xandros9’s iOS and Android Adventure
A massive dump of various thoughts by a compulsive platform hopper.
Part I: Introduction/The Forbidden Fruit
Every once in a while, I like to try something new. Whether its feeding the "grass is always greener" adage or just wanting to change things up, it's something I realize I do more often than I’d like to admit. Thankfully I can just swap my AT&T SIM around as I see fit without much complications, save for the SIM size differences.
From Palm OS to Android its always nice to see things how things are done differently, etc. especially over time. They may technically all do the same things, but how they do it differently always interested me.
And it certainly brings a nice perspective too, and I wanted to talk about what I've experienced in-depth.
But anyways, around mid-August last year (2015) it became clear that my Nokia Lumia 830 and Windows Phone 8.1 (Update 1) just wasn't going to meet my new mobile needs.
(and 10 wasn’t any better at the time, nor was it at the level of quality it is now back then.)
This writeup is going to seem like a giant list of bullets, and I feel that’s the best way to convey everything since many are smaller points. Keep in mind that it’s written in the context of Windows Phone.
The Issues
Getting Physical
The phone came without fanfare and getting set up was fairly straightforward. I did have to borrow a Lightning cable from my roommate since mine was still in the mail, awkwardly enough. But anyways, here's some thoughts on the hardware from my few months of usage.
The Good
Hardware-wise, it wasn't a revelation or anything really fancy over the 830 but it was still very nice.
The Not-So-Good
The Fence
Gone Soft
On the software end, there's a lot to talk about too.
Before I get to the "apps, apps, apps" spiel I want to first talk about iOS itself.
Since I was running ahead of the curve for some time and didn't get onboard the iOS 9.0.x jailbreak, there was no jailbreak available for my poor updated phone, which meant a stock experience for me, like most people.
The Paintjob
I will say that skin-deep, Windows Phone has more customization with its easily recolored, resized start screen and lock screen functionality.
Although some things like MSN Weather and Office seem to have lost some of those features in 10, the start screen was a powerful and beautiful part of the OS that I loved in 8.0 and 8.1's heyday. I could pin documents (like Word doc with directions, a OneNote To-Do list, an Excel spreadsheet for data) and other objects to it, not just applications! I'd get updates from Ars Technica and Pocketnow on my start screen just with their website pinned. And in the rest of the OS, I could toggle the signature white-on-black or black-on-white theme with an accent color to spice things up.
iOS doesn’t do any of that! I could move icons around, change wallpapers, and turn badges on and off (those red numbered notification circles) but that’s about it. Files stay in their apps, not on the home screen. Or anywhere else for that matter.
Although one could pin webpages a la web apps, but I didn't use that too much.
Technically I can fine tune some things WP doesn't have like toggling the translucency effects, system-wide bold font, but those are fairly small fry. (although don't get me wrong, they're still nice to have)
Graphically, iOS is a good-looking, colorful OS in my opinion, but it can also be a blinding OS in that it is very reliant upon pure, clean white. I was often left wishing for a night display mode a la f.lux but I made do with a Zoom workaround.
Pro tip: Dim your iOS screen with an accessibility setting trick - TechRepublic
Turns out that in the upcoming iOS 9.3, Apple started their photocopiers and created Night Shift, which is basically f.lux, except made by Apple. Call me excited for the addition, although the iPhone probably won't be my daily driver in the future most likely.
Nuts 'n' Bolts (and other general things)
It's not just pretty pictures.
As I got into the settings, some of Apple's attention to detail started to come through. iOS is not short of options. The Accessibility section alone has some features that Windows Phone can only dream of like Assistive Touch, mono audio or LED flash notifications thus far.
It's worth noting that older phones get handsfree Siri activation (take that Hey Cortana!) when plugged in.
It wasn't something I used often, but now I realize I missed asking what the temperature was while deciding what to wear.
Privacy settings were granular, which was nice. (I believe 10 Mobile has that now)
Apps can add their own preferences into the main settings app, which was interesting because installed apps now make up half the list. Whether its Excel or GasBuddy, they often appear here.
