iPhone vs Windows Phone: FIGHT!
Jul. 18th, 2015 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
So the low down on Comic Con... is coming. :)) adelagia has written up her daily summary of our trip, and rather than basically repeat everything she's about to post, I'll link to her entry when it's up (but she doesn't have internet right now).
Then there's the One Direction concert we went to a couple days after returning from San Diego, but it works better to post about that after the Comic Con stuff, since some of our reaction to it is based on our experiences in SD.
Instead what I actually want to talk about is my new iPhone. (!!!!!!!!) I've resisted getting one for a long time, because of personal reasons, and also the expense. Since I'm not much of a social media person, or go crazy for apps or whatever, I've always been really happy with my Windows Phone. (Plus, Apple's iPhone business makes MORE MONEY THAN ALL OF MICROSOFT'S BUSINESSES COMBINED. So if one is under some delusion that one is supporting "the little guy" by going iPhone... you're not. Apple's "little guy" days are over.)
However, a few months back I started considering switching phones, because the modern world finally caught up with me, and I kept not being able to get this app or that app -- or more the case, the apps on WP weren't as good or stopped being supported (like Waze, which is an app I really love, so this can all probably be traced back to it). Then, while in SD we wanted to use Lyft after getting a promo code, andadelagia had to be the one to always use it, because it has an Android app but not WP. I guess it all just added up. I knew my mother's line was eligible for an upgrade, and when I learned that AT&T was willing to let me upgrade on her line, and then just switch the new phone to my line, I decided to go for it (also, thank you AT&T for making that a painless process that did not cost any extra! But also, stop trying to hard sell me on Digital Life).
I've had a few days now to use it, and it's kind of an adjustment, in positive ways and negative. The apps stuff is great -- it's opened up a whole new world for me, while the actual functionality of the phone... well, it's been the leader in the marketplace for so long that I feel it's been complacent in improving that area. There are so many basic functions about WP that are far superior, that I really miss -- not just kind of miss, but REALLY miss. And honestly, I am really surprised by that. I just assumed the iPhone had to be better in almost every way. There's no way a regular person would realize this, because of course, hardly anyone has even tried a WP, much less has one. But if the app situation were equal, I would *so* go with WP.
iPhone vs Windows Phone: Who does what better
Apps: The clear winner here is the iPhone (and probably Android, since pretty much every app I see is available on both platforms). It's not just the breadth of apps available -- the iPhone has tons of apps, 99% of which I'm not going to use or care about, and WP has all the major apps that people want. But it doesn't necessarily have the not-mega-popular-but-still-popular ones, such as Lyft. And since everyone is developing on it, you're sure to find SOMEthing you'll find useful, in almost any category you can think of.
The key though is that even apps that are available on both platforms are usually better on the iPhone. Waze, my aforementioned favorite app, stopped being supported on WP when Google purchased it (fuck you, Google). That meant that it worked, but I could tell from some of the notifications I got that other people had many more options than I did for entering road hazards, for instance. And sometimes it wouldn't work for some reason, but there was no update to get, and nowhere to file a complaint. On the iPhone, it works like a freaking charm. I was right about all the options, including being able to get Arnold Schwarzenegger as your navigation voice (that's right, The Terminator can direct you to Trader Joe's). And so much customization!
There's also things like the Amazon Fire TV Stick (or Chromecast), which you can turn your iPhone into a remote control for, in addition to casting (which might be my favorite function of anything, ever).
And also, Pandemic -- one of my fave board games. It's a really nice/slick app. Not available on WP (though to be fair, I don't believe it's available on Android, either).
So yeah, when it comes to apps, WP suffers from being the little guy hardly anyone wants to develop for.
Typing/input: Here's where WP shines. It is astronomically better than the iPhone. (I don't know about Android.) How?
Swipe - There's no native support for swiping on the iPhone. You have to type, or download a third-party app (most popular is Swype, but it has dismal reviews). I've tried 3 different ones, and they are all TERRIBLE. The predictive intelligence is a complete joke. Not only are they terrible at coming up with the word you're trying to swipe, but they're also bad at helping you fix all the words they get wrong. Trying to swipe a sentence on the iPhone, I have to go back and fix 90% of the words -- I'm being totally serious. It's not a time saver at all, which is why anyone would even WANT to swipe. On WP, however, it is almost like magic. Even before I knew that the iPhone sucked at it, I marveled at how well it worked -- how did it know I wanted to type that?! The predictive intelligence was amazing, and it LEARNED when it got stuff wrong. That was seriously impressive as well. And if it did get something wrong, correcting it was a breeze. The thing is, I don't think you can fully appreciate how awesome swiping is unless you've done it, and done it on a platform like WP, where it makes composing stuff so much faster and easier. My only hope now is for Apple to develop something natively, or a third party to create a better swiping app.
