Saturday 25 July 2015

iPhone to Android - apps impressions

The last major change is with the new apps and app store. As I said before, I really like being able to install apps from a desktop web browser but how are the apps themselves? Well, in no particular order...

The default Android calendar app is nice. Not amazing, but definitely more usable than the iOS calendar.

The notes app on the G4 seems ok, but saves its notes to a hidden folder in Google Drive. This fills me with fear for the time I want to migrate to a new notes application. I want to be able to see my backups in plain text somewhere so I can reuse them - migrating from Apple to Android has really shown me the benefit of thinking about that up front. iOS notes was sync'ing to GMail and I wanted something which would do the same. It took some searching, but I turned up GNotes which not only syncs in the same way, but when I gave it access to my Google account pulled all my old iOS notes through. Impressive. At some point I will have a look at Google Keep, but this has got me started.

Shazam seems slightly better designed on Android, although that could be my imagination. Annoyingly (but not surprisingly) I had to buy the ad-free upgrade again. I was hoping it would let me log in cross-platform to avoid that repeat charge, but alas not.

Having Chrome on my phone is lovely. Rather than messing around with bookmarks in Safari they are just sync'd from my desktop. I could have done this on the iPhone of course.

Mailbox isn't quite as nice as the iOS version. Functionality is the same, but I keep opening mail when I am trying to swipe - something I don't remember doing before. It's still by far the best mail app I've used though.

Textra is a great text message app. Not much more to say on this except that I've coupled it with SMS Backup+ which is sync'ing my text messages with GMail to avoid the horror experienced when trying to save them in a readable format from iOS.

The Flickr app. Hmm. Photo uploading was always going to be a big difference between the two operating systems because it demonstrates a major difference in the underlying ideology. In iOS to upload to Flickr you fire up the Flickr app, select your photo, edit it and upload - it starts from the application to upload. In Android you start from the picture, open it in the editing program of choice and push it to another app to handle the uploading. The change takes a little getting used to (change is change, even though the Android setup makes a lot more sense) and would be much better except for one important fact - the Android Flickr app is awful. Significantly worse than the iOS version. It seems to be missing several key features for editing (auto-correct, most of the effects) which makes it only useful for uploading and unless you want to post to Twitter at the same time, the Bot for Flickr is actually a better option for uploading as you can queue a load of pictures to automatically upload next time you connect to a wifi connection.

Photo uploading also highlights a security feature in Android which hasn't fully been adopted by the app developers yet. Resources on the SD card from one application cannot be modified by another application unless permission is given. When you take a photo, the image is a resource owned by the camera so you can't modify it with an editing application. Instead, the editor needs to save a copy but the apps I've used do not switch to this new version on save so I've had to edit, save, back out of the picture, and go into a different picture stream in order to find the saved file for uploading. There is some explanation of the underlying problem in this thread.

The upshot is that uploading photos involves an annoyingly convoluted workflow. It's not the end of the world, but could definitely be better and this is using the (otherwise excellent) Android / LG gallery app.

So far, I'd say none of the apps seem different enough to make a huge difference to anyone's life. I was surprised how easy it was to switch between operating systems and either keep the same apps or find easy substitutions.

Thursday 23 July 2015

iPhone to Android - LG G4 first impressions

Enough of getting out of Appleville - what is it like in the world of Android?

Initial impressions were a little shaky. I hate unclipping molded plastic. No matter how well it is made, it always feels like it is going to break so getting the back off the phone was fraught. Of course, the fact I could get the back off at all is a point in its favour as this handset has a replaceable battery and expandable memory.

Putting in the micro SD card was a bit odd - it felt like it wasn't locked securely into place. It turned out that it wasn't so I needed to open it up again to fix it but it needed a bit more of a push than I was initially willing to give. Still, having it open let me switch the back for a Qi wireless charging enabled case which clipped into place and Just Worked. I don't need wireless charging in my life but it was one of the little things I was excited to try - it feels like I'm in the future. Yes, I'm a child.

Next, loading it up. Key noises. Argh. First task on any new device - silence the system noises. The Android ones seem particularly obnoxious to me. Also, the default Android (or possibly LG?) keyboard is pretty irritating. Why doesn't it auto-complete for me?

Powering through the horrible sounds and annoying keyboard, I put in my Google account details and ... that's it. The phone thinks for a few moments and EVERYTHING WORKS. Calendar, email, contacts, music, files in Drive, sync - the list goes on. I'm very, very impressed. It's not quite as good as a fully iCloud Apple device, but it's much cleaner than I'm used to using non-Apple services on an iPhone.

It gets better from there. Everything that is annoying can be changed. Keyboard? Swiftkey please. Sounds? Change them. Turn them off. Whatever. Text messaging not great? Install an entirely new text message application (Textra). And so on. If you can't be bothered to do it on your phone, just log into Google Play on your desktop and tell it to install stuff to your phone from there. I think you can do this on an iPhone but since it involves firing up iTunes I'd rather add the applications directly to the phone's hard disk using a magnetised needle.

