I tried switching from iOS to Android so let see iPhone vs Samsung which is Better?
I’ve been an iPhone user for a long time now but last month I switched over for my iPhone 14 pro Max to the Samsung Galaxy Z flip 5 with no intention of moving back I love the concept of this phone I made an entire video when it launched showing you how it’s Samsung’s biggest upgrade yet and I genuinely thought that this was going to be it that this was the phone that was finally going to convert me back to being a Samsung user once again and on the way I’ve learned a lot about the state of iPhone vs Samsung in 2023 how Samsung’s touches help or hinder that and what a foldable phone is really like versus a normal bar phone to live with.
iPhone vs Samsung (Data Transfer)
So let’s start with a setup process because it starts out fantastic it tells you to connect both phones via a cable and you’ll be good to go in 30 minutes then even WhatsApp the single most historically difficult app to transfer now has a move to Android button baked in but then the first problem arose it wouldn’t detect the cable I went through four cables before it finally recognized one and then when it worked it only partially transferred apps with very little app data so you’ve had to start each one from the beginning the rest of the stuff like contacts came in dribs and drabs with some having to then be transferred again later with the wireless method and WhatsApp just all together refused this transfer no joke it became my andritious evening project every day for the entire first week just to try and get my chats across from this phone to this phone and for the time being what I’ve resorted to is to just link WhatsApp on my new z-flip to the main WhatsApp account that’s still active on my iPhone but what that means is that I’m effectively still piggybacking off the iPhone and still need to use it once every 14 days so that I can stay logged in on my Samsung.
Smart Switch app iPhone vs Samsung
Now all of this hassle is definitely partly Samsung’s fault for making a Smart Switch app that isn’t very smart at switching but it wouldn’t be fair to give them all the blame I mean you’ll have trouble switching from iPhone to any Android nowadays it’s simply because apple is now more and more tying every single iPhone app and feature into your Apple ID effectively increasing the friction that would come from exiting that bubble so this transition was off to a rough start but the software actually really turned things around for me.
Software in iPhone vs Samsung
Samsung
I love customization and you rarely feel when you’re using an iPhone like it’s lacking but it’s only when you move over to Android after a long time being on iPhone that you re-appreciate all of those oh yeah I can change that too moments so Samsung for example has a suite of apps called good luck and it gives you a level of control so absolutely insane you could spend weeks optimizing every single key of your keyboard or adding in instant shortcuts to popular phrases you can craft every aspect of your own motion wallpaper and you can not just apply icon packs you can make your own I decided quite early on that this phone reminds me of a banana so I went all in on her and what’s really refreshing about using an Android again is that when you have those little nibbles which I did like how if you want to search for an app on Samsung’s default home screen you have to execute some pretty Advanced finger gymnastics or how I’ve got so used to flicking down the control panel on my phone to change brightness in one swipe which again is not the case here it feels tiring in almost all cases it’s just a case of finding the right app or setting and you can fix them.
iPhone
I guess the point being moving from iPhone to Android it felt relieving to not be so locked into one way of doing it like I remember getting really annoyed earlier this year I’d taken some hour-long time lapses on my iPhone and for some reason maybe the files were too large airdrop kept failing and it also wasn’t syncing to my Mac via Apple photos which is how you normally have to transfer videos and all I could think in that moment was I wish this was an Android for like 10 minutes just so I could plug it in go into the Android folder directory and just drag and drop the files I needed to my computer.
Face Unlock iPhone vs Samsung
Only thing that really does feel like a downgrade here is the face unlock I’m used to using Apple’s face ID for everything and it’s so reliable and so good that you start to forget it’s there not the case here Samsung’s Face Unlock isn’t as secure so you can’t use it to authenticate as many things it needs you to be closer it’s a little bit slower and since it’s not using infrared but your actual camera is too snapshot to your face which means it’s a affected by light so when you try and do this at night the phone will actually blast you with enough of it to wake you right back up and be affected by the quality of those cameras meaning that it works pretty reliably when folded because you’ve got a good set of cameras there but then noticeably less well when unfolded as you have to rely on this tiny sensor.
