Need your help everyone. I've tried and tried and tried from the Note way back when to the Fold 4, and now back to iPhone again, it's difficult for me to adjust to everything Android and Samsung. The hardware is beautiful and I love using it, it's just the OS that i'm having a hard time adjusting too. Some pictures other iPhone users get are pixilated, and any smart watch that Samsung has to offer doesn't compare to Apple Watch Ultra. I WANT to love the samsung hardware, it's just that everything with Apple is so seamless. Help me change my mind, seriously what are you guys using to aleviate the iOS vs Android and it's associated hardware woes in between the adjustment period?
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How to transition from iOS to Android
- Thread starter clg82
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Nah. You're a lost cause when it comes to Android. Just give it up. New iPhone due soon.
I’m trying to do it right now and it’s sooo hard, I’m using a Flip4 at the moment. The pictures are coming across low resolution because they’re being sent over MMS not iMessage. Unless you can get all your friends to use another messaging service it’s not fixable, hopefully google and apple work this out someday but right now it suuucks. It’s like getting camera phone pics/video from 2008…
Apple watch is also just better, like you said. Not much can be done here either.
I honestly think apple just gets it. I spent so many hours trying to tweak android to get it to do what I want and it’s still not as good as the iPhone is out of the box, with zero effort. Android phones are nice to tinker with if you have the time. But if you want your phone to get out of the way and just let you do things smoothly, only iphone does that.
However I will say, I’m LOVING my galaxy tab S8+. Since it’s not my main communication device I don’t need it to have all my texts and photos backed up, sync with all the iCloud stuff, etc. I just use it for tablet things like browsing, drawing and taking notes, and for that it’s brilliant. Android is better at multitasking, and on a tablet screen that actually matters.
The screen is gorgeous, the build quality is right there with an iPad, and I like the S pen even more than the apple pencil. The tip is softer and it feels so much more natural to use imo. Doesn’t feel like you’re writing on a piece of glass like the iPad does.
My rec: use an iPhone and a high end Android tablet. Best of both worlds
I think the key to successfully switching to Android is to forget about the wider Apple ecosystem. Forget about imessage, forget about Apple Watch, etc, etc. If you can't do this then its best to stick with iPhone.
I'd disagree with this. Apple is of course very good for out of the box experience and ease of use. But this is also achievable on Android. For example, Google Pixel is just as easy as iPhone without any tinkering.
I switched back to iphone just this past year before that it was pixel3xl which I absolutely loved, and before that it was samsung which honestly it was okish….
I have mac computers littered thruought the house and using android was a bit exhausting…
BUT the only true reasons why i switched back to iphone is because
1.my new truck has a 12” screen and apple car play goes full screen
2. Pixels 3 xl was getting old and i dont have time to mod its system
3. The newer pixels no longer had fingerprint options…
(Newer versions might, so it could be an option)
Im going to see how my pixel does in android auto with my vehicles this weekend and maybe i switch back who knows?
If there were another option i liked for phones with a different os, id consider it as well
I have mac computers littered thruought the house and using android was a bit exhausting…
BUT the only true reasons why i switched back to iphone is because
1.my new truck has a 12” screen and apple car play goes full screen
2. Pixels 3 xl was getting old and i dont have time to mod its system
3. The newer pixels no longer had fingerprint options…
(Newer versions might, so it could be an option)
Im going to see how my pixel does in android auto with my vehicles this weekend and maybe i switch back who knows?
If there were another option i liked for phones with a different os, id consider it as well
Not really, it’s not even close. Do you have any idea how many switches I needed to hunt down and turn off when I got my Flip4? Many of them related to Google services. Maybe if I had an android previously and it had been backed up it would save some of those settings, but I’m saying for a new user, out of the box, how much do you need to change to get a good user experience?
Google’s apps send me a ton of notifications about nothing important, like photos for example. Here’s the notifications preferences for that:
10+ switches just for the notifications, for Photos alone, and most of them vague. I was constantly asking myself “why tf am I still getting notifications from this?” So then you turn off notifications for Photos altogether and you get this nice little popup every time you open the app
Also notice the shopping bag icon constantly at the top of the app 🙄 They’ll never pass up an opportunity to try to sell you something or track you in some way. Photos is just one example, repeat that for Google Drive, Play Store, etc etc. And it’s not just notifications it’s privacy things too, here’s an example of another setting I just came across for the Play Store: “App Install Optimization: Send data to Google about which parts of an app you use, making apps faster to install…” what whyy? Why is this another switch I need to find and turn off to keep them from tracking me?
