These are now both old phones but Igor, aka the love of my life, asked me to tell him my thoughts on the iPhone 6 after switching from the Galaxy S5 and rather than just write it up and send it to him I’m going to put it online so others can benefit as well.
Why did I switch?
Because the Pirate, one of my boyfriends, loves iMessage and I hated my Galaxy S5. Also I heard the camera was better and my camera literally didn’t work. Well my selfie camera worked. But I dropped the phone and cracked open the glass over the lens of the other camera. Then it wouldn’t focus so I peeled off the rest of the glass. Then I got chocolate ice cream on the lens.
What do I think?
Things the iPhone 6 has on the Galaxy S5:
- Camera
- Battery life
- Processing speed
- Download speed
- Memory
- Fewer bugs
About the memory. About a year into owning my Galaxy S5, I couldn’t update my apps anymore because there wasn’t space on the device. It took me hours of Googling to even figure out what was taking up all my space and then more hours to figure out how to free up that space. Most of it was apps, which is crazy because I didn’t even have that many apps. And somehow even after deleting most of them, it was still hard to keep the damn thing updated. It was especially irritating to have insufficient memory when the phone was absolutely full of apps I didn’t want and couldn’t remove.
Things the Galaxy S5 has on the iPhone
When you link contacts the Galaxy S5 suggests people with the same name automatically. iPhone makes you search their names. Same for adding an address from a text to a contact.
Using Apple products requires you to have an iCloud account. This might be technically avoidable but they make it so painful that you will eventually comply.
Apple’s payment system is a fucking mess. First, you have to enter a credit card to download any apps that might be able to take money from you at some point. But they won’t take my credit card.
I tried to work around this by setting up Apple Pay. Surely I can pay for downloads on my Apple phone with the payment system Apple runs, right? Nah. You can use Pay in apps that don’t compete directly with the App Store/iTunes. So you can use Pay to pay for your Ubers, but not your Netflix or Spotify subscription. The idea that I’m going to pay to download my shows and music rather than stream because I can’t use a payment option that’s necessarily an option, not my only payment method, is so stupid it boggles the mind. Not to mention the fact that only a tiny percentage of the population uses Apple Pay now, and even fewer will want to set up a new payment method that isn’t even widely accepted.
Then I tried buying a gift card from the iTunes store in order to download a paid app. No dice. You can’t use iTunes money in the Apple App Store. For what reason? God only knows. It’s not like they’re run by the same company, a company that wants to be in the payments industry no less, or anything.
For some reason the dings and other alert sounds from various apps seem to come and go and I can’t figure out how to get them turned off always and forever. But that’s probably user error. But also make it user friendly.
Also the Galaxy charges a lot faster.
Also the Gmail Android app is WAY WAY better than the Apple iPhone email app.
I dropped my Galaxy S5 approximately 600 times, no case, before any part of it cracked.
Things that suck about them both
Bloatware. Sure, there was more of it on the Galaxy S5. But why the fuck can’t I get rid of the Apple Watch app? I will never get an Apple Watch. And if I do, I can fucking download the app, motherfuckers. Apple Maps needs to die in a fire, especially since when I click on an address in my text messages, it opens that app instead of Google Maps.
Bottom line
Writing this post has revealed to me that I have a lot of rage, and I might should work on that.
I went with Anroid years ago for my first smartphone because I hate Apple’s closed ecosystem of apps. Nowadays, however, that’s less of an issue as HTML5 and responsive design diminishes the need to go through app stores at all.
I still hate the way Apple tries to do the walled garden thing to the detriment of users. But, bottom line is I use my phone to text my friends, pretend I’m going to answer that work email, take pictures of myself and my friends, post those pictures to social media, and find my way around. For those tasks, I’d say the iPhone 6 is overall a better experience than the Galaxy S5.
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