Hard iPhone and iOS user switching to Android, OnePlus 6T

I am what you could call an Apple user of Day One.

I am using Apple products and Mac computers as long as I can remember, from the Power Macintosh that my parents had in the family room to my first iBook through multiple iterations of the iPod .

When the first iPhone came out in 2007, I was dazzled. I saved my earnings from my summer work at a swimming club and I bought it a few weeks after it arrived in the stores. Like just about everyone who has ever had an iPhone, I loved it.

Over the years, I improved semi-regularly every two years: 3GS, 4S, 5S, 6S. Every time, I had the idea to try Android. I played with the high-end Android phones of the AT & T shop, read a little bit about how much the ecosystem was even more "open", then I finally opted for it. ; iPhone.

However, during this last cycle, I held as long as possible. My 6S was still intact after 3 years, operating at an adequate speed for what I needed. The new bells and whistles of new generations of iPhones were rarely so stunning – 3D Touch, Face ID, a missing headphone jack – why upgrade the upgrade?

Next, my battery stopped being able to hold anything that looks like a reasonable charge even after using Apple's battery replacement program. Calls and service began to drop regularly for no apparent reason.

In October, I had to admit that it was time to change phones.

The new Apple phones have the feeling of having less for their money

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

By examining the options of Apple, I had the creepy feeling that there was not much value to be had. The high-end options – the iPhone X and its successor, the XS – looked ridiculous at a price of $ 999.

As I was constantly moving for work, I needed an unlocked phone that works with any operator. It meant that I was not going to use the immobilizer's downgrading program to pay for the phone in pieces. I would pay the total price from the outset, so that I could use it with any carrier, just about anywhere in the world.

Regardless of the fact that smartphones look more like minicomputers equipped with cameras, $ 900 or $ 1,000 for a phone seemed absurd. In particular, when one has the impression that they rarely last more than two years. My digital cameras, at least, remain relevant for five years or more.

The least expensive option from Apple at $ 599, the i Phone 8, represented a more or less marginal improvement over my current phone, the 6S. The XR, the option just below the XS, still costs $ 750 or more, which still means a lot of money.

My choices seemed to be paying an arm for a good phone or $ 599 for a slightly newer version of the phone I already had.

I felt as if Apple had forced my hand. I can not be the only one.

First of all, I tried an economical Android phone and found that a $ 300 phone could do just about anything an average person wants

Antonio Villas-Boas / Business Insider

I started looking for other options at – panting! – Android phone manufacturers.

At first, I looked at the budget options and opted for the Moto G6 for $ 230, which many consider to be the most economical phone at the moment. I ordered the phone on Amazon thanks to its easy return policy and I switched when the phone arrived two days later.

It took a few hours for my phone to work as I wished, with the required applications and settings changed, but to tell the truth, it was easier than I thought. I'd already been using Google Photos for backup for about a year, my email was going through Gmail and virtually every other major application I'd been using was working in the cloud (Lightroom, Instagram, WeChat, WhatsApp, Spotify, etc.). All I had to do was download all of my apps again and log in.

Even at $ 230, the phone was much faster than my 6S and could handle all the apps I was running. The reality is that unless you try to use graphics-hungry games, almost every smartphone you choose these days will work perfectly.

More: I barely noticed a difference when I used this $ 250 smartphone after using $ 800 phones for years

As j & r I used the phone for a week, I did not stop to find little things that I liked on Android.

Double tap the power button to open the camera app changes the deal for me as a street photographer. It is all the more possible to obtain elusive photos.

The operating system application launcher (ie the home screen) can be changed in the configuration of your choice, with the possibility to display widgets indicating the weather, multiple time zones and a Google search bar.

Any Android user will laugh at it, but for an iPhone user accustomed to infinite grids of applications, it's a huge improvement. Apple has not really updated the appearance of iOS for years. You can say, if it's not broken, do not fix it but there is something to be said about trying new ideas.

I have noticed other useful adjustments.

Notifications seem more customizable and powered by AI. If you continue to reject a notification, Google will detect it and give you the option to stop showing it. This saves me time to directly enter my settings and individually configure notifications for each application.

