Last night, I was in the middle of very, very close Vainglory match when, to my horror, the screen froze – my iPad’s battery had finally given out. I ran upstairs, grabbed my iPhone, launched the app…and connected directly into the same match. Despite my nearly minute-long absence from the game, my team and I managed to squeak out a victory.
It was the most memorable moment I’ve had playing a video game in a long, long time.
Today, Dropbox announced support for iOS8’s sharing system:
You can now count Dropbox among the third-party apps that work with Apple’s sharing system, as of today. The company just pushed out a new update to its iOS app that inserts a “save to Dropbox” option in the sharing pane for certain types of files.
In the comments of that article, someone asked a perfectly valid question:
I’m a rare Android user within my group of friends. I’d say something around 90% of the people I hang out with have iPhones and almost all of them assume their iPhone has the latest and greatest technology available on the market. I’m honestly not trying to troll, but could someone provide a list or a few features that iPhone has than Android doesn’t?
Historically, iOS has been more polished, while Android has been more feature-filled. With the release of iOS8, the two operating systems are closer to parity than ever before, but there are still certainly differences, and there are features my Android phone had that I still miss on my iPhone – the ability to set default apps, more powerful background processing, and custom keyboards that actually work being just some of those. Asking what features iOS has that Android doesn’t made for an interesting philosophical question – when people think about iPhones and iPads, the benefits they think of are usually on the hardware side, not on the software side. Still, there are definitely things iOS does that Android doesn’t – here’s what I came up with:
Of course, as I said at the beginning, this is largely a thought experiment – at the end of the day, iOS and Android aren’t all that different anymore, so it’s less about the OS and more about the hardware and ecosystem you want to invest in. There are still some things Android does better, and there are still some things iOS does better, but for the most part, you get roughly the same experience on both platforms, regardless of what die-hards want you to believe.
9to5Mac reports:
Following the success of OS X Snow Leopard for Macs in 2009, one of iOS 9’s standout ‘features’ will be a directed focus on stabilizing and optimizing the operating system.
This would be great news, if true. Android and iOS are at near-feature-parity these days – both OSes do certain things a little better and certain things a little worse, but overall they both provide very similar smartphone experiences. We’re starting to reach the end of what these devices can do without some hardware innovation, especially in the battery area. Now, it’s time for both Apple and Google to slow down and do a bit of polishing.
Another year, another daily driver update. This is a big one (no pun intended) – my move from using an Android phone for almost three years, back to using an iPhone.
Old and Busted: HTC One (M7)
New Hotness: iPhone 6 Plus
The iOS vs. Android debate is a never ending quagmire that I don’t really want to venture into here, suffice it to say that in January of 2015, I decided to try using an iPhone again, and it turns out I really liked it. There’s a variety of reasons, but really, at the end of the day, it came down to battery life and camera performance. This is a fantastic phone, if you can put up with iOS and the somewhat-absurd size.
Two weeks ago, I purchased an iPhone 6 Plus, largely due to my issues with battery life on Android phones. If you’ve been following my posts, you’ve probably figured out that I’ve decided to keep the iPhone and stick with iOS for awhile. I wish I could say I had some grand, all-consuming revelation, but really, it comes down to the same reason I decided to try an iPhone again in the first place: battery life.
My rule for the last two weeks was a simple one: if I was going to keep the iPhone, it had to last all day, every day, only being plugged in at night when I get to bed. Day two (New Year’s Eve) was actually a close call – it came off the charger early for work, and was used heavily throughout the day to coordinate my NYE party, stream music, etc. It scraped by with 10% left when I finally went to bed at 2 AM.
Since that day, though, I’ve come nowhere close to hitting that 10% mark. Sitting at home right now, after work, 11 or so hours after my phone came off the charger, my phone is at about 70% percent. When I go to bed, I will likely have more than 50% remaining – probably closer to 60%, actually. That means I could have used my phone way, way, way more, and still had battery to spare. One morning, I went running for two and a half hours, with RunKeeper tracking in the background the whole time, streaming podcasts to my Bluetooth headphones, and still had 88% battery left.
These numbers are about average from what I’ve seen in my two weeks of usage. They are also quite possibly irrelevant to you, as we likely live in different places, work in different places, and use our phones very differently. It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison to anything except my own previous experiences with phones – and in that regard, I can say it’s exceptional. I rarely play games or stream video, but I also don’t baby it – I simply use it when I need it. You know, like a tool should be used.
