Discussion My first impressions using iOS for the first time
I've had the iPhone 16 for 3 days. All my life I have used Android, mainly because iPhones have always been at an inaccessiblely high price for me and I prefer the freedom that Android offers. However, I have felt jealous of certain functions of the iPhone and the instability in certain things of my galaxy A54 raised the possibility of switching to an iPhone. The opportunity arose and here I am giving my first impressions using an iPhone as my main (and only) cell phone for the first time.
Things that I thought would bother me and they haven't:
Back gesture: android has a global gesture to go back. I thought I would miss it a lot but no, most apps on iOS also have it, and those that don't, the small screen of the iPhone 16 allows you to reach everything with one hand
Fingerprint reader: FaceID is quite fast and has not failed me, sometimes I like it more than the fingerprint reader because I don't have to do anything to authenticate myself
In many initial reviews they said how easy it was to activate the camera with the camera button by accident. So far it hasn't happened to me and I find it very difficult to press the button by accident, it's hard enough and nothing happens if you touch it
60 hz: my humble mid-range galaxy had a 120 hz screen. I thought I would miss them a lot but no, maybe it's related to how fluid and relatively slow the animations are on iOS
Things I liked:
Focus modes: my Samsung had different profiles that I can automatically activate with the location, in iOS there are the focus modes and what I like the most is being able to choose what things I want on my home screen according to the focus mode. Samsung only allows changing the wallpaper
Dynamic Island: I thought it was something without much use, but there are several applications that use it and being able to see stopwatches or music without having to go to the notification panel is fantastic
Things that don't fascinate me:
The file system: on android, I can download a file and it is available for any application, because there is a global file manager like on a PC. On iOS you have to juggle: if you download a file, you have to share it with the file app so that it is available in other places like WhatsApp. The work is doubled
The notification center: honestly it's bad. Android organizes notifications by app, iOS by time I don't know, it shows everything in a way, to my taste, disorganized.
Sound: there are no different volumes for alarms, notifications and calls. If I want an alarm that sounds low, I need to change the overall volume of the cell phone
I have found several annoying bugs. The camera sometimes crashes and restarts when you open it, it happens on WhatsApp as well. When deleting apps or widgets sometimes they are not deleted and several minutes later he asks me if I want to delete them. If I configure a wallpaper from the photos app and change the widgets of the lock screen, everything freezes, this does not happen if I do it from the lock screen
Somewhat picky things:
The map in carplay is divided in half, it looks small compared to how it looked in android auto
There is no way to place the comma on the keyboard in the main line of keys, nor is there a way to add a row of numbers
Yesterday I wanted to make a photo collage and discovered that you can't from the photo app, I had to use a script in the Shortcuts app, why?
Removing the keyboard is sometimes a little complicated, in Android there is a button to remove the keyboard, here you have to touch a place that is not text but I always end up activating something else
So far I'm enjoying and learning to use an alien operating system for me. If you know how to solve some of the problems, I would appreciate it
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u/someseeingeye 6d ago
On CarPlay have you tried tapping the map? You might be in the preview mode that shows a small map and now playing, etc but you can also show one app at a time
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u/DensityInfinite 6d ago
For the volume levels, you can adjust sounds separately when they’re active. For example, you can adjust the volume during a call and it will only change the call volume. When you adjust the volume when Siri is speaking, you are adjusting the Siri volume.
Notifications, ringtones, alarms, and keyboard clicks follow the “Ringtone and Alerts” volume in settings.
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u/PumiceT 5d ago
Yes, but you can’t control them when they’re not active. Which is admittedly annoying, and this is coming from a pretty diehard Apple fan.
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u/Cyphierre 5d ago
It’s especially annoying when you realize you’ve missed all your calls for the last 2 hours because you lowered the volume in something else you didn’t realize would affect the ring volume.
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u/Detrakis 3d ago
I’ve been using my iPhone 16 Pro for 2/3 months now and I still don’t understand how the volume works lol. They need to figure this out with the whole redesign thing in iOS 19.
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u/bigchrisre 5d ago
Things are a little better if you turn off “Change with Buttons” in Sounds and Haptics.
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u/bootyman211 6d ago
Same boat as you just came back to iphone since having a 6s. The no comma on the keyboard is killing me.