Camera iPhone vs Samsung
It’s a pretty minor issue you can’t just use the fingerprint scanner but it leads me on to what I would call a pretty major shoe yeah the cameras when I first saw this photo and I thought this is amazing you can zip the phone out you can double tap and get high quality selfies taken with a proper set of cameras the same set of proper cameras that you can also use for taking rear photos and in some ways this feeling was spot-on the fact that when the phone’s folded up its primary set of cameras are already facing you that’s really powerful because it makes them the default option it creates a situation where the quickest way to take a selfie is also the best way to take a selfie and this works really well since you can also use these cameras while propping at any angle in cover screen mode.
They’ve made their navigation really natural too you just swipe to flick modes and you tap the screen to start recording the stabilization is pretty great I love how Samsung makes faces look both crisp but at the same time flattering and to be fair also thanks to some pretty smart AI the phone’s ability to zoom in is not as bad as you might think given that it has no actual zoom camera but everything else is a little disappointing.
I mean for starters while this whole time I’ve seen it as one massive perk that you can flip the same set of cameras to use as both the front and the rear until I actually used it for a prolonged period of time I completely neglected the con that also comes with this in the in its default position you have no rear camera.
Anytime you want to take a video of what’s in front of you with one hand it’s not tap tap like I’m used to it is tilt the phone up find a way to wedge your thumb in which is pretty difficult considering it’s almost no cap now I’ll push it all the way rotating your finger because you’re conscious not to dig your nails into the fragile foldable screen half the time I then accidentally opened this menu so close that and then press and swipe out for the camera followed by a final swipe to get to video.
I’m dramatizing this a little bit to make the point but when you’re getting your phone out for the 40th time of the day which I was just yesterday because I was out viewing houses and needed to take photos of every single room you really do start to think oh this whole opening and closing thing it’s effort and that what a phone like this really needs is a button that can automatically flip the phone into its fully unfolded position and then even when you do unfold it the video quality itself is not that great now I did go into this knowing that I’d be taking a hit when it comes to video but even with that it doesn’t feel good when you film in those middle lighting conditions which you think should be fine for a thousand dollar phone and then you check the footage afterwards and you realize they’re covered in a sheet of green.
Plus what’s really easy to overlook and something that I didn’t even consider on first impression is that while you do get a set of cameras on the front there is no microphone that faces you so you end up with this really weird trade-off where you can either have good video but mediocre audio when you’re using this or you can have good audio and then mediocre video because this inner selfie camera has a microphone directly above it and let’s be very clear I’m not exaggerating the quality difference between these two sets of cameras anyone can tell that one’s good and one’s not and to be honest cameras aren’t even the only area where you feel the teething problems of foldable phones right now.
New Niche Nifty
Now don’t get me wrong there have been plenty of moments where I’ve discovered some new Niche Nifty perk from the fact that my phone can bend like how often when I film I keep my phone on my desk and sometimes pick it up to remind me what I wanted to say but with this I can use the bottom half to prop up the top half and I can see it without even picking it up or how like a couple of times when I’ve taken video calls this new even sturdier hinge is the reason that I’ve been able to take them hands-free and actually cook something at the same time.
It’s so freeing and refreshing and it’s in these specific moments that you feel that little validation for straying away from the beaten path and actually choosing a phone that’s a bit different but what’s made this such a Bittersweet experience is that for every single one of these moments where you start to question why you didn’t start using foldables earlier something else will very shortly come up to remind you like the fact that the top half of your screen on its own is not really big enough to do anything with.
It fits such little information on it that I started to find I was scrolling twice as often and that I was actually just better off using a bigger phone and propping it up against something and one of the things I was really excited about with this was the possibility of being able to watch content in any situation and actually have a great viewing experience because the angle of a phone can be adjusted but it only took two days of me trying to make this work for me to decide actually this sense.
