I've been coming around to this way of thinking more and more lately. Apple has a clear business model that involves selling high-end phones and other hardware and taking a percentage of app sales, not selling me to advertisers. I've found at least 5 different privacy settings buried in various places around the Android menus in a confusing way (instead of just having a single switch in the privacy settings menu), and for years iOS has had a much better security track record. The only real down side I can see is that it's not open source (not that Android is either, but there are Android based alternatives that are), but on balance I'd rather use something where the economic pressure is to do right by their customers, not something where their customers are the product.<p>Apple has serious problems, but on balance it seems to be the better choice. I also tend to agree with the OP that the iPhone SE is a reasonable size, unlike every Android phone on the market. I just really wish there were a decent chat client that supported XMPP-based services, that's really all that's stopped me from moving over (my carrier lets me receive SMS/MMS messages to an XMPP address and receive calls via SIP, so it's rather important to me).
Notifications, as you rightly mentioned, are a huge problem with Android. Some manufacturers implement battery saving measures which force kill applications so they can no longer process notifications.<p>I used to work at a team messaging startup Flock and we used to get a lot of complaints from users about missing notifications. We were able to detect impacted users and reduce complaints substantially using duplicate acks from xmpp fcm and app. The details are outlined here in case anyone wants to check out: <a href="https://hackernoon.com/notifications-in-android-are-horribly-broken-b8dbec63f48a" rel="nofollow">https://hackernoon.com/notifications-in-android-are-horribly...</a>
I made the switch to a refurbished 6s a couple of months ago when we started work on a new iOS app, and I am happy that I did. For the foreseeable future, I'll be purchasing iPhones. (I even purchased the recently announced Mac Mini in order to access the Apple software ecosystem; though, I suspect that I'll continue to prefer my Ubuntu laptop for productivity).<p>Why switch? After all this time (embarrassed to say), I've finally started to take my data privacy seriously. I really respect Google as an engineering company, and even as a product company. Products like Search/PageRank, Maps, StreetView, SkyMap, Translate, Books/Scholar, AdWords/AdSense/AdMob, Places, Trends, TensorFlow (and CoLab w/ free 12 hr sessions of TPU or GPU), BigTable, Gmail, Glass, and of course Android all are/were really great products. The only problem: those offerings are for the direct purpose of collecting your personal data (or the indirect purposes of making their other products - which collect your data - more efficient, or to bring more people online to collect data from).<p>I would love Google as a product company; I hate them as an ad company (85%+ of revenues resulting from advertising activities). I have migrated from, or I am currently migrating from, every Google product with the exception of YouTube (difficult to break from that, so I try to mitigate by having multiple accounts) and TensorFlow.<p>Notifications on Android were never an issue for me. Maybe I didn't have a similar suite of apps as OP. (iOS notifications have been more annoying thus far).
The number of requests sent to Google or Apple seems like a poor metric to judge privacy impact. A single request with my bank account number carries a lot more information about me than 1,000 with my battery status.
The worlds really could use a "free" mobile OS. I was sad that Firefox OS never saw daylight. Im on android and dislike google very much, though not as much as I disslike Apple. Purism is making a Libre 5 mobile, I hope something like that could really break through. Imagine a desktop/server world without linux. Thats would be awefull. Yet thats where we are with mobiles today
I also have an SE and love it. The OP, and various posts above are slightly wrong to say that Apple is a hardware company. Apple is a PRODUCT company; They design, sell, and support the whole product. That’s why is all Just Works, which is what most folks of any ilk want. Even their Unix (basically BSD) Just Works. Yeah, a little more Open would be great, but when I want to build something else, like a house, I really don’t need to be worrying about recompiling my screwdriver. Like the OP said, I want a phone that’s a phone and works. I want a Unix that’s stabdards compliant and works. I want a laptop that works. And I’m willing to pay a little more for someone else to build and maintain the roads and bridges so I can get where I want to go. And, yeah, not to spy on me while I’m getting there.
