mudkipLong-time iOS user considering switch to Android - Need advice on $1000 flagships
sic_semper_tyrannisWhat’s your reasoning for wanting to switch?
obsidianfoxxy7870If your wanting to switch for privacy reasons I would go for a Pixel and put a custom ROM on it.
Is there a reason you are tied to the idea of it being a flagship? I’ve been using the A series of Pixels forever and love them.
This i 100% agree with, the construction of the A series phones is easier to hold and less fragile, and the performance difference is negligible unless you play mobile games
VeganCheesecakeCompared to the Pixel / Pixel Pro, the Performance difference is pretty much nil because they’re all on the same SoC.
the pixel pros have had the same camera system since 6
thats why i went with the OP12R, i wanted a long last battery too, dont really care much about the camera.
I made the switch from iPhone to Samsung Galaxy several generations ago and I’ve been very happy with it. I just got the S25 Ultra a few weeks ago, coming from the S20+ I got in 2020. These phones don’t slow down over time, the S20+ felt very usable despite being 5 years old. And I upgraded from S8 to S20 without being forced to because the S8 became slow.
The bloat situation is great, you can uninstall Facebook and the other crap on day one and never see it again. There’s a lot of features I’ll never use on this phone but they don’t get in my way.
I’ve never had a Samsung account. I’ll never accidentally use any of the AI or other Samsung cloud features because they require a Samsung account.
You may want to use the Samsung account for their backup and other features and that’s fine, it’s just impressive how optional it is.
CassaGrapheneOS is nice, and a way to keep your phone going even longer. Also supereasy to install.
I’d go with the pixel. Even if they might be the worst on battery life 🤔
Easy 24+ hour on a pixel with graphene for me. OP may not tolerate loss of tap to pay functions, though.
I use tap to pay? 🤔 A lot of bank apps do support grapheneos, but it is worth checking
Yea, is usually good enough battery life for most ppl
UlrichInteresting, I didn’t realize that was part of DMA. Does that apply to Google/Android as well? And will it work outside of the EU? (probably not).
Not sure about paypal, since it’s a trial thing - but there are more apps listed on the banking list github.com/…/Banking Applications compatibility w…
“iCard” seems to have nfc payments f.ex and is listed as international
Yeah but this is a “banking list”, which is a different thing entirely from a “contactless payment compatibility” list.
yes, which is why I wrote that several of the apps here got that. it’s banking list with all sorts of money apps. if you take a look you’ll notice several are not bank apps. The apps that have contactless payment options here should work is the point.
pelyaMy advice is to go to gsmarena.com and find a phone with 4nm octa-core chipset for $400. Who needs those four cameras, you’ll probably use those fisheye lens maybe three times in your phone’s lifetime. It’s better to buy a phone with some useful gimmick like 6000 mAh battery and have 1.5 day life on a single charge.
Just jumped from Android to iOS, and I maintain Android phones for family, seen lots of both since the iPhone 4.
My advice…
Cheap out.
Either keep your phone or get an iPhone on firesale. There is no point to getting a Pro.
Android freaking sucks now, as you can either get a custom ROM and break a lot of apps. It will get worse once sideloading is gone. And flagship Android phones are awful. They either cost a fortune unlocked and ‘mostly stock,’ or they run absolutely horrid, spammy, battery sucking UIs (looking at you, Samsung).
If you want great pictures, grab a nice point and shoot with stabilization. They’re incredible now. In fact, on a recent trip, I discovered my 2008 Canon takes better zoom photos than brand new iPhones.
The phones in the midrange are getting to be better than the top end ones in my opinion. Decent enough build quality for the phone to last 3-4 years. Expensive enough that the bloatware is reduced. If the company does do a modified launcher it’s generally pretty clean.
I am liking the OnePlus 13R I picked up. Stable UI, decent battery life, and not a bad price. The stock launcher does a pretty decent job.
For my work phone I have a Pixel 8. I really regret buying it. I had to disable 30 different bloatware apps. Plus I have 4 apps that I have rejected all updates because they can’t be disabled. I also installed a launcher because the stock pixel UI is trash. The hardware is solid and works well once you clear out the buggy bloatware
Apple made a major fuckup with IOS26. I upgraded my iPad and felt nauseous from the blur effect almost instantly. I can’t completely get rid of it, just make it less horrific. Their “new” multitasking options I am not even bothering to turn on or try to use yet. This is like their 10th edition of multitasking. Let’s see if they get it right this time. Then I will bother to learn their “simple” process that usually involves having to read a manual and remember half a dozen new commands. Fuck it still takes me 2 or 3 attempts to get the the home screen without a button.
