Soldato
- Joined
- 30 Sep 2005
- Posts
- 16,735
I know speaking with a few forum members over the past week, many were of the same opinion as myself regarding the latest phones. There is no perfect phone, they all have their issues with one thing or another.
So...yesterday I grabbed the iPhone 11 black friday deal to see if I could go back to using an iPhone and generally be part of the apple ecosystem. It's been five years since I last owned one. I quite fancied having the apple watch, and as I work away from home a bit an iPad for watching movies would be great. Hell, with my hotel vouchers I might even get the airpods for when I go to the gym.
My ties with googles ecosystem and products
Oneplus 7 Pro
Google One plan with Family sharing, Photos, GMail, Drive, Keep, Calendar, Pay
Google Maps with location sharing on
Google Home and Chromecast
Nest Thermostat, Cameras, Philips Hue, Somfy Blinds
Spotify, YouTube Premium(family shared)
Samsung Galaxy Watch, Samsung Galaxy Buds
Here we go
Maybe I need to give it more time, but I'm really not liking the experience. It feels like I'm using a phone from 5 years ago. Not much has changed.
If anyone is contemplating a similar move (I know a few of you are from previous conversations I've had) this thread may help. I'll put down my thoughts as I spend the next few days getting used to it.
I have 14 days to return it if I don't like it, but that will mean going to the Pixel4 (which has it's own set of issues)....
Thoughts...
The Good
Initial setup very slick. One system update to do, and that's it! No waiting ages for all the apps to update.
FaceID / Apple wallet is fantastic. Setup in seconds, no messing about. Natwest card went straight in. Didn't have to jump through as many hoops as I did with Google pay.
Lockscreen notifications are cool. You can see you have one, and only when you look (unlock faceid) does it open out so you can read it. Really like that.
Carplay is brilliant. Much faster than Android Auto.
Bluetooth is brilliant. Connected to my bose headphones and both cars first time. Pretty much every android phone I've owned has struggled with bluetooth at some point.
Camera is impressive and I really like the wide lens. How many phones have great quality photos with a wide lens? (whilst at the same time not having crap software). I rule out samsung for it's software (personal choice)....and the pixel doesn't have a wide lens.
Widgets over on the left side look pretty. Apple do the best UI.....apart from the google maps widgets. They don't support dark mode so look out of place. Maybe google managed to avoid apples app guidelines when submitting their app.
I really like the bedtime routine feature in the clock app.
The Bad
Apples keyvault isn't a patch on googles smart lock. I've signed into 20 apps and 5 websites yet it's only saved 3.
Notifications don't stack. It's a pain when you get lots of work emails coming from outlook lol
Using a google account in the mail app doesn't support push, only fetch. This means you don't instantly get your emails. To get around this, you can download and use the gmail app (no dark mode yet).
Organizing the home screen is a major pain. To move icons into folders, you have to first long press (this triggers the pop-up menu), wait till it starts to shake. Let go, long press again until it kind of jumps up, then move it into a folder. You have to repeat the whole thing again if you want to move the icon within the folder. This felt really sluggish.
I have had many instances where pressing the back button on an app doesn't do anything. Outlook and onedrive definately did it. Took about 5 presses before it registered. Other apps do the same.
Keyboard isn't a patch on gboard. I've had lots of typos when using swipe. It also seems to take up a lot more of the screen than on Android whilst feeling smaller. My whatsapp chat windows seem a lot smaller for sure.
Searching for someone only shows me their contact, not every interaction I've ever had with them.
No split view. Didn't think about this until I needed to use the calculator to add up lots of numbers from an email. That was a pain.
I asked Siri where I parked my car. She didn't know. I have checked that the locations settings are set right.
I asked Siri to delete a reminder, she said the service was unavailable.
Despite having an A13 processor, it feels slow. I think it's by design to save battery life? Apps seem to refresh all the time. Google Maps is stuttery.
Apple music looks great and fully supports the apple watch, but lacks content for me compared to spotify. It also doesn't play nice with google home, no cast support (to be expected). You have to set the home to bluetooth, but typical google bluetooth is buggy. Apple music web is in beta and a bit meh. Deciding if I should stick with Spotify, but the spotify apple watch app is supposed to be utter crap.
