Greener on the other side: why I’ve switched to Android and why it stuck this time

My iPhone 15 Pro is a marvel, but after over a decade of iPhone use, I am, frankly, bored.

Apple products have become familiar to the point of monotony. And, having spent weeks using the betas of the upcoming version of iOS, I can’t shake the feeling that Liquid Glass is a design language at war with itself, contradicting its own mandate to put your content first by drawing attention to itself at every turn.

So what, it’s a phone—just change it. You’re right, and I did. Twice, actually. I spent a bit of time with the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL a few months back and the OnePlus 13 a little after that. But…at the time, RCS was just rolling out, and since most of my social life relied on iMessage, the friction was too great—if not for me, certainly for my friends and family who I had no desire to inflict turmoil upon.

Even so, to call the experience a breath of fresh air would be putting it lightly. It’s so refreshing to see a fundamentally different take on the same promises Apple makes with its iPhones. Same form factor, same capabilities, yet governed by different philosophies and priorities.

I relish the changes to my routine.

The price of platform loyalty

Those attempts helped me realize there’s plenty of innovation happening in the smartphone space, it’s just not happening within Apple’s walled garden. This means that many folks—myself included—have lost sight of those advances, discrediting them as if they're forbidden, veiled in a fog of platform war.

And for what? Ecosystem ties? What does that even mean?

Why should the tools we buy be allowed to strategically influence how we use them? How did we become convinced that innovation requires isolation? If these companies were as invested in broad human flourishing as they purport to be, we’d have a lot more interoperable, cooperative technology than we do.

Also worth asking: what do we gain in exchange for submitting to our ecosystem bonds? And are we sure the reasons given for these restrictions are demonstrably impactful to the average user? I find it hard to reconcile given that the global majority isn’t bound by these limitations and yet manages to live, work, and play through these devices all the same. Android users outnumber iPhone users nearly three times over. Only in North America are iPhones dominant, which is another thing that’s easy to lose sight of if you spend most of your time there.

I don’t think we ought to accept the notion that technology has to be proprietary to be pleasing, polished, and purposeful. The fact that in some categories that appears to be the case doesn’t mean it must or should be that way. It’s on me to advocate for the kind of technology I want to see more of. When we’ve fallen into a well, we should ask for a ladder not a shovel.

All these thoughts came to a head for me recently. The thought of spending another autumn pining for the next incremental step, seeking wonder in mediocrity, suddenly felt exhausting. What I love is technology, not products. Brand should be one of many criteria, not the primary one.

Apple hasn’t been earning my loyalty lately, and I’m all out of excuses. What better way to put my money where my mouth is than by changing the single most significant piece of personal technology in my life?

My old new phone

And so, after two false starts, I have switched my mobile computing platform to Android.

Just to be clear, I’m not dual-wielding here; my old iPhone 15 Pro Max is in a drawer, turned off. My Apple Watch Ultra 2 is keeping it company. Both will be sold or traded in toward their ultimate successors.

For now, I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (2022’s flagship) that I have for uninteresting reasons related to work. Over the next few weeks, manufacturers like Apple and Google will be unveiling their flagship hardware for the year, and I'd rather wait and see what they're bringing to the table before I decide on my next phone.

This way, I get to spend some time fully using Android as my mobile OS, and I won’t be swayed by fancy cutting-edge hardware. If I miss iOS, I’ll have been away just long enough for the iPhone 17 family to arrive on the scene and lure me back in. If not, extraordinary flagships from Google, Samsung, OnePlus, and more are vying for supremacy. And any one of them would feel like the biggest change to my phone experience in years.

Heck, even a three-year-old phone does! This thing has a pen built into it. It has four cameras. The screen is curved. These things aren’t necessarily better, but I get the opportunity to find out. And no matter what I decide is important to me, I have options available.

There’s not much point reviewing a three-year-old phone, so I’ll just offer a few comparative thoughts. While this S22 Ultra is beginning to show its age, most notably in terms of its battery health, this has felt like more of a sidegrade than a downgrade.

Both it and my outgoing iPhone 15 Pro Max have spacious 120Hz OLED displays. On the Samsung, the display is slightly dimmer at max brightness, but it’s higher resolution than my iPhone’s—and I notice the resolution more. On the other hand, the Samsung is less responsive, with less consistent animations. You can feel the slower processor and sluggish storage speeds holding it back. I prefer the main camera from the iPhone, but I’d rather take selfies with the Samsung. They’re way better. Biometrics differ too, face vs fingerprint. I haven’t decided yet which I prefer, but I know I’d rather not have to choose.

