I was a bit skeptical about switching to iPhone, but I’m starting to like it. As a first time user what I’ve started to notice are certain patterns like aggressive promotion of Apple Pay and on the other hand Apple pretends to care about me. It’s a somewhat bipolar approach! Here are some new findings as a new iOS user.
Findings mentioned in this post are based on differences between an older Android 9 and latest iOS 14.1. As my older device was a 2018 phone and OS, my blog findings don’t reflect or present the current state of OS rivalry. Some things mentioned here might be fixed or have major improvements in latest Android OS. This post focuses only on the things you might want to know if you switch from an older Android to iPhone.
Navigation in iOS 14 vs Android 9 (Samsung S8)
This is something I’ve had to wrap my head around, iPhone 12 uses the whole screen estate for content and the navigation utilizes gestures from the bottom of the screen. A quick swipe from bottom to top takes you back to the home screen, and a slower swipe shows you all the open apps. I automatically keep aiming for the Android 9 bottom navigation buttons, but they aren’t there. My previous Samsung S8 had static navigation buttons in the bottom of the screen for app control, home and back -functions. Different approach, nothing too impossible to grasp.
Apple Pay – Don’t shove it down my throat
I get it. It’s probably a really neat feature that makes “my life better”. Paying hasn’t been an issue though, it’s easy in so many platforms. Although I’ll probably give this a shot when I feel like it, because Apple has their own approach on things. However as a new user, it isn’t very welcoming to keep pushing this function. This keeps coming up not only on my iPhone but also in my iPads. It’s a notification within system settings saying “Finish setting up your iPhone” that leads you to believe it’s absolutely necessary to set up for using the device. When it’s not. Apple Pay isn’t obligatory, its a nice option to have in case you forget your wallet somewhere and perhaps webshops? But my personal preference is to just keep using the good ol’ plastic card. Cards are contactless nowadays so I don’t see that much value for Apple Pay for normal day-to-day stuff like grocery shopping. Web shops on the other hand, there might be some value for Apple Pay. I need to study this aspect a bit more.
The nanny phone?
Last night when I went to sleep I set my alarm clock and apparently the alarm clock function is a part of Apple health now. I set my alarm and sleep cycle, and an hour before sleepy time I get a lullaby-sound from my phone. It told me to “wind down” because I should be sleeping in an hour. Geez, thanks. I’m a 32 year old and not a toddler but I appreciate their consideration.
This sleep function has a small little thing I appreciate, it turned “do not disturb”-mode on automatically during set sleep cycle. On my older Android 9, I had to set alarm and silent mode separately. Small things, but easy to automate.
Face ID is awesome
Face ID works really well and makes things so easy. I can open so many apps with it and don’t need to fill a single login form, works perfect! Compared to my older Samsung S8, it used iris detection with a frontfacing IR camera which was super creepy:
Samsung S8 used front-facing infrared camera to detect your eyes. Creepy!
The iris detection was used only for unlocking the phone. It didn’t work nearly as well as Face ID and seemed to be a gimmick considering that user also had an option for passcode and fingerprint which work way better. Now during the Covid-19 epidemic however, Face ID doesn’t work with face masks. On the other hand, the old school creepy iris-scanner does work with face masks!
That’s it for now. Next time I’ll talk about the cameras!