The disadvantages of switching from iPhone to Android

I’ve been an Android user my whole life, starting with a Samsung Galaxy Ace and then sticking mainly to OnePlus phones thanks to their excellent value for money. I finally made the big move to iOS with the iPhone 15 Pro Max – driving it through three iterations of the OS before returning to Android with the OnePlus 15. As premium as the iPhone experience was, there were some things that Android simply handled better for me, so I assumed the switch back would feel like coming home. This is the case in many ways, but I can now understand why there is friction when moving between the two platforms.

The switch itself is no longer the headache it once was. You don’t need third-party apps just to be able to migrate, say, your WhatsApp chats from iOS to Android. Plus, if you’re already signed in to the Google suite, things like your contacts, photos, and calendar events are automatically transferred. If you pay for Apple services like iCloud+, you can still access your files through a browser, but it would make more sense to upgrade to Google One, which works better for Android.

Generally speaking, iPhones also outperform most Android phones on the software front. Manufacturers like Google and Samsung promise up to seven years of operating system updates, but Apple has a track record of providing long-term software support. Most Android manufacturers still only offer about three or four years of updates.

You may have to jump through a few hoops to move from an iPhone to an Android smartphone, but eventually you’ll find a setup of apps and services that works just as well. This assumes you haven’t opted into Apple’s ecosystem of apps and devices. While a few services like Apple Music work great on Android devices, others don’t work as well outside of Apple’s walled garden.

AirPods can connect to Android phones, for example, but they lose many of the features that allow them to work so seamlessly with an iPhone. There are third-party tools you can install, like LibrePods, but features like Spatial Audio with head tracking still aren’t reliable enough. The situation is worse if you have an Apple Watch: it simply won’t connect to an Android device. You’ll need to keep an iPhone handy if you want to sync your workouts and health data to the cloud.

That said, Google has made a valiant effort to bridge the gap between Android and iOS users. In fact, a few modern Android smartphones can now share or receive files with iPhones, iPads, and Macs via AirDrop. RCS messaging finally available on iPhone is also great news, but iMessage still remains exclusive to Apple devices. You may also need to find alternatives to a few apps available only on iOS. For example, I was a little saddened to learn that Flighty, my favorite flight tracking app (for which I pay a subscription), isn’t available on Android.

My main complaint with iOS is how terrible its keyboard is. Android is also generally much better at file management and download management. That said, there are a few subtleties you might miss after your switch. iOS does a much better job of design consistency. Sure, the Liquid Glass redesign was pretty polarizing, but having third-party apps adopt a unified design language makes the iPhone experience more cohesive. Plus, it doesn’t really help that many Android makers seem to be chasing the same translucent look with half-baked renditions of Liquid Glass, making everything worse than before, in my opinion.

You may also have heard people talking about how much better app quality is on iPhone. I don’t think this sentiment is true for all apps, but there are certainly cases where the iOS version feels more polished. It probably comes down to the fact that app developers only have a limited number of iPhones to optimize their apps for, compared to the thousands of Android phone models released each year with different screen sizes, internals, and software versions.

The iPhone’s hardware is another aspect that you may find hard to leave aside. There are certainly plenty of Android smartphones with comparable or even better hardware, but iPhones do a better job of maintaining a consistent level of quality across the range. Even if you buy a base iPhone model, you won’t have to worry about build quality, haptics, speakers, or camera experience.