The key to this is standby time: when the phone’s screen is off, it is actually asleep, unless I’m intentionally doing something in the background, or it’s running one of the apps I’ve decided I want running in the background. It’s a bit of a revelation to use a phone whose battery life I don’t have to worry about, at all – in that regard, it’s more like having an iPad Nano than an iPhone. The iPad is a device I use every day without concern for the battery – and my phone now falls squarely in that same category. Until recently, I never would have thought that possible.
I’m not going to pretend there aren’t Android phones which, under the right conditions, would provide me the same results – I’m sure those Android phones exist. The problem is deeper than that: after owning three Android phones, and an Android tablet, I simply don’t trust Android to manage my phone’s battery life anymore. Given how I use my devices, I fear that buying an Android phone with a bigger battery would just be a bandaid over the larger problem of Android’s battery management. As long as a background app or process has the ability to wake my device and keep it awake, I will always have reason to doubt my phone’s reliability – and at this point, that’s an unacceptable scenario. I don’t own technology to babysit it; I own technology to use it.
Reliability is really what the iPhone 6 Plus is all about. It’s a boring answer, but for many of us, it’s also the only answer that matters. Vlad Savov explained why the iPhone’s camera is still the camera to beat better than I ever could, but it boils down to this: I can take my phone out, snap a random photo, and, 99% of the time, get reliable, in-focus results. I don’t even get that kind of reliability from my point-and-shoot, the fantastic Sony RX100M2. Obviously the image quality and shooting capabilities of the Sony camera are still far superior, and the camera still comes along to more important events, but I no longer feel the need to dual-wield a phone and a point and shoot on a day-to-day basis. On my Android phones, and to a lesser extent on my point-and-shoot, I rely on burst mode shots to make sure at least one will be in focus. I haven’t felt the need to do that with the iPhone; I only use burst mode for capturing motion or trying to get a very specific moment in time. I can hold the iPhone in one shaky hand, take a single photo, and, almost every time, it still comes through completely focused. I took a little video to demonstrate:
Photos from the sample video:
It’s frustrating because no Android OEM has managed to replicate whatever software algorithms Apple has – there’s certainly nothing special about the hardware optics, so it has to be done in the software. I imagine it’s quickly taking a bunch of photos when you hit the shutter key and either using that data to piece together an in-focus shot, or choosing the most in-focus of the ones it took, or some combination of those techniques. I honestly thought the iPhone’s camera abilities were exaggerated until I started using one again – but now, I am a believer, and it will be hard to settle for anything less.
It feels like a shame to talk about the iPhone 6 Plus without at least mentioning TouchID. I’d had some experience with it on the iPad Air, so I mostly knew what to expect, and I can’t really add much to what others have said. Personally, it’s hard to imagine going back to a phone that doesn’t allow me to secure my device in such a way – I put my thumb on the home button, push it down to wake up the device, and it unlocks almost instantly:
Trusted Devices on Android is good, but TouchID is fantastic, especially now that third-party apps can leverage it. Paying for apps in the App Store, logging into the Amazon app, opening the Mint and Alarm.com app, paying for stuff at NFC terminals – all secured with TouchID. Speaking of payment – Apple Pay is probably worth its own post at some point, but man, it is good. I used Google Wallet in the past, but Apple Pay definitely has the advantage when it comes to implementation. I simply point the top of my phone at an NFC terminal, an image of my credit card appears, I put my thumb on the TouchID sensor, and it’s done. This is the future, folks – and it’s kind-of neat.
So, does all of this mean I’m “switching” to iOS? Technically, yes, I guess, but I don’t really like the term “switching”, or the connotations that come with it. I’ve opted to use an iPhone as my daily driver for the foreseeable future simply because, at this moment in time, it’s the best device for my needs. A few years ago, Apple and I diverged – their phones weren’t big enough and the OS wasn’t flexible or interesting enough. Today, enough has changed that using an iPhone again just makes sense for me. I no longer feel like I’m making a major compromise when it comes to software or hardware, and the benefits – incredibly reliable all-day battery life and a best-in-class camera – are impossible to ignore.
I hope this isn’t a permanent change. I enjoy having a foot in the iOS world and the Android world, as I feel it forces me to broaden my perspective, both as a tech enthusiast, and with regards to the services I choose to use. Eventually, I hope to see an Android device released that, like the HTC One X before it, offers enough of an advantage over the iPhone that I can’t resist it.
