that works well out of the box.
So Apple it was for me, for the better part of seven years. But at the 22nd of last month, I got a Nexus 7 2013 from work, officially for testing purposes (I’m a WebDev), but pretty much a gift for a job well done (I’m totally NOT browsing GAF at work…
. And so I started using it, it remembered all my apps and settings from the old Nexus 7 and set the thing up for me. Just like iOS would, that was nice. But, this device completely blew the old one out of the water, it is insanely faster, browsing, zooming, navigating apps and multitasking all seemed so much more snappy than the older version. Not to mention I have had to do absolutely zero memory management (while I spend most of my time on the Nexus 7 and Galaxy S II killing apps running in the background). I went into the Play Store and replaced all of the apps I used in iOS with their equivalent as far as features go and then some. Of course the biggest plus coming from the system being open, because even though it never really bothered me that I needed iTunes to transfer files from my PC to my tablet or phone, it is insane how much easier things can be. I want to put a new comic on my device? Fine, I’ll transfer it via Bluetooth or Wifi. I accidently have a duplicate picture in my vacation album? Fine, I’ll just delete right here (because you can’t actually delete a picture from an Album you synchronized via iTunes, you see). It blew my mind that I could install a new browser from my device and links from other apps actually opened in that browser, of course I didn’t mind when the PlayStation Store in the PlayStation App opened up in the Safari Browser instead of the browser I actually used when I was on iOS, but it sure feels good to have a device actually do what you want instead. Seems so simple, but yet was so hard for Apple to do.
As I was using the Nexus 7 over the past weeks I hardly even looked at the iPad Air and when I did it started annoying me more and more. Sure, it still had a few things that were better, the 4:3 aspect ratio is better, the scroll-to-top when you tap on the statusbar is great, the battery life is unrivaled and you can’t really beat the look of the device. But the browser would still crash constantly due to the lack of memory (1GB), iOS 7 still looked horrible and as said, I missed the ease of use of being able to download a podcast MP3 file from the web directly to my device for listening. Even worse, I had to struggle using my iPhone 5. Every time I was out and about and using the iPhone I couldn’t help but wish I had my Nexus there, so last week I decided to sell the iPad Air (no reason to have it just lying there doing nothing after all) and used a chunk of the profit to replace my iPhone with a Nexus 5, had it for a week now and I love everything about it, just like the Nexus 7, it’s fast and snappy and even it’s minor drawbacks (as any device has them) don’t even remotely weigh up against the lack of progress made on the iPhone front. It even manages to amaze me, from anticipating features like Google Now that blow Apple's stuff out of the water, to something as simple of dialing the food delivery last night as they were taking too long to deliver and having the phonenumber in the dialer change to the name of the place complete with a picture of the place (including delivery truck) as I dialed the number. It seems silly, but stuff like that impresses.
Long story short, it seems Android has finally hit that sweet spot for me, where the OS is no longer sluggish and unnecessarily bloated. Of course much of this is due to the Nexus line of devices, where you are excluded from the custom skins and software companies put on Android and get the latest Android updates as soon as they’re released, instead of having to wait. The Play Store took a while to match up to the quality of the App Store, and while it’s not quite there (especially on the tablet side), it’s close enough where you can pretty much get the same experiences if you spend some time looking into the different Apps that are out there. It’s been quite the experience for me and I feel that anyone still on iOS thinking about making the switch should definitely give Android (another) serious go, because pretty much every drawback it used to have has been addressed, especially in the Nexus line of devices.
tl;dr: I was a devout iOS user for seven years and have been completely blown away by how far Android has come over the past few years and advise every iPhone user to give Android a serious go.