Most people out here at my university use iPhones. I feel Android phones are almost as rare as Windows Phones were in high school interestingly enough. But anyways, since the iPhone is so common, iMessage becomes very useful. It's integration is seamless with text messages and it’s glorious. Read receipts and seeing when the other person is typing is definitely a useful addition. If Microsoft can make Skype integration as seamless and foolproof Apple has with iMessage, it will be very, very impressed. (more from the fact that MS managed to not screw up, but eh.)
Worth noting that people noticed when I switched phones because there is a visual distinction between SMS messages and iMessages. (so when I switched to and from iPhone respectively, my text bubbles changed from green to blue and back on other people’s phones.) Doesn’t really make a difference, its just an interesting thing to note.
Actionable notifications are the best. Being able to quickly reply in the notification to a text message or Facebook message is a great experience. Being able to act on email or a social media friend request without leaving your current application is invaluable. Windows 10 Mobile has only just recently added the feature, and it doesn’t seem it has quite taken off.
iCloud offers 5 GB of storage space. I don't use it in favor of Dropbox and Copy with a slight reliance on OneDrive.
Apple Maps navigation integrates with the lockscreen, showing directions when locked, which is really nice and something I want to see being taken advantage of in Windows. In my limited turn-by-turn navigation experience with it, it has worked quite well. I haven’t driven off of any overpasses yet, so Apple Maps has that going for it.
I had no issues with performance, iOS 9.1 and 9.2 on this phone is more than speedy enough and web browsing was pleasant.
App switching performed well, rarely was I left enough time staring at a splash screen to imagine a "Loading…" or "Resuming…" appearing on screen.
The experience was mostly quirk free as well. Easily on par with 8.0 and 8.1 in their prime in terms of reliability I’d say at least.
The Health app is about what I expected, tracking steps and stuff. It has this cool Medical ID feature that while its usage situations are slim and unlikely for most people, it’s a nice touch.
iOS isn't speedy in feature additions, I'll say that, but I can say each upgrade builds on what was there before and features tend to NOT get removed.
Stripped Screws
Things I took issue with.
I couldn’t change the default notification sounds of many apps like I could with Windows Phone. I can't really choose default apps either, although Windows Phone isn't perfect in that regard either though.
The Contacts app left me underwhelmed. I know Facebook syncing works because I've seen it in action on other's phones, but it didn’t for me. But Contacts was just a simple address book. I missed Windows Phone's People app. I used Sync.ME to sync contact photos with Facebook.
I wanted to use my groups too in Outlook, but Contacts doesn’t seem to want to play ball.
Oddly, when adding a new phone number to a contact card, the type defaulted not to "mobile" or "home," but to "home fax", which leaves me scratching my head. I never had to fax anyone at home, let alone fax in my lifetime.
iOS doesn't seem to offer any way for applications to reach into the cloud to fetch photos. GroupMe on iOS had built-in Bing image and GIF search (which was a net positive) but the system photo picker could only upload photos on the device itself. Windows Phone's photo picker offered cloud image fetching from e.g. Facebook or OneDrive that I also missed.
I had to get a third-party app for manual controls, (I got Focus) but it just isn't the same. Just can't beat the Lumia camera UX in the camera department. The iPhone may have more features (like Apple isn't about to remove Slo Mo or Panorama functionality), but it just doesn't have that depth of control I sometimes want.
I do not like Apple Music. I came in expecting a great music player because iPod, but I was sorely disappointed. I mean, I'll admit that my taste in UX might be different than the average person, but just I couldn't stand the app.
On the plus side, I found a terrific player to replace it: Marvis. It is officially my favorite music player across all platforms so far. (closely followed by Groove and CorePlayer on Windows Phone, Blackplayer EX on Android)
iOS does not have much of an accessible filesystem. Photos can be imported using a file browser and put on it with iTunes, but otherwise individual apps and the cloud handle the files. No USB mass storage, or even Mass Transfer Protocol/MTP here.
I can’t figure out how to make Siri proactively ask me about text messages like Cortana did and I really miss that. (e.g. automatically saying "You got a text from..." when in the car.) Sure I can ask Siri to read my recent notifications or texts, but it needs input first.
