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Should I come back to the iPhone?

Here is my take after tinkering with both android and windows phones. They can both be fun for awhile when it comes to customizing them but thats not what I buy a phone for. In the end, my iPhone is dependable, smooth, and does all I need it to do. Tinkering is only fun for so long. Either way though, just buy what works best for you.
 
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Yeah, you should get back to same platform. If you are done with android now, you may again use the iPhone 6 plus. it do got good battery life.
 
GreenPea said:
LOL! I just came back to the iPhone TODAY.
Like you, I got a little bored with Apple and quite frankly I get a little upset with the amount of money Apple is charging for an iPhone these days. So I sold my 6S and bought a Samsung Galaxy S6.
At first I liked it ok, but I quickly realized that I miss the simplicity, quality, and style of Apple/Iphone.
The Samsung S6 is a nice phone, but is not near as quality as my iPhone 6S. (in my opinion)

Reasons why I changed back:
1) Battery Life is MUCH better on the iPhone 6S. (there is a HUGE difference in battery life)
2) I like the Apps better on IOS. (the same apps. on android didn't operate as well as on iOS.)
3) Android phones feel "buggy" to me. (iPhone is more consistent)
4) I like Simplicity better than "bells and whistles". I don't need all of the customization, it's overrated.
(The iPhone feels like a Porsche 911 compared to the Samsung which feels like a souped up Corvette. While the stats may be similar.... the quality, performance, and feel are stronger with the iPhone.)
5) I like the email set-up on iPhone/ios much better than Android/Gmail. (even the FONT, I know... weird)
6) The overall fit and finish on the iPhone "screams" quality when compared to most Android phones.
7) I could upload photos from camera onto Craigslist directly with my Samsung S6.
8) There is an intangible "measure" that iPhone has for me over Android phones.
9) I like Apple's FONT much better.
10) Too many "moving parts" for me on Android. (Keep it simple, stupid)
11) Iphone 6S Equals "Classic" simplicity, style, and quality to me.

So, while I have a healthy respect for Samsung and Android, I had to admit that I made a mistake and went back to iPhone 6S. I had sold my 1st iPhone 64gb for $600. I bought this new one 64gb, still in plastic, for $500 ca$h. So I guess I made $100.

There are MANY souped up American made cars that have all of the "splashy" stats; however, I prefer the Porsche 911.
just my .02:)
Click to expand...

Sorry, but you are not talking about android. You are talking about android with Samsung's skin. Totally different experience.

When I switched from nexus to s6, I felt like I had to relearn android all over again. Samsung made android very powerful, but very complicated too. Pure android really isn't half bad.

Although you have to give iPhone the thumb up for battery life.
 
Samsung's skin definitely has an effect compared to stock Android. I don't really think the Nexus 6P is an attractive phone and it doesn't have the best hardware either. LG is decent, but battery life always suffer on their phones. You'd think with all this new technology today that battery life wouldn't even be a consideration at this point.
 
Any modern smartphone is perfectly functional today: phone, text, email, browsing, camera, and major apps all work well.

I prefer setting up an Android, because it actually lets me. But once in use, it's just the little things that separate phones. In my own narrow little world: Email notifications were paramount before I retired, and Samsung's way of just telling you how many emails you had waiting instead of previewing each on the notification screen was worthless to me. Had to open the phone to see them. But calendar reminders on the iPhone are equally poor. When the iPhone chimes a reminder, I can only dismiss it. In Samsung's Lollipop, I can dismiss or snooze - wherein it will remind me again in a few moments. iOS allows you to set one and only one second alert, but you have to manually set it each time you create a new reminder. Lollipop lets you simply specify how long you want the snooze interval to be for your reminders, and it applies it to all reminders. And you can swipe to snooze as often as you'd like. When a reminder goes off and you're in the middle of something, you just want to be reminded again in a few minutes when you're free.

Each of us has our own nuances that make one OS more fitting for the way we work or play. The trick is to both know what you really want and what each OS really gives you.
 
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Lifetime android user ( started on a Motorola CLIQ on android 1.5, still have it as my dedicated sleep tracking device and smart alarm clock), just Came from nexus 5 to iPhone 6s to my GF's insistence to try it out. (Interestingly my mom rolls with nexus 5x, I can do direct generation comparison) I am still on my 4th day with the iPhone, so here is what think so far.

iPhone pro:

1) battery life is much better with a smaller battery. Even running a custom kernel with a governor specifically designed for battery life, it could not match the drain rate on the iPhone. And only phones running Marshmallow could finally match the standby by time.