CatoblepasIf you haven’t tried yet, for your iPad try going Settings -> Accessibility-> Motion, and enable Reduce Motion and Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions. Both helped me, because I hated the blur effects too.
Yep I did it. There is still some annoying bits of it floating around that you can’t get rid of.
The only other thing I’ve found that helped was under Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> Reduce Transparency, the nausea-inducing design decisions really are baffling
DominusOfMegadeusAlternatively, go into Accessibility-> Display and Text Size and turn on Reduce Transparency. This pretty much eliminates the garbage transparent nonsense. I actually enjoy the motion effects and the one time I tried turning them off, I found it pretty jarring. But reduce transparency pretty much wipes it out. It’s a solid option.
talI do not game on phones, but my best experiences have, ironically, been with ‘gaming’ phones like the Razer Phone 2 and Asus phones. They have gigantic batteries, lots of RAM, and lean, stock UIs that let you disable/uninstall apps, hence they’re fast as heck and last forever. I only gave up my Razer Phone 2 because the mic got clogged up with dust, and I miss it.
While I kind of agree (though I don’t really like the “gamer” aesthetics), Asus only offers two major updates and two years of patches, which is quite short.
androidauthority.com/phone-update-policies-165863…
If someone games with their phone and plans to frequently upgrade for new hardware, they may not care. But if you get the hardware just to have a large battery and RAM, that may be a concern.
EDIT: Also, no mmWave support, which may or may not matter to someone.
Custom Roms like Graphene, Calyx are the answer. And there are quite a few finance apps that do work, look it up for the ones you actually need before switching.
Samsung is on my shit list. Their spammy, ad riddled UI is infuriating.
I don’t trust them. They lock their phones down and don’t let you remove their bloatware or block their ads/notifications.
Fuck them. Never buy Samsung.
Agree with this. Samsung has great hardware but I hate their software. I switched from them to iOS. Only thing I really hate in iOS is swipe typing and fucking awful autocorrect. Everything else is better than Samsung. They might also have a better camera but it’s hard to keep up with all the leapfrog.
As an Android user, the iOS keyboard is fucking horrendous and I don’t understand how people deal with that every single day.
I recall Swiftkey being less awful, but with the side benefit of a keylogger, courtesy of Microsoft.
I’m literally questioning my life choices right now thanks to this keyboard. Somehow they managed to make it worse in iOS 26. I regret ever installing this OS.
QuarterSwedeThe keyboard is bugged and someone JUST caught it on slow mo changing the user input. It’s a wild bug and explains a lot because the iOS keyboard and autocorrect used to the gold standard. It was sooooo good pre-ML.
DevolutioniOS allows you to switch keyboards.
ShadowI’ve been on Samsung for years and I don’t get this argument anymore. There’s no ads on my phone, and one ui is pretty smooth.
I do use my own launcher so maybe that covers it up, but new Samsung isn’t like what they were a long time ago.
they also didn’t donate any money to trump’s vanity projects unlike apple and google.
and one ui is pretty smooth.
Nah. It only stopped lagging, because the hardware got faster.
None of this is true. I hate notifications so I turn them off and then I don’t get them.
Even back then. I discovered on my Galaxy S3 (2011/2013?) that you have to buy some softwre from them, to edit the boot animations in their own proprietary format (a novum back then). Then they got Knox and stuff. Their entire bootchain is now a custom proprietary hackjob.
I agree and disagree. I switched from a Pixel to an S series and I have to say I like the Samsung better.
While the Samsung UI used to be a sore spot, I think the Pixel design language shift of the past couple years is far worse. All the big colorful pills with too much whitespace… Samsung brings back a proper notification shade with lots of quick buttons, like it used to be 3 or so versions ago with a Pixel. I put my custom launcher on basically forget it’s Samsung.
There’s spots all over Android that have been rough that Samsung just, smooths out. It’s like they’re actually using the phone and willing to take matters into their own hands when Google isn’t, because Google isn’t focused on AI assistants and letting everything else rot. Samsung lets you customize, whereas Pixel keeps walking you toward an iOS style experience one step at a time.
DeX, if you have a use for it, is awesome. During my lunch break at work can unplug my laptop from my dock, connect my phone, and have a personal workstation for watching videos, whatever. I also have a much better Private Folder with multiple apps. It’s like Samsung understands that with one device we need separation. Google has been saying a competitor to this is coming, but at this point it’s so far behind I’ll believe it when I see it.
Samsung doesn’t hold you hostage in format wars. My old Pixel in 20fucking23 couldn’t support external storage with anything but FAT32. That’s insane. It was screwing me up trying to easily back up a large file and that was no problem for the Samsung. Same with casting, Google is all in on Chromecast and nothing else, Samsung can CC but it can also Miracast. So now I can cast to any TV instead of only some.