Unless I buy an expensive AppleTV, I can't see an easy way of showing my photos on the TV. Unless I use google photos.
Can't find a way to sync reminders and notes to my windows PC. At least with Google it's all in the cloud (one click away in chrome). Apples icloud page is very feature lite in comparison.
Everything generally feels one tap too many.
Things I don't know yet
Still don't know what the volume buttons are doing. Volume for the ringer, alarm, media? I'll have to research this.
When I snoozed my bedtime alarm I couldn't figure out how to cancel it. On Android you can do this straight from the notifcations.
Day 2
Slowly getting used to ios now. FaceID is brilliant, always works 100% of the time unlike the fingerprint scanner which was about 85%
Signed up for my free 12 months of AppleTV+. There's a TV show on there about a space race with the Russians. No idea how I'm going to watch that on the TV though.
Missing the gorgeous 90hz OLED screen, but overall happy with the choice I made. The iPhone has a way brighter screen though. It's the cheapest new iPhone which makes a good test for an ecosystem switch. If it doesn't work out, the phone will be handed down to my son. People who own 90hz screens have probably got used to it, but moving back makes you realize how much better it is.
Moved all my documents from drive to onedrive. Think it's a good idea regardless, and maybe should have done this a while ago. Makes it's easier on my laptop too. Apples files app links in third party services including onedrive. That's clever.
I have swapped my google home for an amazon alexa. This supports all my nest products, philips hue and apple music. Two hours in and I'm already thinking it's a better overall package than the google home. I'll admit I was wrong to assume the opposite. Really liking alexa. It also links into my vodafone sim plan, and I can make a phone call to it (great to spook the kids lol)
Just ordered a 4k Fire stick from Amazon £29. That'll do apple TV+ and also act as an apple airplay reciever for my photos......it's all starting to come together.
Using Siri whilst in Carplay caused it to lockup and crash. It might be the Anker lightening cable I'm using so will have to check that later tonight.
Notifications are dumb, you can't interact with them.
The notification numbers on the top of icons are fast becoming a pain. Natwest says I have 1, and my gyms fitness app says 2. When I go into the apps I don't understand why? There are no natwest notifications for me to read, same with the gym app. When I long press on the icons to bring up the menu, ios doesn't show you the notifications only it's widget. That's pretty crap. What are those numbers telling me!!!!!!
Not sure how to sync notes to my PC. Think I'll ignore reminders and use Alexas instead.
Debating on a wireless charging pad today.
Day 3
Battery life! OMG. How much left. Didn't put it on charge last night and it's sitting at 71%. OK, so unlike the first day, I wasn't on it all day, but it did get plenty of use.
Siri crashes Carplay. It's not the cable. Looking online I think it's an iPhone 11 bug. Oh well, Siris rubbish anyway.
Do not disturb during driving is great. Starting to realize that this iPhone comes across as quite basic on the surface, but under the hood it's actually quite powerful.
Siri is starting to keep track of where I've parked. Four journeys now have been recorded in maps.
Day 4
I was on a course yesterday, and again today so this will be very brief. Really starting to like the iPhone....A LOT. Battery life is just silly good. The damn thing never seems to drop. Didn't use my phone much yesterday, but I got through the day and still had over 70% battery life. Didn't charge it last night, and this morning it was still over 70% what?
Maybe I have a bit of OCD, but unlike the oneplus icons where when you set them to round they add horrible extra white padding the iphones are all square. Yes, they are always going to be square. You can't change that, and you know something....I actually quite like that you can't. It's an OCD thing. Using an icon pack an android always had some missing icons, so you had 90% round ones, and 10% square. Looked naff. Plus oneplus has a launcher bug where the favourites on the shelf add padding in error. They also have a second bug where sometimes long pressing an icon to edit it gives you a blank menu.
The other thing I really like it that you only have one app for stuff. One texting app, one browser, one calendar etc etc. I know the mrs samsung seemed to have two of everything. Apple also lets you uninstall stuff like garage band, keynote, pages, books...hell, with the oneplus I couldn't even uninstall netflix.
When I wake up, I love the good morning widget on the lock screen.
