Mobile upgrade: Should I consider jumping from Android to iOS? Help me decide.

In My Humble Opinion
1

It seems that it will soon be time to up grade my mobile phone. It so happens that I’m very happy with my service provider and have no problem signing up with them for another eighteen months, or two years, or whatever, in order to get an iPhone or latest model Samsung Galaxy virtually free. The problem is, which? I’ve been on Android for about three years, and I’ve been happy with that. At the moment I’m on the last version Jellybean; although I did try KitKat, I decided it took up too much memory on my relatively old phone. I must also admit that K itKat came with a number of problems which may be a good reason why many consumers are so sold on Apple and iOS.

Be that as it may, what I really need is for someone experienced with both operating systems to comment on the particular functionality that I currently appreciate with my Android device, or would expect to have with an Apple device:

Music: With Android, I can easily transfer just about anything I want from my old CDs to my Samsung device. Do I understand correctly that this wouldn’t be possible with Apple?

Podcasts: If I change to iOS, does that mean I’ll only be able to download podcasts from iTunes? Does it make a difference? IOW, if I currently get my podcasts from the BeyondPod Android app, will I be able to get all the same ones from iTunes? Or different ones? Or fewer?

Email: Can I still use my GMail accounts?

Maps: Did Apple get the mapping issues worked out? To be fair, Google Navigation and GPS, in recent releases of Android, have been so inaccurate as to be nearly useless for real time driving navigation.

Radio: On my Android phone I use TuneIn Radio, which I love because it provides access to brick-and-mortar radio stations all over the world. I’m not really down with the whole Sirius/XM thing; I don’t want to listen to something without a geographical center. Is there something like TuneIn Radio for iOS?

Performance: iOS is often said to be like the Ferrari of mobile operating systems. Is it really that awesome?

External storage: Is it true that Apple devices don’t accommodate any expansion of available storage? IOW, what you get when you buy the phone is what you have?

Battery: Since you can’t swap out the battery with an iPhone, how does the original battery hold up over a couple of years? With my current Samsung device, I typically go through at least half of a charge cycle daily, if not more. I’m not usually away from an AC outlet for more than an hour, but when that does happen, I can easily go through an entire battery charge in an afternoon, at which point I change to my spare.

These are just the things I’m thinking of right now, I’m sure there are other issues that will occur to me.

If you’ve gone from Android to iOS, how has it been for you? Did you stay with iOS or did you go back to Android?

2

Rip your CDs into iTunes, sync to iPhone. Simple.

You can download podcasts anyway you like, but if you don’t use iTunes to retrieve them, they will need to be imported into iTunes (drag and drop) to sync with the iPhone.

Yes.

Apple maps work very well. I haven’t ever experienced a problem, and the data is crowd-sourced (and has a “report error” button right on the map), so errors get fixed quickly.

Don’t know how it compares with other phones, but I’ve never had an issue with performance.

Other than the cloud and your computer, yes.

I have a 4s, and I can go a day or so between charges, but I tend to keep mine charging whenever I can.

3

We just had a thread on going the other direction which has useful information:

4

My current phone is an old Galaxy S2, and as mentioned I’ve been happy with it, so a newer Galaxy model is probably the most likely non-iPhone choice I would make. I’m truly tempted to choose one of the Note models, because I consider the ability to use handwritten notes a great feature to have.

5

Touching on this, I forgot to include:

Mobile network connectivity: All things being relatively equal–allowing for the fact that there are a multitude of Android devices but only one series of iPhones–does the iPhone 5s perform consistently better with regard to streaming radio or audio, particularly when you only have one or two bars? I’ve never lived on a street that had better than one or two bars; in the neighborhood I just moved to, I’ve learned to have downloaded podcasts or music at the ready if I want to listen to something when I go out. TuneIn Radio is just for when I’m home and can use my WLAN to get online.

If the iPhone does better here, it would be a HUGE selling point for me.

ETA: And thanks to everyone for responding. I knew there would be a lot of people here with things to say about this.

6

I’ve edited the title how you wanted it.

7

Thanks for the quick fix.

8

Wait for the iPhone 6… It’ll be released in a month

9

Music: Has to be synced through iTunes, but you can rip CDs (or transfer already-ripped sound files) to iTunes easily.

Podcasts: The default Apple Podcasts app will handle RSS feeds as well as iTunes feeds. There are several paid and free alternatives as well. I personally like Pocket Casts, which is available on Android as well, so you could even try it out before switching to see what it’s like. The two versions are very close, from what I understand, though each is built to fit with native apps on their respective platforms.

Email: “Can I still use my GMail accounts?”

Yep. Either through Apple’s Mail app or the Gmail app. People who preferentially use the Gmail interface (i.e.: Gmail power users) usually prefer the Gmail app. There are other clients like Mailbox that can integrate with Gmail too. Accounts through various services (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) are added at the system level and you can use several different clients, depending on what you want to do, without having to set each up separately.

