Moving to Android

If the title if this post isn’t enough of a giveaway, I’ve retired my iPhone 4S and purchased a Nexus 4.

To say that I’ve invested a lot of time and money into the Apple ecosystem over the past five years is an understatement. So this is somewhat of a big deal for me.

Why the change?

Quite simply I think I’ve outgrown iOS and all that it has to offer. I’ve longed for more power user features and configurability over the past six months than ever before. And sadly iOS just isn’t able to provide that for me at this moment in time.

Perhaps it’s a premature move on my part, since we can only speculate as to what iOS7 has in store. But knowing Apple as a company, they aren’t going to make a change, for changing sake. Looking back at their previous releases is evidence of this. Think about how long it took them to implement a simple feature like copy and paste.

Android first impressions

Android is pretty darn sweet now. The clunkiness of the interface has gone and the responsiveness is excellent! Added to the fact that I have been able to see dramatic software improvements take place over the past few years made this a no brainer for me. Yes there’s room for improvement, but I’m confident that these are going to get addressed in the near future.

That said I’m thoroughly enjoying my Nexus 4 and all that it has to offer! In fact I’m busy writing this very blog post using the gesture enabled keyboard. Something I’d never dream of using my old iPhone.

Pros and cons

For those of you who are considering making the move to Android, here’s a quick rundown on a few of the things that I’ve noticed since jumping ship. Some of these might be phone specific, rather than applicable to Android, but I’m going to list them here anyways.

Pros

Hardware

• Larger screen
• Increased battery life
• Standard charging adapter

Software

• Google integration is fantastic
• Itemised breakdown of mobile data and battery usage is killer. You can even set a cap on each.
• Notifications HUD is interactive i.e. you can action things within it on the fly like archiving an email
• Gesture keyboard entry has completely changed the way I type on a touch screen device. I never want to touch type again
• Better customisation using Apps launchers and widgets
• Android updates come directly from Google. No waiting around for mobile carriers to add their guff before receiving the official Google update.

Cons

Hardware

• Position of the power button is annoying
• Camera isn’t as good

Software

• Sometimes the back button is a little inconsistent
• No ability to press and hold down the full stop key to insert .com or .co.uk
• No ability to touch the top of the screen and scroll to the top of the page
• When you remove an icon from the home screen, it isn’t uninstalled. Perhaps this is a failure in my mental model as I’ve been so used to using iOS
• Gestures aren’t used half as much as in iOS apps e.g. nice mechanisms like pull to refresh aren’t as popular
• A few apps which I use almost daily don’t have an Android counterpart. DayOne, Omnifocus and Fantastical being the main ones