It has been long debated, is Android really better than iOS or is it the other way around? Peter Moriarty takes on the challenge of switching from one platform to another for a week and he shares how it was like. There are ups and downs on both OS and Peter discusses it unbiasedly even though he's the guy who lives and breathes Google. Get some insights and share your own experience in the comments below.
Here's a summary of the advantages of both platforms:
Advantages of iOS
- Overall app experience is epic
- Very minimal bugs if there’s any
- Seamless app switching
- Notification management is awesome
- Best for 4K recording
- Can use an external microphone for video recording
- Fingerprint works 99% of the time
Advantages of Android
- Smooth integration to anything Google
- Pixel camera and photos are better
- Google voice AI is way superior to Siri
- Dictation is definitely more precise
- Duplicate apps are possible to segregate work and personal profiles
- A wide array of customization
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Transcription:
Good day guys, Peter Moriarty here. In this video I'm going to take you through my experience of being forced to switch to iOS for a whole week, and how that went for me as a Googler googly person using Google every single day. And of course my Android phone, did I miss it? Did I survive? Find out in this video?
So firstly a quick bit of back story. I have been on an Android phone for a couple of years now. I switched over from iOS when I tried out the Pixel and I actually bought a second hand Pixel 1 for $500 on Gumtree, thought I'd give it a try and didn't end up going back to iOS at the time. I think I had an iPhone 7, ended up giving that to my partner at the time and I didn't look back.
I stuck around with Android, really liked the operating system, and the key thing for me has always been the really nice tight integration with Google's tools, drive and documents. And then you know, the assistant came out and all of that's been really nice. But because I'm running a G Suite business and working with the Google tools every day in my business and in my personal life as well, that integration with Android really went swimmingly for me.
With the media side of my business in recording videos and having to work with things like drones and 4K footage, well that stuff still tends to work a little bit better on iOS. So I've always had this kind of inkling of do I switch back? Some of my vlogs that I've recorded the front facing camera on an iPhone is better than an Android device. Using an external microphone, you can't do that on the Google Pixel, so I've had to use a backup iPhone for that. So this has been something that's still in my life. iOS has still been around, even though my primary phone has always been Android.
Now disaster struck. A couple of months ago I dropped my Pixel phone, which is now the Pixel 2 XL, that's the one I'm currently using, and it landed face down. I've got a great case on it, but it happened to land face down and a rock hit it, completely smashed the screen. It survived for a couple of weeks. I thought that maybe I could make it last until October when my renewal is due, but no, I had to go ahead and replace it.
So in that time where the phone was completely dead, I switched back to iOS for a week. What I ended up doing was just taking my secondary phone that I'd been using for recording vlogs and things like that, popping my SIM card in and just seeing what it was like.
I'm going to cover what that experience was like. What I liked, what I didn't like, and my verdict on whether or not I'm going to be switching back to iOS.
Let's talk about the things that I liked. There is a long list of what I liked with iOS. Now, number one is just the overall experience. I've been a Mac user for years and years and as well as using the Pixelbook for my main kind of workhorse laptop, I've still got an iMac in the office that I use for both editing videos from time to time, but also just kind of as my main workstation when I'm not using my Chromebook.
The thing is with the Apple Ecosystem, everything just works. The app experience, especially on iOS is because it's so locked down by Apple, the apps just work perfectly. There's no weird bugs. There's no strange things you just need to put up with or deal with which happened in the Android world, everything just works the way that Apple should. Now, sure, from time to time there are bugs with iOS, but they are absolutely minor considering what you have to put up with day to day on Android.
Let me give you some examples. One of the weird things that happen on my Android phone, and this is a bug specifically related to Pixels, is when I'm using the phone on speakerphone mode, every five or 10 minutes the speaker phone will just switch off. It'll go back to what's the normal speaker. So I've got a click speaker off and then click speaker back on again and it works. So weird stuff like that just doesn't happen on iOS.