A minor side-effect of developmental neglect is less support for ads on Windows I feel. But still its not enough to say it’s a net positive though.
It’s almost a law of physics that an iPhone will inherently slow down as it receives major updates from Apple. Whether intentional, laziness, or lack of pizza, who knows. Its still a phenomenon that most recently affects the iPhone 4s.
iTunes
Since I was using an iPhone and wanted to throw in local media, I had to deal with iTunes on my PC.
iTunes on my PC wasn't too bad of an experience. Whether its full-featured or bloated is probably subjective, although I’m leaning towards the latter. It’s certainly not as bad as it was a few years ago when I could hardly tolerate it.
But it works. It won't win any performance awards but it technically works. iTunes did not kill me, and that’s gotta count for something.
It synced my ~9 GB music collection fairly speedily (over Wi-Fi) and could fetch album art from online, although I tended to add my art manually. (shoutout to Mp3tag)
Adding custom tones was much more tedious than the other two platforms multiplied by each other, needing an AAC .m4r file before it'll be added, but I got the job done eventually.
Once those custom tones were added, adding them to individual people on the phone was as easy as it could be, working just like on Windows Phone.
Playlist syncing was bulletproof unlike my more finicky experience with Xbox Music/Groove and the smart playlists are, well, smart. I favor one for driving and a smart one for Recently Added. (I’m still salty Microsoft took out the Recently added section from the Music Hub in 8.0.)
Ultimately, the ease of management and syncing makes it so if I could just snap my fingers and have it work with other phones I probably would do it. It's not as good as I'd expect from Apple but it’s still quite useful. I would prefer the option of manually taking control of stored videos though.
(I would previously just try to either remember what music I just added and manually add them later or only get music when I had my phone or card plugged in - so in total, iTunes is a slight net positive.)
It can sync my phone’s bookmarks with Internet Explorer which is a plus, but I’ve since switched to Firefox, which doesn’t show up oddly enough. At least iOS straight up has a Firefox app though.
Mind the Application Gap
Now that the core system things are out of the way, I can talk about… the APPS:
The apps were there. I got my Snapchat, GroupMe and superior OneNote (with Touch ID compatibility),etc. and I was pleasantly surprised by the step up in quality seen in Facebook Messenger, Skype, etc.
Facebook Paper is great Facebook client, it isn't as up-to-date in working with all the features like replies to individual comments but its fluid card-based UX is the best I've used. There's a bit of a learning curve though. (ironically I use it because it gets less updates due to Facebook’s tendency to run experiments using the main app.)
I also miss this app on Android.
Facebook Messenger now lets us Quick Reply to messages from the notification. (think W10M's new quick reply feature for texts, which iOS added in 8) And that's nifty, although I need to put in my passcode/use Touch ID to send a message unlike the default Messages which was a mild annoyance.
I tried using Alien Blue for reddit but I didn't like it. Narwhal is my current favorite reddit client of all time.
Instagram shows sponsored pictures and media to me, a definite plus for 6tag there.
The MSN News app flat out sucks on iOS, which is odd considering MS is arguably at its best on iOS. It technically works, but once you leave the app and come back, it loses its spot and reloads from scratch.
I used a Package Tracker (aptly named literally that) which tracked my packages across an app on desktop Windows 8.x and Windows Phone - I definitely miss that functionality, although Cortana compensates for that.
but hey, I finally got a built-in stopwatch now, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
Ultimately, I enjoyed me iOS adventure by any stretch; it was (and is) a terrific phone. I came away impressed. I think it may still have the overall app advantage, but the platform works, but isn't the best fit for me.
I have no qualms recommending it by default though.
But it was trying out Android; namely CyanogenMod 13 (based upon Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow) that truly blew me away.
Although that had tradeoffs of its own.
A massive dump of various thoughts by a compulsive platform hopper.
Part I: Introduction/The Forbidden Fruit
Every once in a while, I like to try something new. Whether its feeding the "grass is always greener" adage or just wanting to change things up, it's something I realize I do more often than I’d like to admit. Thankfully I can just swap my AT&T SIM around as I see fit without much complications, save for the SIM size differences.
