I have always been an Android user, and I have also been an apple hater in the earlier days, just like all the ones you see online all the time. Why buy Apple when you can get more features for half the price with other brands?
I realized I was young and stupid many years ago but I still didn't switch, usually because of hardware. The iPhone 4s still had tiny screens while Android had screen sizes we consider "normal" today. The iPhone 5s didn't have water resistance while the Galaxy S5 did. The iPhone 6s didn't have OLED screen, or a large screen to body ratio but the Galaxy S7 did.
However, ever since I got an iPad 2, I knew iOS software was superior, I just couldn't swallow the penalty on hardware performance. Android fanboys and apple haters at this point often accuse me of not knowing how to use Android "properly" because apparently the "proper" way to use Android is to uninstall it and flash a custom ROM from XDA made by some random guy on the internet you've never heard of, and a bunch of other hacks made by other random dudes who's never met each other. And you're supposed to somehow trust that they will come up with a superior OS than Samsung, or for that matter, Apple.
It sounds stupid and ridiculous, but that's because it is. I have tried it, I have used no less than 20 different custom ROMs on the Android devices I have owned and they all sucked for a variety of different reasons. I'll just list some of them for the laughs:
Simply put, it has been the most satisfying phone purchase I have ever made, everything is just so perfect. When I got the S7 Edge, the screen isn't perfectly uniform and bottom is a bit more green than the top. The front camera is slightly misaligned with the hole, so is the rear camera, the sim tray doesn't sit perfectly flush with the frame etc...
Not on the iPhone X, That's Apple quality control right there. Well except for how I ordered mine the second pre-order started and it still got delayed 10 days such that I had to get it from someone else for a bit extra, I didn't like that at all.
This is what I have learned from Apple devices, the actual products always meets or exceeds your expectations. Whereas other products from other manufacturers give you just as high or higher expectations, but often fail to meet those, even if only by small margins. It makes all the difference. Examining your new Apple product you only find perfection like in those CG rendered ads. Examine your Samsung phone in detail you only find imperfections that aren't quite as you expected. Like how the microphone hole isn't in the exact middle of the frame but the sim tray open hole next to it is in the middle. Or how the holes aren't beveled and has tiny chips on the sharp edges. It just doesn't feel very good.
At first I had my doubts with the iPhone X, I didn't think the home gestures would work because remember the Blackberry tablet? That was the first tablet with no buttons and they came up with this brilliant idea of having a different swipe on each side of the screen, and it was absolutely horrible.
You wouldn't know how to use it because you don't know that it's swipe based, there are too many swipes to remember, and they trigger when you don't want to, but not trigger when you want to. Same thing with Windows 8. I was pretty sure Apple will mess it up with a button less design like that.
Now having used it for a couple of days, it is just perfect. I have never once failed to activate home, or activated it by accident. there is plenty of room and a nice indicator so you can do exactly what you want reliably and accurately. I have to say it is better than the physical home button, super unexpected.
Unlike many others I didn't have much of a doubt with FaceID, I understood how it works from the keynote so I wasn't asking stupid questions like can you use it in the dark or can you fool it with a photo. I knew what it could do (unlock while wearing makeup) and what it couldn't do (unlock while laying flat on a table), I tried it myself and I have to say it too, exceeded my expectations a little bit. I didn't expect a first generation tech to work this well, in any situation where the phone can see my face, it just unlocks before you can finish swiping, it's almost seamless, which is what the best technology should be like.
Android fanboys be like, LOL ANDROID HAD FACE UNLOCK FOR YEARS. Yes they did and it has been absolutely horrible for years, and nobody used it. You can fool it with a photo, and it's not integrated into any of the apps, the ONLY thing it can do is unlock your phone.
iOS is just great, you can control your volume with confidence, isn't that great? You can confidently click on videos and know that it won't make a sound because you are on mute. You also know that apps won't give you sound notifications when you are on mute as well! Isn't that AMAZING!?
