Finally, I made the move. So far I’m not regretting it. It has been a whole month without IPhone, and I stayed sane.

The begin of an era

I was in my uni dorm when Steven shocked the world with IPhone, I have re-watched the release conference countless times over the years. And ever since I have been an Apple fanboy, from 3GS up until 12 pro max, IPad, MacBook air/pro, AirPod, watch, you name it. I just liked the elegant design, consistency of performance, and the resistance to adding to much complexity to the system. There were issues for sure, like the signal issue with IPhone 4, IPhone 5’s long face and the design language switch after 5. I sticked to Apple no matter what and defended it fearlessly.

Failed attempt

However, into the recent years, I started to feel that Apple world is becoming more and more boring. Ever year’s release is about a faster chip and maybe a better camera(which I don’t care about for a little bit, still have no idea why people want to shuffle these huge ass cameras on phones). The system is becoming bloated, though still not as bad as Android I admit. The price is becoming harder and harder to swallow. I made my first attempt in 2019 to switch to OnePlus 7pro. The no notch design really attracted me, and the pop up front camera is just too cool to resist as a nerd.

The attempt eventually failed because:

  • I still own most of the Apple eco system which is a pain in the ass to use together with an Android phone
  • Android system was not good enough in a long run. After 1 year, you can feel the system slows down, and background apps constantly get killed
  • Everything you want to achieve you have to put some effort which is fun at the beginning, since you can basically make the phone however you want it to. But it becomes tedious quick. In contrast, Apple offers less options, but most of them are well polished.
  • All these years of using Apple stuff, the habit is really hard to get rid of. It’s like drug addict.
  • The flaws in the design of the phone. I always run my phone naked, no screen film no case. The curve screen makes it super hard, because constantly I struggle with click or not click on the screen because of my palm touching the edge.
  • Battery life, battery life, battery life

Move on

I broke my Apple watch when cooking. I was hesitating between a new Apple watch series 9 which has 1 day battery life or ultra which has multiple days battery but makes your wallet slim quick. Then I suddenly realize why am I doing this if it will not make me happy anyway. At this time, Samsung happened to announce their new S24 line.

Everything looked pretty cool, the no curve design, Qualcomm chip’s performance finally catch up with Apple A series, the screen is stunning, plus bunch of AI gamic stuff, price is though still very expensive but the pre-order discounts made it okish. But I don’t want to rush and make the premature switching mistake again. After watching almost all reviews on Youtube, and found a bug in the ING partner deal which gave me €500 more discount, I decided this is it. Traded in my 12 Pro Max and that’s it. I moved on.

Good and bad so far

It has been roughly a month since I switched to S24 Ultra, overall, it’s a pretty good phone, but still not perfect. Here are some goods and bads:

Good

  • It’s a good looking phone.
    • I really like the squared design inherited from the Note series. Some reviewer said that it’s not comfortable to hold in hand because of the more straight corner, but I find it not so bad.
    • The camera hole is definitely a lot better than the hugh notch or dynamic island that IPhones have. It’s less intrusive for sure, and the edge of it lights up when you’re logging in with your face(okay, IPhone’s dynamic island beats it in terms of functionality, but still, aesthetically, I like the hole better)
    • The Titanium frame looks sexy and feels good when holding in hand
    • The arrangement of cameras looks better than IPhone’s weird triangle-ish thing.
  • Battery life definitely improved a lot than any of the Android phones I had before. I think it’s really on par with the IPhone if not better. For a full day’s use, I normally have more than 70% battery left at the end of day. And I have always on display turned on.
  • It’s quite capable. Actually, as the phones chips are getting so powerful, I don’t think performance will be of any issue for flagship level phones anymore in the future. Since I owned the S24 Ultra, I haven’t experienced any hiccup or slow down. Everything opens pretty much instantly. I don’t play games on phones, so I’m not sure how it will perform in games. But I think it will crash it.
  • The screen is just stunning. Adaptive refresh rate up to 120Hz, vivid color, high pixel density, way less reflective than my old IPhone. This just ticks all my boxes with a screen.
  • Customizability. This has been a strong point for Android phones since forever. IPhone does not even come close. Still remember I used to spends so much time on my old HTC phones to customize it to my like. Back then you still need to root the phone to achieve maximum customizability. But now with S24 Ultra, you get GoodLock, which is official app that offers enough customization without needing to root the phone.
  • Long term commitment to software update. Samsung has announced that S24 series will receive 7 years of software update, which is good, because I have no plan change my phone again in next 3 years at least.
  • Software availability. This is controversy one. In terms of app coverage, I still think that Apple’s app store beats Android as well as the app searching, installing and updating experience. But one huge advantage that Android has is, it’s OPEN. You are not only limited to Google play store, you can basically install anything in the form of an apk. This is especially useful for me, since even though I do not live in China anymore and I absolutely hate some of the Chinese apps, I still need to install one or two of them. It’s much easier than switching regions of your app store.

