“Anyone who knows me personally or has read my articles and tweets knows that I’m not exactly an Apple fan. I’ve been vocal about my preference for Android’s endless customization over iOS’s controlling, restricting ways,” Ben Sin writes for Forbes. “Not only am I not an Apple fan, actual Apple fans would probably consider me a hater.”
“Whatever. I may be very opinionated, but I believe I’m a fair dude. I’m critical of iOS being limiting because it is,” Sin writes. “Why can’t I arrange apps on the homescreen the way I want, Apple? This isn’t even a completely superficial, aesthetic-driven complaint. Living in a crowded, on-the-go city like Hong Kong, I frequently have to use my phone one-handed while standing in trains or walking up and down stairs, so on Android I place my key apps at the bottom of the screen, where they’re easily accessible. I also like minimalism, so I keep the rest of the homescreen app free. On iPhones, I can’t do that. If I want just a few apps on the first home page, they must sit all the way at the top, out of reach. If I want them lower on the screen, I must fill the rest of the entire homescreen with apps.”
MacDailyNews Take: Settings > General > Accessibility > Reachability. Turn it on. Sheesh, Android settlers are so typical. They know it all, but really know nothing. Hence their poor choices. Knockoffs never exceed the real thing, dummies. But, we’ll lay off Ben now for he’s about to have his epiphany. Finally. iPhone X was Ben’s red pill.
“But even having said all that, after testing the iPhone X for a week and half, I’ve decided to make it my daily driver. This means the X is currently home to my main sim card, and is the phone I bring out and about every single day,” Sin writes. “So just what about the iPhone X impressed me enough to have me abandon Android? The bezel-less display? Nah, the LG V30 offers very similar immersive experience. The X’s dual rear cameras? Nope, in my testing I found the X’s main shooters isn’t necessarily better than the Galaxy Note 8’s or Huawei Mate 10 Pro’s dual-cameras. The build quality? The X feels nice in my hand, but so does my Xiaomi Mi Mix 2.”
MacDailyNews Take: One brief pause here to quote our very own selves, from yesterday:
What’s really telling is that in order to even attempt to compete with Apple’s iPhone X, the Android proponent is forced to proffer a collection of Android phones (one with a good camera, another one with a decent display, another one with good battery life, another with a “mesmerizing” finish, etcetera).
Nobody in their right mind would cart around a basketful of fake iPhones in order to poorly approximate everything an iPhone X can do. Of course, anyone who settles for DOG-SLOW, IP-infringing knockoffs of Apple’s revolutionary product that’ve been cobbled together by South Korean dishwasher makers (or worse) is certainly not in their right mind.
“I’m using the iPhone X as my daily driver because… I thought using facial recognition to unlock the phone (which Apple calls Face ID) was going to be a pain, but after using the iPhone X for well over a week I’m completely sold,” Sin writes. “Face ID doesn’t just help me get past my lockscreen, but also help me verify purchases in the App Store or via Apple Pay, and even help me keep prying eyes from reading my lockscreen notifications. Here’s how it works: when a WhatsApp/WeChat/whatever message comes through, the lockscreen will light up with a notification stating there is a message, but it will only show the content of the message for me when I look at the phone. Any other face will just see a blank message. The TrueDepth system also allows the iPhone X to shoot selfies in bokeh mode (which I don’t really care about), create animated emojis that mirrors my facial expressions (which I want to say I don’t care about but I do…), and take some very good, atmospheric selfies. The latter is due to this new feature called Portrait Studio Lighting, which simulates the lighting effects of a studio portrait. The results are quite stunning.”
“The iPhone X also has a higher-than-usual touch input refresh rate of 120Hz, and it makes scrolling on the X a tiny, tiny bit more ‘natural’ than scrolling on most Android devices,” Sin writes. “Apple gets the little things right.”
MacDailyNews Take: Alright, we lied. We can’t hold our tongues.
Sin still won’t admit it, but scrolling and all other UI interactions are much more than a “tiny, tiny bit more natural” (fluid and fast) on iPhone X running iOS vs. any Android phone. In fact any iPhone’s UI interactions are much faster and more fluid than any Android phone. Apple does get the little things right, Ben, but UI interactions with your device belong in the class of very big things – things you do all day long – and Apple gets the big things very, very right, too. Would you settle for a slow, inaccurate, jerky mouse on your personal computer? No. But, that’s exactly what Android settlers have to endure all day long. Android feels like cheap, laggy junk compared to any iOS device.
“Under the hood is Apple’s A11 chipset, and performance is excellent as expected. Because Apple designs its hardware, software and chipset in unison, there’s just a level of performance efficiency that Android phones can’t match,” Sin writes. “Again, it’s the little things.”