Keyboard - The main WP keyboard has basic punctuation. I cannot TELL you how great this is. Actually, I wouldn't have been able to tell you that until using the iPhone, which main keyboard does NOT have basic punctuation. You have to go one level deeper for that, and it is SO time consuming, especially for people like me who actually like to use proper punctuation. I used to write really long, involved emails on my phone (jade_okelani once told me that she couldn't tell when I'd written a message on my phone vs my computer. I thought maybe this was due to mass skillz on my part, but it turns out it's because it's so much easier to input on a WP), and now the thought of it makes me want to just wait until I'm at a PC.
After all this, I kind of understand now why so many people's messages look like bad English/netspeak. Trying to type PROPERLY on an iPhone is ridiculously time consuming.
Predictive intelligence - WP is far better at predicting what you're trying to say, and has a better way of making those suggestions, too.
Navigation - WP is much more intuitive, and lets you get to your most important stuff much more quickly. Case in point: My inbox. If I press my mail key, on WP it always goes to my inbox. On the iPhone, it just puts me right back where I last was on the app, even if it's settings or the sent folder. You can get to those things in WP, but 99% of the time, I don't need to get right back to that exact thing -- I need/want to see the latest stuff in my inbox. With iPhone, I find myself constantly needing to go back through the levels in order to get back to what I want. WP also has a back button, which I love using for just about everything. If I am playing a game, then I check my email, then I read something in my browser, I can go from the third thing to the first thing in a breeze. It remembers what I was last doing. There's no such function in the iPhone. If you want to get back to something you were doing before, it seems you have to just press the home key and find the app again. Even in the browser, going "back" isn't great functionally; you have to scroll back up to the top of the page in order to make the back/forward keys appear. What if I get sick of reading an article midway through? It's minor, but all these little time-consuming things add up.
Cortana vs Siri: I can't say too much on this, because I haven't used Siri much. What I loved about Cortana was that she was more of a digital assistant than someone who answered random questions for me. I could say, "Cortana, set my alarm for 7am" and she'd do it. Or "Cortana, remind me to buy milk" and she'd do it. From what I understand, Siri doesn't have that kind of functionality.
Live Tiles vs Badges: Live Tiles are better. You can change their size, which is great because there are some apps that are more important than others, and you want to be able to get to them quickly. Live Tiles also provide little bits of information about the app, whether it's a preview of news you're interested in or if you have a new message, or whatever. With badges, you can learn the number of new messages or updates you have in the app; that's it.
Form: I had a Lumia 1520 before, and I really liked it. Huge screen and thin. I got the iPhone 6 Plus in order to get a big screen again, but it's not as big. It is slightly thinner, though. Apple does know aesthetics.
Heating issues: When I'd use certain apps on WP, it would get super hot. I didn't like that. Waze and Township (my fave farming game) were the worst. Waze is also terrible on the iPhone, which is disappointing. I don't know why I thought the iPhone had to be better, but it's not. It gets SO hot it actually burns my skin. That can't be good for me OR it. Township seems to run cooler on the iPhone. Thus the heating issues are a wash, I think. Both phones get far too hot for being handheld devices.
"Home" button: The iPhone is better here. It's not just a home button, which is all it is on the WP. It can also serve as a fingerprint reader, which is awesome. I love being able to log in with a touch rather than having to type in my passcode.
Cords: As with most things Apple, the cord is proprietary, so you can't use universal components with it, like a mini USB port. You HAVE to buy the Apple-specific part. I find this pretty annoying, but it's not so bad in terms of pure dollars, since you can get pretty much anything you need or want on eBay fairly inexpensively. If you buy them retail, though -- ouch. A car charger alone can run you $30, whereas I was able to get an extra wall charger, a car charger, two cords, car mount and hard case altogether for around $15 on eBay. Seriously!
Email: Since I don't do much social, I email a lot. It's my preferred method of communication. I have two primary accounts, one for work and one for personal (which itself gets about 6 different email addresses forwarded to it, but at least I only have to check 1). It's really important to me to be able to separate out the two. There are times when I really need to know if I have new work email, and other times when it's the last thing I want to see, and only care about personal messages.
On WP, each email account is a separate tile, which means that I can see how many new messages there are in each individual account. It's just helpful to know which mailbox has the mail. And each account can have different tones associated it with it, so even if I'm not on my phone, just from the notification sounds, I can tell what's coming in.