Day 6 - Cracks starting to appear
Starting to get a bit annoyed now. Downloaded the bitmoji app as I quite like the little photos you can put in messages. The android version was great, you basically just pressed on the image and it inserted into the message body. Now, on iOS it copies the image into the clipboard so you have to press on the text entry box and paste it in. That's a pain! made even worse by the fact the screen is not responsive enough. It took me 4 taps on the text box to get the cursor to go in. I'm finding that happens a lot!
The OS is not fluid. It's slow! It's really sluggish. I'm in the ebay app (which like a lot of apps I'm finding are not as good as the android ones) looking at my sales. I press the back arrow to go back and it does nothing. I tap it again, and again, and again, and again, finally it goes back.
I'm playing a song in apple music, I swipe up to go back to photos. When I swipe back again to go into apple music, the music stops for a second whilst the app reloads. Urgh!
Ads in apple news! What!
Last night we all went into town so the kids could see the Christmas lights. This was the first real chance to test out the camera. It's ok....I wasn't blown away. What is a bit rubbish is actually looking at them later on. The icloud website isn't a patch on google photos. How do I scroll through full screen photos? They are all 1/4 of the size of my monitor?
Nearly all of the photos I took last night we're outside in the dark. They seem to have a lot of noise on them all. Most review sites rate this camera above the pixel? I'd say the camera was ok, probably better than the oneplus, I don't know....it's boxed up now, but I wanted to be blown away. Isn't this basically the same camera as in the iPhone 11 pro?
I've moved my notes over to onenote as it seems the only decent way of accessing them on the iPhone and laptop. It's not as good as google keep though.
Day 7
The little niggles are fading and I quite like it. It's reliable. It's a no nonsense, gets the job done phone. Not sure i've found any bugs other than the siri carplay one.
RAM management (if that's what it is), is annoying but I assume that helps battery life. Ebay is an example. If I'm watching my sales, I can see the timer counting down. If I switch out to another app, and then back again the timer is stuck until I manually refresh.
I've ordered the airpods.
I'm really looking forward to the new design iPhone 12 next year. I just like technology.
Day 8
Airpods arrived today. Bloody brilliant. Love how you only have to touch the case to the phone and they automatically connect. I also like how they show the airpods and cases battery life next to the phones battery. Nice and neat.
Starting to really enjoy it all now. Think it's a keeper.
Day 11
We'll it's almost time for me to make my mind up....and I'm pretty sure I have. It's not a perfect phone, like I said right at the start, there is no perfect phone. IMHO, and it really is just that, my opinion, this is the least worse phone (that sounds bad), it's an almost perfect phone (bit better).
Unlike the oneplus shelf, which I never used...I'm finding the widgets over on the left side screen really useful. It's a phone which just gets the job done.
Storage seems really good after a weeks use. Plenty of apps installed now, photos, music etc etc and i've only used 16gb so have plenty left. I'm sure I had the same apps on my old phone and I was nearer 30gb+ Talking of apps, ios apps seem to download/install like lightening. Literally, a few seconds and they are on.
I struggled deciding where to store my photos, either keeping them on google photos or moving over to icloud but in the end I moved to Amazon photos. Really like it....and it's free (with original quality) as I'm a prime member.
Surprised I haven't really missed the google app which tailors your news and articles based on your browsing habits. I used to use that all the time, but really haven't missed it.
Did the latest ios update yesterday. Same issue in the car. Starting to think it's the car now and not the phone. There is a software update to do on the car, so might try that at some point. I'm not too bothered though.
Took a portait photo earlier and played with the settings. WOW. Now THAT is impressive. Have a fantastic photo of my son which I'm going to print out.
Apple watch for christmas?
Summary
Oneplus 7 Pro - Apple iPhone 11
Google One plan with Family sharing, Photos, GMail, Drive, Keep, Calendar, Pay -
Amazon Photos, GMail, Onedrive, Onenote, ios Calendar, Apple Pay, Reminders through Amazon Alexa app
Google Maps with location sharing on - Same
Google Home and Chromecast - Echo Dot 3 and Fire TV 4k (supports apple music and TV+)
Nest Thermostat, Cameras, Philips Hue, Somfy Blinds - Same
Spotify, YouTube Premium(family shared) - Apple Music
Samsung Galaxy Watch, Samsung Galaxy Buds - Airpods (AW5 for christmas?)