The amount of horizontal room you have to display a video on this folded screen is so tiny that I’d literally be squinting to try and see what’s happening and so the compromise I’ve ended up with is using a slight Bend to allow the phone to stand up sideways so you can still get that full screen experience and prop your phone up without using a separate stand but you just lose what was really exciting about this which is being able to adjust the angle and then the other annoying part of this is that when the phone is fully open It’s Too Tall if most YouTube videos on a normal phone fill 80 of the screen here it’s probably 65 which is small enough that it starts to feel like you’re wasting space and that if you try and enlarge it you’re going to lose so much information on the top and the bottom that is kind of unwatchable oh yeah and there’s also the really obvious crease which to be honest over time you do adjust to but it just makes the phone a bit less cool.
Battery Life iPhone vs Samsung
It does also pose a practical problem if you’re trying to watch videos on it with other people because for whoever’s watching from an angle you will basically just see a big line over your content battery life on the other hand pleasant surprise it’s not even been close to an issue for me it sounds bad on paper with its 3700 milliamp hour cell but two things a I’m spending a third of my time with this phone on this tiny cover screen which is pretty conservative on battery and B the fact that the cover screen is the default has 100 definitely reduced the total time I spend on my phone it’s created far more of a barrier between receiving a notification and then getting lost in an app that I didn’t even realize why I clicked I’ll normally keep the phone folded up on the desk I work on and then if I get like a WhatsApp I flick to the side I tap it to make sure it’s not urgent and then just turn the phone back off but since there’s nothing I can do on this cover screen that’s actually fun it’s also not distracting.
I’ve said this from the very beginning and I stand by it in the long term that this ability to create separation between the utility of a phone and the distraction that usually comes with that that is the single biggest perk of these z-flip phones.
Mini Conclusion
So am I going to stick to it is it going to be the one to replace the iPhone NO part of it is the niggles that come with it being a foldable part of it is the pretty severe camera downgrade but a big part of it is also the ecosystem.
So I’m actually not really fussed whether my phone is an Android or an iPhone (iPhone VS Samsung) but the one thing that is a non-negotiable for me is that my computer has to be a Mac for my needs the fluidity of the Final Cut Pro editing program and the massive lead in battery life that Macs have right now over Windows (Mac vs Windows for Video Editing?) these two are both critical because I’m constantly traveling and I’m constantly trying to work while traveling and so part of the decision has to also be how easy is it to live with an Android phone and an Apple computer and to be honest not a massive issue there are workarounds for almost every single feature but I have felt the lack of ease.
Airdrop iPhone vs Samsung
I really miss airdrop that’s one if you want to wirelessly transfer between these two I mean most guys seem to recommend AirDroid but it puts ads right in your face needs a monthly subscription and also still has a file size limit even if you pay there’s warp share which can actually fool your Mac into thinking you’re sending from an iPhone but only works one way and so the best option seems to be snapdrop which looks like airdrop and even feels like airdropping that you’re just browsing your files and tap share you click via snapdrop and then tap on your Mac or PC to send it.
But even that’s not the same it’s slower than airdrop you have one extra press on the Mac of having to click download after the transfer is complete and it also will not continue if you move really far away like airdrop does now plus it feels really weird not being able to take my phone calls on my laptop automatically like I used to be able to with my iPhone.
It was so handy because it removes that anxiety of always needing to sit within hearing distance of your phone in case someone tries to get in touch.
Airpods iPhone vs Samsung
Airpods become less good they still work but just as basic bluetooth earbuds without a lot of their key perks like automatically pausing when you take one but out there’s a few more instances like this of the difficulties you get when trying to fit Samsung into an apple ecosystem but the point is mildly inconvenient not insurmountable and I’d be willing to put up with it if the rest of the phone had impressed me more because as well as all the other difficulties I’ve also noticed the signal doesn’t seem as strong as it does on my iPhone.
Potentially since there’s more layers to travel through when folded the speakers (Bose Portable Home Speaker Review) aren’t as loud or as Bassy presumably because they’ve had to make the body of the phone Slimmer and the z-flip gets pretty hot especially when charging or using a mobile hotspot with my theory being that it’s more cubic shaped when folded reducing the surface area for heat to escape plus cooling just generally not being a priority here.
So I guess the search for the Android that will steal me away continues.