Today, I am an iPhone user again. Tomorrow? I don’t know what I’ll be, but I can’t wait to find out – and that’s why I find the tech world such an exciting place.
I have ranted enough about my frustrations trying to diagnose and combat random Android battery drain, and since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll just show the following screenshots.
iOS:
Android:
What’s the key difference here? Simple: iOS is kind enough to point out apps that are draining my battery in the background. Of course, there’s another obvious difference, and I definitely miss the battery graph from Android, especially its ability to predict how much longer the battery will last. However, when it comes to actually diagnosing why my battery might be misbehaving, nothing beats telling me which apps, specifically, are performing battery-draining background tasks. Even better, iOS gives me fine-grain control over which apps can do so. I quickly identified a few apps that I didn’t need refreshing their data in the background and shut the door on them:
Oh Facebook – you remain delightfully terrible on ANY platform
It’s important to note that this does not prevent push notifications from coming through; it just keeps those apps from running background processes to update their information.
I make this comparison not to bash Android, but rather because I believe it specifically illustrates the different philosophies of iOS and Android. Android and iOS both empower their users, but in different ways. Android empowers them with freedom, while iOS empowers them with control. iOS allows me to specifically limit the behavior of certain apps if I decide I don’t need or want a particular piece of functionality, or if I believe an app is misbehaving.Android takes more of an all-or-nothing approach to permissions – unless, of course, you download a third-party tool to enable that functionality.
Essentially, Android errs on the side of the app developer, while iOS errs on the side of the user. This difference is perhaps best illustrated in the screenshot below:
Notice the “App Explanation” portion at the bottom. It’s a little thing, but it’s important – what it shows is that yes, Apple will let a developer’s app use your location in the background, but only if the developer is willing to explain to the user why it needs to do so.
This brings us back to freedom: many of the things I can do to limit third-party apps can be done in Android, thanks to the freedom it provides users. I can root and download a tool to manage permissions or to hibernate apps with something like Greenify. However, it requires more effort on the user’s part, and let’s face it: most users simply don’t want to mess with their phones any more than they have to, which I think is a perfectly reasonable position to take.
Perhaps it boils down to this: iOS attempts to pro-actively protect the user from misbehaving third-party apps, while Android empowers the user to deal with it themselves – if they have the time and motivation. It’s the difference between standing guard in front of your house and warning you about possible intruders, or handing you a sword, walking away, and trusting you to learn to defend yourself with it. Both approaches are valid for difference people. Personally? After nearly a week of using iOS as my daily driver, I find myself enjoying a mobile OS that seems to have the user’ best interest at heart, even if it means sacrificing some freedom when it comes to what I’m able to do with my phone.
It’s frustrating because I know Android can do better, and it wouldn’t even take that much. The tools to deal with app-level permissions are already in Android, they’re just hidden from the user. The tools to monitor battery usage are already in Android, they’re just not good enough to pinpoint the behavior of a rogue process. All it takes is for the folks in Mountain View to put themselves in the user’s shoes and think about protecting the user while empowering them – there’s nothing wrong with handing someone a sword and still making sure you’ve got their back.
The following are random thoughts and musings from my first three days of owning an iPhone 6 Plus.
So far, I’m surprised how little I miss about Android – but I also know I’m only three days in, and this could quickly change as little annoyances add up. I’m impressed by the strides Apple has taken with iOS, though – they continue to take the right inspiration from Android, while implementing those ideas in such a way that it’s much less likely for a rogue third-party app to negatively impact my experience. While it is certainly still a walled garden, it is a much prettier walled garden, and when it comes to the computing device I use most on a daily basis, I’ve become more willing accept some minor limitations in exchange for reliability.
Of course, what really matters is long-term reliability – proving to be “reliable” over the course of three days isn’t particularly impressive. I’ll certainly report back if anything changes in this (or any other) regard.
Oh God what have I done
As many of you probably know, I’ve used Android phones for almost three years now – my last iPhone was the fantastic iPhone 4 – but I’ve recently grown frustrated with inconsistent behavior and performance of Android. Battery life has always been a problem, and it recently grew to a head, but it’s not the only problem I’ve had with Android. Media controls and integration continue to be a struggle for Android. Third-party app performance is less than ideal. New apps and services still typically come to iOS first, despite Android’s significant marketshare advantage. Apple’s ecosystem remains untouchable; if you want an accessory or service for your device, it’s almost certainly available. The Apple Store remains the gold standard for customer service on consumer electronics, and nothing from any Android OEM has come close.