2）Wi-Fi signal does seems to be stronger than before, but there is impact on performance yet.

3) the system overall seems to be more stable. There is no random crashes of random background apps that I see every fees week running stock android (and it could be every few hours when running some custom ROMs)

Android pros

1）Customs ROMs, custom launchers, xposed modules. If you don't like how the phone is setup (I.e touchwiz) there is a way to change it. And you can try many different approach difference has to create an UI. On the S3 and Nexus 5, I have tried Touchwiz, MIUI, stock android, cyanogenmod and parapidandroid as well as different launcher like nova, Google now and that funky Nokia laucher.

2) Google integration is way better, Google overall provides better search results and maps than Apple. Using google apps on iOS feels very much crippled.

iPhone cons

1) there is no way to set default apps and apple maps managed to get me lost on the first day. (There is construction on one of the ramps I need to use a detour and apple maps went crazy never had that with google maps) now I am habitually close whatever the is has launched, press the home key select the app I actually want to use and try to remember all the inputs to type in.

2) there is not blue light filter. I really relied on it to use my phone before I go to sleep, I used twilight on android and cyanogenmod even have the feature build in. It appears F.lux (which is what I use in my PC) had sideload app for iOS, but Apple sued to have them taken down. I mean WTF.

Android cons

1) like I said before it can be unstable, it not unusual to has apps crash or worse

2) there can be very crappy phones with crappy experiences out there.

3) many devices can be evolutionary dead ends and you never know when your buying it. I have a tablet perfectly capable of marshmallow and it is stuck on jellybean, and it is not popular enough for people to bring it forward on custom ROMs.

Things need to gotten used to

1) the keyboard. I never imaged how I missed my old keyboard (Google pinyin) until now, there so many time would want to smash the on the floor (if it was so darn expensive) because the writing autocomplete (it does not appear to learn very well) or the annoyance in typing in a number or symbol (there is no swiping on a key to get the job done) by but millions of people seems to be fine with this one, so I guess I'm the problem.

2) the same apps I like to use on android either don't exist on the App Store(like torque) or is very ******. (I'm looking at you tapatalk, the very thing I'm typing on right now) But I guess it is expected, if if one app team focuses on one platform it sort of ignores the other one.


Things I don't know

Not sure how jail breaking would fare on the iPhone. From what I have researched so far, cydia does not appear to be nearly as stable as stable as cyanogenmod or just a rooted nexus is on android, and going back to stock is not as simple either. So to all you jail breaker out there, should I do it. It is worth a while and is it stable enough to daily it. As a references I stays off of any nightly build on cyanogen, will try millstone build if I run into problem will roll back a stable build. (Same when trying ROMs, will default back to stock or cyanogen when run into problems)


Edit: I did not feel that iOS is really smoother than android. If anything my mom's nexus 5x actually feels more responsive, I did go into developer settings and "optimized" things for her.
 
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dark_knight177 said:
Please note that iPhone 6S Plus lags and stutters badly with iOS 9. Siri is a joke and Apple's cloud services are horrible.

These are the points against switching:

1. Siri can't use Google Maps, therefore you will be stuck with inferior product Apple Maps.
2. Siri is a POS that doesn't understand more than 50% of the time, where it's just easier to pull out my phone and complete the task manually. Google Now understands me 95% and saves tremendous amount of time when doing simple tasks.
3. You will have to use iCloud Photo Library which is unreliable POS. Yes you can use Google Photos but again, Apple doesn't allow it to be the default photo app, therefore you will be stuck with inferior iCloud if you want to have acceptable user experience.
4. Copy and paste is very buggy in iOS 9 and doesn't work half of the time. Whereas it works 100% in Android
5. No native push support for Gmail, if you want to use native mail app. Yes you can download Gmail app but again you can't set it as default mail app. Again you are stuck with inferior product.
6. iOS 9 is a joke and stutters on the Plus model, despite iPhone 6S Plus having the most powerful CPU in the world.
7. Too many other bugs to list.

These are the points for switching:
1. You miss iOS
2. iPhone 6S Plus currently has the highest benchmark score, but again it lags horribly due to inefficient OS.
3. iMessage
Click to expand...