Samsung’s hardware is usually better. They try new things sooner so you have a refined ultrasonic fingerprint sensor while Pixel was still doing illuminated, depending on your version the processors are better.
Now, places where Samsung sucks are obvious and you stated a few. No unlocking is bullshit. I own the phone, I should be able to unlock it. If you’re into tinkering then stay away, but Samsung’s do tend to have higher resale value, so if you want to get into ROMs then you can always sell the Samsung and grab a cheap used Pixel. Samsung kept the headphone jack and uSD around a little longer, but they’re both long gone on today’s models so that’s moot.
Samsung (and I can see where they’re coming from) was concerned with how much control Google had over Android so they made their own first party apps for everything. This means a lot of duplicate apps. I will say that while some can’t be easily uninstalled, they can be easily ignored. I just don’t use most of them and I’m fine. They don’t really force them on you or keep changing them to the default handler or anything. I’m OK with it, but I could see some people being annoyed.
That’s about it honestly… Samsung reminds me a bit of the early Nexus era days. Lots of customization, interesting tech, and work being put into the OS. Google is just plodding along, content to lock people into an iPhone clone and sell AI. I say give them both a try. If you pick up used or a refurb you can save a fortune and easily switch if you don’t like it without losing much if anything.
It’s been a while since I used Samsung. My work phone is a Samsung flip of some sort that gets powered on once a month.
However, it’s not just their phones that have me turned off. Their TVs built in OS is shit and they just had a whole lot of bad press for their fridges that will start showing ads. Not to mention how their appliances tend to have the shortest lifespan of comparably prices appliances.
Good hardware, but consistently anti consumer software.
My very fist Android phone was a Samsung and while it had all kinds of cool features like TV out and an IR blaster, the software never got updated. I ended up installing and tinkering with custom ROMs and that led me to the Nexus line when it first launched. I stayed with Google ever since because they kept the Nexus and A series affordable, and had a much nicer clean OS with constant updates.
When they switched from Nexus to Pixel they decided they wanted to price it like an iPhone, even though it totally lacked the polish and value proposition. I stuck with my Nexus until they introduced the A series. It was affordable and new, but lacked video out, wireless charging, and thr SD card. Things the Nexus line all had. It was the beginning of the iphone-ification of Android IMO, but there were no other good options because every other vendor abandoned their phones after a year.
Now several years later things have only gotten worse. The amount of brands selling Android phone that are actually decent is like 2, maybe 3, they all are just slate designs with nothing interesting, and only a few actually give you proper updates. Samsung stands out in that crowd for having the most interesting phones and still decent support, but I agree that they are too expensive when new, and the locked bootloader sucks.
As you mentioned I’m 100% I’m just talking about Samsung’s phones here. Samsung as an entire company is one I would stay away from in most cases. I also would never buy one of their appliances and while I may have considered their TVs in the past due to them being an excellent panel manufacturer, I would think twice today.
Totally fair.
I do admit the phones look cool and have some very nice features. But they’ve been on my “never buy” list for a long time for all their products, phones included.
I think not being able to uninstall Facebook was one of the breaking points when I last trialed their phone.
Eww, yeah that’s not cool. Was that Samsung forcing that on the phone or the carrier? I know US carries are atrocious for their uninstallable apps like that. Regardless shame on Samsung and the others for allowing it. The only apps that came on mine were Samsung apps.
Regardless, your dislike is completely justified. I really wish someone else could step up and make the phone we need. Repairable, jack/slot, small-midsize, proper updates, but I just don’t think the market is there. The iphone-ification of smartphones is basically complete, and now Microsoft is trying to do it to the desktop. In the future there’s going to be a lot of old people telling stories to their grandkids about how they used to own a computer and choose what was installed…
I was a lifelong android user, mostly pixels, and switched to a an iPhone 14 pro 4 years ago. This is the first phone I’ve had that’s lasted 3+ years, that’s never crashed, and still runsas quickly and smoothly as when I bought it. Apple would have to seriously fuck something up for me to ever go back to an android.
zewmI’m the opposite. I switched to Apple in 2018 and their most recent changes have made me start looking at Android again.
My biggest gripe is the crappy liquid UI and terribly low QA they have now. I’ve never had a more buggy experience in my life.
If I ever figure out how to move all my 2FA stuff over to another phone I will most likely switch.
It’s atrocious. I’ve been an Apple user since 2007, and I am almost ready to move everything I can to Linux, and set up home assistant. Apple Home is straight garbage anyway; it’s barely functional, and they have abandoned the software.
Yeah it took me a while to get used to swiping to go back but I think I prefer it now.