From Palm OS to Android its always nice to see things how things are done differently, etc. especially over time. They may technically all do the same things, but how they do it differently always interested me.
And it certainly brings a nice perspective too, and I wanted to talk about what I've experienced in-depth.
But anyways, around mid-August last year (2015) it became clear that my Nokia Lumia 830 and Windows Phone 8.1 (Update 1) just wasn't going to meet my new mobile needs.
(and 10 wasn’t any better at the time, nor was it at the level of quality it is now back then.)
This writeup is going to seem like a giant list of bullets, and I feel that’s the best way to convey everything since many are smaller points. Keep in mind that it’s written in the context of Windows Phone.
The Issues
- The “App Gap” (no escaping it, eh?)
- GroupMe on Windows Phone 8 was much slower than its compatriots.
- worth noting 10 has a very nice new GroupMe app which also hooks into People.
- Snapchat is a very popular communications platform I wanted to get onboard again.
- 3rd-party Yik Yak app, Yodel, was pulled from the store two days before my 830 was fixed up with the RM-985 board. It can be entertaining and perhaps useful, especially when on campus.
- (Ironically I don’t use it much anymore.)
- Canvas (school uses it for education things, its like Blackboard - for those familiar with its competitor.)
- Facebook. Something reasonably speedy and full-featured was preferable to what we had.
- although ironically I don’t use the main Facebook app anymore because of Facebook's experimentation. (See intentional crashes and other experiments. I use Paper on iOS and Lite + the website on Android now.)
- my credit union, fairly self-explanatory there. I get mobile check deposits too!
- OneNote - I wanted my password protected sections and speed. W10M's Office didn't wow me then.
- (Interestingly password-protected section access is a feature W10M has over the Android version.)
- …
- GroupMe on Windows Phone 8 was much slower than its compatriots.
- I was getting a bit tired of the same-old stuff, Windows Phone wasn't appearing to go anywhere for the time being; (remember, this was August 2015) and 10 wasn't looking to be the savior it was made out to be anytime soon, and I wanted to try something new.
- I decided the Touch ID and performance bump to be worth the markup online over a 5 or 5c.
- I needed at least a 32 GB model to fit my music and still have some room left over. (I can’t afford to and don't wish to stream)
- Worth noting the last iOS device I used seriously was an iPod touch running iOS 5 (I dabbled a bit with 6) so its been a while.
Getting Physical
The phone came without fanfare and getting set up was fairly straightforward. I did have to borrow a Lightning cable from my roommate since mine was still in the mail, awkwardly enough. But anyways, here's some thoughts on the hardware from my few months of usage.
The Good
Hardware-wise, it wasn't a revelation or anything really fancy over the 830 but it was still very nice.
- It was compact
- Whereas the 830 and many of its 5+ inch compatriots were often unwieldy in my hands, the 4-inch 5s was more than manageable with one hand, cementing my want for a phone that isn't as big as today's Windows Phone and Android mid-range to high-end phones.
- (which will come into play in Part II.)
- Whereas the 830 and many of its 5+ inch compatriots were often unwieldy in my hands, the 4-inch 5s was more than manageable with one hand, cementing my want for a phone that isn't as big as today's Windows Phone and Android mid-range to high-end phones.
- It was a premium, high-end phone too on top of being compact, something I don't see much of today.
- (which was a huge problem in picking an Android phone, but more on that later.)
- Battery life was solid.
- Certainly blows away my old 920 in web browsing, but vs. the 830, they're both quite nice.
- It's standby battery usage is terrific when left overnight.
- Touch ID has utterly spoiled me in its speed in authentication.
- 120 fps slo-mo video capture is fun. Haven't tried the time-lapse feature myself, but my sister has done great work with it.
- The camera is speedy to start and take photos.
- It has a ringer switch! I may not be sure what my dream phone would be, but it’d certainly have this feature.
The Not-So-Good
- Had to get a new cable because Lightning. It’s fine otherwise.