Wow. My 6s plus never lags or stutters while my 6 plus did and my note 4. This phone works great. No issues. Siri has never failed me when using it as I use it in the car all the time. I don't like the photo issues with sync and gmail but it doesn't bother me that much. I do plan to switch back to android when my term is up.
 
bowlman2345 said:
I used to be the biggest Apple fan...had an iPhone immediately and loved it. But over the years, I got bored with it. The home screen design had gotten plain and boring, and the customizations just weren't there.

I've used Android for a while now and currently have the Note 5. After getting my iPad Pro, I realized that a part of me misses iOS and having an iPhone - especially the integration. I've felt like Apple has started to innovate the OS a bit better, although its design remains mostly unchanged. If I come back to iOS, I do feel like I'll miss the customization a bit, although it seems like Apple has started to open up a bit and let people take more control.

I think the IPhone 6s Plus would have better battery life than my Note 5 and I know it's plenty fast. Do you think Apple has innovated much with iOS in the last three years? Just looking for opinions. I think I'm close to going back, but can't help but be a bit hesitant.

Thanks for the opinions and suggestions.
Click to expand...

The only thing thats changed in the last few years have been the increased number of annoyances and bugs..
 
I had the iPhone 3G then went to the Galaxy S2 then the HTC M9 and now the iPhone 6s. The only two things I don't like about the iPhone is searching for texts messages is not working properly all the time and the notification system is dated compared to Android. I will say the iPhone is a smoother experience and the apps tend to run better and get better developer support. With so many Android phones it difficult for developers to make sure their app runs well or at all on all Android devices. At least with Apple there is a limited amount to focus on.
 
I had the iPhone 3G then went to the Galaxy S2 then the HTC M9 and now the iPhone 6s. The only two things I don't like about the iPhone is searching for texts messages is not working properly all the time and the notification system is dated compared to Android. I will say the iPhone is a smoother experience and the apps tend to run better and get better developer support. With so many Android phones it difficult for developers to make sure their app runs well or at all on all Android devices. At least with Apple there is a limited amount to focus on.
 
No doubt about if you want customization on your device you will have a way better time with Android. No hacking or rooting either. Although if you do you can take it to whole new level. I just enjoy my devices stock for the most part. The Note 5 seems like a great device. Especially if you want a smartphone with the best multitasking around. But I ended up going with a 128GB Nexus 6P for the freedom it offers. I gave up the amazing multitasking but the Nexus has pros over the Note 5 as well.

Currently using my 128GB iPhone 6s Plus as a primary so it's not a big deal about the split screen multitasking a Note offers over it (have a Note 4 still). I got to say I'm not having lag as some other say though. My iPhone isn't perfect. But I believe no device is. Especially with the software and numerous components involved. Third party support is better on the iPhone. But if you go with one of the Galaxy S/Note devices you will have plenty of things to pick from. I could say a lot but I enjoy both.
 
I mainly try Android devices out just for having something different to try out, because as OP says, iOS can get boring. Its UI element is still largely unchanged, same old squares on home screen, and tinkering (mainly customizing as I'm not that knowledgeable on this kinda stuff) on Android is pretty fun. After a while though I get tired of worrying over little stuff about my phone and trying to optimize things.

I can see myself getting another Android phone in the future, but it will not be my main phone. I just can't imagine myself using an Android device only. I've had iPhone 4, 5c, and 6 Plus and LG LTE 2 & Note 4 for Android.

However, in the end it all comes down to personal preference, I just happen to prefer iOS over Android.

I have to add though, these "lags" people keep talking about are WAY overblown online. It's not THAT bad. Even 6 Plus, which is the laggiest recent iPhone right now, isn't that laggy at all. Just a little stutter here and there that I DO see, but mostly smooth. Well, until 9.2 it was hilariously stuttery and I couldn't stand it, so I get where the complaints are coming from, but 9.2 worked its magic on it. And Apple is still working on more updates so these lag concerns should be mostly irrelevant soon, if not already.

ANYWAY - to answer your actual question, I'd say try it out and resell it or return it if bought from Apple store within 14 days. There are different options out there. It's your choice in the end, maybe you'll like returning to iOS.
 
bowlman2345 said:
The ones on this thread. I actually expected the opposite overall replies.
Click to expand...
Actually there are a number of people that hang out here to tell the world how good android is compared to iPhone. Not sure what their motivations are. If you analyze their responses it boils down to minor preferences? Your goal of helping you decide on which phone to get by depending on other people's opinion is flawed. One person's must have is another person's pet peeve.