A bit painful to read considering the iPhone SE-series is now discontinued. (Despite that the SE is still a very good phone. Wish more manufacturers made devices with these dimensions and polish.)
I put lineage on two devices and I must say it's shockingly refreshing to be able to have some say in how much Google you get. I am used to the idea of OEM and carrier bloatware but it's surprising how much unwanted Google software appears in a stock image. On lineage I am pretty happy with the "nano" set of OpenGApps which is about the amount of Googleyness I want. I install a few more from Play on top.
To say that I'm ditching Android is a pretty incomplete statement - because there is no one Android. It really matter which flavour of Android we are talking about. And which specific device. For example, the bloatware might not be a problem on a unlocked Pixel device.<p>At this point, both iOS and Android are in pretty stable states. It comes down to individual preferences. Author primarily seems to have an issue with Google, which again is justified.
On the notifications part, I had a Huawei phone for a bit and encountered the same issue. Huawei does some crazy things to keep the battery from draining. It does kill almost all background apps. There are some settings to stop this but it seems like a crap shoot whether it decided to listen to them. I thought android had gone down hill and eventually tested out an S9 and realized it was the Huawei android flavor that did this.
The second a pure linux phone without googles bullshit (which includes allowing manufacturer and carrier bullshit) comes out, I'm switching. Until then I'm sticking with my blackberry android because at least I have a linux underside and a foss appstore.<p>Google had such a good opportunity with android, and shit the bed with it, abusing users and letting manufacturers and carriers join in on the abuse.<p>There should be a "Right to Root".
<i>Yes their hardware is grossly overpriced, but the flagship Android phones are pretty much inline with Apple these days.</i><p>So which is it, Apple is grossly over-priced or inline with what a decent Android phone costs? And then the author goes on to complain about the data firehouse back to Google and bloatware. Are we yet seeing that price is not always measured in dollars? I don’t mean to pick on the author, I guess it’s just interesting to watch the process of coming to this realization.<p>But the notifications, holee-shit. That seems like one of those “under a full moon...” reports, but others here confirm. I’m so speechless, I don’t even have a snarky Apple fanboi comment.
A lot of people want to ditch both Android and Apple, so /e/ is kicking off as a purely Google-free FOSS OS the author might like more than Lineage, once it gets a little more developed:<p><a href="https://www.xda-developers.com/e-google-free-lineageos-fork-nexus-oneplus-xiaomi/" rel="nofollow">https://www.xda-developers.com/e-google-free-lineageos-fork-...</a><p>We're overdue for some viable third option.
I'm also thinking about ditching android, for a completely different reason.<p>I want a premium phone. I like good cameras, and big fat CPUs. So I've been using Samsung phones for a while. I currently have an S6, which I have been pretty happy with. But it has come to my attention that it has received its last update about 6 months ago. Samsung only sends updates for two years.<p>Having an internet-connected device that no longer gets patches? Seems like a terrible idea to me.<p>Apple supports their phones for 5 years. So that's the direction I'm currently looking.
I ditched Android 2+ years ago for... Windows Mobile. :)<p>While I did so for purely financial reasons (Microsoft was in the process of bailing out, so was putting their stock on fire sale and I couldn't resist, ecosystem disadvantages notwithstanding), I've come to appreciate the design and will be sad once I have to leave (I'm still using a Windows 10 Mobile Alcatel IDOL 4s as my daily driver).<p>To me, Windows Mobile had some of the best parts of Android (hardware variety) and Apple (regular OS/security updates for all).
I'm currently in a similar spot, but am very surprised you did not mention MicroG, which is an open reimplementation of the Google APIs. There seem to be some issues with GCM (or, more precisely, the newer replacement - uhm, FCM?), but imho it's worth a try. If you already have a LineageOS-supported device, you can grab a prebuilt LineageOS+MicroG image from the MicroG site.<p>Disclaimer: That's pure theory. I'm still figuring out how to do a custom build of LOS16+MicroG for my device, since it's only on LOS14.