- No Qi wireless charging
- the 3rd-party add-on Qi pads that plug into the Lightning port doesn't make me feel confident in their ribbon cable’s durability.
- but they DO work well.
- the 3rd-party add-on Qi pads that plug into the Lightning port doesn't make me feel confident in their ribbon cable’s durability.
- Camera left me wishing I could put even the 2012 Lumia 920's camera hardware in it.
- It's not bad, its just not as good as I was used to, especially in low light with the Lumia’s Optical Image Stabilization.
- I find myself just not attempting many low-light photography shots anymore since I got rid of the 830.
- I miss that actually, but these cameras just don't deliver in the same way. (also referring to the Galaxy Alpha)
- I miss my camera button too. The volume keys work, but it’s just not the same.
- (also applies to the Galaxy)
- I miss Glance and double-tap-to-wake.
- No high-sensitivity mode for use with gloves on.
The Fence
- It's a physical home button again! I kinda like it, but its another point of failure some might not care for.
- has some slight crackly quirk that, while isn't a functional issue, is odd. Probably because I bought used.
- I don't use NFC often, its still an omission I'm sure many will miss. No Apple Pay on this model either.
Gone Soft
On the software end, there's a lot to talk about too.
Before I get to the "apps, apps, apps" spiel I want to first talk about iOS itself.
Since I was running ahead of the curve for some time and didn't get onboard the iOS 9.0.x jailbreak, there was no jailbreak available for my poor updated phone, which meant a stock experience for me, like most people.
The Paintjob
I will say that skin-deep, Windows Phone has more customization with its easily recolored, resized start screen and lock screen functionality.
Although some things like MSN Weather and Office seem to have lost some of those features in 10, the start screen was a powerful and beautiful part of the OS that I loved in 8.0 and 8.1's heyday. I could pin documents (like Word doc with directions, a OneNote To-Do list, an Excel spreadsheet for data) and other objects to it, not just applications! I'd get updates from Ars Technica and Pocketnow on my start screen just with their website pinned. And in the rest of the OS, I could toggle the signature white-on-black or black-on-white theme with an accent color to spice things up.
iOS doesn’t do any of that! I could move icons around, change wallpapers, and turn badges on and off (those red numbered notification circles) but that’s about it. Files stay in their apps, not on the home screen. Or anywhere else for that matter.
Although one could pin webpages a la web apps, but I didn't use that too much.
Technically I can fine tune some things WP doesn't have like toggling the translucency effects, system-wide bold font, but those are fairly small fry. (although don't get me wrong, they're still nice to have)
Graphically, iOS is a good-looking, colorful OS in my opinion, but it can also be a blinding OS in that it is very reliant upon pure, clean white. I was often left wishing for a night display mode a la f.lux but I made do with a Zoom workaround.
Pro tip: Dim your iOS screen with an accessibility setting trick - TechRepublic
Turns out that in the upcoming iOS 9.3, Apple started their photocopiers and created Night Shift, which is basically f.lux, except made by Apple. Call me excited for the addition, although the iPhone probably won't be my daily driver in the future most likely.
Nuts 'n' Bolts (and other general things)
It's not just pretty pictures.
As I got into the settings, some of Apple's attention to detail started to come through. iOS is not short of options. The Accessibility section alone has some features that Windows Phone can only dream of like Assistive Touch, mono audio or LED flash notifications thus far.
It's worth noting that older phones get handsfree Siri activation (take that Hey Cortana!) when plugged in.
It wasn't something I used often, but now I realize I missed asking what the temperature was while deciding what to wear.
Privacy settings were granular, which was nice. (I believe 10 Mobile has that now)
Apps can add their own preferences into the main settings app, which was interesting because installed apps now make up half the list. Whether its Excel or GasBuddy, they often appear here.
Most people out here at my university use iPhones. I feel Android phones are almost as rare as Windows Phones were in high school interestingly enough. But anyways, since the iPhone is so common, iMessage becomes very useful. It's integration is seamless with text messages and it’s glorious. Read receipts and seeing when the other person is typing is definitely a useful addition. If Microsoft can make Skype integration as seamless and foolproof Apple has with iMessage, it will be very, very impressed. (more from the fact that MS managed to not screw up, but eh.)
