And back to iOS

For the last 4 years I’ve had Android phones (ever since Android 4). First the Galaxy Nexus and later on the Nexus 5 released in 2013. This year it was once again time to get a new phone as the N5 was starting to show its age. So, last Friday on a trip to Munich I went into the local Apple store and got myself an iPhone 6s.

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Switching between Android and iOS is an expensive endevour as you usually invest quite a bit of money into apps when using either one of them. For me it is a bit of a different story, though, as I’ve never really stopped using iOS. I’ve always had an iPad on which I read the news in the morning or listen to podcasts and read books in the evening after work. It was also my main “mobile” client for OmniFocus, which ended up being the major motivator for moving back to an iPhone. As compact as an iPad mini is, it’s simply not a good tool for doing GTD on the go.

Obviously one app alone couldn’t really be the deciding factor here, so these were some others:

• Better headphone support: I listen to podcasts all the time. When walking about the city, always having to get the phone out to adjust the volume, skip and add or simply pause is just tedious. Sure, there is Android Wear but my LG G Watch R was simply not as reliable and well-made as I’d hoped it would, so I stopped using it a long time ago.
• Overcast: I’ve been a Pocket Casts user for many years now, but I wanted to try Overcast for its Smart Speed feature, but sadly it is iOS-only. For that reason it would never be even option as I heavily rely on being able to sync between phone and iPad.
• Better camera (both in hardware and software): Not much to say here. The N5 simply had an aweful camera and the software accompaning it didn’t really help either.
• I picked an iPad mini 2 a couple of months ago because it had virtually the same specs as its successor with the exception of TouchID simply because I didn’t see it as that useful a feature. I was so wrong. Entering that passcode every time I want to do anything is simply tedious and so getting TouchID (or a similar functionality) in whatever phone I picked next became quite a high-priority item.

Of course there are also a lot of things that I’ll miss from Android (which I still like very much):

• A good built-in clock app that allows discarding alerts within the notification itself up to one hour before it would go off
• Detailed battery inspection
• A flexible home screen
• A dedicated notification LED (although the flash might end up being useful enough)

That being said, though: The first 2 days were awesome. The battery life is fantastic and I don’t know what I’d do without TouchID 😉 I still haven’t got used to the keyboard, though, and it will definitely take some time, but everything else was as great as I’d hoped it would.

On to at least two years of being iOS exclusive then, I guess 😃