Published: Wed, 03 Sep 2025 21:00:41 -0800
My first iPhone was the 4s, the first iPhone to feature Siri and the last to have the 30 pin apple charging connector. That massive connector ended up being it's killer as water inevitably made it's ingress. After that came my 5c in lime green, which for all I know is still working fine, though I lost track of it during my last move. That was all my experience with iOS and it's devices until 2022. I wouldn't describe it as a negative experience, I just lacked any sort of comparison. After building my first PC and truly getting into tech for the first time, Android's feature-set seemed more appealing. I hadn't chose Apple explicitly anyways, it was merely due to convenience since my father was already in the ecosystem with his iMac and iPhone
The interim period, years 2016-2022, were marked by a collection of Android phones. The first and longest held was my Oneplus 3. I got it new and fell in love with it from the start. I remember that first day vividly, playing with every option in the developer settings, trying out all the various launchers, tweaking to my heart's content. After leaving the walled garden of iOS, Android was like a breath of fresh air. I had it for three years, playing with custom roms and even SailfishOS for some time.
It's departure was a slow one, after a spontaneous collision with a concrete step cracked the digitizer, I replaced the screen, damaging the power button ribbon cable in the process. For a few weeks I tried and failed again and again to get that ribbon cable properly installed, and inevitably admitted defeat. Instead of continuously wasting money on repairs, I opted to hunt for a replacement, settling on the HTC one m8, though it never quite worked right. Then came the Razer phone 2. HA! Remember when Razer tried making phones? That was awful. It was so bad I ended up swapping between it and my half-functioning Oneplus 3 throughout my time using it. Then came a relatively short stint with a Nexus 6p, which was an amazing phone on release, but less of one 6 years later when I purchased it. Then came the second Oneplus 3, I still have my original but something on it stopped working and I found one listed for $35. I was hoping it was going to be like that first time again when I powered it on, but it too had the same fate as the Nexus 6p, great on release, but lackluster half a decade on.
During this time I was getting fed up with Android, or well, degoogled Android. During my teenage years, it didn't really matter if maps were working or if every app would launch, because my life existed within a 25 mile radius and I had all the time in the world to find work-arounds. Adult life required a working phone, one with play services. At times I made it work with 2 phones, a main degoogled phone with a sim and a backup googled one, but that was inconvenient at the best of times.
Apple suddenly felt like a worthy compromise. Sure they still collected data, but they weren't an advertising company and probably not as much, right? And I can probably still opt out of stuff, right? And yeah, I'll be limited to the app store, but there's tons of similar options as Android for apps, right?
Wrong! Where you can still use Android without a signed in Google account, you have to be signed in for iOS. Where you have to explicitly set up certain "features" on Android, you're automatically signed up for them with iOS. I remember vividly a few weeks after starting my job at the store, in the widget screen (when you swipe right on the home screen) the suggested location popped up with "work 7 minutes away". Mind you, I never told it that that location was my work, nor did I seem to have the ability to turn off this smart location tracking. For the things you can turn off, it's not a simple toggle switch, but something you "haven't set up yet", which shows up as a pending notification from the settings app until it eventually realizes you're never going to set it up and it just disappears. Switching everything away from using iCloud by default took a month to fully disable.
Then there's the apps. The apps which are so containerized that they can't see any worthwhile data from the device. After paying 6 bucks to get "Mobious Sync", the only Syncthing client for iOS, it didn't even allow to sync photos, the only real reason I would want Syncthing for my phone, something that works absolutely fine on Android. Apps all but refuse to run in the background, making sshing into any of my computers an absolute pain. Quickly copy and paste a command from the browser? Nope! Have to log in again! Maybe it will work if I pay the $1.99 a month for the "pro" version. Every "free" app is kneecapped unless you fork over x dollars per month. Of course this exists on Android, but at a drastically lower rate, especially on FDroid. Of course, there's no equivalent to FDroid on iOS, and if the reaction by Apple after the EU tried to open up the platform indicates anything, there won't be one any time soon.
I tried my best to give it a fair shake. I knew there were gonna be growing pains, but after living in a (mostly) open ecosystem for so long, it feels suffocating when trying to accomplish the most basic of tasks, knowing that Tim Cook can lift a finger and the problem would cease to exist.
I've known for a while that the next phone I would be would be a non-iOS device. I was hoping that Linux phones would take off, but it's clear we've hit some stagnation. The Step allows me to keep track of how things are progressing, and I've gone days where I've barely touched my iPhone, but for things like authentication and taking photos, it's just not there yet. Yet, I need a new phone now. The charging port has been on it's way out for over a year and now only will take a charge if it's being forced in with a few newtons. The wireless charging still works fine, but it's bit my ass on more than a few occasions when an accidental midnight bump off the charger leaves me with a day of charge anxiety.
With Google announcing that they are severely limiting sideloading with their "certified Android" devices, it makes me worry for the future of the ecosystem. I plan on running GrapheneOS so hopefully that will be less of an issue, but with how Google has been curtailing any projects that utilize their projects outside of Google's intended vision, I worry for its future too.
I regularly check my email, If I don't respond quickly, send me a poke:
jasco.website@pm.me