I switched from iPhone to the Pixel 2: One-week report

I find the cognitive load of having three unknown things happen at any time (touch, long touch, force touch, plus who knows whatever else kind of touch they may have) way, way too high, and the value non-existent.

It was also nearly impossible for me to know what did what, or how to get a long-touch separated from a force-touch.

I would be 100% content if Force Touch entirely disappeared. I don't see the problem it addresses and experienced first hand problems it causes. Example: I could hardly figure out how to move apps around in springboard (or whatever the home screen is called these days) or cancel apps in the task switcher with it on.

Maybe I'm a luddite, but I would really have preferred an iPhone 6+ "v2" with the same CPU and camera as the iPhone X - but none of the other stuff it brought (like color-changing OLED screen, nigh unusable Face ID, lack of a 3.5mm audio port). But, when your boss generously gives you an iPhone X it would be disrespectful not to use it.

These families where luxurious old IPhones are available plentifully are probably a bit odd, but for the purpose of hacking, IPhones are not too bad. They can be rooted, they have good hardware on board and batteries which last a decade. When I was young, I only had old lame personal computers from the household trash. I whish I had portable devices to play with! :-)

My two issues with iOS: - Siri is absolute trash. I've given up on using it for text messages. Even when just using it for timers it fucks up. It's basically a 50/50 chance it will interpret things like "3 and a half minutes" as "3 to a half minutes". Whenever it does this it then says something like "I don't understand what time you want". I literally never had Google mess up a timer. - Apple insistence on making you use their apps has gotten better, but it's still annoying. I still run into cases where it tries to open links in Safari (my default browser is chrome) or open directions in Maps ( I use Google maps).

Outside of those things I really love iOS.

My biggest reasons for switching was horrid privacy controls on Android(which have improved since I left) and device degrading rates. Every Android phone or tablet I owned would slow down terribly and have a noticeable dip in battery quality within 1 1/2 years. It was like clockwork. Luckily this hasn't been the case for me on iOS. I will hit the two year mark with this phone in the summer and it's still running and holding a charge like the day I got it. I used to get a new phone every two year religiously but this is the first time I am going wait it out.

However the iOS one "just works". Disclaimer: I hate voice mail with a passion. Not using it unless I really think it might be something important.

> There’s a super-easy clear all link which is fantastic

Force touch the first close icon to close all on iOS. Which is absolutely terrible in terms of UX.

> Universal back function: It’s great having a global “affordance” for the super-common thing that people want to do. It works well, too: its meaning subtly changing in the right way, depending what you’re going back from.

However you're guessing what you're actually going back to since there's no visual indicator. The location is super perfect at the bottom row. Missed opportunity for the iPhone X which has screen real-estate on the bottom.