Bottom line: maybe I'm picky and I'm not considering bang for the buck that android provides. But what I totally did not realize is this about the galaxy s7 compared to the 6s:
Why I left (what I thought I was missing):
--better battery
--better camera
--better screen
--notification light
--more customization/hackability
--cheaper, way less expensive real world prices
--more "open"
What I think most people don't know or simply for some reason do not care about which is beyond me:
--the battery life is not much better, if at all a week or two later. Why? Because you will download apps that will somehow be leeching battery juice, yes, even after doze on android 6.0. All that backgrounding does take a toll, those android services. the standby time is way better than it used to be, but it still is not like the iphone, where fully loaded up with apps, the battery barely moves overnight.
--the camera on the s7 is NOT better than the 6s. The color balance matters, and it's yellow. The raw hardware is better, but the final result, is not. It's oversharpened, by a noticeable amount. And the pro mode is not that "pro" as there is no shutter priority. Get an app for that. I did. The apps don't support Android 6 yet, and the picture quality has dramatically worse quality than the Samsung camera app. There is some image processing that the apps do not have access to or whatever it is, the picture is terrible. So yes I can customize but the end result is worse than the Samsung default camera app. In the end the iphone camera is easily better to me and more reliable. But the Samsung focuses faster. Low light was not a night and day difference to me, especially since I didn't realize how much the yellow color cast would bother me. Yup it's brighter but everything looks yellow. Not a clear win to me, which surprised me.
--screen is not as peak bright as 6s, but it's not a bad screen, very good but the superhigh res did not matter to me. sunlight legibility was not better than the 6s, which many reviews said it was. It just makes the contrast very milky etc and it's not clear that this is more legible.
--notification light I thought would be great a la blackberry days . But oddly enough the notifications coming in bothered me (not the light), because I kept having to press "clear" "clear" "clear". Apps would install themselves with a ad banner type bar, or a weather app would install itself in the notification bar, and it was annoying to see these what I'd consider unwanted adware in the notiification bar.
--the amazing number of ads in apps. It's immediately noticeable. Ads everywhere and very reminiscent of windows laptops vs macs.
--the app quality, no matter what, is always always always always better on ios. I think it's not just as simple as the money trail. Have you tried to develop for android vs ios? ios is just so much faster. Android development is very bloated and the compatibility libraries and subtle differences between devices make for least common denominator apps with more bugs...or the devs just don't care as much. The app quality is easily poorer for all but the big huge billion dollar companies.
--UI lag. You've got 8 cores but it's immediately, patently obvious that the way android is designed just is not smooth in the way ios is. Chrome for crying out loud lags when scrolling, or it will after a week. Transitions are jerky at times, etc. Pulling up a context menu, etc. This is immediately apparent to any average ios user. It just doesn't feel "smooth".
--Unsensible defaults. When I press play on a video link, I get a small tiny window, rather than Safari giving you full attention and turning the video fullscreen. On a device this small, I'd think safari's fullscreen by default, give all your attention to the video, makes sense for most. And right now there's no way to turn this to the default option on my s7.
--The font system is also off: either too big or too small when adjusting font size in many apps such as chrome, gmail, etc. It seems odd but despite bigger screens, the information being presented is less than the iphone. Or if more than the iphone, the text is too small. Seems to be no middle ground here.
--Swipe from top of screen to toggle quick controls is not user friendly. Bottom would be better, but that may be for google now.
--Privacy. Wow. No idea what Google is tracking and why, there's just no confidence there. I think this is a huge bet that only Apple has wagered correctly on. I tried to get ad blocking to work and figured you can't on Chrome, makes sense....that's how Google makes money. But then it seemed odd to have to download an entire separate adblocker browser. Again the sensible default where you add a content filter to Safari. It was effortless.
--Lack of updates--I have no confidence these bugs will ever get fixed.
--Better headphone audio quality in iPhone. Music sounds better.
--there is no such thing as just use it out of the box and go with Android. No way. You've got to tinker and mess with settings and there's constant fiddling around to get the perfect setup. With iPhone it's all works sensibly with default options . I feel strongly that this is not just a familiarity bias. I was with the G1 at the very beginning and iphone was always better in this way.
I believe there are fundamental, deep problems with android that are not going to be solved unless there is a complete rewrite of the core and a rethinking of the philosophy. I'm really bullish on ios' future simply because the core features, like watching media, reading a website, listening to music, making phone calls, scrolling, etc are all highly intuitive and solid in a way that I do not believe android due to its fragmentation and mindset about the way apps are built are ever going to catch up to. It's open yes, but it's clear this openness is not the path towards quality. And if quality wins out in the end, ios is very safe. Android is simply not a quality product to the degree that ios is. Everyone knows this because as soon as people can afford one, they move to an iPhone. Rarely are there switchers to android.