Out of the box I'd say iOS has the edge. It's more refined, snappier and has much better defaults. But Android gives me options iOS users can only dream about. Arguably far too many configuration options, but it really didn't take too long to go through the ones I cared about and by the end I have something which works very well and is tailored to the way I use the phone. It's still doesn't feel quite as snappy as a new iPhone but it's much more than fine and the personalisation definitely makes up for it.

The LG G4 is a lovely device. Much bigger than the iPhone 4S, but it really didn't take very long to get used to the change. The screen is quite beautiful - quad HD with a great colour definition -  and the camera is fantastic too. The battery started out frightening - I struggled to get a full day out of the charge - but a friend told me they gain life after a day or so of use and he was right. Last time I looked, the indicator said I had 75 hours remaining. My usage has dropped off a bit as I've stopped fiddling with it but not that much.

Android tells me things about the battery. How much it's using and which applications are consuming the power. Why didn't my iPhone tell me this information?

So - first impressions weren't great. Almost every other impression since then has been brilliant. I've been using the system for a little over a week now and it still gives me actual pleasure - it has been a long while since I could say that about a phone.

Saturday 18 July 2015

iPhone to Android - iMessage

My phone number is attached to iMessage so any incoming texts will disappear into the Apple servers and be delivered to my iOS devices. This was great when using an iPhone but now basically means texts are delivered to my iPad.

This was something that hadn't even occurred to me until a friend complained I wasn't reading his messages. A quick hunt online turned up Apple's Deregister iMessage tool which is very easy to use. I had already put my SIM in my new phone by this point and couldn't be bothered to dismantle everything so I used the SMS deregister and it worked immediately.

I think I'm free now?

Thursday 16 July 2015

iPhone to Android - music

After the horror of extracting my SMS data from my iPhone, I moved on to music. Currently I have my music in iTunes with Match so I can stream to my device. A little reading showed me Google Play is:

  • bigger (stores at least twice the number of tracks)
  • not using iTunes
  • cheaper (free!)
  • not using iTunes
  • web accessible
  • not using iTunes
The setup was easy, led through by a well designed website. It pushed me to the Chrome app which seemed to have trouble reading my music but then I found the desktop version. I pointed it at my (iTunes) music folder. It scanned it and about 2 hours later I had an online library of around 2500 songs. I am struggling to find the words to express quite how easy it was.

Now, I have a very fast internet connection here but I was also watching stuff on YouTube and talking on Skype while it did its thing and didn't notice any problems. It even handled the multi-artist albums which iTunes sometimes struggles with (albums with "artist featuring another artist" on it). I've not dug through my online library in too much detail yet but I'm yet to find a mistake.

I'm impressed.

Wednesday 15 July 2015

iPhone to Android - contacts and SMS messages

I want to retain as much data as possible from my iPhone, most importantly my contacts list. In theory my phone contacts should have been sync'd with my Google contacts but that doesn't seem to have worked completely. Instead I made use of Contacts Sync by Playa Apps (a name that inspires trust). The interface was very simple and, although it cost me a couple of quid, it let me push all my iCloud contacts to Google contacts in a few minutes. There was probably a free way to do this but really it wasn't worth finding.

On to SMS messages and this is where I'm reminded one of the reasons I want to escape Apple control. These messages are my data and they are backed up into my iCloud account but can I get at them? Or can I download the iCloud backup and pull them out? Of course not. Cue an hour of hunting around for something which would help me and not try to charge me $20+ for the privilege of extracting my own data. 

Finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel. If I manually back up my iPhone via iTunes (like in the Olden Times) then I can extract the SMS messages using AllYourTexts which is simple to use and free. Finally, I have a folder of my message history, freed from the Apple Prison.

I'm expecting the Android import to be significantly easier but even if it isn't I now have the data saved.

iPhone to Android

After seven years as an iPhone user I have decided to give Android a go. Going into this, my expectations are:
  • significant financial saving on the handset
  • expandable memory on the device
  • pain in the switch over
  • better integration with the services I already use (basically the Google suite)
My first hope was immediately dashed - somewhere along the lines, the handset manufacturers decided to start selling premium phone at premium prices. Fortunately, and unlike the Apple world, prices fluctuate massively so I eventually found an LG G4 for under £400 which was a significant enough saving to be worth a go. It also seems to be one of the few front-runner phones which offers replaceable battery and memory expansion - it seems these features are dying out which is disappointing.

I'm expecting switch over pain. It's a new operating system so there is no way it will be a seamless transition. Also, the handset I've bought is much bigger than my old phone so I'm expecting it to take some time to get used to that.

There wont be any comments on speed here. I'm coming from an iPhone 4S so the new phone will be faster, but it's hardly a point of comparison.

A collection of thoughts and experiences through the change over: