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?

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.

On iOS, I feel like doing things take a few extra taps and swipes than they would on Android.

But on the whole apps made for iOS feel higher quality. Even Google’s own apps are better on iOS. I feel like the problem is that Apple forces developers to adopt changes quickly, whereas Google lets apps use years old API versions.

I’ve switched between android and iOS every couple of years since 2008. My recommendation: just keep using iOS.

The experience is more polished, it’s less difficult to figure out what to buy. You don’t have to worry about Google doing more insane shit, like harvesting and selling all your data, or getting rid of a product you’ve relied on for years. Not to mention my older iPhones work more reliably than my older Android phones do, so even from a support perspective Apple is the better choice.

My only gripe with iOS is that Safari is locked to the OS version you’ve installed, so when you stop receiving phone updates, your browser gets stuck in the past too.

In my experience, I feel like Apple does a much better job curating and vetting their content, making things a lot more stable. Also, Apple at least tries to care about your security and privacy vs the alternative.

I’ve also given Graphene a (short) try and while the privacy features are nice. I don’t want to spend time fiddling with my phone, and trying to get things working.

Yes, the new iPhones are expensive. But if money is tight, you can still get it subsidized by your phone provider. Worst case scenario, get a slightly older/refurbished iPhone.

Good luck OP!

Edit: I also prefer 1Password, but that is another discussion altogether.

Oh, and you are asking in an Apple community. You aren’t going to get many people giving you reasons to use something else ;)

My BIL is a Google engineer and he gave me (an iPhone user) a pixel 8 pro to test drive for feedback. The hardware is pretty darn solid and felt good in my hands and to my eyes. I really liked that it had both a fingerprint sensor and a facial recognition system to unlock. This made contactless payment a lot easier to use than an iPhone in my opinion. In general, the software is not as polished as iOS, but is more customizable and you can side load apps from alternate app stores like f droid, which is great. The killer feature as far as I am concerned is Firefox with uBlock.

The Android OS is very hostile to background processes running.

The rules around what's okay and what's not is constantly changing, so apps that need to run things in the background are constantly having to update things so they can work properly and sometimes they don't, or they do it wrong, and then certain features don't work properly like push notifications or schedules events.

Then, even if the developer does everything perfectly you get OEMs like Samsung that ignore the rules and fuck with your app anyway, and the literal only way to stop it is to go into the OS setting and disable a lot of things, which puts the onus on the user, and not the developer to make the app work.

But Samsung is such a bitch that even then they don't honor your settings and sometimes revert them, or add new ones that fuck with it again in a constantly changing hard to find nested settings menu.

I actually do like my Samsung phone, but god damn fuck you Samsung for doing this.

If you want a phone that at least follows the ever changing rules properly, get a pixel.

It'll take about 6 months to get used to the new UI. Don't expect to not be frustrated by not being able to quickly do simple things you used to be able to do easily

Google, Apple and few other cloud photo storage service providers recently announced a service to move all your photos from Apple iCloud to Google and vice versa. It takes a few days but it’s all automated. So if you want to move on from iCloud, check that.

https://support.google.com/photos/answer/10502587?hl=en

I've had an Android since probably 2012. It has been nice to see the OS become so mature, and security has been getting increasing attention over the last few years. I don't know iPhone as well, so I will speak more on my experience with Android.

Brand Families: Many excellent brands exist, but I will really only consider what I think of as the top two - Google and Samsung. I've had the Pixel 3, 5, 7 and my girlfriend has had the 4a and 8. The experience on a Google branded phone is, in my opinion, the best way to experience Android. The Samsung phones definitely keep up with the Pixel line, but the UI feels chaotic to me. Pixel Android is clean.

Work App Experience: My job is in IT for a government contractor, and my email is configured in a Microsoft Intune container. This feature simply does not work in non-stock OS's, so I wouldn't count on being able to use Graphene. Play store is required, as the Play Store sets up the secure container. This may sound like a downside, but to me it's preferable over relying on Microsoft for this. The secure container works excellent and allows me to shut off all of my work apps with one click. If I was ever fired, my job could wipe the container without wiping my personal data. This is a huge benefit to me. Earlier this year we had an employee stealing data and when we issues the remote wipe command to their iPhone it wiped EVERYTHING.

Play Store: It's very ad heavy. I typically know what I am looking for before I venture into the Play store.

**De-Googling: ** I use Firefox Mobile with uBlock (yes it works on mobile) and am working my way towards Proton services (drive, email, password manager, VPN, etc).

Overall Experience: I own several Android gaming handhelds, an Android audio player, and my Pixel 7. I will probably stick with Android for the foreseeable future. Android is flexible, mature, fast, and secure. My cameras are excellent and really only fall apart when zooming. Newer Pixel phones improve this experience.

I’ve switched between android and iOS several times at this point.

Probably the best things about android is the ability to use custom ROMs and alternative apps stores such as GrapheneOS and fdroid.

If you are switching to get into the Google ecosystem, I think that is probably a mistake. In my opinion the ecosystem is vastly inferior to their Apple counterparts, and even the parts that are better, such as drive and gsuite, are just as good, if not better supported on iOS.

Whenever I was in android it was because the software was more open or there was some novel hardware that ended up not being as good or apple caught up (such as the galaxy phone being bigger and more capable at the time or the new Moto Razr being a clamshell flip, ended up breaking after 6 months)

In either case I switched back

Note: the following is based on an email I sent to clients who switched to Android last year. Sorry for long format but figured it might help.
TL;DR: Android can be a great choice. Just plan ahead and be careful.

There’s a few extra steps to preserve data security and privacy. In particular, prepare to:

• Flash an open-source system
  • Why: increasingly, data harvesting is deeply woven into the fabric of common Android systems provisioned for individual sale
    • Google’s approach to system design adds privileged telemetric access everywhere for truly robust user surveillance (to which third party developers are offered access via their platforms)
    • Manufacturers and carriers want in on the feeding frenzy, so they add their own data harnesses on top of vanilla Android to supplement their device sale and telco service revenues
    • All this data proliferation will dramatically expand your attack surface if you’re not able to take responsibility for your own security hygiene
  • How: select your preferred ROM first (since your device selection can be limited by compatibility) then buy your device and (if possible) flash it before carrier activation
• Be vigilant and thorough in your audits of any app market installations, especially from the Play store
  • Most app stores take little responsibility for what developers offer in their market (beyond the most obvious malware) and are especially hands-off re: user data collection and “dark patterns”
  • In other words there are no guarantees (by Google, Samsung, Verizon, or anyone else) that you might be accustomed to with Apple’s strict (draconian) quality control
• Avoid installing anything by Google if possible, including the Play store, because their apps try very hard to re-google any de-googled Android system
• Find a different password manager
  • KeyChain is basically impossible to use on Android without compromising security one way or another
  • You can export your passwords to CSV and import to most password managers
• Host your own cloud photo sync/backup service
  • While you can access iCloud Photos on Android in various ways, including through a browser, I’m not aware of any software that offers equivalent e2e integration
  • There are several popular options but I was most impressed by LibrePhotos

Only flagship samsung and google phones offer 7 years of OS updates support.

You can export the passwords using a Mac and you can get the email ids being used for “Sign in with Apple” and just use that email id if you can’t change it on the websites. I do it now as some websites stopped supporting that feature.

Just don’t.