So...yesterday I grabbed the iPhone 11 black friday deal to see if I could go back to using an iPhone and generally be part of the apple ecosystem. It's been five years since I last owned one. I quite fancied having the apple watch, and as I work away from home a bit an iPad for watching movies would be great. Hell, with my hotel vouchers I might even get the airpods for when I go to the gym.
My ties with googles ecosystem and products
Oneplus 7 Pro
Google One plan with Family sharing, Photos, GMail, Drive, Keep, Calendar, Pay
Google Maps with location sharing on
Google Home and Chromecast
Nest Thermostat, Cameras, Philips Hue, Somfy Blinds
Spotify, YouTube Premium(family shared)
Samsung Galaxy Watch, Samsung Galaxy Buds
Here we go
Maybe I need to give it more time, but I'm really not liking the experience. It feels like I'm using a phone from 5 years ago. Not much has changed.
If anyone is contemplating a similar move (I know a few of you are from previous conversations I've had) this thread may help. I'll put down my thoughts as I spend the next few days getting used to it.
I have 14 days to return it if I don't like it, but that will mean going to the Pixel4 (which has it's own set of issues)....
Thoughts...
The Good
Initial setup very slick. One system update to do, and that's it! No waiting ages for all the apps to update.
FaceID / Apple wallet is fantastic. Setup in seconds, no messing about. Natwest card went straight in. Didn't have to jump through as many hoops as I did with Google pay.
Lockscreen notifications are cool. You can see you have one, and only when you look (unlock faceid) does it open out so you can read it. Really like that.
Carplay is brilliant. Much faster than Android Auto.
Bluetooth is brilliant. Connected to my bose headphones and both cars first time. Pretty much every android phone I've owned has struggled with bluetooth at some point.
Camera is impressive and I really like the wide lens. How many phones have great quality photos with a wide lens? (whilst at the same time not having crap software). I rule out samsung for it's software (personal choice)....and the pixel doesn't have a wide lens.
Widgets over on the left side look pretty. Apple do the best UI.....apart from the google maps widgets. They don't support dark mode so look out of place. Maybe google managed to avoid apples app guidelines when submitting their app.
I really like the bedtime routine feature in the clock app.
The Bad
Apples keyvault isn't a patch on googles smart lock. I've signed into 20 apps and 5 websites yet it's only saved 3.
Notifications don't stack. It's a pain when you get lots of work emails coming from outlook lol
Using a google account in the mail app doesn't support push, only fetch. This means you don't instantly get your emails. To get around this, you can download and use the gmail app (no dark mode yet).
Organizing the home screen is a major pain. To move icons into folders, you have to first long press (this triggers the pop-up menu), wait till it starts to shake. Let go, long press again until it kind of jumps up, then move it into a folder. You have to repeat the whole thing again if you want to move the icon within the folder. This felt really sluggish.
I have had many instances where pressing the back button on an app doesn't do anything. Outlook and onedrive definately did it. Took about 5 presses before it registered. Other apps do the same.
Keyboard isn't a patch on gboard. I've had lots of typos when using swipe. It also seems to take up a lot more of the screen than on Android whilst feeling smaller. My whatsapp chat windows seem a lot smaller for sure.
Searching for someone only shows me their contact, not every interaction I've ever had with them.
No split view. Didn't think about this until I needed to use the calculator to add up lots of numbers from an email. That was a pain.
I asked Siri where I parked my car. She didn't know. I have checked that the locations settings are set right.
I asked Siri to delete a reminder, she said the service was unavailable.
Despite having an A13 processor, it feels slow. I think it's by design to save battery life? Apps seem to refresh all the time. Google Maps is stuttery.
Apple music looks great and fully supports the apple watch, but lacks content for me compared to spotify. It also doesn't play nice with google home, no cast support (to be expected). You have to set the home to bluetooth, but typical google bluetooth is buggy. Apple music web is in beta and a bit meh. Deciding if I should stick with Spotify, but the spotify apple watch app is supposed to be utter crap.
Unless I buy an expensive AppleTV, I can't see an easy way of showing my photos on the TV. Unless I use google photos.
Can't find a way to sync reminders and notes to my windows PC. At least with Google it's all in the cloud (one click away in chrome). Apples icloud page is very feature lite in comparison.