So I’ve been using iPhone’s and iPad’s and even the occasional iPod Touch pretty much since the inception of iOS, we’re talking from the very start here, I had a first generation iPod Touch, a iPhone 3G, 3GS, iPhone 5, hell, I’ve owned ever single iPad, except the 4 and the Mini Retina and of course I have an Apple TV for Airplay. Needless to say, I was a pretty devout Apple user. In fact, I’ve only “betrayed” Apple exactly twice before, I replaced the 3GS with a Samsung Galaxy S II and used that for well over a year before returning to Apple after getting annoyed with the sluggishness, the lack of certain Apps I got used to using and most importantly the crappy support as far as software updates go (when Android 4 was released it took months upon months for that to come to the S2, and my country (Netherlands) was amongst the last to get it due to some localization issues). I also got the first Nexus 7, which was a lot better, but too suffered a lot from sluggishness. I didn’t care much about how “open” my device is, and I don’t want to spend hours upon hours rooting my device and installing custom mods to get the best experience, I’m lazy, I want a device that works well out of the box.
So Apple it was for me, for the better part of seven years. But at the 22nd of last month, I got a Nexus 7 2013 from work, officially for testing purposes (I’m a WebDev), but pretty much a gift for a job well done (I’m totally NOT browsing GAF at work…
. And so I started using it, it remembered all my apps and settings from the old Nexus 7 and set the thing up for me. Just like iOS would, that was nice. But, this device completely blew the old one out of the water, it is insanely faster, browsing, zooming, navigating apps and multitasking all seemed so much more snappy than the older version. Not to mention I have had to do absolutely zero memory management (while I spend most of my time on the Nexus 7 and Galaxy S II killing apps running in the background). I went into the Play Store and replaced all of the apps I used in iOS with their equivalent as far as features go and then some. Of course the biggest plus coming from the system being open, because even though it never really bothered me that I needed iTunes to transfer files from my PC to my tablet or phone, it is insane how much easier things can be. I want to put a new comic on my device? Fine, I’ll transfer it via Bluetooth or Wifi. I accidently have a duplicate picture in my vacation album? Fine, I’ll just delete right here (because you can’t actually delete a picture from an Album you synchronized via iTunes, you see). It blew my mind that I could install a new browser from my device and links from other apps actually opened in that browser, of course I didn’t mind when the PlayStation Store in the PlayStation App opened up in the Safari Browser instead of the browser I actually used when I was on iOS, but it sure feels good to have a device actually do what you want instead. Seems so simple, but yet was so hard for Apple to do.As I was using the Nexus 7 over the past weeks I hardly even looked at the iPad Air and when I did it started annoying me more and more. Sure, it still had a few things that were better, the 4:3 aspect ratio is better, the scroll-to-top when you tap on the statusbar is great, the battery life is unrivaled and you can’t really beat the look of the device. But the browser would still crash constantly due to the lack of memory (1GB), iOS 7 still looked horrible and as said, I missed the ease of use of being able to download a podcast MP3 file from the web directly to my device for listening. Even worse, I had to struggle using my iPhone 5. Every time I was out and about and using the iPhone I couldn’t help but wish I had my Nexus there, so last week I decided to sell the iPad Air (no reason to have it just lying there doing nothing after all) and used a chunk of the profit to replace my iPhone with a Nexus 5, had it for a week now and I love everything about it, just like the Nexus 7, it’s fast and snappy and even it’s minor drawbacks (as any device has them) don’t even remotely weigh up against the lack of progress made on the iPhone front. It even manages to amaze me, from anticipating features like Google Now that blow Apple's stuff out of the water, to something as simple of dialing the food delivery last night as they were taking too long to deliver and having the phonenumber in the dialer change to the name of the place complete with a picture of the place (including delivery truck) as I dialed the number. It seems silly, but stuff like that impresses.
Long story short, it seems Android has finally hit that sweet spot for me, where the OS is no longer sluggish and unnecessarily bloated. Of course much of this is due to the Nexus line of devices, where you are excluded from the custom skins and software companies put on Android and get the latest Android updates as soon as they’re released, instead of having to wait. The Play Store took a while to match up to the quality of the App Store, and while it’s not quite there (especially on the tablet side), it’s close enough where you can pretty much get the same experiences if you spend some time looking into the different Apps that are out there. It’s been quite the experience for me and I feel that anyone still on iOS thinking about making the switch should definitely give Android (another) serious go, because pretty much every drawback it used to have has been addressed, especially in the Nexus line of devices.
tl;dr: I was a devout iOS user for seven years and have been completely blown away by how far Android has come over the past few years and advise every iPhone user to give Android a serious go.
