Switching from iPhone to Android

I've been an iPhone guy since the very first iPhone. I fell in love with the interface, the usability, the functionality. I was an iPhone lover before the App Store, before the SDK. I paid $600 for that phone, plus ETF fees from Verizon to switch over to AT&T, the only carrier at the time who had the iPhone. I've owned every version of the iPhone. But then something happened.

The 5s underwhelmed me. While every other version of the phone offered something good and useable, the 5s did nothing for me. It was the first upgrade that didn't impress me enough to make the leap into the new phone. 

iOS 7 sucks. It's hideously ugly and buggy. Many things changed just just for the sake of changing, and didn't introduce any real improvements. The UI sucks. It's a perfect example of flat design not working. The icons look like a child created them. I thought I'd get used to it, but after several months of using it, I still hated it. I moved on to the Nexus 5.

First things first, the screen is beautiful. The phone is a good size. Sometimes I love the extra real estate it offers over my iPhone 5, but sometimes I wish it was a hair smaller so I could operate it with one hand. I guess the "perfect size" is a very difficult compromise to find. 

I like KitKat. It's mostly intuitive, and the things it handles differently from the iPhone are relatively easy changes to make sense of. I like how literally EVERYTHING on Android is customizable, from the lock screens to notification bar. Unfortunately, sometimes too many choices also make things complicated. One of the things I loved from iOS 7 (maybe the only thing) was the Control Center, with shortcuts to the camera and flashlight and calculator. To recreate this, I investigated some apps to add those icons to the notification bar. There was an overwhelming amount of choices there, and it took me quite a while to find a good solution. 

In the end, I believe the solution I used it better than Apple's, but that's not the point. In my youth, I enjoyed tinkering with technology, trying things out and spending my time tweaking. As I get older, I don't enjoy that process nearly as much. I find myself just wanting it to work, and not caring if it's not 100% to my liking as long as it's "close enough". 

Don't even get me started on the transition from iMessage to Hangouts. I guess that's a post for another day. 

The camera also sucks, even on 4.4.2. 

I'm going to give this Android an honest shot and see if I come out the other side as a Google/Android fan boy. I haven't made any decisions on that point just yet.