On the iPhone, the default mail account just munges everything together. It lets you add a bunch of different accounts, and it's simple and easy to do, but by putting them all together, I can't tell, when it says that there's 34 new messages, which of those are new work messages, and which are personal. So then I keep having to check. After hours, I care less about work email, and more about personal mail, so having to check the general box every time to see what's come in is pretty annoying. Plus the mail app itself suffers from trying to do too much. It gives you the entire folder structure, rather than prioritizing the inbox, which is what I want 99% of the time (as mentioned above). And then if I was in one mailbox, and got a notification for the other, I had to back all the way back out to the menu where I could select which mailbox I wanted, rather than easily being able to just switch to the other account.
The way I solved for this was to download two mail apps. One called myMail, for my personal account, and Outlook, for work. Outlook is faster than myMail (did several tests and Outlook received messages nearly instantly while myMail took a minute or longer), but it also munges all the accounts together if you add more than one. :/ I considered using Outlook for my personal account and sticking with the iPhone's default mail app for work, but that app is just too unwieldy. And it's more important for me to get my work mail fast than personal mail.
So that I wouldn't have a bunch of extra stuff on my phone, I deleted both accounts from the iPhone mail app and turned off its notifications (you can't just delete the app outright). Buuuuuuuut I quickly learned that that wasn't good, because your contacts are based on what's in that app. >< Once I'd deleted my accounts, I no longer had any contacts to call/email/Whatsapp. D'oh!!! So then I had to re-add both accounts to the default mail app, and just turn off mail for them. SHEESH!! I spent so much time figuring this out last night. -.-
Bottom line: I don't regret getting the iPhone -- much -- because it IS better for the reason I decided to switch (the apps). However, I am dismayed to find that it's not as good a phone as I'd imagined, and that in many respects, it is vastly inferior to my previous phone. :/ If only I could marry the features from each together, I'd be really happy.
I did as much research as I could on some of the things I had questions about -- such as whether anyone had made an iPhone keyboard which main keyboard has punctuation (doesn't appear so) -- but it's possible that some of my complaints are just me not knowing the phone well enough. So if you have pearls of wisdom to impart, please do!
Finally, while I've never used an Android phone and can't speak to how much better or worse it is in these categories vs its competitors, it seems like it might be a really good alternative option to the iPhone. It's cheaper (? I think) and has nearly as good an app selection. I've heard complaints about its interface from a few sources, but I don't know if those are anomalies or what.
adelagia has written up her daily summary of our trip, and rather than basically repeat everything she's about to post, I'll link to her entry when it's up (but she doesn't have internet right now).Then there's the One Direction concert we went to a couple days after returning from San Diego, but it works better to post about that after the Comic Con stuff, since some of our reaction to it is based on our experiences in SD.
Instead what I actually want to talk about is my new iPhone. (!!!!!!!!) I've resisted getting one for a long time, because of personal reasons, and also the expense. Since I'm not much of a social media person, or go crazy for apps or whatever, I've always been really happy with my Windows Phone. (Plus, Apple's iPhone business makes MORE MONEY THAN ALL OF MICROSOFT'S BUSINESSES COMBINED. So if one is under some delusion that one is supporting "the little guy" by going iPhone... you're not. Apple's "little guy" days are over.)
However, a few months back I started considering switching phones, because the modern world finally caught up with me, and I kept not being able to get this app or that app -- or more the case, the apps on WP weren't as good or stopped being supported (like Waze, which is an app I really love, so this can all probably be traced back to it). Then, while in SD we wanted to use Lyft after getting a promo code, and
adelagia had to be the one to always use it, because it has an Android app but not WP. I guess it all just added up. I knew my mother's line was eligible for an upgrade, and when I learned that AT&T was willing to let me upgrade on her line, and then just switch the new phone to my line, I decided to go for it (also, thank you AT&T for making that a painless process that did not cost any extra! But also, stop trying to hard sell me on Digital Life).I've had a few days now to use it, and it's kind of an adjustment, in positive ways and negative. The apps stuff is great -- it's opened up a whole new world for me, while the actual functionality of the phone... well, it's been the leader in the marketplace for so long that I feel it's been complacent in improving that area. There are so many basic functions about WP that are far superior, that I really miss -- not just kind of miss, but REALLY miss. And honestly, I am really surprised by that. I just assumed the iPhone had to be better in almost every way. There's no way a regular person would realize this, because of course, hardly anyone has even tried a WP, much less has one. But if the app situation were equal, I would *so* go with WP.
iPhone vs Windows Phone: Who does what better
Apps: The clear winner here is the iPhone (and probably Android, since pretty much every app I see is available on both platforms). It's not just the breadth of apps available -- the iPhone has tons of apps, 99% of which I'm not going to use or care about, and WP has all the major apps that people want. But it doesn't necessarily have the not-mega-popular-but-still-popular ones, such as Lyft. And since everyone is developing on it, you're sure to find SOMEthing you'll find useful, in almost any category you can think of.