Worth noting that people noticed when I switched phones because there is a visual distinction between SMS messages and iMessages. (so when I switched to and from iPhone respectively, my text bubbles changed from green to blue and back on other people’s phones.) Doesn’t really make a difference, its just an interesting thing to note.
Actionable notifications are the best. Being able to quickly reply in the notification to a text message or Facebook message is a great experience. Being able to act on email or a social media friend request without leaving your current application is invaluable. Windows 10 Mobile has only just recently added the feature, and it doesn’t seem it has quite taken off.
iCloud offers 5 GB of storage space. I don't use it in favor of Dropbox and Copy with a slight reliance on OneDrive.
- My phone's backup take 520 MB of that space for reference.
- (Unfortunately Copy is shutting down so I had to adjust. More on that in Part II.)
Apple Maps navigation integrates with the lockscreen, showing directions when locked, which is really nice and something I want to see being taken advantage of in Windows. In my limited turn-by-turn navigation experience with it, it has worked quite well. I haven’t driven off of any overpasses yet, so Apple Maps has that going for it.
I had no issues with performance, iOS 9.1 and 9.2 on this phone is more than speedy enough and web browsing was pleasant.
App switching performed well, rarely was I left enough time staring at a splash screen to imagine a "Loading…" or "Resuming…" appearing on screen.
The experience was mostly quirk free as well. Easily on par with 8.0 and 8.1 in their prime in terms of reliability I’d say at least.
The Health app is about what I expected, tracking steps and stuff. It has this cool Medical ID feature that while its usage situations are slim and unlikely for most people, it’s a nice touch.
iOS isn't speedy in feature additions, I'll say that, but I can say each upgrade builds on what was there before and features tend to NOT get removed.
Stripped Screws
Things I took issue with.
I couldn’t change the default notification sounds of many apps like I could with Windows Phone. I can't really choose default apps either, although Windows Phone isn't perfect in that regard either though.
The Contacts app left me underwhelmed. I know Facebook syncing works because I've seen it in action on other's phones, but it didn’t for me. But Contacts was just a simple address book. I missed Windows Phone's People app. I used Sync.ME to sync contact photos with Facebook.
I wanted to use my groups too in Outlook, but Contacts doesn’t seem to want to play ball.
Oddly, when adding a new phone number to a contact card, the type defaulted not to "mobile" or "home," but to "home fax", which leaves me scratching my head. I never had to fax anyone at home, let alone fax in my lifetime.
iOS doesn't seem to offer any way for applications to reach into the cloud to fetch photos. GroupMe on iOS had built-in Bing image and GIF search (which was a net positive) but the system photo picker could only upload photos on the device itself. Windows Phone's photo picker offered cloud image fetching from e.g. Facebook or OneDrive that I also missed.
I had to get a third-party app for manual controls, (I got Focus) but it just isn't the same. Just can't beat the Lumia camera UX in the camera department. The iPhone may have more features (like Apple isn't about to remove Slo Mo or Panorama functionality), but it just doesn't have that depth of control I sometimes want.
I do not like Apple Music. I came in expecting a great music player because iPod, but I was sorely disappointed. I mean, I'll admit that my taste in UX might be different than the average person, but just I couldn't stand the app.
- I do not care for the Radio and Connect tabs - I don't stream.
- Can't swipe between tracks, despite left and right swipes not serving any other purpose.
- Recently added is front-and-center which is a nice touch I liked.
- Can only scroll somewhere around a couple dozen tracks ahead in the playlist - a big one for me.
- It just didn't feel right.
On the plus side, I found a terrific player to replace it: Marvis. It is officially my favorite music player across all platforms so far. (closely followed by Groove and CorePlayer on Windows Phone, Blackplayer EX on Android)
iOS does not have much of an accessible filesystem. Photos can be imported using a file browser and put on it with iTunes, but otherwise individual apps and the cloud handle the files. No USB mass storage, or even Mass Transfer Protocol/MTP here.