Personally, I don’t have a strong preference for either platform; I like and appreciate each one for what it is. I’m not a fan of companies, but of devices – specifically, devices that seamlessly fit into our lives. My chief problem with iOS has always been that it expects the user to fit their workflow to match how Apple wants you to do things; my chief problem with Android has always been that it often demands a fair amount of micromanagement on the user’s part if you want an ideal experience. For me, it comes down to that core struggle: user experience vs. personal workflow.
After a couple weeks of toying with the idea of getting an iPhone 6 Plus, and after being incredibly impressed by the iPad Air 2 I got about a month ago, I finally decided it was worth revisiting the possibility of using an iPhone as a daily driver. So, at lunch yesterday, I gave into a whim, and here I am, less than a day into owning a new iPhone 6 Plus.
The question that I can’t answer without actually using an iPhone again full time is whether or not I can live with iOS’ limitations on my primary mobile device. It’s one thing when it’s a secondary device used primarily for leisure and content consumption; it’s another when it’s the device that drives my day to day activities. I’ve become accustomed to adapting a device to my workflow; can I return to adapting my workflow to a device?
So, here we go – a two-week experiment with an iPhone 6 Plus. Here’s what I’m anticipating, both positive and negative:
I have Touch ID on my iPad Air, and it’s pretty amazing. It’s been more than a year since this feature was initially introduced with the 5S, and no competing phone has been able to match the simplicity and accuracy of Apple’s implementation.
Given my rant yesterday, this probably isn’t a surprise, but it’s still worth mentioning. Standby times on iOS devices tends to be solid, and I’m expecting no less from my 6 Plus. I’m also not holding anything back – it’s configured more-or-less the same way my Android phone was, at least within the limitations of iOS. PocketCasts and Play Music are set to automatically download. FitBit and weather apps are syncing in the background. Notifications are being pushed to my Pebble. Google Now is…Google Nowing. Like with my Android phones, I have no intention of babying this thing to save battery life. It will meet my demands or I will (eventually) find a device that will. Battery life is something I’ve always compromised on – I’m the guy who always has his phone plugged in at work – and I’m tired of making that compromise. Assuming I’m not spending all day playing games or streaming my video, my phone should last me all day. Period.
iPhones are still the best example for how to release a phone without any carrier interference. While you do have to deal with Apple’s “bloatware” (its usefulness likely dependent on how deep you want to go into Apple’s ecosystem), at least the carriers can’t touch the hardware or software. Android is getting better in this regard, but you still generally have to buy a phone unlocked if you want a carrier-free experience – even the Nexus 6, if purchased through AT&T, gets their logo stuck on the back. Of course, as we learned from the iOS 8.0.1, the downside to a lack of carrier intervention in the update process is that it can lead to a glitchy software update rolling out to thousands of phones – but that remains the exception, rather than the rule.
I currently use a Sony RX100M2 as my primary camera, but the iPhone 6 Plus’ camera is a breath of fresh air after coming from an HTC One (which is great in some ways and flawed in others) and a Nexus 5. It’s not that those cameras are objectively terrible, but what they are is not reliable. I’m excited to use a phone with a fast camera that’s quite good in most conditions – it may mean my point and shoot can get left at home a bit more often.
I’ve greatly enjoyed the quality of apps I’ve seen on the iPad Air, and I’m excited to see that quality brought to my mobile handset. My daily go-to apps like RunKeeper and MyFitnessPal seem to be better designed and perform better than their Android counterparts. Even Chrome seems to run a bit better on iOS, likely due to the fact that it has to share the Safari browser engine, essentially becoming a fancy Google-centric Safari wrapper. Given Chrome’s performance on OS X, sometimes I wish the OS X version was also just a fancy Safari wrapper.
Although I’ve already put a good deal of effort into making third-parties work together in Android to deliver functionality similar to Continuity, there’s something reassuring when it’s a native solution as opposed to a hacked-together solution dependent on multiple third-party apps (in my case, PushBullet and MySMS). As an iPad and MacBook owner, I’m already excited to be sending texts from those devices using the native messaging app on each.
