4mo ago

I've had ios apple phones all my post-2010 life and am thinking about buying my first android phone, what are some things to know before switching?

Relevant details that might make this a headache.

Most my passwords are saved on the safari password manager and I use the “sign in with apple” on a bunch of websites
My photo library is currently backed with an icloud subscription

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The Android experience is quite a bit more wanky than Apple's walled garden. I moved to Android a year ago and it took me months of fiddling until I was satisfied. Google really tries to give you their own not-that-walled garden, giving you an Apple-esque experience. If you are not 100 % invested, it could get finicky, though. The vendors usually provide their own standard apps, but more often than not, I find them unpolished.
Regarding Log in with Apple, you could, from what I experienced, get problems, as some Android apps won't let you sign in wit Apple, and even websites don'support it all the time. Take Tripadvisor as an example. Create an account on the iOS app, and when changing to Android, you're basically locked out, because neither their Android app nor their website support Log in with Apple.
- Thanks. I’m actually considering /e/os (a degoogled privacy focused android fork) But I’m assuming sone of the issues here still apply.
  I’m really iffy about the privacy constraints with android and the main reason I’m considering switching is
  lack of customisation (for me, torrenting is a must have which apple doesn’t allow)
  cheaper. I lost my job due to disability so I just need a more affordable solution than apple.
  
  I went the /e/os way and quickly turned back. Not to dismiss the effort of the maintainers, but it really felt like a frontend on lineage os meant to sell alternative cloud services. I did not find convincing arguments over a bare lineage os and the pretty much forced /e/ cloud was a total turn off.
  I went the "real" security / privacy way and switched to grapheneos. Very happy overall, already went thought with 2 major os updates, no issues whatsoever. Only issue would be if you want Google pay (won't work on graphene). You'd need a pixel phone if that's in your budget. The pixel phones are great at photos, but pretty "meh" otherwise
  
  Thanks. I’ll look into lineage and graphene.
  
  for the first point, Transmission has a pretty serviceable web client that works great on iOS as a web shortcut
  its just occurred to me you might mean downloading torrents directly to you iphone, rather than a remote to some other device.... in that case a web client isn't sufficient, you'd have to sideload
  
  Thanks for telling me about sideloading. I’m now a IOS pirate, until I buy a new phone atleast because my battery doesnt last an hour lol
  
  oh fantastic
  
  Yes. Due to disability I’m unable to use a computer anymore, so I’d like to torrent onto my phone.
  
  You can actually (indirectly) torrent on iOS via seed box. I use SonicBit, which has an iOS app. I find it’s actually more convenient than torrenting directly as the files are stored and seeded online yet still accessible to me when I need them. Then you can download the files to your iPhone/iPad.
  
  On the price side Apple is bringing out a new SE in 2025. Should be cheap. The First issue I don’t know about so can’t respond (torrenting).

29 comments