I am sure that iOS users can sympathize: at some point in the use of my iPhone, I have not even looked at the notifications screen because it contained a wealth of information that I neither needed nor asked for.

Not to mention the usefulness and precision of Google Assistant. Even though she 's not as accurate as Alexa' s Amazon, she 's way better than Siri, though I confess that I still get used to it. Google Assistant.

But the low budget phone camera was dull and so I decided to try the "best kept secret" of smartphones – the OnePlus 6T

Antonio Villas-Boas / Business Insider

The Achilles' heel of the Moto G6 was the camera. There was no way to get around it.

The phone's camera was not even comparable to that of my 6S camera, 3 years old, not to mention one of the newer Apple Phones. . It's hard to be crazy about that for a $ 230 phone, but, as a pbadionate photographer, I would not be happy in the long run.

It was at that time that I heard about OnePlus from my technical office colleague, Antonio Villas-Boas, who called the Chinese company's products "best smartphones of which you have never heard of it.

While I had never heard of the company, OnePlus has built a loyal base of fervent customers for its high-end phones, but affordable over the last five years. The company just released its latest version, the OnePlus 6T, in October, for rave reviews, especially from my colleague.

At $ 580, it was more expensive than the G6, but still cheaper than almost every iPhone. And critics said that despite the price of the phone, it could compete with flagship smartphones such as the iPhone X or the Google Pixel.

"I have the impression of cheating with a smartphone that costs $ 550 at the base and does everything I want, just like the other phones that I've tried this year," wrote Villas-Boas in October.

I decided to try.

The OnePlus works like a $ 900 phone for a fraction of the price.

Antonio Villas-Boas / Business Insider

After about three weeks weeks of using the phone, I am d & # 39; agreement with the commentators. The OnePlus 6T is also good. Fast, it has most high-end features like more expensive phones, such as the iPhone X and the Pixel, and even offers cutting edge technology like its built-in fingerprint sensor. 39; screen.

To learn more: the OnePlus 6T at 550 USD gives me the impression of cheating in a world where smartphones cost 750 USD or more

I worried all likewise the performance of the camera.

Around the same time I bought the 6T, my girlfriend bought the iPhone XR. As we traveled in the last month, we compared the catch as we went. Although I would not say that the 6T is clearly better than the XR's camera, it's a very competitive race. There are lighting situations in which the XR outperforms the 6T and other times the 6T outperforms the XR.

Most of the time, it's a matter of taste. 6T images tend to be more saturated and get deeper blacks, while XR shots tend to be more detailed.

But then I discovered one of the joys of using Android: the opening of the platform and its community of super-fans. On the OnePlus subreddit, I discovered that some astute developers had imported Google's proprietary GCam application which, on the Pixel, would have been the best smartphone camera on the market.

Harrison Jacobs / Business Insider

Although I do not use GCAM all or most of the time because the application is not available exactly stable – complications of not being an official version of the application – approved by Google – I use it for special situations like the night. The GCAM night mode, combined with the OnePlus 6T camera, propels the XR reader out of the water. It's crazy good.

And the simple fact of adapting the phone to my needs has seemed fun, which my iPhone has not done for years.

I found a big problem with the move from iOS to Android: abandon iMessage

Apple

For an iOS user who toggles , the biggest obstacle I've found is iMessage. Apple has done a sneaky and smart thing by integrating its locked messaging system with the default SMS application.

With most of my friends and family on iOS – and everyone apparently allergic to "green bubbles" – I suddenly found myself in the unenviable position of trying to convince my immediate entourage of 39, use WhatsApp.

The more I use Android, the more I'm convinced that iMessage is the only major difference between operating systems. Of course, there are others, ranging from the Apple iCloud service to the generally better security of the Apple operating system, but the most visible barrier for most iOS users is the abandonment of iMessage.

And I'm not going to lie: it's painful. Although I do not mind WhatsApp, iMessage definitely feels like a smoother and cleaner email service. At this point, if something will take me back to iOS in a few years, that will probably be the case.

But for the moment, I do not regret changing positions. It was delicious.