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

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

#161

Post by pmontra »

rusk wrote: post #80
rusk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Frustrating and clunky as the iPhone might be at times, it's relatively reliable and stable. I'm quite happy to use Android on a tablet. It's far closer to a "traditional" operating system in terms of the amount of control you get over everything.

Although I've got to say, the headphone jack might be the last straw for me ... my iPhone SE could be my last iPhone if a reasonable alternative materialises ...

I like small and light phones so I bought an Xperia X Compact at the end of 2016. It's more or less the same form factor of the SE and it still works very well. Unfortunately its ticker (9.5 mm vs 7.6 mm) and it weights more (135 g vs 113 g). The Xperia Compact XZ1 from 2017 is 2 mm less tick but weights even more (140 g). If I could make me like iOS I would have got a SE immediately. The Compact is probably the best small phone in the Android world but I stopped researching phones. I'll start again when the Compact will be about to die. I hope it lasts at least as long as my old Galaxy S2, 5 years.

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

#162

Post by timrichard »

the_rosentotter wrote: post #135
timrichard wrote: post #88

I develop on Macs, and really like using iOS devices. The iPad is my tablet of choice.... But I've always stuck with Android phones, since the G1 (and a lot of jokes at the time). I think it's because the app interoperability was designed in from the start, something that only appeared gradually in iOS. I find a lot of value in workflow companion apps. So when I get a text message, it gets archived to Gmail with a la…

> hen I get a text message, it gets archived to Gmail with a label so it's searchable. And every incoming/outgoing/missed call puts an entry with the details and timestamp in my calendar What? I have used Android phones for many years and had no idea that is possible. Teach me your ways!

I found two apps a while ago which have been pretty reliable. One is Backup to Gmail [1] for the text messages. The other one is called Calltrack for the calendar things.

It's nice to have it all integrated and searchable inside Gmail and Google Calendar.

[1] Just checked the Play store, and I think it's called SMS Backup+ now. There are a few alternatives too...

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

#163

Post by baldfat »

YouKnowBetter wrote: post #136

My whole family (parents, sister & her kids, wife & our kids) have switched to iPhones (and macos devices) years ago. Result: 1. no "technical" issues anymore. As the go to IT guy in the family this alone is worth the supposed premium price one pays for the Apple logo. 2. Everything is updated, at all times. 3. "Facebook logs my sms" are a none issues 4. All devices die of old age (even the devices that have since lo…

My anecdotal evidence has been the opposite. My daughter has always been an Apple user and she has had so many more issues with her phone. Either she never upgraded her phone due to storage limitations because she refused to uninstall certain apps. He screen twice has twice peeled off. The battery expanded and now it glitches every hour but she is stuck because there is NO HEAD PHONE JACK. So she keeps saying do I buy a new phone but I want a head phone jack.

My parents both ditched their iPhones before the plus came out due to size and eye sight. They haven't gone back to an iPhone plus.

Video Conference: Best in class I would say is Google Duo. It is dead simple and works across all devices.

Apple's weakness: Siri. Now as an adult I don't use voice commands much but both my two youngest 11 and 7 and their friends use voice commands all day long (On my computer and Google Home). I see this being a big issue if they don't fix this in about 3 or 4 years. We see a big upswing in voice commands and Google's recognition has a 95% recognition rate is about on par with humans ability to carry a conversation. http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends

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

#164

Post by fasj82 »

georgebarnett wrote: post #147
fasj82 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>- Background tasks That's bad

Background tasks become essential as soon as you need your phone to be a data aggregator for external devices. As an example, if you monitor biomedical sensors on your body, the app needs a way to reliably run in the background without being shot down.

The sensors should store the information inside themselves and then sync with the mobile when I open the app. No need to have my mobile awake all the time for something like that.

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

#165

Post by cdubzzz »

jvannistelrooy wrote: post #129

For my job as an app Product Manager, I use several different devices on a daily basis. I also switch between an iPhone and Android phone as my personal device every half year or so, to stay up-to-date with both platforms. I think articles like these are interesting to read, but not relevant anymore. iPhones and high-end Android devices both offer a mature user experience, and you can't objectively say that one is be…

How have you found support between the platforms?

I tend to agree with your thoughts here, and this article seems like nothing more than very minor personal taste notes, but I have only used iPhones for the past six years or so.