"I tried replacing Android with Lineage OS on a old phone I had. Whilst that meant I didn’t have any Google Apps on my device, it was still Android underneath. Also many apps kept complaining that I didn’t have Google services on the device."<p>An alternative is to install microG [1], which reimplements assorted Google services. YMMV, but I've been able to run ~70% of all Android apps with no problems.<p>[1] <a href="https://microg.org/" rel="nofollow">https://microg.org/</a>
What about iOS being a walled garden? Moving to a proprietary OS isn't going to safeguard the interests of data security in the long term.<p>Also see the rich custom rom scene for Android phones, with highly active communities building rooms for even phone models long abandoned by their
manufacturers.
I wish people would stop using the term “overpriced”. If it was overpriced, then Apple would lower the price or stop selling it. Apple set the price. They determine if the price is correct based on their sales numbers, not your perceived value of the Bill Of Materials for the phone.
I won't ditch Android for Apple. Apple is restricted, Safari is a tragedy for the web and prices are too expensive for the value.<p>Somehow I dislike everything Apple represents, and reminds. The design, the simplicity which comes from restrictiveness. Even the lightest Linux window manager like i3wn, is better than all of os/x does.<p>I will just wait till a true open source option comes.
The best thing about Android is that you can change it (Huawei is useless). Acquire root permissions and any app can be deleted. There is also an option to install a fully free and open source Google Services implementation (if you need them so much). Finally, notifications are caused by vendor specific problems, clean Android is fully functional.
This guy was a saviour. I was poking round his blog after reading this, and found his review for elementaryOS where he mentions how to get the system tray working. I've been searching for months to get it working.
I remember when Ubuntu tried making a mobile phone OS( Ubuntu Touch ), but it never was a commercial success. I was extremely dissatisfied to hear about Google and their phone upload requests. It makes me question whether Android is a good choice after all( not that I agree with Apple, either ). That is the problem with modern-day tech, there is not enough choice in the market. Everything is either bought out or choked out by larger, dominating manufacturers, i.e. Google & Apple.
After my old cell phone broke and just after I bought a new desktop computer, my newer cell phone broke bad right after warranty. It was hard to justify another outlay of money so I bought a Nokia 3310.<p>Pretty close to a dumb cell phone. For the most part nothing in my life got worse. It isn't that hard to ditch a real smart phone..well if your life is spent in front of a computer for your job anyway.<p>However, the Nokia 3310 is not a good dumb cell phone. The text messaging application is broken for messages for group messages and and multiple messages from the same person in a row. Basic stuff. Text messaging with the old style number pad entry is really as horrible as we remember. Surely there are better alternatives for key entry on a dumb phone in this age. Despite this, it does its job as a cell phone. It almost always has a charge, and it gets reception where my old cell phone would not, and despite its size you can always hear its ringer. So there are pluses. It does contain a web browser and 3G connectivity. I can use its web browser to read HN, and I do pretty frequently, but on most sites the formatting is always horribly wrong. Clicking a link frequently takes you to a different address than was clicked.
Personally I've ditched Google services (like GMail and contacts) from a little while, however I do not find any viable alternatives to Android not as a phone, not as a limited mobile MUA but as a personal navigation devices.<p>I tried both FOSS PND and classic TomTom's/Garmin's etc, none of them while having few strong points can really beat GMail (for now).<p>I hope Purism can create a FOSS phone but I'm not too optimistic since many tried it and fail, including many with far more resources than Pursim but for now change a jail for another only for background traffic it's not worth my money... I simply choose an economic device (MotoG 4G) and stick with it as long as it will work...
Honestly, who really cares that much about what smartphone you have these days? You have one with a good enough battery and the same apps as anyone else, and the speed is all fast enough to not notice. At this point the technology has converged.