The next one is if I'm launching an app and it's a bit slow to launch, sometimes with my ADD brain, I'll go back to the home screen and I'll open up another app, but then the first app is still loading in the background and I'm in the second app and then the first app steals the display. It goes back to that first app and that's pretty damn annoying, especially when I'm trying to work fast, and of course with my ADD brain, do two things at once. That's another thing that happens.
Thirdly, the notifications are an absolute mess. Trying to customize your notifications on Android is an absolute maze. I never know whether they're going to be on or off or do they push through the do not disturb or not. The notifications is just really hard to configure.
In iOS it's so refreshingly simple. You go into notifications, you go to manage them and an app can either have badges, it can make sounds, it can have pop ups on the notification screen or on the display screen, and that's it. You only have four options.
With Android there's about 10 or 12 different ways to configure your application notifications and honestly, I never know if I'm going to get notified about something or not. Then Android's got persistent notifications. They've got do not disturb. I'm just going to stop talking about it. It gets confusing even trying to explain it. It's total no go zone.
I think overall there's still that lingering ethos of customization with Android. Android has always been the more open platform where you can do a little bit more of what you want. You can change the system settings, you can change the background workings of the phone and you get access to that. Whereas Apple are very much a sandboxed and closed experience where you get a better experience but there's less options to customize.
Let's get back to what I liked about iOS. The fingerprint reader was surprisingly something that was much better. Now the Pixel's got a great one. It's on the back of the phone and I've got to say it's fairly convenient, it's easy to use. You know, the little button here, you just click one button with your forefinger as you pick up the phone and it's nice and easy.
The problem with it though, even though it's fast and it's fairly accurate, for me it only works about four out of five times. What I find is if my finger's a bit sweaty or if it's got a little bit of dirt on it, it doesn't always work. But with the iOS, because you're using your thumb, and I don't know, maybe it's firmness of that press, it works 99 times out of 100. So that experience of unlocking the phone with my thumb, it's always using the fingerprint reader to actually unlock the phone, but oddly it's just not something that ever gives me trouble. Whereas the Android phone, I know one time out of five I'm going to have to wipe my finger or try it a second time before that fingerprint scan actually works.
You might not think that's too much of a problem, but with the fingerprint protection on most of the apps that I'm using, like banking apps, like LastPass, and some of the other apps that I use for actually locking down the phone, that gets quite annoying because I'm using the fingerprint reader quite a lot during the day and if it's not perfect it's going to start frustrating me. Finally, here's something that I didn't think I would expect from iOS.
On Android I've got a pretty simple setup but I also use Android for work which puts all of my work apps in kind of like a sandbox, aside from all of my personal apps. That's really great because I've got two different versions of Gmail and I can immediately open my work email or my personal email. With my calendar, I have separate calendars there even though I've got them shared together. But with Google Keep and Google Tasks, you can see on my home screen, I literally have two sets of icons because I'm constantly going between personal and business tasks, or between personal and business notes.
With iOS you can't have the same setup. You can't download two copies of the same app and have one signed in with your work Google profile and one with a personal or a home profile. So I thought that was going to be a big problem for me. What you have to do when you're in iOS is actually open up the app and flip between the different profiles manually. And when you switch between those two different Google profiles, then it's going to let you get access to that data.
I thought that was going to be a pain, but to be honest, it wasn't too bad. It's, it's fairly quick and certainly a couple of button presses, and that's one of the main reasons I switched over to Android is because I knew that I had these separate logins for my apps and I wanted to keep those apps separate. But I've got to say it wasn't as bad as I expected on iOS, and one of the things that I thought would really frustrate me didn't end up being all that bad.
Let's cover off a couple of things that were even on both of the platforms. I've said many times before that iOS and Android app for app are pretty darn similar. Your different apps, across both platforms nowadays, if you are using Airbnb on iOS or Android or if you're using your banking app or if you're using Google Drive, the features and the operations of those apps are pretty much the same. Even though they've developed natively on both the different platforms, the experience that you get is going to be pretty similar. So the actual apps aren't really better on either one of the platforms, of course, in my opinion.