Bad

  • Not as good face unlock: I have mixed feelings towards IPhone’s Face Id. It looks cool and useful in scenarios like the weather is too cold to be bare handed, or when your hand is wet/dirty. But despite all that, I’m still an absolute sucker of finger print unlock, it’s fast, more secure and more reliable. And I don’t like the fact that I was forced to use my face to unlock the phone. That’s said, Face Id is definitely superior to what Samsung put on their phones. Pure 2D image processing based face unlock should just be discarded, it’s not safe at all. If you use it, it gives you a false sense of safety. Please just use the finger print.
  • Samsung ecosystem is equally bad: I’m getting more and more irritated by this eco system thing. You have to use this proprietary cloud service be it Samsung cloud, google cloud or Microsoft one drive. No, I don’t want to use either of them, I want to use my self-hosted NextCloud. And I don’t want ‘SmartThings’ just give me Ziggbee or matter then I can integrate with my self-hosted homeassistant. And I don’t care a bit about the Samsung app suite. But fortunately, with Android, there’s things you can do to have most of the things as you like but probably not as smooth.
  • Android is still fragmented: One advantage of Apple’s closed cycle is they control everything, and thus everything is under control. So almost everything is plug and play, be it on IPad, IPhone or Apple Watch. But with Android, it’s up to the developers whether or not to fit their app to certain devices. Some unpopular apps just doesn’t work so well on some of the devices.
  • Google Pay or Samsung Pay is absolutely garbage comparing to Apple Pay: At least in the Netherlands, Apple Pay dominates. I can pretty much leave my card at home and don’t need to worry about making payment as long as I have my phone or my watch. But I failed miserably when attempt to add my ING debit card to Google Pay, it didn’t even allow me to put in my Dutch card number because it only allows numerics. Samsung pay is just non-exist here. Eventually I have to use the ING app as default payment, and it just never worked. I embarrassed myself at AH and IKEA when try to checkout, and saved by my wife’s Apple Pay. As someone who works in the payment industry, this just make me sad.
  • Speaker output is still not as good as IPhone: This is quite subjective. But to my ear, S24 Ultra’s speaker output is not as loud or as high quality as my old IPhone 12 pro max. It’s decent, but not as good.

Conclusion

IPhone is still one of the best phones out there. But for me specifically, I’m getting tired of Apple’s bullshits like the boring design, stupid Siri, lighting cable, super slow charge rate, ridiculous price, closed ecosystem. The Samsung S24 Ultra is the fresh air that I needed right now. Hardware wise S24 meats all my requirements, and as someone who is pretty tech savvy, there’s wiggle room for me to overcome software issues.

So if you don’t want to spend too much time on your phone, don’t mind being told what to do by Apple and have a deep pocket, then IPhone is still the choice. If you mind the aforementioned, S24 is pretty good choice.

Tips to make life better with S24

  • you have to have GoodLock for any meaningful customization. It can be found in the Galaxy Store, and there’re mini apps(not sure what they are called officially) inside it that you can install to customize different aspects of your phone. Some of them I found especially useful are:
    • ClockFace + LockStar: with this two basically you can make your lock screen any way you like
    • Keys Cafe: customize the keyboard layout. This is particularly helpful for me since I found the default Chinese keyboard has a quite awkward layout which causing me mistype all the time.
    • Home up: for your home screen, I didn’t touch too much here besides changing folder to pop up style and switch task changer to stack style
    • Note that there’re two tabs in GoodLock, Make up and Life Up. the latter provides some useful functional customizations like enhance screenshot, notification, etc
  • Turn on finger print icon on lock screen at Settings -> Security and privacy -> Biometrics -> Fingerprints -> Fingerprint always on, don’t need to guess where to scan your finger anymore
  • Hide your notification content when screen is locked Settings -> Notifications -> Lock screen notifications -> Hide content. Prevent unauthorised ppl see your notifications
  • Pix Material You is a paid icons and widgets bundle that offers some good looking stuff. Try it out if you don’t mind the 1 euro price.
  • Add the google widget on your home screen with which you can search not only the internet but for your apps. Still not as good as Apple’s Spotlight, but better than nothing.
  • I found Side panel extremely useful. I just put stuff that I want to have quick access there, like ING banking app, authenticator, bitwarden, digid.