About a week ago, I wrote I miss the nice things about having a “real” smartphone. Since then, I started using my iPhone almost for everything besides the most private and some communications on Signal. I found out a couple of surprising things!

The Unexpected

As an advocate of smaller phones (I have an iPhone mini, which I think is the perfect size. My Android is a regular Pixel 6) turns out I actually prefer the bigger screen size for reading. The smaller screen has even less room when I need to increase the font size, especially if I don’t have my glasses on. Reading a book on the bigger Pixel is better.

Then there are the photos and videos. Both phones take excellent photos with the stock camera apps, but in my opinion, Google’s camera software1 is slightly better than Apple’s. That’s because of its additional smart editing and integration with Google Photos and its AI. The iPhone insists on taking videos in MOV format instead of MP4, which adds another layer of complexity when I want to upload and store my videos. I don’t see the advantage to Apple’s native videos/photos format, especially since my photos often go into Photoshop and my videos to Camtasia for editing. So, as far as taking photos and videos - I find my Pixel to be better for my use case.

Annoying ads are yet another thing that I found the iPhone handles worse than the Pixel. Pop-ups, in-your-face flashy animation, and other ads with a tiny “X” you easily miss and tap your webpage away are everywhere on the iPhone. The smaller screen makes those even more annoying, so much so that I avoid clicking links to articles altogether. My Android seems to filter much more of these annoyances, partly because of the browser (Firefox Focus at the moment, which has a good reading mode) and partly because of components integrated into GrapheneOS. Those of you who use iPhones: how do you deal with this?? It’s so infuriating and frustrating! Is there a way you avoid those?

The Expected and Exceeding it

Some things the iPhone does better, and some it does much better. Here are a few things that I found refreshing as an Android user.

First, Apple Maps has come a long way since I used it years ago. In my opinion, Apple Maps is now even better than Google Maps. That’s because it has just enough information to make things useful, especially in NYC. Google Maps is causing me information overload. While I find that I miss the location reviews and charts of when a place is busy and not, these are mostly just perks.

Speaking of getting around, the iPhone has an “express” option to pay for NYC Subway without even using face recognition. This is fast. You’d think that waving your credit card at the turnstile is just as fast. Well, it isn’t. By the time you take out your wallet, pull out your credit card from its tight pocket, and then wait for the thing to register against the reader, you’ve lost 10-15 seconds. In a busy NYC subway system, that’s the difference between missing your train or getting someplace on time.

Scanning and recording notes is another thing the iPhone is better at. Google has Keep and Google Drive, but the integration and elegance are not there. Notes is much more polished and seems more mature, even though I think Google Keep has been around for longer. Scanning is a pleasure to use, and the fact that I can scan PDFs directly into my Synology (where I keep my documents) without going through a cloud (Google’s or Apple’s) is huge. The fact that I can sign and annotate those on my iPhone while they are open on the Mac for highlights and comments is mind-blowing. This is the kind of magic Apple is known for.

Speaking of magic: I found myself using the iPhone’s measurement tool just for fun. The thing is phenomenal. Meanwhile, my mom was blown away by the magnifier tool, which also comes with an option to brighten the screen app. No more camera flashes in dark bars and restaurants…! It’s these small things that make the iPhone surprisingly useful when you don’t think about it.

A Disclaimer…

It’s not possible to write an Android/iPhone post these days without annoying someone about their favorite tech. I’m aware that writing a disclaimer won’t help much either, but I’ll try.

First, again, I’m using GrapheneOS, which is aimed at privacy geeks. As a result, many features of the Pixel phone are not there. That said, I’ve used Google Pixels since they started (and before that, with the Nexus phones.)

Then, of course, these are my opinion. I used to wave away many of the iPhone benefits I listed above until I started using them. I understand you can get by with app X and write a script to get around option Y, which is what I’ve been doing myself for years. The point is that with the iPhone, I don’t need to.

Footnotes

1 - My Android has GrapheneOS now, which means Google’s camera and photos are not present without an additional installation. I installed Google Camera almost immediately, as taking photos is important to me, and GrapheneOS’s camera is basic at best. I’m trying to hold back on Google Photos, but I think it’s a losing battle.