I switched back to Android from an iPhone 6.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

To the phone I least expected to go for: A Samsung Galaxy S6. 

 

There wasn't anything wrong with the iPhone 6 per se. It works flawlessly, the apps and the OS mostly just work, one small snafu aside.¹ The thing is though... using iOS felt too restrictive. Even with the added options in iOS 8 there were options missing. In short, it wasn't the right phone for me after the novelty factor had worn off.

 

I had been thinking about which Android device to switch to since January. With MWC taking place in March I decided to wait and see what the various manufacturers were to show. Had anyone asked me before MWC which phone I'd choose my answer would have been 'probably the HTC One M9'. As it turned out the M9 is somewhat underwhelming in my opinion; your mileage may vary.

 

Then I watched the Samsung Unpacked event. The moment I saw the phone design, heard about the specs and how TouchWiz has finally been de-bloatified I knew this was the phone to go for. I settled for the regular version - the S6 edge is (again, in my opinion) more of a gimmick than anything. 

 

I ended up buying the phone at a launch event held at one of two official Samsung stores in Germany, on the evening of the 9th of April. The launch event will be the subject of a blog post eventually.

 

Am I happy with the phone? Oh yes. With the S6 there is finally a Samsung flagship device with a premium hardware design to go with it. The phone is ridiculously fast, TouchWiz has finally become usable - it's not the mess we saw on the S4 or S5 anymore. As for bloatware on the phone: Yes, you can't uninstall the MS apps on the S6. Since I was already using them on previous devices however they don't bother me in the slightest. Since this is an unlocked phone there is no carrier bloatware; there were a few useless apps (pizza.de and similar offers) which were easily uninstalled. 

 

There are some pre-installed Samsung apps you can only disable rather than uninstall, but they too don't bother me. They didn't dump everything including the kitchen sink onto the phone either; many formerly pre-installed apps are now optional downloads from the Galaxy app store.

 

Most importantly, I can safely say I feel comfortable with my phone again. On the iPhone it felt too much like I'm in a designer apartment with 'don't touch, don't change anything' signs all over the place. As said above - the iPhone 6 works well, but in the end it just isn't the right device for me.

 

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1 The small snafu being the iOS 8.0.1 disaster. 

[neo1911]

iOS 8 in general was such a disgusting release. They made some changes to touch algorithm and now iOS touch feels like Android. Non responsive and less confidence inspiring. Almost like it has just lost all it's magic.

 

Apple knows this very well. Hence we are seeing point updates going to 8.4. Though I am happy with my 5S, I also enjoy my backup phone LG G2 which is 2 years old but runs LG's Lollipop update very well. I get best of both worlds.

 

The anti-Apple wave has started to catch up. @OP, I didn't expect you to switch over to Android so soon as you have defended Apple and their products in past.

 

We go with whatever works best for us.