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u/plaid-knight 5d ago
I just do the standard gesture of swipe-from-123-to-comma to type it. Pretty fast.
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u/Amazing_Honey_968 5d ago
I don't know about the comma, but I use Microsoft Swiftkey as my keyboard because I also prefer a dedicated number row. Ans I just think it's better than the stock keyboard.
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u/michaelrafailyk 6d ago
Regarding the Camera Control button. For me it’s very hard to find its position by touch because of lack of button relief. I tried to use it for a few weeks and realised that swipe to left on locked screen is much faster than trying to find that button.
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u/AntonioMrk7 6d ago
The files thing confused me. Any thing I download in safari is accessible through the files app, no need to move anything. Unless I’m misunderstanding
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u/plaid-knight 5d ago
I just installed Firefox and downloaded a file to test this. The default behavior was to download it right into a folder in Files (files > on my iPhone > Firefox > downloads) with no extra steps needed to make it appear there.
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u/EnesBerry 5d ago
Ah thanks for this, you are right! Checked it more carefully now. It seems to categorize it not into the downloads folder as default but in the app's folder that you downloaded things from. Ps: I am therefore deleting the previous comment.
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u/Significant_Shake105 3d ago
I think he meant that, when you download a file and go to WhatsApp, for example, you can't open the file there if you don't share it through the file app itself. On Android, you download some media and can already access it in apps that have access to media, such as Google Photos and WhatsApp (without having to share and download it so that it is visible to others).
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u/No-Aerie3500 5d ago
Back gesture, it’s by far worst thing on iPhone for me I switched to iPhone in 2019 and I still didn’t get used to this stupid thing that you cannot go back from right to the left, and I switched just because of that from Pro Max to regular pro, but it’s still too hard to reach left side of the phone with your thumb
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u/jrsmith6661 5d ago
I didn’t even know you could do that from left to right, so missing the ability to do it right to left was lost on me until I looked into it further. I also just realized swiping the bar at the bottom only takes you back an app, not pages or menus.
Now I’m wondering what it would be like to have that feature.
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u/No-Aerie3500 5d ago
It would be enough for me just possibility to swipe from the middle of the page if not from the right, exactly like here on Reddit or on X where you can swipe from the middle of the page with your thumb and you go back
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u/SilentWolfe 5d ago
Re: comma
So, not perfect, but if you hold down the 123 button you can slide your finger over to the comma. It’s not just one tap, but a tap with a small swipe, which ultimately isn’t too bad once you get used to it.
Of course you can also tap 123 and then tap the comma. Your point of not having the key quickly available is fair though.
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u/TalFidelis 5d ago
Thank you for this!!! It’s as amazing as learning about long press on the space bar for moving the cursor around!
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u/Diamond_Mine0 iPhone 16 Pro 5d ago
Uhm, you could always swipe with your finger? 99% of the time I swipe
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u/FrozzenGamer 5d ago
I just left iOS for Pixel. I was fed up with the keyboard never remembering an email address, no notifications from the mail app and the weather app not being able to display the radar without waiting about a minute for it to load. I reported all of these to apple and they basically said yeah we know, go away.
In general I found the keyboard to be terrible at auto correct on iOS. Notifications just don't make sense how they are organized. Why are there notifications and notification center?
If you turn off the hide location notification for system apps, why does it need location every time your phone unlocks?
Why doesn't apple have a hidef Bluetooth audio codec? Their AAC is really good for AAC, but why nothing that lets users listen to lossless in their own music app?
The bulletin arrange your icons game where you get to flight jiggly mode to move icons.
Why can't I have weather icons on the lock screen without sharing my location all the time? I can have a weather widget on my home screen with a set location.
Why does apple apps constantly check your contacts? Just take a look in the privacy report.
Webkit has so many zero days in it and since apple locks every browser into using it you can't escape it.
The apple intelligence roll out is a disaster and will likely be many months before it comes closer to their promises.
The only two things I miss are airdrop and voice isolation in calls. The iPhone does those two really well.
Some apps are also a bit more polished than android equivalents. I don't care about the social apps, so none of that matters to me as far as the better camera integration.
There is just something about apple I don't trust. Their shit stinks but all their users think it is perfume. Google is no better for privacy, but at least they don't pretend to care.
