After proudly owning virtually each model of the iPhone since 2011, three months in the past I ditched my iPhone 14 Professional for a Pixel 8 Professional. As a cross-platform consumer, I used to be uninterested in Apple’s restrictive insurance policies, notably their stranglehold on textual content messaging with iMessage.
Completely satisfied as I had been with the iOS expertise – together with the iPhone’s seamless integration with my MacBook, Apple Watch, iPad, and Apple TV – that have broke down quickly on my Home windows and Linux PCs. What started as a minor annoyance at having to modify to a different gadget each time I wished to textual content somebody regularly grew right into a nagging need to liberate my cellular messaging life from Apple’s management.
Positive, I may have tried emigrate most of my messaging conversations to WhatsApp or one other messaging platform. However as an American consumer, SMS stays the first technique of messaging all through my life. To have the ability to ship and obtain messages to and from my cellular quantity with everybody in my circle, I wanted to ditch iMessage.
In fact, Apple doesn’t enable some other app to ship and obtain SMS on its gadgets, so to dump iMessage in favor of an app that will work throughout all platforms, I wanted to kick the iPhone to the curb.
Listed here are 5 issues I’ve discovered after 90 days with Android on Google’s Pixel 8 Professional.
Android’s consumer expertise has developed properly through the years, and whereas it retains the excessive diploma of customizability that iOS has usually lacked, I discover its total consumer expertise has caught up with Apple’s in most methods.
Android’s consumer expertise has developed properly through the years, and whereas it retains the excessive diploma of customizability that iOS has usually lacked, I discover its total consumer expertise has caught up with Apple’s in most methods.
Tech Advisor / Robert Strohmeyer
Android’s consumer expertise has developed properly through the years, and whereas it retains the excessive diploma of customizability that iOS has usually lacked, I discover its total consumer expertise has caught up with Apple’s in most methods.
Tech Advisor / Robert Strohmeyer
Tech Advisor / Robert Strohmeyer
Android has come an extended for the reason that days of chaos
Once I traded in my final Android cellphone – a Motorola Droid – for an iPhone in 2011, I’d come to view Android as a chaotic mess and noticed iOS because the clear, steady various. Positive, the Apple telephones have been absurdly costly, however they labored roughly flawlessly so long as you didn’t thoughts residing with out the power to customise something however the wallpaper.
Whereas Apple’s aesthetics and UX polish nonetheless stand out as superior, the customizability of Android stays much more intensive than that of iOS.
By leaving Android then, I used to be giving up the liberty to configure my cellphone any method I wished in trade for extra safety within the app ecosystem and a extra steady cellular OS. Android, in these days, had an app ecosystem fraught with bugs and safety issues, and efficiency points abounded from gadget to gadget.
On high of that, Google didn’t have a lot of an ecosystem, whereas Apple was designing its varied gadgets to work seamlessly with each other.
Quick ahead to 2024 and Android’s ecosystem has flourished. Google gadgets together with Chromecast, Nest doorbells and cameras, and each Chromebooks and Home windows PCs all work properly with Android telephones.
Outdoors Apple’s walled backyard, everybody else has simply moved on with their lives and Android telephones make it straightforward to share knowledge, messaging, and app experiences throughout PCs and different gadgets, even when they’re not made by Google. I can use Google Messages simply as effectively from the browser on my Ubuntu Linux PC, my Home windows 11 PC, my principally uncared for Chromebook, and sure, even my MacBook Professional.
Whereas Apple’s aesthetics and UX polish nonetheless stand out as superior, the customizability of Android stays much more intensive than that of iOS. In the meantime, Google Play has tamed the Android app market considerably through the years, and Android apps are usually no riskier than iOS apps.
iMessage’s inexperienced bubbles are meaningless
As an iPhone consumer, I’ve by no means understood why non-Apple messages are available in as inexperienced bubbles moderately than Apple’s normal blue bubbles. I couldn’t care much less what sort of gadget the opposite particular person is texting from, and seeing half my incoming messages seem in a distinct colour has all the time appeared like a pointless distraction. However now that I’m on the opposite aspect of the cellular platform divide, Apple’s try to stratify cellular customers into blues and greens appears much more obnoxious.
Apple’s inexperienced bubbles have all the time been simply one other branding ploy
Android customers don’t spend a single second of their day serious about whether or not the textual content bubbles in your display screen are blue or inexperienced. They’re not lacking a factor. Actually, Android telephones have been utilizing RCS (wealthy communication companies) since 2008, and it seems Apple is barely simply now catching on with the anticipated introduction of RCS on iOS 18 this yr.
The clear takeaway is that Apple’s inexperienced bubbles have all the time been simply one other branding ploy, supposed to strengthen their prospects’ perception within the inferiority of competing gadgets, however serving no helpful goal in any respect.
Gadget ecosystems nonetheless matter
Once I switched to Android, my Apple Watch misplaced most of its utility for me. Other than telling time and monitoring exercises, I principally trusted the smartwatch to offer me glimpses of messages all through the day, sync to my calendar, and sustain with the climate.
In at this time’s tech panorama, telephones and smartwatches are tightly interconnected, so in the event you use an Android cellphone, an Android smartwatch is a should. Naturally, I picked up a Pixel Watch the identical day I acquired the Pixel cellphone, and the 2 work as symbiotically because the iPhone and Apple Watch.