Now we’ve reaching the nitty gritty, but I’ve found that one of the more frustrating aspects of Android in my day-to-day usage is that the Bluetooth controls on my go-to set of headphones simply aren’t very reliable. It’s been this way on ever Android device I’ve used in the last couple of years – the Nexus 5, the Nexus 7, and the HTC One. All of them have varying degrees of problems (the Nexus 7 would typically drop connection entirely after a couple of minutes), the most common being that the phone would take commands from the Bluetooth headphones as suggestions. Pause? I guess, when I get around to it. Go back? Eh, maybe. We’ll see. As someone who often uses headphones for hours a day, between running and working, this adds up to a pretty frustrating experience. I had reached the point where I was using my headphones on my iPad more frequently than my phone, just because I knew the damn things would work right. For the record, I don’t think this is a problem with the headphones, either. My Moto 360’s Bluetooth audio controls are often fairly delayed as well. As a bonus, iOS also displays a battery meter for the connected headphones – something Android can’t do, regardless of you root and ROM it.
This one…probably sounds weird. I don’t mean cooler as in hipper – I mean, literally, cooler. I’ve yet to have an Android device (phone or tablet) that didn’t run hot while under load including, occasionally, while it was just sitting in my pocket. I’m hopeful that Apple’s marriage of software to hardware will better handle thermal issues.
I’m excited to try a bigger phone, with all the benefits it can bring. I’m also worried it’s simply too big, however.
This is the obvious and predicable choice, but it doesn’t make any less true. Everything positive I’ve ever said about Android remains true, and while iOS8 has made strides towards being more open with the additions of Extensions and Today Widgets, it still doesn’t adapt to my personal workflow the same way Android does. Whether or not I can put up with doing things the “iPhone way” will largely determine how this experiment plays out.
This is actually a big one. Despite recent frustrations, I still love my Moto 360, and not being able to use it is a huge, huge hurdle on my potential move back to iOS. I still have an old Pebble, which is…fine, I suppose, but I already miss Android Wear. There’s always a chance Android Wear could work with iOS, at least on the same level as Pebble, but today, that’s simply not a reality.
This is another tough one. While Google has done a commendable job of ensuring its own apps work together inside iOS, there’s still a lot more than can be done. I should be able to ask Siri for directions and have her open Google Maps. I should be able to ask Siri to take a note and have it go into whatever app is able to handle that communication. This is something I use all the time with Android Wear, and not being able to create to-do items in my to-do app of choice is going to be a frustrating hurdle.
I’m a huge Google Now user and lover, and I’m going to try using Google Now on the iPhone, but I’m concerned about how well it will perform when it’s not an integral part of the OS. Of course, this could go both ways: perhaps I can get most of the benefits of Google Now within the app restrictions of iOS, thus giving me much of the functionality without the battery life hit. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.
This is specific to my uses, but I had my HTC One setup as a universal remote for my TV and audio system. Obviously this isn’t a deal breaker – I can go back to using my regular remotes, like a peasant – but it was a really, really nice feature.
My current phone didn’t have this, but the Nexus 5 did, and it’s a convenience you find it difficult to give up once you’re used to. At least Apple’s Lightning cables are a step above Micro USB in user-friendliness, though.
Hardware-wise, I still think the HTC One was, like the iPhone 4, close to perfect. It feels right in your hand, and the size is pretty ideal. While I’m excited to try a larger phone for the first time, I already miss some aspects of the One’s form factor.
So, those are my expectations going into this experiment. As I said at the beginning, I haven’t used an iPhone on a regular basis in almost three years, so I’m excited to see the ways the platform has changed and grown. Even if I don’t end up keeping the 6 Plus, at least I’ll come away with a better understanding of what the platform is capable of.
This morning, after my stationary bike workout, I misplaced my FitBit One. I knew it was either in my office (where the bike is) or my room, but I wasn’t sure which, and it’s small enough that it could’ve easily fallen in a corner somewhere. Unfortunately, there’s no “find my FitBit” feature on my phone – but it was still connecting to my phone via Bluetooth.
That’s when I got the idea to download an app that would show me Bluetooth signal strength – in my case BlueScan for Android, but there are certainly others for both iOS and Android. By looking at the signal strength, I was able to quickly determine which room it was in (the office) and where it was (on the floor next to my bike).
Signal strength low = not in the bedroom
Signal strength high = probably in the office
I figured this was a neat trick worth sharing, especially as more and more of us are carrying small, easy-to-misplace Bluetooth devices, whether it’s a fitness tracker, smartwatch, or headphones.
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