I love Android phones, I have no idea what usability catch-up they need to play or are perceived to need, but frankly I don’t think the quantity or quality of novelty is there to be really worth making the jump away from what you’re already acclimated to.
I guess unless you desperately want a phone that folds or a really high-end “gaming phone”. But I go years at a time between phone upgrades because every generation is just an incremental improvement. Many times the “big improvement” is along an axis I don’t even particularly care about.
I’ve been trying to get my gadget jollies elsewhere these days.
i typically only get new phones every 5 - 6 years, and i’m currently sort of due for a new one (my iphone X is…not working optimally), but every time i look at the new models of iphone, i’m just like “really? am i gonna buy this shit again?” like it has a better camera? great, i don’t fucking care. it can call the cops when i’m on a roller coaster? enticing, but no
Interesting data point since I’m still rocking a XR and it is working great. I find myself in the same boat of not knowing what it would take for me to be excited about buying a new phone again, but not desperate enough to ditch a quality software ecosystem for novelty
i’m also realizing after you wrote this that switching from iphone to android would also probably mess with the functionality of my iPad, no? i guess not, since i’d still have an apple account, but it would make messaging…complicated? maybe? idk - maybe people can get over being texted by my email address like it’s 2004 again or something.
but yes, i guess i just want to have a sense of what is going to break when i make the switch. if it’s minimal enough, then novelty wins
yeah pretty much this, a phone is a phone, android and ios have converged a lot at this point also (to the detriment of both perhaps)
if you do decide to switch between ~ eco systems ~ it’s easier than you might think but probably time consuming. apple make an android app for migration but i’m not sure how reliable it is, you can also export a lot of your stuff at icloud.com and import to contacts.google.com etc.
google photos is actually Legit Good and i used it on ios for years anyway, so that’s pretty trivial to move to, though be aware that there’s a toggle for storing photos at original quality vs some compressed shit
iMessage will still work over your email address but it will automatically unbind your phone number after a while if you have not used an iPhone with that SIM card recently. SMS/call relay won’t work obviously if you don’t have a phone
This ultimately depends on how much platform-specific software you are using. IMO one of the major appeals of the iPhone is that Apple-exclusive apps tend to have a higher degree of care and polish than Android apps, and if you primarily use multi-platform apps, you are missing out on a lot of the best the iPhone has to offer, but it reduces friction and adaptation when you switch
I will say that maintaining three Android apps at work every day has made my trust and opinion of the platform even worse from a security POV. Clients ask for bonkers user hostile stuff that Android policy should technically prevent but there are always loopholes to exploit and it pisses me off
i think the issue is that it’s been dropped on its head one too many times, moreso than battery issues
again, the main thing is just i am bored to death of iPhones, but it sounds like there isn’t necessarily a super compelling reason to switch.
i.e. the idea of a folding phone with a stylus is cool to me, but in practical terms, idk how this affects my life or changes how i do things. however, maybe it would make things more enjoyable since i hate tapping a screen with my thumbs to text?
mostly i’m just bored at how conservative the iphone’s iterations have been. the X felt like the last time i had to learn something kind of new that felt interesting.
it’s just the state of phones. I switched ecosystems every time I had the excuse to throughout the 2010s (literally, I tried blackberry 10 and windows phone) and I would never get off of iOS now, the platform advantages are too significant and nothing anyone else is doing is that interesting
don’t underestimate the battery being an issue btw, the CPU throttles if it can no longer provide the max voltage, very little else on an iPhone can gradually degrade
i did a little of this myself a few months ago because those flip phones are cute as hell! but inertia and distrust of samsung (my tv sucks lol) kept me with an iphone
Not supposed to talk about FINANCIAL products there! No credit cards, loans, investment products, retirement accounts, etc. (And really it was one specific conversation about credit cards that lead to the retitling.)
huh, interesting. financial product is a term that was never in my lexicon until right now, so that’s neat. i just thought it meant like…products you…pay for with your finances lol
My old Pixel 4a broke due to me being stupid and i bought a replacement 4a and even tho it’s old i have no idea what I’m missing out on and it’s cheap enough for me to rock the light baby blue without a case so people think my phone is really cool.
My advice is to buy something older and used with a cool color.
I was curious what was out there and I found this hilarious razr that looks like a flip phone but is like a modern foldable screen phone.
I also found this modernist minimalist Scandinavian ass phone
I want them to release that Sharp phone in the US so I can carry it around and introduce it to people as “the Sharp x68000 of phones” but at the end of the day it’s still an android phone, idk I’m completely off of the google ecosystem and plan on staying that way. When I feel bored/tired/frustrated of technology like you described my impulse is just to throw it all away and start printing out Mapquest maps…I get closer every year
the thing with the weird form factors is the parts are way worse than what you’d get with the same money towards a boring slab with no moving parts. they’re modern equivalents of the first gen original razr that’d lag one character behind my t9 typing speed whereas a pixel 6a and iphone se for ~$400 will both run fine for years because they’re benefitting from economies of scale and older siblings
rip blackberry though i loved the pearl i assembled from two broken ones and called frankenberry