Switching cellular platforms necessitated shopping for a brand new watch and a brand new TV adapter. Happily, the Pixel Watch and Chromecast are far cheaper than their Apple options.
Switching cellular platforms necessitated shopping for a brand new watch and a brand new TV adapter. Happily, the Pixel Watch and Chromecast are far cheaper than their Apple options.
Tech Advisor / Robert Strohmeyer
Switching cellular platforms necessitated shopping for a brand new watch and a brand new TV adapter. Happily, the Pixel Watch and Chromecast are far cheaper than their Apple options.
Tech Advisor / Robert Strohmeyer
Tech Advisor / Robert Strohmeyer
Casting movies from the cellphone to the TV was one other day by day behavior that all of the sudden wanted consideration once I switched telephones. You may’t forged from Android to Apple TV gadgets with out janky third-party apps.
Happily, Google Chromecasts are dirt-cheap, so I grabbed 4 of them for lower than the value of 1 Apple TV, and added one to every of the TVs round my home. Now I can forged to any of my TVs, and nonetheless watch my Apple-bought motion pictures on the Chromecasts with the Apple TV app. It’s a weirdly round expertise.
In a family, switching platforms could be contentious. Whereas I switched from iOS to Android, the remainder of my household didn’t. So now we now have two totally different digital TV gadgets hooked as much as each display screen in the home, and there’s little settlement on what to make use of by default. My son appears to love the Google UX, however my spouse and daughter persistently exit the Chromecast and activate the Apple TV once they’ve acquired the distant.
Android Auto is a humiliation
Once I determined to make the change, it by no means even occurred to me that I might need points with Android Auto. In my thoughts, my automotive got here with help for both platform, and it shouldn’t matter a lot which one I used.
Oh, how I used to be mistaken. After 4 years of hassle-free driving with Apple CarPlay, the bumbling, incoherent expertise of Android Auto has been downright infuriating as a rule.
half my apps don’t work accurately with my Audi’s click-wheel management
Android Auto’s consumer interface appears to be like nice, however in my automotive many apps failed to reply to my automotive’s Again button, making it tough—and extremely distracting—to make use of.
Android Auto’s consumer interface appears to be like nice, however in my automotive many apps failed to reply to my automotive’s Again button, making it tough—and extremely distracting—to make use of.
Tech Advisor / Robert Strohmeyer
Android Auto’s consumer interface appears to be like nice, however in my automotive many apps failed to reply to my automotive’s Again button, making it tough—and extremely distracting—to make use of.
Tech Advisor / Robert Strohmeyer
Tech Advisor / Robert Strohmeyer
With CarPlay, Apple’s tight-fisted governance of app habits ensures, at a minimal, that apps play properly with the automotive’s built-in controls, in stark distinction to Google’s lackluster execution. With Android Auto, half my apps don’t work accurately with my Audi’s click-wheel management. Once I change to an app, I ought to be capable to press the Again button on my automotive’s heart console to get again out of it to the primary view.
As typically as not, nevertheless, this doesn’t work in any respect, and there’s no method to exit an ill-behaving app with out asking Google Assistant to assist me out or choosing up the cellphone and manually deciding on one thing else.
At first, I assumed this concern was simply with third-party apps, however even Google Messages has this drawback in my automotive. Looking out Android consumer boards, I found these points fluctuate barely from one automotive producer to a different, with the widespread theme merely being Android Auto is junk.
Google’s AI rocks
I’ve had a mixture of Google Dwelling audio system and Apple HomePods round the home for years, so I’ve recognized first-hand for fairly a while that Siri is a reasonably dumb assistant. With Google’s latest push in AI tech, nevertheless, the gulf between Google and Siri has solely widened.
Whether or not I’m at my desk, standing within the kitchen, or driving, I can normally rely on Google Assistant to reply any questions I can pose to it. Siri, nevertheless, will typically resort to sending hyperlinks to my iPhone moderately than summarize info for me on demand.
With Gemini Nano constructed into the Pixel 8 Professional, the AI expertise on my Android cellphone is now gentle years past something I’ve ever skilled with Siri on any iPhone. It’s not but clear whether or not Apple has any huge tips up its sleeve to meet up with Google, Microsoft, and Samsung within the AI division.
Will I stick to Android?
Once I first determined to modify from iOS to Android a number of months in the past, I considered it as an fascinating experiment and nothing extra.
If I didn’t like Android, I’d gladly change again, however I used to be dedicated to giving the change a strong run earlier than making up my thoughts. I nonetheless have the iPhone 14 Professional sitting on my desk, and I’ve used it a number of occasions for testing different merchandise that work with iOS. It’s proper there and I may return to it as my day by day driver cellphone at this time if I wished to. However because it seems, I don’t wish to.
Whereas my preliminary motivation for switching gadgets was a considerably trivial annoyance with the best way iMessage monopolizes my textual content messaging, I’ve discovered the general Android expertise liberating. I actually do love having the ability to stroll out the door with my Ubuntu laptop computer and nonetheless retain the power to ship texts from my browser at any time when I need.
I additionally love Google’s considerably superior AI and the power to rearrange the icons and widgets on my cellphone any method I like (a function I hear is coming to iOS 18, because it occurs). And, to be trustworthy, I sort of benefit from the misguidedly askance glances I get from my smug iPhone-toting mates once they see me pull my Pixel out of my coat pocket.
So, all in all, I’m proud of the change to Android and I don’t plan to modify again anytime quickly.