If I turn off Google’s or Samsung’s services, they nag me to turn them back on. So many of the apps require permissions I’d rather they not have, but then things break if you turn them off 🙄
These are the kinds of things I’m talking about with user experience out of the box.
PS here’s the notifications for Apple Photos for comparison. I don’t even turn them off because I get so few that I actually enjoy them. If I do turn them off, I never hear about it again.
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Android user for approx 7 years and I don't use Google photos.
I only get notifications for my mail, messaging apps, Ebay and Amazon. Most others are switched off.
How do you back up your photos? My other option seems to be Samsung’s “Gallery” app, which can only back up to Onedrive, and doesn’t pull in the photos I’ve backed up from iCloud to Google or Onedrive. Maybe I’m doing something wrong?
Also is there a better way to control my smart devices like Hue lights than using Samsung’s Smartthings app?
I’m the same way with notifications, I have almost all of them off, my complaint is how much more work it is to switch them all off when you’re a new user, how many different notifications the Google and system apps want to send, and that many complain when you turn off their notifications.
I think people that have been using Android for a long time take for granted how much their experience helps them. To a new-ish user, it’s not very intuitive. This is coming from someone relatively young, intelligent, and tech savvy. I’ve even had a handful of Android phones over the years (though my last was like the Galaxy S2 or S3 lol)
I’m not saying it’s not usable, or powerful, but it’s not as intuitive and clean a UI as iOS, relatively.
Can I get everything to work? Yes. But it takes longer, with more mental effort, and then still isn’t as pretty. I’m starting to think those hours and neurons could be better spent elsewhere
I don't back up my photos. 
They stay on my phone until the next phone comes along and then they get transferred over. If I needed to I would back them up to a computer. Cloud, schmoud.
Hasn't iOS being easy and ready right out of the box always been its selling point? I take a couple of hours setting my Android phones up but I do most of it in a sleepwalk because I've done it that many times before.
They stay on my phone until the next phone comes along and then they get transferred over. If I needed to I would back them up to a computer. Cloud, schmoud.
Hasn't iOS being easy and ready right out of the box always been its selling point? I take a couple of hours setting my Android phones up but I do most of it in a sleepwalk because I've done it that many times before.
I don't back up my photos.
They stay on my phone until the next phone comes along and then they get transferred over. If I needed to I would back them up to a computer. Cloud, schmoud.
Hasn't iOS being easy and ready right out of the box always been its selling point? I take a couple of hours setting my Android phones up but I do most of it in a sleepwalk because I've done it that many times before.
That's another thing I have trouble with whenever I am in my Android period, when I bought a new phone or for some reason had to factory reset it wouldn't just restore everything to how it was on my old phone or before the factory reset. There just seemed to be a lot of things and settings that weren't properly backed up, I really think I should only need to set up a phone once and everything should just carry over from that point, that would make the whole "who wouldn't want this option off by default?!?" thing less annoying.
If you're basing your views on only Samsung devices, you're conflating Samsung with all of Android. I said iPhone-like out of the box ease is achievable on Android. I didn't say its easy for all Android devices. Samsung does make things a bit harder because there is a lot duplication of apps/services on Samsung devices.
I think the desire to want to tinker with notification settings when first setting up a phone is a power user tendency. On a Pixel (or any Android phone without lots of OEM-added apps/services) most "regular" people will be happy just turning on the phone, signing into Google account, and just proceeding to use the phone without any tinkering (similar to iPhone).
It is true Android does have more granular notification settings but the individual categories can be turned off as and when you receive notifications you don't care for, rather than do it all at the start (that's how I do it anyway). Just long press on a notification you have received, tap turn off notifications, and the system will indicate what type of notification it is and you can elect to toggle that off (instead of disabling all notifications from the app).
It works both ways. My first one or two smartphones back in late 2000s was an Android phone. When I tried my first iPhone I remember not being able to figure out how to do certain things without looking it up. Also more recently someone asked me if I knew how to add an attachment to an email reply in iOS mail app. I've been using an Android phone for the last 8 months and I realised I'd forgotten how to do it and couldn't figure it out. After looking it up, I thought wow that's not intuitive at all. So I think a lot of what iPhone users consider intuitive is also just familiarity.