Why I left (what I thought I was missing):
--better battery
--better camera
--better screen
--notification light
--more customization/hackability
--cheaper, way less expensive real world prices
--more "open"
What I think most people don't know or simply for some reason do not care about which is beyond me:
--the battery life is not much better, if at all a week or two later. Why? Because you will download apps that will somehow be leeching battery juice, yes, even after doze on android 6.0. All that backgrounding does take a toll, those android services. the standby time is way better than it used to be, but it still is not like the iphone, where fully loaded up with apps, the battery barely moves overnight.
--the camera on the s7 is NOT better than the 6s. The color balance matters, and it's yellow. The raw hardware is better, but the final result, is not. It's oversharpened, by a noticeable amount. And the pro mode is not that "pro" as there is no shutter priority. Get an app for that. I did. The apps don't support Android 6 yet, and the picture quality has dramatically worse quality than the Samsung camera app. There is some image processing that the apps do not have access to or whatever it is, the picture is terrible. So yes I can customize but the end result is worse than the Samsung default camera app. In the end the iphone camera is easily better to me and more reliable. But the Samsung focuses faster. Low light was not a night and day difference to me, especially since I didn't realize how much the yellow color cast would bother me. Yup it's brighter but everything looks yellow. Not a clear win to me, which surprised me.
--screen is not as peak bright as 6s, but it's not a bad screen, very good but the superhigh res did not matter to me. sunlight legibility was not better than the 6s, which many reviews said it was. It just makes the contrast very milky etc and it's not clear that this is more legible.
--notification light I thought would be great a la blackberry days . But oddly enough the notifications coming in bothered me (not the light), because I kept having to press "clear" "clear" "clear". Apps would install themselves with a ad banner type bar, or a weather app would install itself in the notification bar, and it was annoying to see these what I'd consider unwanted adware in the notiification bar.
--the amazing number of ads in apps. It's immediately noticeable. Ads everywhere and very reminiscent of windows laptops vs macs.
--the app quality, no matter what, is always always always always better on ios. I think it's not just as simple as the money trail. Have you tried to develop for android vs ios? ios is just so much faster. Android development is very bloated and the compatibility libraries and subtle differences between devices make for least common denominator apps with more bugs...or the devs just don't care as much. The app quality is easily poorer for all but the big huge billion dollar companies.
--UI lag. You've got 8 cores but it's immediately, patently obvious that the way android is designed just is not smooth in the way ios is. Chrome for crying out loud lags when scrolling, or it will after a week. Transitions are jerky at times, etc. Pulling up a context menu, etc. This is immediately apparent to any average ios user. It just doesn't feel "smooth".
--Unsensible defaults. When I press play on a video link, I get a small tiny window, rather than Safari giving you full attention and turning the video fullscreen. On a device this small, I'd think safari's fullscreen by default, give all your attention to the video, makes sense for most. And right now there's no way to turn this to the default option on my s7.
--The font system is also off: either too big or too small when adjusting font size in many apps such as chrome, gmail, etc. It seems odd but despite bigger screens, the information being presented is less than the iphone. Or if more than the iphone, the text is too small. Seems to be no middle ground here.
--Swipe from top of screen to toggle quick controls is not user friendly. Bottom would be better, but that may be for google now.
--Privacy. Wow. No idea what Google is tracking and why, there's just no confidence there. I think this is a huge bet that only Apple has wagered correctly on. I tried to get ad blocking to work and figured you can't on Chrome, makes sense....that's how Google makes money. But then it seemed odd to have to download an entire separate adblocker browser. Again the sensible default where you add a content filter to Safari. It was effortless.
--Lack of updates--I have no confidence these bugs will ever get fixed.
--Better headphone audio quality in iPhone. Music sounds better.
--there is no such thing as just use it out of the box and go with Android. No way. You've got to tinker and mess with settings and there's constant fiddling around to get the perfect setup. With iPhone it's all works sensibly with default options . I feel strongly that this is not just a familiarity bias. I was with the G1 at the very beginning and iphone was always better in this way.
I believe there are fundamental, deep problems with android that are not going to be solved unless there is a complete rewrite of the core and a rethinking of the philosophy. I'm really bullish on ios' future simply because the core features, like watching media, reading a website, listening to music, making phone calls, scrolling, etc are all highly intuitive and solid in a way that I do not believe android due to its fragmentation and mindset about the way apps are built are ever going to catch up to. It's open yes, but it's clear this openness is not the path towards quality. And if quality wins out in the end, ios is very safe. Android is simply not a quality product to the degree that ios is. Everyone knows this because as soon as people can afford one, they move to an iPhone. Rarely are there switchers to android.