You can allow or deny permissions to any of the apps easily and without them refusing to work! Not that you'll need to because none of them ask for permissions they obviously don't need! INCREDIBLE!
The OS actually gives you a keyboard that is usable! It's not absolute crap that you have to go for a third party solution! UNBELIEVABLE!
Wait what you can also control exactly how and if each app give you notifications in a single menu!? HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?
Best of all, you can easily with a toggle switch deny an app from running automatically in the background? WOWWOWOWOW!! And STILL get all the notifications!? JUST WONDERFUL! Not that you'll even need to anyway but isn't it ironic that the OS that desperately needs this feature doesn't have it?
Let's see what else we got here:
Oh right, the notch, I almost forgot about that because that’s how I feel about it, I don’t even notice it. In fact if I try to look for it I think it’s better for it to be there in portrait mode, it looks beautiful and only takes up otherwise wasted space. In landscape it is slightly annoying but then the entire screen is not so great anyway because it is so ridiculously wide in landscape, just don’t use it landscape, problem solved.
I got myself an Apple silicone case, it costed me a finger on top of the arm and leg for the iPhone itself but I’ve learned my lesson, third party designers suck. even with my Samsung, my Samsung case was much better looking than any third party case. Should I drop the iPhone X repair will cost me yet another arm, definitely not very happy about that, and will actively try to avoid it.
I don’t worship big companies that don’t care about me, I don’t care if my product is Apple or not, only if it is good. If Android can get their **** together some time in the future, or if Apple drops the ball I’ll switch in a heartbeat. Fanboyism is stupid, please don’t be a fanboy, pick the best product, regardless of alliegence, it helps the market be more competitive as well.
I realized I was young and stupid many years ago but I still didn't switch, usually because of hardware. The iPhone 4s still had tiny screens while Android had screen sizes we consider "normal" today. The iPhone 5s didn't have water resistance while the Galaxy S5 did. The iPhone 6s didn't have OLED screen, or a large screen to body ratio but the Galaxy S7 did.
However, ever since I got an iPad 2, I knew iOS software was superior, I just couldn't swallow the penalty on hardware performance. Android fanboys and apple haters at this point often accuse me of not knowing how to use Android "properly" because apparently the "proper" way to use Android is to uninstall it and flash a custom ROM from XDA made by some random guy on the internet you've never heard of, and a bunch of other hacks made by other random dudes who's never met each other. And you're supposed to somehow trust that they will come up with a superior OS than Samsung, or for that matter, Apple.
It sounds stupid and ridiculous, but that's because it is. I have tried it, I have used no less than 20 different custom ROMs on the Android devices I have owned and they all sucked for a variety of different reasons. I'll just list some of them for the laughs:
- There's a hack that turns the S7's earpiece into another loud speaker, iPhone 7 style. But it also makes the headphone jack volume insanely high and way more noisy.
- Custom ROMs with idiotic design choices that only appeal to 13yo boys with blue neon, black skulls and skulls made of green neon lights.
- Custom ROMs that makes your bluetooth connections drop.
- Custom ROMs that makes the phone processor go to deep sleep while you're listening to music on headphones.
- People that think you can improve audio quality by installing software on the phone.
- Same as above, but a software stolen from another phone, which has completely different chips.
- Same as above, but with multiple pieces of software of the same type, all stolen from different phones! AND THEY ARE ALL ENABLED AT THE SAME TIME BY DEFAULT! The audio quality was just distorted to ****.
- When you have a custom ROM running, anyone can restart your phone, and read all data from it with a PC. There no protection what so ever.
- Various power saving features that kill your apps in the background and they stop giving you any notifications.
- Up until only a few years ago, Android is incapable of showing your album art in full resolution. Instead they scale them all down to a tiny file with heavy JPEG compression, probably to "optimize" performance. On the other hand the iPhone has been able to do that with 1/50th the performance. This is what I hate the most with software from non-Apple companies. Oh it's too hard to optimize so we'll just not optimize it. Let's either throw more hardware at it, or reduce the quality.