Maps: Google Maps is available on iOS, though it’s not installed by default. The Apple Maps app has improved significantly, and I prefer it for walking directions because it shows orientation better.

Radio: This one, I honestly don’t know from personal experience, but since there’s a decent list of iOS apps just a Google away, I’m guessing you’re probably going to find something you like.

Performance: Everyone who has used both has said that lag is way lower on iOS. Even with more powerful hardware, Android scrolling sometimes lags or stutters, while iOS devices are rock-solid and track your finger perfectly. I’ve only toyed with display Android devices myself, but even the flagship products like the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy series phones did feel significantly sluggish compared to even my old iPhone 4S.

External storage: “Is it true that Apple devices don’t accommodate any expansion of available storage? IOW, what you get when you buy the phone is what you have?”

Yes. Buy the model with the amount of storage you think you need. The deal I got with my carrier was ¥22,000 (roughly $200) for the 64 GB iPhone 5S with a 2-year contract. So I got the top of the line new model with the most storage — the absolute most expensive option, and it wasn’t particularly expensive. Some lower models were “free” on contract.

(If you buy an unlocked handset through the Apple store, there’s no subsidy, so you pay the full price of the device, which is surprisingly expensive if you’re used to the subsidized prices like my DoCoMo example. But the benefit of buying unlocked is that you can switch carriers anytime — depending on your arrangements with the carrier — and you can do things like swapping SIM cards for a local carrier if you travel overseas.)

If you sync with your computer, you can swap many files on and off the device. Even on Android, external storage is problematic, so quite a few things must be stored internally, like applications. The hoop jumping for iOS just requires a cable and a computer, rather than shuffling SD cards.

Battery: Even with heavy use, I usually have 20–30% left at the end of a day (06:00 to 23:00). If you top up during the day by plugging into your computer or AC power, you shouldn’t have problems. iOS is reportedly better about managing battery life than most Android devices, possibly because of technical restrictions implemented by Apple, which reduce background processing and radio usage, and the OS itself which aggressively culls inactive processes.

10

Not from my carrier, and they don’t let you bring your own. If I do opt for an iPhone, it’ll be the 5s, with the highest amount of storage offered by my carrier.

11

You may have been puzzled by this response; for some reason I thought you were referring to a Galaxy s4 though it’s obvious you meant the iPhone 4s. Funny how similar “s4” is to “4s”, isn’t it?

May I ask how long you’ve owned your iPhone 4s, and whether you’re still on the original battery it came with?

12

I could see myself being delighted with 64 GB. I’ve only got 32 now–16 internal including what the phone needs to run at all, and a 16 GB external card which could be swapped out for a 32 GB card.

13

I’ve had it for almost 3 years, and it’s still the original battery.

14

Can this be done with any sound file, including random .mid files? In order to sync music through iTunes, do the albums or songs have to have been original copies purchased from a music store (i.e. years ago), or later through iTunes or Google Play? Here’s the thing: I don’t believe in using pirated music, but I have often made a spare copy of something just in case I lose the original, or the latter stops playing. In some cases I don’t know where the original is and the copy is all I have. Like many people, I dumped a lot of my old LPs as I replaced them with CDs in the 1980s and 1990s, and now I’m sorry I did that, because the notion that CDs were permanent and non-wearing turned out to be a load of horse hooey.

15

Conceivably, could a faster or more efficient OS make up for mobile network issues by recovering from “drops” before I’m even aware they’ve happened?

My very first smartphone was a Windows device with only very limited memory and processing speed, but it performed better at streaming than anything I’ve had since. To find things to stream, though, I had to spend quite a while searching for the *.pls files I wanted; I wasn’t aware of any TuneIn-like app that I could download to do this in a more user friendly way.

16

This isn’t entirely true; with Android many apps can be moved to external storage, although in order to move many of them you need to root your phone.

17

No. iTunes does not care where the music comes from as long as it’s in a format that the phone can play (mp3, aac, aiff, wav.)

18

A lot of thinking and a tough decision to be made. I notice also that the later Galaxy models are far ahead of the 5s in camera resolution, but then specified resolution is obviously not the only factor in how good the pictures will be. The camera’s very important to me so I can’t simply shrug this one off.

19

Could be an issue with my .mid files, but that’s only applicable to a very small portion of what I have. And I’d be very surprised if there isn’t a tool I can download somewhere to do the translation.

20

MIDI files aren’t actually audio files; they’re more like sheet music. They tell the computer which built in instrument sounds to play, and how. The advantage of this is that they’re very small. The disadvantages are potentially different instrument sounds on different computers, generally low-quality sounds, and the fact that they don’t play on everything. iTunes used to play them (and convert them), but I don’t seem to be able to do that any more. I’d convert them to audio files - there are definitely tools you can use, although I haven’t tried any free ones lately.

Here’s one recent review of phone cameras from a well-known product comparison magazine.

Personally, I’d go with Android, as I much prefer the general “philosophy” of the OS and products to Apple’s.