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⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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So I got the iPhone 14 Pro after being an android user for the past 6 years. My last iPhone was an iPhone 5c running IOS 9, so 8 generations of iPhone and 7 versions of IOS later it's quite a change.
I've been running degoogled android (/e/ os to be specific) for the past 4 or so years, with some gaps in that time frame where I ran googled android. Degoogled android was mostly the same standard android experience except notifications break for certain apps and location data is spotty. What's frustrating is that back on Android 7, everything pretty much just worked, but with each release of android more and more things started breaking. More of the android experience was incorporated into the Google Services Framework and less was part of the underlying android open source project. It feels like my phone was getting buggier with updates. The straw that broke the camel's back was when I was on a date and I couldn't get us directions because location services couldn't find my location. I normally fixed this by rebooting but that was a long process on my oneplus 3 and so instead of looking like an idiot for another 3 minutes, I just asked her to navigate to it. It was quite embarrassing.
Plus, like I said earlier, I still ended up using google services regularly. Since navigation was spotty I brought a spare phone with me that ran google services for google maps, but I ended up using the phones interchangeably or often even simultaneously. It turns out it's quite useful to have 2 screens. I just turned on the hot spot whenever I needed to do anything networked on the other phone.
Mind you I did try to not use the other phone as much. It turns out to be a somewhat functional member of society for my age range you're required to use these invasive services. As much as Apple shills their privacy, I assume there is a lot of data mined off it's users, however I'm certain it's only a fraction of which google collects. So I went with iPhone.
The universal back button is android's strongest feature. Need to pull down the keyboard? Back button! Need to go back a page in any app? Back button! Need to exit out of a dialog box? Back button! it really was great. The multitasking button wasn't as wonderful but was good to have.
Runner up is the double press of the power button to open the camera. I'm still trying to do it on the iPhone. It was such a useful shortcut that I used as the primary way I opened my camera.
The ability to side load apps shouldn't be a feature. Nevertheless, apple hides this ability behind a $100 yearly fee for a developer account which comes with it's own headaches, or praying that a jailbreak for your version of IOS comes out. I'm going to miss great open-source apps off F-Droid.
🎵 I'm stepping inside a universe designed against my own beliefs 🎵[1]
It's not half bad. I'm surprised with the amount of customizability that they allow you to do now, I remember it being more locked down. The gestures are fairly unintuitive, Sailfish OS has no competition. FaceID is worse than a fingerprint reader and the general idea of it still makes me uneasy. There's a lot more paid apps and free apps are plastered with ads. You can't move the apps to the bottom of the phone screen on the home page. Every browser is just a wrapper for Safari which means no uBlock origin. The widgets are really good. Battery life is AMAZING. The cameras are beautiful and a massive step up from the oneplus 3.
Generally the apps I've downloaded are of a higher quality than that of the average android app. Honestly there are a lot of apps that make interfacing with a linux machine fairly easy. I found one app called "iSH" which is just an alpine linux chroot similar to "Termux" on android. Additionally I found a really good gemini browser called "Elaho" which works great!
Overall it's not actually made that big of an impact on how I use my phone, but I'm not needing to constantly deal with the headaches of degoogled android so I'm feeling better at the end of the day. So far I'm enjoying my experience!