Everything generally feels one tap too many.
Things I don't know yet
Still don't know what the volume buttons are doing. Volume for the ringer, alarm, media? I'll have to research this.
When I snoozed my bedtime alarm I couldn't figure out how to cancel it. On Android you can do this straight from the notifcations.
Day 2
Slowly getting used to ios now. FaceID is brilliant, always works 100% of the time unlike the fingerprint scanner which was about 85%
Signed up for my free 12 months of AppleTV+. There's a TV show on there about a space race with the Russians. No idea how I'm going to watch that on the TV though.
Missing the gorgeous 90hz OLED screen, but overall happy with the choice I made. The iPhone has a way brighter screen though. It's the cheapest new iPhone which makes a good test for an ecosystem switch. If it doesn't work out, the phone will be handed down to my son. People who own 90hz screens have probably got used to it, but moving back makes you realize how much better it is.
Moved all my documents from drive to onedrive. Think it's a good idea regardless, and maybe should have done this a while ago. Makes it's easier on my laptop too. Apples files app links in third party services including onedrive. That's clever.
I have swapped my google home for an amazon alexa. This supports all my nest products, philips hue and apple music. Two hours in and I'm already thinking it's a better overall package than the google home. I'll admit I was wrong to assume the opposite. Really liking alexa. It also links into my vodafone sim plan, and I can make a phone call to it (great to spook the kids lol)
Just ordered a 4k Fire stick from Amazon £29. That'll do apple TV+ and also act as an apple airplay reciever for my photos......it's all starting to come together.
Using Siri whilst in Carplay caused it to lockup and crash. It might be the Anker lightening cable I'm using so will have to check that later tonight.
Notifications are dumb, you can't interact with them.
The notification numbers on the top of icons are fast becoming a pain. Natwest says I have 1, and my gyms fitness app says 2. When I go into the apps I don't understand why? There are no natwest notifications for me to read, same with the gym app. When I long press on the icons to bring up the menu, ios doesn't show you the notifications only it's widget. That's pretty crap. What are those numbers telling me!!!!!!
Not sure how to sync notes to my PC. Think I'll ignore reminders and use Alexas instead.
Debating on a wireless charging pad today.
Day 3
Battery life! OMG. How much left. Didn't put it on charge last night and it's sitting at 71%. OK, so unlike the first day, I wasn't on it all day, but it did get plenty of use.
Siri crashes Carplay. It's not the cable. Looking online I think it's an iPhone 11 bug. Oh well, Siris rubbish anyway.
Do not disturb during driving is great. Starting to realize that this iPhone comes across as quite basic on the surface, but under the hood it's actually quite powerful.
Siri is starting to keep track of where I've parked. Four journeys now have been recorded in maps.
Day 4
I was on a course yesterday, and again today so this will be very brief. Really starting to like the iPhone....A LOT. Battery life is just silly good. The damn thing never seems to drop. Didn't use my phone much yesterday, but I got through the day and still had over 70% battery life. Didn't charge it last night, and this morning it was still over 70% what?
Maybe I have a bit of OCD, but unlike the oneplus icons where when you set them to round they add horrible extra white padding the iphones are all square. Yes, they are always going to be square. You can't change that, and you know something....I actually quite like that you can't. It's an OCD thing. Using an icon pack an android always had some missing icons, so you had 90% round ones, and 10% square. Looked naff. Plus oneplus has a launcher bug where the favourites on the shelf add padding in error. They also have a second bug where sometimes long pressing an icon to edit it gives you a blank menu.
The other thing I really like it that you only have one app for stuff. One texting app, one browser, one calendar etc etc. I know the mrs samsung seemed to have two of everything. Apple also lets you uninstall stuff like garage band, keynote, pages, books...hell, with the oneplus I couldn't even uninstall netflix.
When I wake up, I love the good morning widget on the lock screen.
Day 6 - Cracks starting to appear
Starting to get a bit annoyed now. Downloaded the bitmoji app as I quite like the little photos you can put in messages. The android version was great, you basically just pressed on the image and it inserted into the message body. Now, on iOS it copies the image into the clipboard so you have to press on the text entry box and paste it in. That's a pain! made even worse by the fact the screen is not responsive enough. It took me 4 taps on the text box to get the cursor to go in. I'm finding that happens a lot!