MacDailyNews Take: Again, those are big things, Mr. Minimizing Apologist. Android sucks. You can come out and admit it now, Ben. It’ll be quite alright.
Sin writes, “With that said, I do wish Apple would implement a better one-hand mode than the awkwardly named ‘Reachability.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Threw that in later, after your stumbled across it, but were either too lazy to rewrite your lead paragraphs or were intentionally trying to obfuscate (make iOS seem too rigid to use during your one-handed commute when it’s actually not)? Which is it?
“So one of the things many have complained about has been the notch,” Sin writes. “For the most part, it doesn’t bother me. Using the phone in landscape mode I’m able to forget about it as long as apps have been optimized for the iPhone X’s screen. But when using the phone in landscape mode, such as watching videos, this is when problems arise.”
MacDailyNews Take: Agreed. The notch is an inelegant kludge. Nobody’s perfect, not even Apple. We’d take four notches all around before we ever settled for a crappy Android phone.
“Throughout my use, the phone lasted me an entire day every single day but one,” Sin writes.” Apple has refined the software and hardware efficiency so much that its smaller battery size handedly outperforms Android phones with larger batteries.”
“Ten years ago, Apple changed the entire mobile industry with the first iPhone. And while the iPhone X isn’t nearly as revolutionary a device, it is arguably just as refined as the original iPhone,” Sin writes. “The iPhone X is ultimately such a polished product, with so many little things done right, that I’ve been won over.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Welcome, Ben!
Now spend some time learning about your iPhone, iOS, and revising your ideas of what’s really important vs. what isn’t. (Hint: icon layouts on your home screen are not more important than processors that can outperform most laptops, fluid UI interactions, security, privacy, display quality, power efficiency, software and hardware harmony, etc., etc., etc. Your priorities are way out of whack and it makes you sound stupid.
By now it should be obvious that “devout Android users” are that way because they don’t know any better.
SEE ALSO:
Android Central reviews Apple’s iPhone X – November 13, 2017
ZDNet reviews Apple’s iPhone X: The best smartphone – November 13, 2017
ZDNet’s Miller: After 10 days with Apple’s iPhone X, it’s clear its the best smartphone. Period. – November 13, 2017
Michael Gartenberg: iPhone X is the best smartphone you can buy today, and likely tomorrow; Apple is now a full generation ahead of their competitors – November 10, 2017
T3 reviews Apple’s iPhone X: Brilliant, five stars, 2017’s best smartphone – November 8, 2017
DisplayMate: Apple’s iPhone X has the most color accurate display we’ve ever measured; it is visually indistinguishable from perfect – November 8, 2017
Ars Technica reviews iPhone X: Easy to recommend if you want a glimpse at the future – November 3, 2017
iMore reviews iPhone X: The best damn product Apple has ever made – November 2, 2017
TechCrunch reviews Apple’s iPhone X: ‘Like using the future of smartphones, today’ – November 1, 2017
Tim Bajarin’s first impression of Apple’s iPhone X: Face ID worked flawlessly – November 1, 2017
The Verge reviews Apple’s iPhone X: Clearly the best iPhone ever made, despite being marred by its ugly notch – November 1, 2017
Above Avalon’s first impressions of Apple’s iPhone X: ‘An entirely new iPhone experience’ – October 31, 2017
The Independent reviews Apple’s iPhone X: ‘This feels like the future’ – October 31, 2017
David Pogue reviews Apple’s iPhone X: ‘The best thing is its size’ – October 31, 2017
Forbes reviews Apple’s iPhone X: Opulent, gorgeous, classy; the best iPhone yet – October 31, 2017
CNBC reviews Apple’s iPhone X: ‘The best smartphone on the market’ – October 31, 2017
iPhone 8’s Apple A11 Bionic chip so destroys Android phones that Geekbench creator can’t even believe it – September 30, 2017
Apple’s A11 Bionic chip is by far the highest-performing system on the market; totally destroys Android phones – September 19, 2017
Apple’s A11 Bionic chip in iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and iPhone X leaves Android phones choking in the dust – September 18, 2017
The inside story of Apple’s amazing A11 Bionic chip – September 18, 2017
Apple’s A11 Bionic obliterates top chips from Qualcomm, Samsung and Huawei – September 18, 2017
Apple accelerates mobile processor dominance with A11 Bionic; benchmarks faster than 13-inch MacBook Pro – September 15, 2017
Apple’s A11 Bionic chip in iPhone X and iPhone 8/Plus on par with 2017 MacBook Pro – September 14, 2017