One of the things I was expecting to be different was things like payments. Using Apple Pay versus using Google Pay ended up being really great on both platforms. There's a slightly different process for them. Apple, you actually have to click the button while you're doing it. On Android, as long as your phone's unlocked, it's automatically going to use your most up to date card. But rewind three years ago when Android phones started rolling out Android Pay, it wasn't actually accepted by all banks. And Apple pay also was even worse at being accepted by some of the Australian banks and what we found was certain cards would work with certain devices. But nowadays everyone pretty much works across all the different devices, which is a nice touch.
Next up, let's cover the bad stuff, and what I've found challenging about the Apple Ecosystem. There are a few small things where Apple doesn't allow you to customize that were a bit frustrating for me. One of those is Bluetooth devices.
There's no way that I could find to rename my Bluetooth devices. So I'm connected to my cars, I'm connected to a couple of different Bluetooth headsets, I'm connected to some audio visual devices and I couldn't rename them. So some of those throw up weird model numbers, especially one of my cars that I drive all the time. And for that reason it's a bit difficult to know if I'm trying to troubleshoot, reconnecting, just which device I need to click to actually force a Bluetooth connection. That was frustrating and it's a very Appley thing not to let you rename or customize something as simple as Bluetooth.
Next up is, I gotta say I missed the camera. iOS is better for recording videos and I should say Apple devices are better for recording videos, but the Pixels photos, just with that amazing camera and the software attached to that camera, I can't get the same shots on iOS that I can get on Android, and I honestly missed it. My shots on the Pixel are absolutely phenomenal and even though it's a Pixel 2, it's not even the newest camera, it still takes absolutely amazing shots every time. And I missed it.
My final point to cover is why I could never make the switch back over to iOS. And so far the points that I've covered, honestly I was leaning towards iOS. I really love the overall experience, and Apple just delivers a product that works. Whereas Android can really feel a bit junky at times.
But the big area that iOS lets you down is dictation. Siri just sucks. I mean it's been so long, they've had so long to improve the product, and the voice recognition just isn't all that great.
On Android you have the amazing AI machine learning driven Google voice product and it is just absolutely flawless, not only in picking up individual words but constructing whole sentences and discovering what your intent is, and use that in this AI analytics to predict what you want to say. I use this feature every single day.
On my Android device, on my Pixel, I just click the button right next to the keyboard and I can start talking. I don't really bother typing anymore. As long as I'm in an environment which is even down the street or in the car if I can click one button and automatically start talking and have that transcribed in a simple and accurate way, well there's just no point in me bothering with typing. And it just sucks on iOS.
With Apple you can download the Google Gboard application, and with that application, you can have a custom Gboard from Google. You can do all the cool things like the swipey typing and you can use dictation as well, but dictation is a two step process. Google has to go out of the keyboard app and then come back into the Apple app and that's an Apple restriction, and it just doesn't work.
Aside from that, the Google assistant of course isn't there as well. The Google assistant is fantastic. When you're on the go, you can use Siri to open the Google assistant app and then you can use the Google assistant. But forget about that, it's a total pain. Whereas with the Google device, you can say the magic words, Hey Google, and you will automatically start. Oh, and all my are going to go off now. You could automatically start talking and it's going to help you out with whatever you need.
So that's my final summary. I loved iOS. It was a great experience. I still carry this second iPhone around with me for recording videos and controlling my drone and other bits and pieces but my primary device will remain the Pixel. I'll probably upgrade to the Pixel 3 sometime soon, or maybe even wait till the Pixel 4 comes out. But I'm very firmly in the Android camp, I'm really loving it.
For you, what decision should you make? It's completely up to you. If you're someone who may take advantage of using voice dictation then I would thoroughly recommend Android, it's far superior, if you want to talk instead of typing. But you do have to put up with the slight junkiness and all the other bits and pieces that come along with Android, and that maybe too much of a trade off for some Apple users.
Anyway, take care. I will catch you in the next one. Bye.