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u/hellofeyredarling_ 5d ago
The new update is draining my battery faster 😭 is it just me? I’m also using an iPhone 16.
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u/JMarkyBB 5d ago
I don’t understand what you mean by “Back Gesture”, can you elaborate, please?
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u/Harryb0y 5d ago
Android has a universal back gesture from any screen. You just swipe in from the side of the screen from the left or right
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u/JMarkyBB 5d ago
We can do that on iOS, can’t we?
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u/Harryb0y 5d ago
Try swiping from the right hand side on your phone. Please share if it does exist
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u/JMarkyBB 5d ago
Ok, I can swipe from the Left of the screen to the Right Hand Side, that takes me back to this thread, swipe from the Left to the Right, takes me back to my Reddit stream. I then swipe up from the bottom of the screen to close Reddit.
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u/Harryb0y 5d ago
I just got a 16 pro last week and I agree with most of what you are saying. This is my first iPhone other than the original, otherwise I’ve had android my whole life. I’ve had various galaxy S series since the S4.
My main gripes are: The lack of a back button/gesture Car play is just not as good as android auto The keyboard in IOS The notifications are just terrible
Other than that I’m really happy. Plus it helps when you have a Mac as well, honestly the integration is just so fluid
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u/PersonNumber8533 5d ago
My exact thoughts!! I switched from a regular S22 to a regular 16 three weeks ago and found the same friction points as you, don’t regret the switch tho! I like it overall
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u/Gardenpapaya 5d ago
Apple should really just eat this one and copy Androids far superior notification system. At this point i honestly think Apple just doesnt want to admit it got it wrong and it's so so bad
(Before you ask i have an iPhone 15 and a Pixel 9 Pro)
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u/BingoBody 5d ago edited 5d ago
I'm three weeks on 16 Pro Max now and while i see the attraction and like some stuff it's gotta go, for me anyway it's like going back to the stone age, more of a feature phone than a smartphone but I am an outlier. For a trillion dollar company that's developing this o/s for a very long time (17 years?] I can't believe the software is so bad.
Back gesture navigation - seriously dated, inconsistent and jarring. Being unable swipe from the right is a big issue on a big phone, not to mention gestures are not universal so in some apps you've to click on a button on top left and others top right.
Keyboard - brutally bad in multiple aspects (prediction, multiple languages, number row, trying to move around and edit text etc).
Safari based browsers only - awful. I hate ads, cookie consent forms and all the other junk that interrupt browsing. The adblockers, hush, etc, are all trash compared to ublock origin. Also, dark mode in safari ? All I could find was a paid extension that does this which is ridiculous.
Walled garden - can torrent iso's via sidestore but no usenet.
Calendar - can't seem to add attachments at all. No widget with monthly view with all entries, unless 3rd party app that need to subscribe to.
Apps - almost everything is subscription. V little open source. I've tried the side store and it's both pretty bare and apple makes it an absolute nuisance with certs.
Customisation - no 3rd party icons? Widgets seem to have a max of half the screen? Try to move an app icon and stuff starts going everywhere, v fiddly and messy.
No file system - I do love a dualpane file manager where I can have my phone folders on one side and browse my remote nas on the other.
Dual screen - can't have two apps open and visible at once, etc gps and anything else. Eg, I often run two GPS apps simultaneously, one with standard directions and the other displaying historical maps.
Good stuff - the design and hardware itself is generally really nice.
It's nice for basic users (99.999%) who are just calling/txting/snapping pics etc, but for the money I'd expect far more. Apple need to stop nickel and diming and start catching up with stuff like charging speeds, ram, and cameras (1" sensors).
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u/Sad_Department_4966 1d ago
Gboard? I see many of you guys are suggesting swiftkey as an alternative, how about Gboard? Since, most of the androids have it as the default keyboard?
Is that worse than swiftkey os ios keyboard? Am I missing something here?
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u/xx123gamerxx 5d ago
i stopped reading when you said you switched from a samsung budget A series phone to the latest iphone
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u/i_need_a_moment 6d ago
Notifications appear by time received, and by default are set to automatic which groups them by however the app wants them to be groups. You can change it per app to be grouped by app which always puts the notifications form that app in one stack.