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How can pressing the button to attach a file not be intuitive? That’s how you do it on more or less every other platform. Dragging and dropping works the same as other platforms as well if you rather do that.
Based on the email apps I use, attachment button is typically not a hidden part of the keyboard like it is in the iOS mail app.
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If I were to get and set up an android phone today, there would be a lot of settings I would have to change and tweak to get the phone to be just how I want it to be and it would seem like a lot of work. However, because I’ve been using the iphone for over 9 years straight, I probably made the same adjustments bit by bit over the years.
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I just don't care about iMessage. This is how I can switch between platforms when I want to. All my services are from Google which is available on both platforms. I have an apple watch but that watch is so confusing just trying to navigate to the music widget compared to my galaxy watch. Any group chats are in Facebook messenger, WhatsApp or Instagram for me.
iMessage is the best-in-class messaging app that the most people want to use though. I'm sure you're inconveniencing friends and family by insisting they use these third party solutions to communicate with you.
In US, iMessage is the one which people use the most. But in rest of the world, People prefer WhatsApp/Telegram/Messenger etc. Between iPhones, I prefer iMessage as sending fotos and videos in high quality, nothing kan beat iMessage. Now Google is trying to do the same with RCS but most of the people I know who use an Android, don't bother about it. WhatsApp has started with HD fotos but quality is not the same.
Haven't used iMessage in 7 years and even then it was just for SMS. Nobody outside of the US really does. It's crazy how you guys make such a big deal out of it.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN:
1. check your iCloud subscriptions!
- cancel any you do not need. I do advise if you ONLY have an iPhone / iPad in your position or house hold and you fully plan to switch from Apple devices entirely - REMOTE your subcriptions (Disney etc here).
* Pay close attention to Apple One expiration date or if you had a separate storage subscription add-on to Apple Files/Drive as mentioned in step 5 below!
2. Hide My Relay: Ensure ANY of your ONLINE registration and Accounts are here.
a) do NOT delete them! Take note and change to whatever email address you'll be using after teh iPHone and CHANGE to new said email address. What happens is some accounts will send to the randomized email relay address to confirm your identity before allowing yourself to update the new said email address of your choosing. if you REMOVE or disaccociate any Email Relay setup here you'll NEVER be able to get it back! Some accounts like Reddit don't have any other option so you're out of luck if you made the mistake I did.
Here: iOS Settings > iCloud account > Hide My Relay.
3. iCloud Keychain Passwords : Copy them 1 by 1 over.
- IF you were like me and took full faith in Apple's iOS Passwords ... you're gonna have a hard and LONG time MANUALLY copying login accounts and passwords with URL's over into Chrome Password Manager or any password manager app.
1 Password for iOS does NOT have a Copy ALL function.
THIS IS THE BANE and most likely the primary reason why the EU is pushing for Apple to open up iOS to allow for other browsers and payment systems. UNLESS you have a Mac you cannot export, copy all your iCloud Keychain passwords on iOS/iPadOS .
iOS Settings> Passwords.
you're going to have to manually copy and paste ON device to whatever password manager you choose.
(Personally I see no reason to invest in a password manager app, I'm not that forgetful and I'd like mysel to OWN access to my passwords not matter WHAT device I choose).
NOTE: And no, no migration app will copy iCloud Keychain passwords as of iOS 16.6 currently.
4. iCLoud Emails.
Setup forwarding ALL your emails if you have specific notificatsions going to there.
Bank eTransfer confirmation emails, Credit Card communications etc its VERY helpful to plan thi sstuff ahead!
5. iCloud FIles (for ALL your Files: Documents/Pictures/Video /etc)
By now, and I swear by my own experience, Files will start to give all kinds of errors about copying files as small as 10kb+ from within to other Files API compatible apps like DropBox, BOx.net/Mega.Nz etc! (And yes I've restarted cleared iOS cache, uninstalled and re-installed said apps and re-connected).
You'll want to start migratiing your files over to whatever file storage services you choose or over netowrk to your SYnology or Network SAS drive.