There’s not much more to say about the hardware, so let’s talk about the most contentious difference: Android vs. iOS.

What it’s like to switch to Android

You may be expecting a harrowing account of how challenging it was to detach myself from the Apple ecosystem, but it all turned out to be more of a mental barrier than a real one.

All my core apps are already cross-platform. Email is with Fastmail, calendars with Google, tasks with Todoist. Notes are in Obsidian, journals are in Day One, RSS is in Feedly, reading is in Readwise Reader. Thoughts, inspiration, bookmarks, products, watchlists, and games to play are all in MyMind. Podcasts are in Pocket Casts, Plex streams my personal media collection, and Apple Music is actually better on Android because you get access to better Bluetooth codecs. Secrets are, of course, in 1Password.

As for messages? I turned off iMessage, and after waiting a few hours for its tendrils to wither and fall away, I was pleased to discover that RCS (now fully rolled out) had taken over all my conversations, giving me the typing indicators, reactions, read receipts, and replies I appreciate in a daily messaging app. Only two group chats had issues, and me sending a new message manually to the same people fixed them both. No wonder Apple is dragging its feet with implementing the latest RCS functionality—this protocol strikes at the heart of their most powerful lock-in lever.

Alongside RCS messaging, there’s Signal and Telegram, WhatsApp and Messenger…each with its own benefits and drawbacks. I’m on all of them, and while I certainly admire the makers of some of those apps more than others, there are more impactful ways for me to rebel against them. Besides, I’m not interested in policing the way people want to communicate with me. I’m just glad they do. And if that means keeping a few more messaging apps installed so folks can reach me, I’ll take it. It’s a good problem to have.

When it comes to the Android experience itself, it’s terrific.

First of all, the universal back gesture? They were right all along. I’m not a big fan of Samsung’s aesthetic with OneUI, but since this is Android I mostly don’t have to see it if I don’t want to. I’ve also replaced their system apps with Google’s equivalents because I prefer them. Beyond that, I use Niagara launcher and a custom icon pack, which replaces the entire home screen and app launching experience with a completely different paradigm. To me, it feels both fresh and faster, more helpful than mainstream mobile OS interaction models. If I get tired of it, there are tens of other launchers and thousands of icon packs I could turn to for help refreshing and reinvigorating my enthusiasm—without having to change the hardware.

No one should be surprised to hear that iOS and Android are more alike than not, especially these days. They trade blows. Being able to have the number row on the keyboard in Android? Great. Not being able to tap the clock to scroll back to the top of a view? Less great. Being able to connect my iPad to an external display? Good. Being able to do the same thing from my phone? Better.

In other areas, Android is clearly ahead, in my estimation. Separate volume controls for alerts vs media vs ringtones vs. system sounds is fantastic. Native clipboard history is handy. Being able to control animation speed system-wide makes it easy to tune the interface responsiveness to suit your preferences. And many of the core features are just smarter; for example, auto-rotate uses the front-facing cameras to check which orientation your face is in relative to the screen, so if you’re lying down and looking at your phone, it doesn’t switch orientations on you unnecessarily. When you take a group photo, it takes multiple shots so you can later choose the best facial expression for everyone, overcoming the typical challenge of getting that perfect moment where no one is blinking or looking elsewhere.

There's a lot more to explore, and I'm excited by the sheer breadth of choices available to me, both in software and in hardware. I’m going to have to learn some new ways of doing things, and unlearn some old ones.

But unlike the previous times I’ve tried this, this time it feels easy.

Between RCS (replacing iMessage), Find Hub (replacing Find My), Blip (replacing AirDrop), KDE Connect (replacing Continuity), and a growing ecosystem of web-first and cross-platform apps, this is proving to be a smoother transition than I thought.

A new chapter

This doesn’t mean I suddenly hate Apple.

I love my Mac, and I'll continue to purchase Apple products when they legitimately serve my needs better than other options, but I hope to start making my purchase decisions with more care and a more open mind. Gadgets aren't only important to me as a hobby, but also as a matter of professional interest.

One way I contribute to the world is by finding and sharing ways to use technology for good, which I believe requires it to be built on foundations that are distributed, interoperable, and humane. Never has this felt more important to me than now.

If I don’t want technology to exclude, I shouldn’t exclude entire branches of technology myself. At least not without trying them.

So here we are, in a season where I, a staunch Apple user of over a decade, should be debating nothing but the colour and size of iPhone I'll upgrade to (for no good earthly reason), or at least "iOS or Android this time?"—but I'm not. Instead, I'm mostly asking myself...slab or foldable?

Technology is fun again!