Really in line with my own thinking. I bought an iPhone SE 6 months ago for the reasons he stated. The one thing I dislike is that you don't have a Finder type of functionality. But there are some 3rd party apps that do it well enough (I think one was called Documents).<p>Also it is easy to find a protectable huge case for these phones since they already exists for eons in the digital industry. I sometimes drop my phone in front of people to see what they are missing: the absence of broken screens.
Based on the stated concerns, data sent to Google, bundled apps that can't be removed...<p>And given the author's interest in FOSS...<p>Really interesting Lineage failed. He claims apps kept nagging about the lack of Google app support. How pervasive is that? Could he have just found a couple app alternatives rather than throwing them all out at once?<p>It's hard to disentangle whether the problems we have are with our phones, with the OS, or with the app ecosystem.<p>(Quick edit for clarity.)
I bought a Pixel 2. It had Google system apps, not Huawei system apps.<p>My last phone was an iPhone 6 plus. It had Apple system apps that I couldn't uninstall.<p>I don't get it.
I was hoping the author was going to list alternative stable mobile OSes with privacy and users in mind, or maybe lay down the reasons for starting a project hard forking an existing OS or something...but he literally just said he wants to move to iOS???<p>Honestly, (and personally) I feel better knowing that I am running an Android ROM with publicly available code on Github than any iOS any day
"Most of the bloatware on Android devices I’ve used over the years cannot be removed as they’re marked as system apps."<p>I believe you can use the Application Manager in Android to disable any of these Apps, even though you cannot remove them.<p>Just don't disable an App the phone actually needs.
Had the same problem with my S9+, battery would just drop throughout the day. I ended up disabling a bunch of Samsung apps and trying to find the others that were giving me wake locks and now I can happily say I get almost two days, with 6 to 8 hours of screen in time.
The "ditching Google" guy can't find a way to stop using Android Pay or Google plus? Using Google plus means your still 100% in Google's ecosystem. These are also 2 of the easiest things to stop using.
Google does let you turn off location tracking and web search history and I believe them. Apple has a much higher walled garden, do you have to trust them completely? I am on Android and have considered this.
I see a pro Apple sentiment here for privacy, just my 2 cents.<p>Apple is constantly raising their prices ( asp ) and they won't share unit sales in their next stock report.<p>So I'm curious what this will do for the future.
I made the opposite move last month. Ditched my iphone 6+ and went with a Samsung Galaxy S9+.<p>Apple soured me with their bullshit around throttling the CPU to make the battery last the same. No wonder my phone was performing like shit.<p>But here's the bad news, this new phone I got is still not so hot. I still run out of battery despite working from home and only using the phone for google maps and calendar/slack when I'm out of office. I don't game on it or anything.<p>For my next phone I want to find a much more inexpensive phone, swappable battery, with a long-ass battery time. I would go with a Nokia but I don't know if their classic phone supports google maps.
He missed the thing that's getting me really close to leaving Android after being a devout user since the G1 (with a short 3-5 month stint on an Iphone 6). I really, really dislike IOS and I absolutely don't want to be more tied to Apple than I am with my MBP and Hackintosh (technically I'm just tied to OSX right now).<p>RCS (the Android attempt at iMessage) is STILL not a real-world thing. Txt messaging and MMS on Android is still an absolute joke. My Samsung S8 has, what, a 12-megapixel camera (I never look at these specs anymore) that can take incredible pictures and videos but if I want to send them to someone I have to jump through a bunch of hoops. Upload them to dropbox, share it, send my friend the link, hope they click it vs it just playing in their messaging app.<p>If I send that video via text message it gets compressed to a 500kb blurry mess. I frequently have to explain to people that Androids don't take terrible pictures, my phone takes amazing pictures. The problem is when I send them to you I'm limited to the maximums of text messaging because phone providers haven't rolled out RCS. It also doesn't help that the Snapchat app back when I used to use it just took a screenshot of our camera app. That further shouted, "Android sucks at pictures, what a peasant phone!"