Finally test your emails, logon accounts etc and once you're 100% certain NOW your can start to migrate to Android.
THIS IS REAL WORLD ADVICE THAT THOSE YOUTUBE CLOWNS NEVER speak about when they say "I just switched to Android" Yet you can always see they have another iPhone, iPad etc in the background or ont he table. They never mention ANY of this cause they''ve never fully switched.
The App you'll need to run on both iPHone and your Galxy is Samsung Smart Switch.
1. DIsable auto lock on your iPhone (Settings > Display & Background > Auto Lock) if it locks during transfer all you data stops stransfering (a Pain I went through twice to realize this on my own).
Use the iPHon eUSB-C to Lightning Cable to connect BOTH devices directly.
2. Once complete ... close Samsung Gallery and wait unitl the notification in Galaxy device states "finishing up complete" or similar as the databases complete the organiztion.
Now you can re-launch Galaxy and your pics and albums will be there. You may get prompted for that to be the default App -I'd advise doing so. Benefit for the 6mths free trial of Microsoft 365 Basic to auto backup to your Microsoft One Drive account.
you can copy and export from there or wherever you choose. or on device to export its up toyou.
FYI ... You mention inuitive UI ... you'll soon unlearn being taught iOS was intuitive because you've learned limitations, even though Apple would always say their kernel for iOS came from macOS a powerful computing OS. Now think if you use a computer that's exactly the same mindset you're going to foster using the AndroidOS becuae it does not take your mindset away from that thinking. YOu'll begin to realize how many things are actually MORE inuitive than iOS (such as copy paste and history of such (samsung keyboard) when editing file names
such a relief of slow process. Also i've just sped up the UI on my Galaxy S23 and I finally actually start to think normally when using the device more than I ever could on IOS! Actions where just too slow in navigation beyond 2-3 steps on iOS and I personally actually felt to slow my thinking down. This affected me in my work on the PC as well. wasn't cool, I was going backwards in my mind using iOS. Deep breath accept ask questions and you'll see how much better it is. Ads in apps when on Samsung Dex are a pain I've noticed in small windows (FK Explorer non-paid; grrrrr!) but so minimal and only for a day that I needed that app so not a headache.
What would you do if you lost your phone and hadn’t backed up your photos in say a few months, and lost those memories because there was no backup? Remembering to back up the phone periodically is one more thing I don’t want to have to do.I don't back up my photos.
They stay on my phone until the next phone comes along and then they get transferred over. If I needed to I would back them up to a computer. Cloud, schmoud.
Hasn't iOS being easy and ready right out of the box always been its selling point? I take a couple of hours setting my Android phones up but I do most of it in a sleepwalk because I've done it that many times before.
Whenever I would get a new iPhone, here’s the setup process: turn on, answer a handful of setup questions, sign into Apple Account, wait a few minutes for it to activate, done.
All the settings transfer, all my data appears instantly every photo and every text in the last 10 years, all my notes, calendars, music, passwords, bookmarks, keyboard shortcuts, smart home settings, everything just how I left it. Granted some of it is still in the cloud at that point and takes a little while to download in the background, but it requires no work on my part.
It’s very freeing knowing that if you lose your phone or it’s stolen, you will lose nothing
Smart switch didn’t work for me, trust me I wasted an entire evening trying. First of all I have more photos in iCloud than will fit on the internal storage of the new phone, so that’s a no-go (~300gb). Apple keeps the full rez files in iCloud and downloads them on the fly when needed, they outgrew my iPhone storage a while ago.The App you'll need to run on both iPHone and your Galxy is Samsung Smart Switch.
1. DIsable auto lock on your iPhone (Settings > Display & Background > Auto Lock) if it locks during transfer all you data stops stransfering (a Pain I went through twice to realize this on my own).
Use the iPHon eUSB-C to Lightning Cable to connect BOTH devices directly.
2. Once complete ... close Samsung Gallery and wait unitl the notification in Galaxy device states "finishing up complete" or similar as the databases complete the organiztion.
Now you can re-launch Galaxy and your pics and albums will be there. You may get prompted for that to be the default App -I'd advise doing so. Benefit for the 6mths free trial of Microsoft 365 Basic to auto backup to your Microsoft One Drive account.
you can copy and export from there or wherever you choose. or on device to export its up toyou.
