19-SEP-2017

​After about 10 years in the iPhone camp i did the switch - I replaced my iPhone 6S Plus with a OnePlus 5.

It was a simple and painless process and my only regret is not having done it sooner.

For years, I have been following how Android phones have been catching up with the iPhone but chose to stick with the iPhone because I had put quite a lot of money into iPhone applications and considered myself stuck in the Apple ecosystem.

I recently realized two things:

1. I have tried to use Apples cloud services but always moved to Google. I bought iCloud storage space but used Google Drive instead. I tried to use iPhoto/Photos with iCloud sync but ended up migrating everything to Google Photos. I payed for iTunes match but switched to Google Play music instead. And I always used Google Maps instead of Apple Maps for navigation. Going all the way and switching to a Google Phone - Android - would make sense.

2. Most of the software I bought for my iPhone is old. I bought it back in the day for my iPhone 3G, 4, 4S and so on. I don't use many of them anymore and those I do have started telling me they haven't been updated and will not work with the next version of iOS.

So while Apple presented the iPhone X to the world, I walked into a local phone store and bought the OnePlus 5 for half the price I have become used to paying for a new phone.

Back when the iPhone was introduced, it was truly revolutionary and early Android phones competed with Blackberry, not Apple. I still like a lot about the iPhone and the curated App store. But I now feel Android phones are about as good at half the price.

My OnePlus has a beautiful 5.5 AMOLED screen, USB-C port, dual cameras (wide and tele, something I value greatly) and 8 GB of RAM (compared to 3 GB in the upcoming iPhone X). And a headphone jack.

Android might not be quite as polished in every respect as iOS but the difference is small and it is good enough for me. Using the built in Google applications and cloud services is simple and they are in my opinion better than Apples services. The only software I miss is Apple's "Notes" application that was a really simple and efficient application that synced perfectly between my home desktop, work laptop and iPhone.

And I love using the NFC payment option in Android. There is no Apple Pay where I live so you can not pay using your iPhone. But with Android, I can install an app from my local bank and turn my Phone into a NFC payment card. Works great.