The key though is that even apps that are available on both platforms are usually better on the iPhone. Waze, my aforementioned favorite app, stopped being supported on WP when Google purchased it (fuck you, Google). That meant that it worked, but I could tell from some of the notifications I got that other people had many more options than I did for entering road hazards, for instance. And sometimes it wouldn't work for some reason, but there was no update to get, and nowhere to file a complaint. On the iPhone, it works like a freaking charm. I was right about all the options, including being able to get Arnold Schwarzenegger as your navigation voice (that's right, The Terminator can direct you to Trader Joe's). And so much customization!
There's also things like the Amazon Fire TV Stick (or Chromecast), which you can turn your iPhone into a remote control for, in addition to casting (which might be my favorite function of anything, ever).
And also, Pandemic -- one of my fave board games. It's a really nice/slick app. Not available on WP (though to be fair, I don't believe it's available on Android, either).
So yeah, when it comes to apps, WP suffers from being the little guy hardly anyone wants to develop for.
Typing/input: Here's where WP shines. It is astronomically better than the iPhone. (I don't know about Android.) How?
Swipe - There's no native support for swiping on the iPhone. You have to type, or download a third-party app (most popular is Swype, but it has dismal reviews). I've tried 3 different ones, and they are all TERRIBLE. The predictive intelligence is a complete joke. Not only are they terrible at coming up with the word you're trying to swipe, but they're also bad at helping you fix all the words they get wrong. Trying to swipe a sentence on the iPhone, I have to go back and fix 90% of the words -- I'm being totally serious. It's not a time saver at all, which is why anyone would even WANT to swipe. On WP, however, it is almost like magic. Even before I knew that the iPhone sucked at it, I marveled at how well it worked -- how did it know I wanted to type that?! The predictive intelligence was amazing, and it LEARNED when it got stuff wrong. That was seriously impressive as well. And if it did get something wrong, correcting it was a breeze. The thing is, I don't think you can fully appreciate how awesome swiping is unless you've done it, and done it on a platform like WP, where it makes composing stuff so much faster and easier. My only hope now is for Apple to develop something natively, or a third party to create a better swiping app.
Keyboard - The main WP keyboard has basic punctuation. I cannot TELL you how great this is. Actually, I wouldn't have been able to tell you that until using the iPhone, which main keyboard does NOT have basic punctuation. You have to go one level deeper for that, and it is SO time consuming, especially for people like me who actually like to use proper punctuation. I used to write really long, involved emails on my phone (
jade_okelani once told me that she couldn't tell when I'd written a message on my phone vs my computer. I thought maybe this was due to mass skillz on my part, but it turns out it's because it's so much easier to input on a WP), and now the thought of it makes me want to just wait until I'm at a PC.After all this, I kind of understand now why so many people's messages look like bad English/netspeak. Trying to type PROPERLY on an iPhone is ridiculously time consuming.
Predictive intelligence - WP is far better at predicting what you're trying to say, and has a better way of making those suggestions, too.
Navigation - WP is much more intuitive, and lets you get to your most important stuff much more quickly. Case in point: My inbox. If I press my mail key, on WP it always goes to my inbox. On the iPhone, it just puts me right back where I last was on the app, even if it's settings or the sent folder. You can get to those things in WP, but 99% of the time, I don't need to get right back to that exact thing -- I need/want to see the latest stuff in my inbox. With iPhone, I find myself constantly needing to go back through the levels in order to get back to what I want. WP also has a back button, which I love using for just about everything. If I am playing a game, then I check my email, then I read something in my browser, I can go from the third thing to the first thing in a breeze. It remembers what I was last doing. There's no such function in the iPhone. If you want to get back to something you were doing before, it seems you have to just press the home key and find the app again. Even in the browser, going "back" isn't great functionally; you have to scroll back up to the top of the page in order to make the back/forward keys appear. What if I get sick of reading an article midway through? It's minor, but all these little time-consuming things add up.
Cortana vs Siri: I can't say too much on this, because I haven't used Siri much. What I loved about Cortana was that she was more of a digital assistant than someone who answered random questions for me. I could say, "Cortana, set my alarm for 7am" and she'd do it. Or "Cortana, remind me to buy milk" and she'd do it. From what I understand, Siri doesn't have that kind of functionality.