- I am fluent in both English and Chinese and I have a need to type in both. This is actually very painful in Android because there isn't a keyboard that is good in both English and Chinese. All the good English keyboards have no Chinese support at all. And all the good Chinese keyboards have very bad English support. So you have to switch between different keyboards, which you do by first opening the notification drawer, and then tap the input switcher (which is only there when a keyboard is active) pick the keyboard you want, and then way a second for it to switch. It's just so slow. Where as on iOS I just use the default keyboard, sure it's not as good as the third party ones but it's like the difference between 93% and 98%. Where as on Android you would have to compromise down to like 40%.
- Some Apps can't be muted, or even affected by the volume controls. Also there are 4 different volume bars, you never know which controls which. I mean WTF? Why is this so complicated?
- Apps that require permissions they don't really need, and then refusing to work AT ALL if you don't give it to them. This is especially prevalent in China because there is no Google so no quality control what so ever. I was working at a company in China and they were trying to build an iOS app which got rejected, they had me translate the rejection and it said exactly that, you can't ask for permissions you don't use, and you can't threaten your customers into granting permission with refusing to work.
- Google doesn't exist in China so every time I go there everything is messed up, hours and hours of hacking, installing apps, migrating apps accounts etc...
- icons are just ugly, since there isn't an uniform design language, some apps have round icons, some have free form icons, some have rounded square icons, it's just a mess. You can install icon themses but they can never cover every app you use.
- Capacitive buttons suck, on-screen buttons suck even more.
- While many Android flagships have amazing cameras, some of which are even better than iPhones, I mean the S7 had definitively better camera than the iPhone 6s and 7. However as soon as you launch an app that isn't your stock camera app, everything feels the same as a $200 mid-range phone, because those custom camera interfaces can't take advantage of the advanced algorithms or hardware features your fancy phone has.
- I don't know how anybody looked at those lag in early Android phones, and thought that was acceptable.
- There is always some random app that says "3 hours in background, 35% used" when you check your battery and find that you have way less than you expected. Sometimes it's a third party app you don't want to uninstall. Sometimes it's just Google Play Services which you can't uninstall.
Simply put, it has been the most satisfying phone purchase I have ever made, everything is just so perfect. When I got the S7 Edge, the screen isn't perfectly uniform and bottom is a bit more green than the top. The front camera is slightly misaligned with the hole, so is the rear camera, the sim tray doesn't sit perfectly flush with the frame etc...
Not on the iPhone X, That's Apple quality control right there. Well except for how I ordered mine the second pre-order started and it still got delayed 10 days such that I had to get it from someone else for a bit extra, I didn't like that at all.
This is what I have learned from Apple devices, the actual products always meets or exceeds your expectations. Whereas other products from other manufacturers give you just as high or higher expectations, but often fail to meet those, even if only by small margins. It makes all the difference. Examining your new Apple product you only find perfection like in those CG rendered ads. Examine your Samsung phone in detail you only find imperfections that aren't quite as you expected. Like how the microphone hole isn't in the exact middle of the frame but the sim tray open hole next to it is in the middle. Or how the holes aren't beveled and has tiny chips on the sharp edges. It just doesn't feel very good.
At first I had my doubts with the iPhone X, I didn't think the home gestures would work because remember the Blackberry tablet? That was the first tablet with no buttons and they came up with this brilliant idea of having a different swipe on each side of the screen, and it was absolutely horrible.
You wouldn't know how to use it because you don't know that it's swipe based, there are too many swipes to remember, and they trigger when you don't want to, but not trigger when you want to. Same thing with Windows 8. I was pretty sure Apple will mess it up with a button less design like that.
Now having used it for a couple of days, it is just perfect. I have never once failed to activate home, or activated it by accident. there is plenty of room and a nice indicator so you can do exactly what you want reliably and accurately. I have to say it is better than the physical home button, super unexpected.