What I have done is support both iPhones and Android devices at work. When someone’s iPhone would break or have issues, I would take it to an Apple store and usually get the issue resolved or a replacement phone the same day. On the other hand, dealing with any sort of support issue for Samsung Galaxy devices was a damn nightmare. Those had to be shipped to some processing plant in TX and Samsung had a painfully bad website for tracking the repair. I had one instance where there just sent the phone back a few weeks later with no updates or information on the web. It took numerous phone calls and wasted time to find out they wouldn’t repair its screen issue because it had a third-party battery.

Perhaps (and hopefully) Google is better about this than Samsung, but those support experiences are what led me to prefer Apple’s ecosystem for personal use.

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

#166

Post by pmontra »

rauhl wrote: post #152
pmontra wrote: post #144

A question for the author about the blog page: why did you set body {visibility: hidden} and prompt some people with a blank page? I don't know which one of the privacy extensions I'm using probably prevented some JavaScript to turn it into visibility: visible, but why shouldn't it start as visible since the beginning?

Yeah, but if you leave JavaScript disabled how can the trackers fire? I assume that's the real reason for all these pages which would work just fine without JavaScript requiring it.

Fair assumption. However one can do some tracking using visible and invisible images from third party servers. They get the referral and their cookies even if maybe not as many as they used to, browsers start blocking 3rd party cookies now.

The worst thing I saw was a post loaded into a JavaScript as a JS object. The script would insert it into the DOM after the onload event fired.

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

#167

Post by Infinitesimus »

antihero wrote: post #124
digi_owl wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/k3b/APhotoManager/wiki

It's good that someone has made that but it looks nowhere near as nice. When you open the Photos app on iOS you have a beautiful map with clustered thumbnails. http://tinyimg.io/i/d4DRgIT.png http://tinyimg.io/i/0lVO6KC.png It's useful enough that I could find out the exact spot I slept by the river Seine years ago based on scrolling around Berlin on the map for 5 minutes until I found the photo, taken several years…

FWIW samsung's gallery does that https://imgur.com/a/Qgc3yUH (probably only on the S8 and above but idk )

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

#168

Post by Saaster »

I wish I could switch to the iPhone, and I've tried several times. The hardware is excellent. But these are my deal-breakers that keep me on Android (I've only ever had Google Nexus / Pixel phones):

- Lastpass or any other password manager on iPhone is a joke, requiring multiple convoluted steps and using the "share" menu in the browser because of the Apple lock-down. Lastpass on Android? Click the password field in any app or the browser, authenticate with your finger. Done.

- All the Google apps on the iPhone are of a much lower quality and behind design and feature wise. The reason I switched last time from the iPhone to Android was because I realized I don't use any of the Apple apps any longer (mail, maps, notes, music, etc.) and I use the Google apps and services exclusively because they're just so much better. And they're way better still on Android!

- Google Photos is amazing. It's hard to overstate just how good it is. And you can still plug in your phone and get your photos of the device, if you like. A recent experience of trying to backup my wife's photos from her iPhone 7 was an incredibly frustrating experience in contrast. The Apple photos desktop app is a piece of crap, somehow even slower and beachball-prone than the Apple Store app, and the backup is very confusing. Using iCloud is not a backup solution, because deleting a photo on any device still deletes it everywhere.

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

#169

Post by nickthegreek »

mrsuprawsm wrote: post #92

One of the author's frustrations is actually already present in iOS: > There’s a super-easy clear all link which is fantastic and hits at my #1 pet peeve w/ iOS’s design: the iOS notifications give me more work to do, not less If you force touch on the topmost (x) in the iOS notification dropdown, you get an option to clear all notifications. However, I only recently discovered this myself, after using each iOS since…

Thank you kind sir! The force touch (x) is a god send and I never knew about it. I was just grumbling to myself yesterday about having to hit all these X's.

My biggest issue with the iPhone is all the hidden force touch controls that are never taught. I've had 3 different android phones and always come back to iphone.

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

#170

Post by boudin »

teekert wrote: post #55

I'm thinking of going from android to iPhone for privacy reasons. But, whenever I hold an iPhone that list of notification puts me off, in android they are grouped, meaning 3 new exchange mails is 1 notification, I can pull on the notification to expand the 3 and then even more for every email. Short replies can be done inline in the notification even. I use that constantly. You can also swipe away a notification gro…

I don't see how Apple is better with privacy. I get it's a big part of their marketing, but it's.... marketing. Phone still comes with siri, with apps you can't remove, with location tracking. Apple cloud is, as all clouds, you giving away your data to Apple, so you end up having to trust them blindly.

I know it's not part of their business model so far, but they still collect and own a lot of your data.

As long as a phone comes with apps you can't remove (either if it is from google, apple or whatever manufacturer), I don't see how it can be trusted.

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