Live Tiles vs Badges: Live Tiles are better. You can change their size, which is great because there are some apps that are more important than others, and you want to be able to get to them quickly. Live Tiles also provide little bits of information about the app, whether it's a preview of news you're interested in or if you have a new message, or whatever. With badges, you can learn the number of new messages or updates you have in the app; that's it.
Form: I had a Lumia 1520 before, and I really liked it. Huge screen and thin. I got the iPhone 6 Plus in order to get a big screen again, but it's not as big. It is slightly thinner, though. Apple does know aesthetics.
Heating issues: When I'd use certain apps on WP, it would get super hot. I didn't like that. Waze and Township (my fave farming game) were the worst. Waze is also terrible on the iPhone, which is disappointing. I don't know why I thought the iPhone had to be better, but it's not. It gets SO hot it actually burns my skin. That can't be good for me OR it. Township seems to run cooler on the iPhone. Thus the heating issues are a wash, I think. Both phones get far too hot for being handheld devices.
"Home" button: The iPhone is better here. It's not just a home button, which is all it is on the WP. It can also serve as a fingerprint reader, which is awesome. I love being able to log in with a touch rather than having to type in my passcode.
Cords: As with most things Apple, the cord is proprietary, so you can't use universal components with it, like a mini USB port. You HAVE to buy the Apple-specific part. I find this pretty annoying, but it's not so bad in terms of pure dollars, since you can get pretty much anything you need or want on eBay fairly inexpensively. If you buy them retail, though -- ouch. A car charger alone can run you $30, whereas I was able to get an extra wall charger, a car charger, two cords, car mount and hard case altogether for around $15 on eBay. Seriously!
Email: Since I don't do much social, I email a lot. It's my preferred method of communication. I have two primary accounts, one for work and one for personal (which itself gets about 6 different email addresses forwarded to it, but at least I only have to check 1). It's really important to me to be able to separate out the two. There are times when I really need to know if I have new work email, and other times when it's the last thing I want to see, and only care about personal messages.
On WP, each email account is a separate tile, which means that I can see how many new messages there are in each individual account. It's just helpful to know which mailbox has the mail. And each account can have different tones associated it with it, so even if I'm not on my phone, just from the notification sounds, I can tell what's coming in.
On the iPhone, the default mail account just munges everything together. It lets you add a bunch of different accounts, and it's simple and easy to do, but by putting them all together, I can't tell, when it says that there's 34 new messages, which of those are new work messages, and which are personal. So then I keep having to check. After hours, I care less about work email, and more about personal mail, so having to check the general box every time to see what's come in is pretty annoying. Plus the mail app itself suffers from trying to do too much. It gives you the entire folder structure, rather than prioritizing the inbox, which is what I want 99% of the time (as mentioned above). And then if I was in one mailbox, and got a notification for the other, I had to back all the way back out to the menu where I could select which mailbox I wanted, rather than easily being able to just switch to the other account.
The way I solved for this was to download two mail apps. One called myMail, for my personal account, and Outlook, for work. Outlook is faster than myMail (did several tests and Outlook received messages nearly instantly while myMail took a minute or longer), but it also munges all the accounts together if you add more than one. :/ I considered using Outlook for my personal account and sticking with the iPhone's default mail app for work, but that app is just too unwieldy. And it's more important for me to get my work mail fast than personal mail.
So that I wouldn't have a bunch of extra stuff on my phone, I deleted both accounts from the iPhone mail app and turned off its notifications (you can't just delete the app outright). Buuuuuuuut I quickly learned that that wasn't good, because your contacts are based on what's in that app. >< Once I'd deleted my accounts, I no longer had any contacts to call/email/Whatsapp. D'oh!!! So then I had to re-add both accounts to the default mail app, and just turn off mail for them. SHEESH!! I spent so much time figuring this out last night. -.-
Bottom line: I don't regret getting the iPhone -- much -- because it IS better for the reason I decided to switch (the apps). However, I am dismayed to find that it's not as good a phone as I'd imagined, and that in many respects, it is vastly inferior to my previous phone. :/ If only I could marry the features from each together, I'd be really happy.
I did as much research as I could on some of the things I had questions about -- such as whether anyone had made an iPhone keyboard which main keyboard has punctuation (doesn't appear so) -- but it's possible that some of my complaints are just me not knowing the phone well enough. So if you have pearls of wisdom to impart, please do!
Finally, while I've never used an Android phone and can't speak to how much better or worse it is in these categories vs its competitors, it seems like it might be a really good alternative option to the iPhone. It's cheaper (? I think) and has nearly as good an app selection. I've heard complaints about its interface from a few sources, but I don't know if those are anomalies or what.