Unlike many others I didn't have much of a doubt with FaceID, I understood how it works from the keynote so I wasn't asking stupid questions like can you use it in the dark or can you fool it with a photo. I knew what it could do (unlock while wearing makeup) and what it couldn't do (unlock while laying flat on a table), I tried it myself and I have to say it too, exceeded my expectations a little bit. I didn't expect a first generation tech to work this well, in any situation where the phone can see my face, it just unlocks before you can finish swiping, it's almost seamless, which is what the best technology should be like.
Android fanboys be like, LOL ANDROID HAD FACE UNLOCK FOR YEARS. Yes they did and it has been absolutely horrible for years, and nobody used it. You can fool it with a photo, and it's not integrated into any of the apps, the ONLY thing it can do is unlock your phone.
iOS is just great, you can control your volume with confidence, isn't that great? You can confidently click on videos and know that it won't make a sound because you are on mute. You also know that apps won't give you sound notifications when you are on mute as well! Isn't that AMAZING!?
You can allow or deny permissions to any of the apps easily and without them refusing to work! Not that you'll need to because none of them ask for permissions they obviously don't need! INCREDIBLE!
The OS actually gives you a keyboard that is usable! It's not absolute crap that you have to go for a third party solution! UNBELIEVABLE!
Wait what you can also control exactly how and if each app give you notifications in a single menu!? HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?
Best of all, you can easily with a toggle switch deny an app from running automatically in the background? WOWWOWOWOW!! And STILL get all the notifications!? JUST WONDERFUL! Not that you'll even need to anyway but isn't it ironic that the OS that desperately needs this feature doesn't have it?
Let's see what else we got here:
- Do not disturb actually works, fantastic!
- A compass that works without having to do the embarrassing calibration thing in public.
- Widgets that give you essential information without looking ugly in the home screen.
- The best fastest browser, with 3D touch.
- Shoot equally high quality images with any app
- Conctacts that just works, without having to worry if a particular contact is saved in the SIM/phone/Google etc...
- Color management. Shouldn't photos be displayed in the color space they are supposed to? Android disagrees, Android thinks everything should just be as over saturated as your display is capable of.
- The app store doesn't recommend to you idiotic apps like fast charger, virus scanner, wifi booster, or system cleaners.
- Like I mentioned before, I’m not impressed by camera autofocus, especially the telephoto lens.
- FaceID doesn’t work in landscape, you have to rotate the phone around. Unlike the sitting on a table situation, this shouldn’t be a hardware limitation.
- Getting music from your computer onto the device is still a pain, but I know most people would just use Apple Music and have no need to do this anyway.
- Double click power button to confirm purchase is a little annoying because it’s such a stiff button. But I guess it makes sense because it’s the same operation as Apple Pay, so that it’s not so easily confirmed by mistake as the TouchID devices.
- No fast charging in box.
- The headphone dongle seems fragile.
Oh right, the notch, I almost forgot about that because that’s how I feel about it, I don’t even notice it. In fact if I try to look for it I think it’s better for it to be there in portrait mode, it looks beautiful and only takes up otherwise wasted space. In landscape it is slightly annoying but then the entire screen is not so great anyway because it is so ridiculously wide in landscape, just don’t use it landscape, problem solved.
I got myself an Apple silicone case, it costed me a finger on top of the arm and leg for the iPhone itself but I’ve learned my lesson, third party designers suck. even with my Samsung, my Samsung case was much better looking than any third party case. Should I drop the iPhone X repair will cost me yet another arm, definitely not very happy about that, and will actively try to avoid it.
I don’t worship big companies that don’t care about me, I don’t care if my product is Apple or not, only if it is good. If Android can get their **** together some time in the future, or if Apple drops the ball I’ll switch in a heartbeat. Fanboyism is stupid, please don’t be a fanboy, pick the best product, regardless of alliegence, it helps the market be more competitive as well.