I can’t figure out how to make Siri proactively ask me about text messages like Cortana did and I really miss that. (e.g. automatically saying "You got a text from..." when in the car.) Sure I can ask Siri to read my recent notifications or texts, but it needs input first.
A minor side-effect of developmental neglect is less support for ads on Windows I feel. But still its not enough to say it’s a net positive though.
It’s almost a law of physics that an iPhone will inherently slow down as it receives major updates from Apple. Whether intentional, laziness, or lack of pizza, who knows. Its still a phenomenon that most recently affects the iPhone 4s.
iTunes
Since I was using an iPhone and wanted to throw in local media, I had to deal with iTunes on my PC.
iTunes on my PC wasn't too bad of an experience. Whether its full-featured or bloated is probably subjective, although I’m leaning towards the latter. It’s certainly not as bad as it was a few years ago when I could hardly tolerate it.
But it works. It won't win any performance awards but it technically works. iTunes did not kill me, and that’s gotta count for something.
It synced my ~9 GB music collection fairly speedily (over Wi-Fi) and could fetch album art from online, although I tended to add my art manually. (shoutout to Mp3tag)
Adding custom tones was much more tedious than the other two platforms multiplied by each other, needing an AAC .m4r file before it'll be added, but I got the job done eventually.
Once those custom tones were added, adding them to individual people on the phone was as easy as it could be, working just like on Windows Phone.
Playlist syncing was bulletproof unlike my more finicky experience with Xbox Music/Groove and the smart playlists are, well, smart. I favor one for driving and a smart one for Recently Added. (I’m still salty Microsoft took out the Recently added section from the Music Hub in 8.0.)
Ultimately, the ease of management and syncing makes it so if I could just snap my fingers and have it work with other phones I probably would do it. It's not as good as I'd expect from Apple but it’s still quite useful. I would prefer the option of manually taking control of stored videos though.
(I would previously just try to either remember what music I just added and manually add them later or only get music when I had my phone or card plugged in - so in total, iTunes is a slight net positive.)
It can sync my phone’s bookmarks with Internet Explorer which is a plus, but I’ve since switched to Firefox, which doesn’t show up oddly enough. At least iOS straight up has a Firefox app though.
Mind the Application Gap
Now that the core system things are out of the way, I can talk about… the APPS:
The apps were there. I got my Snapchat, GroupMe and superior OneNote (with Touch ID compatibility),etc. and I was pleasantly surprised by the step up in quality seen in Facebook Messenger, Skype, etc.
Facebook Paper is great Facebook client, it isn't as up-to-date in working with all the features like replies to individual comments but its fluid card-based UX is the best I've used. There's a bit of a learning curve though. (ironically I use it because it gets less updates due to Facebook’s tendency to run experiments using the main app.)
I also miss this app on Android.
Facebook Messenger now lets us Quick Reply to messages from the notification. (think W10M's new quick reply feature for texts, which iOS added in 8) And that's nifty, although I need to put in my passcode/use Touch ID to send a message unlike the default Messages which was a mild annoyance.
I tried using Alien Blue for reddit but I didn't like it. Narwhal is my current favorite reddit client of all time.
Instagram shows sponsored pictures and media to me, a definite plus for 6tag there.
The MSN News app flat out sucks on iOS, which is odd considering MS is arguably at its best on iOS. It technically works, but once you leave the app and come back, it loses its spot and reloads from scratch.
I used a Package Tracker (aptly named literally that) which tracked my packages across an app on desktop Windows 8.x and Windows Phone - I definitely miss that functionality, although Cortana compensates for that.
but hey, I finally got a built-in stopwatch now, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
Ultimately, I enjoyed me iOS adventure by any stretch; it was (and is) a terrific phone. I came away impressed. I think it may still have the overall app advantage, but the platform works, but isn't the best fit for me.
I have no qualms recommending it by default though.
But it was trying out Android; namely CyanogenMod 13 (based upon Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow) that truly blew me away.
Although that had tradeoffs of its own.
This will be very helpful to members. 
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