I upgraded recently from a galaxy note 2 to an iPhone 6s plus because of a stupid mistake on my part ruining my note 2. I had planned on going to the note 5 until it came out and screwed up my plans by essentially taking the apple path of being sealed as well as only offering only a max of 64gb (a lot for most people but not enough for me). I don’t mind the apple ecosystem for some things. I’m typing this on a macbook. Perhaps I get too hidebound and just want things to work the way I want them to and don’t like being told something is better when it’s not better for me.

1. Scheduled SMS messages.

Not everyone I know lives in my town. Plus I travel for work and for pleasure. It’s faster for most people to get a text message than to check their emails. Yeah spam for keeping people from checking emails! So I liked to be able to type a message and then schedule it for their waking time and have it just automagically send it at the right time. Another trick similar to this was putting the phone on airplane mode and sending text messages that “I’ve landed”. Once I actually did land and took the phone off airplane mode, it would just send the messages. With iOS if the message doesn’t send I have to go back and click the $&!# ‘i’ and make it resend the message.

2. Customization

I’m a tweaker. I want to be able to make the technology work for me. I don’t like being forced to follow the path dictated for me. It’s like school, work or anything else, if you can make the technology work for you, you’ll probably be more efficient.

3. Extra battery

There isn’t always an outlet around, nor do i always have my external battery with me. I miss being able to change the battery or being able to install a larger internal one. Some of us care more about function than form.  *not anymore on the note 5

4. Space

I miss having the ability to add an extra memory card for space. Movies, music, documents, pictures, etc, can be placed there to save the faster internal memory. *not anymore on the note 5

5. Front screen notifications

Now that I don’t have it, I miss the charging light that I used to have and the blinking light that I could have for a notification. I think it worked better for me since I generally have almost every notification turned off except for messages and missed phone calls. I’m forced to actually turn my phone on to check now that something new is waiting.

6. Updated apps

One of the benefits of the microsd storage (after rooting) is that i could have automatic backups of apps so that after an update if something was different or nonfunctioning, i could go and rollback to a previous version.

7. Buying apps

I miss being able to try out an app from the play store and deciding if it is actually worth keeping or not. If not, you have a 10-15 minute window in which you can ‘return’ the android app you don’t like. Comes in handy for testing our a genre like trying to find a calendar app amongst the many and returning all but the one that you actually want. For iOS I hate to think about the amount of apps that I’ve bought in search of the right one for calendars or todo lists.

The sad thing is, I haven’t been impressed with a lot of the gimmicky phone models on the android side recently and the move from samsung to change the note 5 to a more apple like product was the stake for me this round. If I hadn’t damaged my phone I’d still be on my nice Note 2 that was working just fine and I could continue the game of, “If I needed to get a new phone.” I don’t really use handoff and I’m not really a fan of every device in the ecosystem ringing when I get a call. Perhaps I’m still disgruntled about having to make a choice and getting a new phone, just not the phone I was hoping to get. Maybe if Jobs was still alive I’d be happier being in the apple ecosystem. Seeing all the bugs and problems that keep cropping up because of quick releases doesn’t give me hope but it does level the playing field. Android doesn’t update anywhere near the same speed because each carrier dips their fingers in and makes an update take forever to come out. I’ve seen an update be released as the NEXT version was already coming out. That’s slow folks.

Trying to find a place of peace in the ecosystem,

-SFA