Back on an iPhone

So – a few months ago, I decided it was time to slash some bills. Get rid of some streaming services we didn’t need, evaluate all the things – and make some smarter decisions.

Verizon wireless. I had been a Verizon business customer for the better part of 10 year. Prior to that I was a standard customer for probably 5 years. One thing I’ve learned is – Verizon treats business customers like trash.. They give you a SLIGHT discount and in exchange for this small break in price, they treat you like you don’t matter. At least, this is how I felt and what led me to start looking at other providers.

I landed on T-Mobile. I figured – the upcoming merger with Sprint would provide me with very decent service at a much cheaper price point. I ended up saving ABOUT $100.00 a month. Great. Missions accomplished.

Time for a new Phone. I decided that I wanted to get a new phone during this project. I originally was a hard core Android/Windows guy – but my wife helped me see the light and productivity improvements that come along with Mac OS and one thing led to another, and here I am….. An apple phone boy. This didn’t mean I had no love for the little green robot and his corresponding green bubble text messages, I had just been.. well.. comfortable and stayed with iPhone for a at least 6 years. It was time for a change. I was GOING to get an Android. I told myself things like ; “I use to LOVE Android” “Its probably come SO far in 6 years” and so on…. Well, I was wrong.. I got the Samsung S20 Ultra border line tablet phone because, ya know, why not… Loaded up Nova Launcher, put my critical apps on the home screen, Setup a bunch of jobs in tasker, etc… Then I started using the phone and much to my surprise it felt very disjointed. This was clearly an OS, with Apps for each critical function, that all clearly operated independently of one another and leveraged the OS for any interoperability (Copy and paste, etc). Apps like LastPass – A CRUCIAL app for me, that worked flawlessly on iOS had issues constantly, would never successfully biometrically authenticate, was an overlay on-top of whatever app it was trying to let me into, and was just sloppy. I thought to myself, “Man they didn’t take their time with this app – maybe it’s time to switch to a new password manager or something. Then this scenario played itself out over and over and over again with lots of other apps. I constantly found myself dealing with some shortcoming that impeded my productivity and/or connectivity thus resulting in lots of wasted time spent tinkering with the device to get it to do what I wanted. Probably the BIGGEST waste of time was the under screen finger print reader and the hack job version of face id that they built into the phone. For me – they probably worked 40% of the time. My phone would somehow face unlock in my pocket, but typically fail to unlock when it was actually looking at my face (LOL).

So after a few annoying months, I had to do the walk of shame and explain to my wife that I hated this phone, and was going to switch back to iPhone. She busted my chops a bit – rightfully so, and here I am…. feeling like I cheated on a girlfriend or something – crawling back into the loving arms of my iPhone bias.

Its not that iPhone is better or Android is bad – its just that for me, the smoothness and top to bottom approach of iOS saves me a ton of time. Yes – iOS is boring. Yes – it was a TON of fun for the initial week or so customizing my s20 to the way I liked it. Yes – the 120Hz screen was incredible. But – the one thing I found re-inforced throughout this experience was that software is King. An incredible phone with lack luster software is far less useful than a very OK phone with amazing software.