Lessons Learned from an Android to iPhone Convert. Part 3: What I Miss From Android and Like on iOS

I can't believe it's been about 3 months since I converted from my beloved Samsung Galaxy S10 Android phone to the iPhone 14 Pro. In previous posts, I talked about the pitfalls of migrating to iMessage and working with Photos and Files.

While I have gotten used to iOS, there are still a few things I miss from my Android phone.

What I Miss From Android

Pin Live Scores on Home/Lock Screen: For sports fans like me, I loved the Pin Live Score feature. I would often Google search a game for a live update. Once Google returned the results, there was just a "Pin Live Score" button shown on the search results page and I just clicked it. And it stays "floating" on your home screen until you remove it. You can move it to anywhere you want. Super easy!

From Google search, tap on Pin live score

Live score overlay can be placed anywhere on phone screen

Apple has added in iOS 16 Live Activities. But you need a sports app that’s updated for this feature. Or you have to go to Apple News app's My Sports section and select your favorite teams. All of these options take way more effort than the Android Pin Live Score experience!  

Better Predictive Text: I find the predictive text and autocorrect on Android way better than Siri. It's clear Google's AI investments are paying off way more than Apple's. I now understand all the jokes I used to see on social media and from iPhone friends of Siri returning silly autocorrections.

Future Date Alarm: I miss being able to set an alarm for a future date. From the iPhone's Clock app, you can only set an alarm in the next 24 hours or repeat by day of week. But what if I want to set an alarm in 3 days? For example, I like to set an alarm exactly 24 hours before my Southwest flight to try to snag the best boarding number possible. I found a workaround using Reminders app that's not great, but doable.

Alarm in Clock on iPhone

While on my trusty Samsung Galaxy, you can set the time and date far out into the future.

Future Date Alarm on Android

iPhone Finally Got This?

Over the years, I have met iPhone loyalists who think Apple is such an innovator and don't realize that Samsung has typically been more innovative than Apple for smartphones. For example, Samsung embraced the larger screen size and OLED screen technology way before Apple. In particular, with iOS 16, iPhone finally got a few features that I enjoyed on my Samsung for years:

• Ability to shuffle through multiple photos on lock screen
• A haptic keyboard
• Always On display is finally on the iPhone 14, but not the base model. You need a Pro! Luckily I got the Pro. But I have actually had this feature on Samsung for 5 years!

What I Like on iOS

To provide a balanced perspective, there are some features I like on my new iPhone.

Location Settings at App Level: As a privacy advocate, this is one of my favorite benefits converting to iPhone! On Android, it was turn Location On or Off -- pretty much all or nothing if an app I used needed location sharing. Because I didn't like my location always on, every time I used Google Maps for driving directions, I had to turn location on and then turn it off again. This is because Google's advertising business model benefits from geo-targeting, unlike Apple who doesn't rely on advertising revenue.

iMessage: As described in Part 1, one of the main reasons I converted to iPhone from Android was pressure from family and friends to get on iMessage. After a few months, I get why people love iMessage! I have been getting more pics and videos sent to me, and they are high-res. I have been added to existing group chats with other iPhone users. I can easily send people my location temporarily via iMessage when I am on my way.

FaceTime: While there are many ways for video calls, such as via Zoom, Teams, or Google, FaceTime is way easier to instantly video call another iPhone user than I ever realized. And since iOS 15, even non-iOS people can join a FaceTime call! 

Face ID: While I loved the finger sensor in the glass of my S10, I have gotten used to facial recognition to unlock my phone. Although the few times I had to wear a mask, it doesn't work. I guess I could try to configure the mask settings on my iPhone.

Dynamic Island: This is a neat future on the 14 Pro. I mainly use it on calls, while listening to music, and waiting for rideshare car to pick me up. I'm sure there are more use cases I haven't discovered yet. I must say the way Apple programmed how that area on top that replaced the dreaded "notch" moves and dynamically transitions is quite slick!

I'm sure many people will get an iPhone for Christmas. Some may even be Android converts like me. I hope my 3-part series has helped others.

Happy holidays!

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Lessons Learned from an Android to iPhone Convert. Part 2: Working with Photos and Files

It’s been about 2 months since I replaced my beloved Samsung Galaxy S10 for the iPhone 14 Pro. I have adapted to iMessage, despite some of the post-migration issues. 

I do a lot of work on my phone on the go. I’ve always felt like Android was designed for more techie folks and Windows users like myself. While Apple, in the name of ease of use and securing its devices, sometimes appears more restrictive than Android.

Naming Photos

Take the Photos app for instance. I discovered that my new iPhone does not let me rename or save photos with my own file name easily. Instead I have to accept its arcane IMG_XXXX naming convention! On my Android phone, I used to rename photos to make it easier to find or recall what the image was (e.g., bob birthday dinner, company retreat team photo). While I lose the ability to easily rename photos to make it easier to find, you can use the Caption feature in a photo to write notes.

Caption field in Photo

If you REALLY want to rename photos taken, you can Save to Files, which is buried down low after the share options.

Save to Files option from Photo

So after you rename the photo's file via the Save to Files option, you won't find your image under the Photo app. Instead it will be under the Files app. For years, Apple didn’t have what we Windows users call File Manager or Explorer on the iPhone and it's not heavily promoted to consumers. 