The OS is not fluid. It's slow! It's really sluggish. I'm in the ebay app (which like a lot of apps I'm finding are not as good as the android ones) looking at my sales. I press the back arrow to go back and it does nothing. I tap it again, and again, and again, and again, finally it goes back.
I'm playing a song in apple music, I swipe up to go back to photos. When I swipe back again to go into apple music, the music stops for a second whilst the app reloads. Urgh!
Ads in apple news! What!
Last night we all went into town so the kids could see the Christmas lights. This was the first real chance to test out the camera. It's ok....I wasn't blown away. What is a bit rubbish is actually looking at them later on. The icloud website isn't a patch on google photos. How do I scroll through full screen photos? They are all 1/4 of the size of my monitor?
Nearly all of the photos I took last night we're outside in the dark. They seem to have a lot of noise on them all. Most review sites rate this camera above the pixel? I'd say the camera was ok, probably better than the oneplus, I don't know....it's boxed up now, but I wanted to be blown away. Isn't this basically the same camera as in the iPhone 11 pro?
I've moved my notes over to onenote as it seems the only decent way of accessing them on the iPhone and laptop. It's not as good as google keep though.
Day 7
The little niggles are fading and I quite like it. It's reliable. It's a no nonsense, gets the job done phone. Not sure i've found any bugs other than the siri carplay one.
RAM management (if that's what it is), is annoying but I assume that helps battery life. Ebay is an example. If I'm watching my sales, I can see the timer counting down. If I switch out to another app, and then back again the timer is stuck until I manually refresh.
I've ordered the airpods.
I'm really looking forward to the new design iPhone 12 next year. I just like technology.
Day 8
Airpods arrived today. Bloody brilliant. Love how you only have to touch the case to the phone and they automatically connect. I also like how they show the airpods and cases battery life next to the phones battery. Nice and neat.
Starting to really enjoy it all now. Think it's a keeper.
Day 11
We'll it's almost time for me to make my mind up....and I'm pretty sure I have. It's not a perfect phone, like I said right at the start, there is no perfect phone. IMHO, and it really is just that, my opinion, this is the least worse phone (that sounds bad), it's an almost perfect phone (bit better).
Unlike the oneplus shelf, which I never used...I'm finding the widgets over on the left side screen really useful. It's a phone which just gets the job done.
Storage seems really good after a weeks use. Plenty of apps installed now, photos, music etc etc and i've only used 16gb so have plenty left. I'm sure I had the same apps on my old phone and I was nearer 30gb+ Talking of apps, ios apps seem to download/install like lightening. Literally, a few seconds and they are on.
I struggled deciding where to store my photos, either keeping them on google photos or moving over to icloud but in the end I moved to Amazon photos. Really like it....and it's free (with original quality) as I'm a prime member.
Surprised I haven't really missed the google app which tailors your news and articles based on your browsing habits. I used to use that all the time, but really haven't missed it.
Did the latest ios update yesterday. Same issue in the car. Starting to think it's the car now and not the phone. There is a software update to do on the car, so might try that at some point. I'm not too bothered though.
Took a portait photo earlier and played with the settings. WOW. Now THAT is impressive. Have a fantastic photo of my son which I'm going to print out.
Apple watch for christmas?
Summary
Oneplus 7 Pro - Apple iPhone 11
Google One plan with Family sharing, Photos, GMail, Drive, Keep, Calendar, Pay -
Amazon Photos, GMail, Onedrive, Onenote, ios Calendar, Apple Pay, Reminders through Amazon Alexa app
Google Maps with location sharing on - Same
Google Home and Chromecast - Echo Dot 3 and Fire TV 4k (supports apple music and TV+)
Nest Thermostat, Cameras, Philips Hue, Somfy Blinds - Same
Spotify, YouTube Premium(family shared) - Apple Music
Samsung Galaxy Watch, Samsung Galaxy Buds - Airpods (AW5 for christmas?)
Last edited:
. I know what you mean though. I had a terrible time with my original pixel. Think my 3XL was generally better, but yeah.....I think these days companies are hell bent on rushing stuff out the door it's not very well tested.