By and large happy users of a phone don't seem to be too concerned about coming on these forums to tell you how happy they are. There are millions of people using various phones at this point. Only a small fraction even know about these forums. Your best bet would be go to stores, spend some time playing with various phones you are thinking about and go with your gut feel. All the brands work well and as with most people you will tend to validate your own decision as being correct regardless of what you choose.
 
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dark_knight177 said:
Please note that iPhone 6S Plus lags and stutters badly with iOS 9. Siri is a joke and Apple's cloud services are horrible.

These are the points against switching:

1. Siri can't use Google Maps, therefore you will be stuck with inferior product Apple Maps.
2. Siri is a POS that doesn't understand more than 50% of the time, where it's just easier to pull out my phone and complete the task manually. Google Now understands me 95% and saves tremendous amount of time when doing simple tasks.
3. You will have to use iCloud Photo Library which is unreliable POS. Yes you can use Google Photos but again, Apple doesn't allow it to be the default photo app, therefore you will be stuck with inferior iCloud if you want to have acceptable user experience.
4. Copy and paste is very buggy in iOS 9 and doesn't work half of the time. Whereas it works 100% in Android
5. No native push support for Gmail, if you want to use native mail app. Yes you can download Gmail app but again you can't set it as default mail app. Again you are stuck with inferior product.
6. iOS 9 is a joke and stutters on the Plus model, despite iPhone 6S Plus having the most powerful CPU in the world.
7. Too many other bugs to list.
Click to expand...
I'll take a stab at these :-

1) You can use Google Maps with Siri - http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/31961/tip-day-use-siri-get-directions-google-maps
2) Not used Siri loads but when i have its been in the car and always worked. Actually used it the other day to ask for an address for somewhere as a meeting point had changed after i set off. Phone was plugged in playing music through the car stereo and it still picked up my Hey Siri command, understood what i asked it and gave me an instant reply with the details so i could put the new postcode in the car sat nav.
3) You dont have to use anything...i've never used iCloud Photo Library and back up all my photos to OneDrive with no issues at all
4) Its a bit fussy at times but i tend to have no issues majority of the time
5) This is due to Google getting funny and taking away a feature they were allowing at one time and technically is still available should you wish to pay for it. I've used Gmail via the built in app for years now for mail, contacts and calendar with no issues and now just have it set to Fetch every 15mins which is no hardship really. If i'm desperate to receive an email quicker i refresh manually.
6) iOS 9.2 running on an launch day iPhone 5 with no issues at all. No stuttering that i can spot.
7) Nice generic stab in the dark....i can safely say i rarely come across anything on a day to day basis that causes me any issues. Yes an app may crash now and then or the phone has a moment but anything running software will do that and that includes Android stuff. I was stood next to a bloke at a gig the other week and all he tried to do was reply to a mate who was there as well and was trying to meet up. Replying took him about 10mins as the phone locked up as he replied, had to be rebooted twice and then eventually he got there.
 
I've had both the note 5 and 6s plus. Both are excellent phones, but i always feel the urge to come back to the iPhone. Not even sure why at this point. The two main things i like over the iPhone are the display and Samsung pay, which is a million times better than apple pay.
 
Smithwicks said:
I've had both the note 5 and 6s plus. Both are excellent phones, but i always feel the urge to come back to the iPhone. Not even sure why at this point. The two main things i like over the iPhone are the display and Samsung pay, which is a million times better than apple pay.
Click to expand...

Tell us one way that Samsung Pay is better than Apple Pay. Emulating a magnetic stripe doesn't count, because that's old insecure technology.
 
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LV426 said:
Tell us one way that Samsung Pay is better than Apple Pay. Emulating a magnetic stripe doesn't count, because that's old insecure technology.
Click to expand...
The "ONLY" technology that works virtually anywhere! You can't beat that! I have yet to meet a place at which Samsung Pay didn't work.
Old or NOT, it will succeed and surpass Apple Pay in near future due to not requiring special NFC terminals.

Try explaining to average Joe that Apple Pay doesn't work at most stores because the store doesn't have new NFC terminals. Whereas Samsung pay does.

All average Joe knows is this:
Apple Pay doesn't work! Samsung Pay works! That's it!
 
LV426 said:
Tell us one way that Samsung Pay is better than Apple Pay. Emulating a magnetic stripe doesn't count, because that's old insecure technology.
Click to expand...
The fact that it works everywhere as opposed to apple pay where its accepted at maybe 15% of the places i frequent.
 
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