<p>Tmobile has RCS now but it only works between Tmobile Android users who are using the stock messaging app. They might even need a recent phone with a specific version of Android, I'm not sure there. They rolled this out in June 2018. 2018! How long has imessage been around? And I still have never seen it actually kick in because 90% of the people I txt are on iphones. I also HAVE to use the built-in Messaging app to get this because the RCS API wasn't (not sure if it is now) public so other messaging apps couldn't send over RCS. If I use the Samsung messaging app then I lose the web messaging feature that the Google Messaging app gives me. The Google Messaging app is terrible, though, it doesn't even have the ability to click a person's name and see all of the media shared between us like the good messaging apps do. I have to literally scroll and scroll and scroll to see a picture that I've been sent.<p>There are all these tradeoffs just for messaging. Do I want an easy web experience so I don't have to pick my phone up every time I get a text? Then I lose the file library when you click a contacts name. Do I want RCS? I'm not even sure which Messaging app to use for it. It's either Samsung Messaging or I need to download Tmobile messaging.<p>I don't follow it but I don't believe ATT/Verizon are even going to roll out RCS, I believe they have their own implementation coming (somedayTM). Unless their "Advanced Messaging" is just RCS. Will that work with Tmobile users? Or will it just be between ATT customers?<p>I have plenty of other complaints about Android lately. Privacy, per-app notifications are a mess.<p>I LOVE the customization of Android and the lack of it is what I dislike about IOS but I'm to the point where I just want a smooth UX.<p>edit: Before I get the "Use Whatsapp/etc" that's just not an option. Google Hangouts was SOMEWHAT ubiquitous between my friends a few years ago and was great but if I'm taking pictures of my house for a contractor, or shooting pictures of my Jeep offroading to random Jeep friends and what not I'm not going to go "Are you on WhatsApp?" each time. I know these limits are because of carriers and not Google/Android specifically.
It's rather common knowledge that most vendors that aren't Google or Nokia put a load of crap ware on their devices that can't be removed. Duh.<p>He also hasn't really ditched Android yet, since his iPhone hasn't even been delivered yet.<p>I don't get the point of this blog post.
I am not sure how people are figuring this out now. It's only common sense given googles business model and their history that your android phone is nothing more than a tracking and data generation device. I am sure Apple has it's flaws but Google uses Android to double down on selling your info.<p>Be smart, pick up an old Blackberry 10 device and use its Android emulator.
> I’m never going to completely get rid of Google, that’s impossible at this point<p>And here's the crux of why I just don't bother, then again it's not really that big of a deal to me that I'm the "product".<p>I'll probably regret it some day, but I'm hoping that I won't.
As they say, when there's a will - there's a way.<p>The author clearly did not evaluate all of the alternatives, and simply jumped from one walled garden to another.<p>Bloatware, adware, and battery life are cited as his reasons. But he could have rooted his phone in 5 minutes then deleted all the bloatware and google apps in an instant. Add microG and adaway on top, and you have a nice ad-free system with much better battery life.<p>All he had to do was research.
What I want to be able to do with a phone:<p>- calling<p>- texting<p>- taking pictures<p>- occasionally recording sound<p>- music<p>- directions<p>- occasionally, an alarm clock, a calendar and notes<p>- web surfing is a nice to have and I use it now that I have it.<p>- the ability to run a Debian Chroot and an X server is a nice to have.<p>Lineage 15 (soon 16) with latest updates, without Google apps does that brilliantly well, and I get a solid 6 to 10 days of battery life.<p>No emails (but k-9 mail works well if needed, and the webmail too), no chat. Chat would be possible (and I will probably want that in the future) with many applications like Signal, Riot, Conversations, maybe even WhatsApp (I haven't tested - not interested).<p>Directions with OsmAnd gives me great offline functionality, allowing for a 2€/month phone plan.<p>I get all notifications I want in a timely manner, which are texts and calls. No more.<p>edit: Oh, and installing apps without the phone needing any email address.<p>On iOS, I would not have such a freedom.<p>Next step: a blob-free phone, or no phone at all.