Rename photo's filename

Searching Photos

I also discovered the Photo search is quite powerful. If you enter Captions for your photos, it searches that field by default. But iPhone's AI can also detect text IN images you don’t tag. Here's an example with a hypothetical Taylor Swift photo search. A search for “taylor” found mentions in photo caption and text in image. 

Photo search results for "taylor" in Caption

Photo search results for "taylor" embedded in image

Removing Photo Backgrounds

But wait, there's more! Another cool feature I discovered in Photos is like Adobe Photoshop’s "magnetic lasso" to easily remove backgrounds for images. By long pressing a subject in a photo, a white border appears instantly, outlining the subject in the photo you long press. 

Long press photo to start "magnetic lasso" creation

Then you can copy, save or share that subject, auto removing the background. It works amazingly well and super easy to use! How is this cool feature such a well kept secret?

Background removed with "magnetic lasso"

HEIC vs. JPEG File Format

By default, iPhone's Camera app saves photos in HEIC format. For iPhone converts that follow in my footsteps who are Windows users, this can trigger this warning from your PC.

Error message opening HEIC files in Windows

To resolve this issue, don’t forget to change the Camera Capture settings from the default HEIC format to be Most Compatible so you can easily share JPEG-formatted photos with non-Apple and Apple users. 

iPhone JPEG format camera setting

Hope you found some of these tips handy!

Next time I'll cover some Android features I still miss on my iPhone.

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Lessons Learned from an Android to iPhone Convert. Part 1: Moving to iMessage

After 13 years of being a loyal Android user, I made the switch last month to iOS and bought the new iPhone 14 Pro. 

I loved my first Android phone — the iconic Motorola Droid back in 2009. Brief detour down memory lane: The Droid had a large gorgeous display, slider keyboard (for those of us who still liked Blackberry and not ready for the keyboardless iPhone), the powerful 5MP camera, and built-in “free” Google Maps/GPS navigation app. And backed by Verizon with a huge Star Wars R2-D2-themed marketing campaign. Sure those specs sound outdated now, but the Droid really put Android on the map, and since then I’ve been a loyal fan of Samsung Galaxy S smartphones.

Motorola Droid, 2009

So why the change after all these years? Mostly pressure from family and friends to get on iMessage and FaceTime (a.k.a. network effect), more parity between iOS and Android devices (i.e., less innovation these days, unless you want a foldable Z phone 😉), and increasing privacy and security protection concerns with Android/Google.

I do a LOT on my smartphone, including work and personal tasks. So I had a lot of concerns about my productivity on iOS and how smooth the migration would go. 

Migrating to iMessage

Most of the apps I use on Android exist on iOS. But iMessage is a walled garden, despite the recent advertising campaign by Google poking fun at Apple to get them to adopt RCS for cross-platform messaging interoperability.

The biggest unknown was transferring my 13 years of text messages to iMessage. I researched this for weeks and discovered there was no guaranteed 100% fool-proof way to do this. Verizon reps couldn’t make any promises. Even the geniuses at Apple who recommended their Move To iOS app conceded that it has failed at times.

I considered other options, including Verizon’s Content Transfer app and SMS Backup and Restore app. But ultimately I decided to try Move To iOS.

Surprisingly, Move To IOS worked…mostly. First, the app’s time estimate to complete migration is woefully inaccurate. It started with 6 hrs (!!!), then down to about 3 hrs in 15 mins. I had read reviews about it timing out and having to start over, so I sat there tapping both phones to wake them every few minutes. Then when it said 2 ½ hrs left, it finished unexpectedly. So in reality it was closer to 45 minutes.

Every text conversation appeared to have migrated over into iMessage! I was now part of the blue family. I can now get high-res videos and photos from other iPhone users, among other benefits.

With iOS 16 came new features that I love. Mark Unread is great. Now I wish there was a reminder option like Slack or snooze like Gmail. Also, the ability to delete or edit a text shortly after sending is great! And while not a new iOS 16 feature (but new to me), being able to reply in thread (like Slack) is awesome.

But there were a few wrinkles.

I did discover that my old “Android” phone number was treated as a different “person” than my new “iPhone” phone number in existing (I.e., pre-iPhone) group conversations with other iPhone users. See below example where my reply (in green even though it was sent from my new iPhone) showed me receiving a text from myself (in grey).

iMessage thought I was different person

Moreover, when someone else replied in an existing conversation, a NEW conversation was created with only my iPhone persona from that point forward. And this new conversation didn’t show past texts. However, at least I have my old conversations archived on my new iPhone in iMessage, even if it is a separate conversation now.

Another big problem was photos and videos that were in my texts didn’t port over. Instead I see alphanumeric jibberish like this. This led me to keep my old Samsung Galaxy phone indefinitely should I ever need to reference past photos or videos.

Missing images from old texts

I also had an issue where profile images for people had changed and in some cases reverted to photos that were several years old. Not even sure how iMessage even captured that meta data! So I had to update a bunch of profile pics.

Lastly, one feature I sorely miss from my Verizon Message+ app is the ability to send scheduled texts. Sure it could be used to send a late night text to a boss as if you were burning the midnight oil. But it is also useful to send a future reminder to someone (or yourself). Schedule a text saying “Remember to ask teacher about X” to your child, timed for after school gets out tomorrow. Maybe Apple will have this feature in 3 years.

Next time: Part 2: Working with Photos and Files 

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