FYI ... You mention inuitive UI ... you'll soon unlearn being taught iOS was intuitive because you've learned limitations, even though Apple would always say their kernel for iOS came from macOS a powerful computing OS. Now think if you use a computer that's exactly the same mindset you're going to foster using the AndroidOS becuae it does not take your mindset away from that thinking. YOu'll begin to realize how many things are actually MORE inuitive than iOS (such as copy paste and history of such (samsung keyboard) when editing file names
Deep breath accept ask questions and you'll see how much better it is. Ads in apps when on Samsung Dex are a pain I've noticed in small windows (FK Explorer non-paid; grrrrr!) but so minimal and only for a day that I needed that app so not a headache.
Second, it wouldn’t transfer my texts, it would say there wasn’t enough internal storage on the phone (Flip4 is 256gb, iCloud says I have 30gb of messages backed up including attachments). No matter what timeframe I set it to backup, all, 6 months, 1 month, etc, it just didn’t work. It would look like it was in progress for like an hour each time, and nothing would be there when it was done.
Third, calendar events, thought this one would be simple. They all transferred alright, but they’re in a separate “on phone” calendar that doesn’t sync to Google calendar, or even sync across Samsung devices, couldn’t get them to show up on my Tab S8+ no matter what I did, I played around with every sync option I could find, and there’s no way to export them from what I could tell. So that’s a no-go. Had to export my calendars on my mac, import them in Google calendar, and use that. Except then I had duplicates of everything and there’s no way to mass-delete all calendar entries in the Samsung Calendar app. Tried deleting the data in settings, the cache, etc. I had to find a third party app I could use to wipe it.
Total clusterf***, all of it. Didn’t even mention it would constantly say it disconnected during the transfer, that happened like 4 times. Tried two different nearly new OEM lightning cables. The port contacts in the phone are totally clean and I don’t have issues in any other context.
Literally all it was good for was getting my contacts over 🙄
It’s not like I haven’t had Android phones before, this is like my third one, I’ve actually had Windows phones, Androids, and Palm Pre before getting into iPhones, so I’ve seen them all, I thought both Palm and Windows phone were more intuitive than Android, which was the worst of the 4 imo.
One example of something bugging me today: on the keyboard I have text replacement shortcuts set up for 50+ things. On iPhone when you type the shortcut, the replacement text is inserted automatically unless I hit an X to cancel it. Perfect and fluid. On my Flip4, when I type the shortcut, I have to tap on the replacement in the toolbar/suggestion area, taking my focus off of the keyboard and interrupting my flow every time. There’s also no way to decouple auto-correct from predictive text, from what I can tell. I don’t want predictive, but auto-correct is nice to have. Maybe this is possible in another keyboard, but I’m not going to give someone like Google permission to read all my keyboard input.
The customizability and ability to sideload apps are nice, but I’m starting to think they don’t outweigh the cons I’m dealing with, including it not syncing anything with my Apple products without using Google or Onedrive, and I’ve lost all faith that I’ll be able to transfer my texts back to iPhone if I ever switch back, which is a big deal to me
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idk, even having things already set up and having used it for like a month, using them back to back it just seems like everything takes longer on the Flip4, and there are some things it does that just don’t make sense.
Like it takes an extra 2-3 seconds to adjust my Hue lights, I just can’t get it any faster and that’s a pain when I do it so often.
In email for some reason it keeps taking me back to one of my individual inboxes instead of the overall inbox for all accounts and I have to open the menu and go to all accounts again. Happens multiple times a day, no idea why,
I know it’s only an extra 2 seconds, but dang, 2 seconds here, 3 seconds there, an extra click here and there, the back button not being intuitive (sometimes it takes you back like in browser, sometimes it backs you out of the app altogether if you arent nested in anything; if i wanted to go to the home screen I’d press the home button 🙄), the extra set up time, clunky backups, it all adds up to an experience that feels like walking in mud vs ice skating
A fluid experience requires more than smooth animations and a 120hz screen
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If you stick with Samsung then you can pretty much move all your stuff over from one (Samsung) phone to the other without any hassle. Regarding backing stuff up I did say that I would do so to a computer if necessary. Photos take forever to download from the cloud.
Nope. We're a mix of Android and iPhone users so we don't care. I'm in NYC so maybe we're more diverse here.