I’m Switching to Android (Premium)

Tomorrow, Apple will announce new generation iPhones. So this is the ideal time to reveal that I’m switching to Android.

Granted, it’s been a long time coming.

And to fair to Apple and the many avid fans of its products, it’s not like I won’t be getting a new iPhone: I still need to keep up on what Android’s only competitor is doing. So I’ll do what I’ve always done and keep two phones around, one Android and one iPhone.

The difference is that I’ll be using Android day-to-day. And not the iPhone, as I’ve done for the past few years.

The “why” of this change isn’t all that complex, but it is multi-layered.

As I wrote back in May, I’ve been warming to Android over the past three releases, Android M, N, and O. And alongside side, the available devices have gotten better and better. This year, we’ve hit an amazing apex, of sorts, from a design perspective, with Samsung’s Galaxy S8+ leading the charge forward to bezel-less displays and new tall and thin form factors.

On the flipside, my iPhone experience has worsened over the past year.

For the first time, the latest iPhone, the iPhone 7 Plus, has delivered a worse camera experience than its predecessor, and I find the photos this device takes to be dull and lifeless. So when it comes time to capture memories I really care about, like on a vacation or other trip, I’ve turned to the Google Pixel XL, which delivers superior picture quality. But it’s not just the Pixel XL: Many Android-based handsets now outperform the iPhone when it comes to photography.

I originally defended Apple’s decision to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone. But this design has worn on me over time. I’ve never been stranded, headphone-less on a plane, so far. But many times, I’ve gotten in the car, or tried to use a speaker upstairs, and have been stymied by a missing dongle.

Worse, I just upgraded to the latest version of my cherished and highly-recommended Bose QuietComfort 20 noise-canceling headphones, which offer a few improvements over the initial version I’d be using. Bose offers two versions of these headphones, one for Apple devices and one for other devices, and I’ve always used the latter without any issues. But with the new version, a loud and repeating popping sound happens every time you connect them to the iPhone. You have to press and hold on the volume rocker to make it stop, so there’s at least a workaround. But it is extremely annoying.

And then there is the Microsoft stuff.

As I’ve noted in the past, if you’re concerned at all about using Microsoft technology on mobile, Android will always provide a better and more complete experience than iPhone. That’s because Android is open and iPhone is not, and while Apple has done a decent job of closing the gap, it will never be the same. And if you care about the coming Windows 10 integration stuff in particular, as I do, then Android, again, is the place to be.

Somewhat related to mobile is a broader ecosystem issue. As I’ve plotted my smart home switch-over, I’ve had to make decisions about which technologies I’ll use where, and what I’ll use to control it all. I’ve decided to centralize everything on Google Home, as I feel that Google Assistant will win the digital personal assistant battle, just as Android won on mobile. Related to this, I’m dumping my expensive and locked-in Sonos equipment and moving to Chromecast Audio for multi-speaker music and audio.

Put simply, where Microsoft was at the center of the mainstream personal computing world in the PC era, I feel that Google is increasingly taking on this role in the mobile era. As important, I feel that Google’s unique strengths will enable this firm to parlay this strength into a leadership position in the coming “AI world.” So we’ll see where that takes us, but the simple version is that Google is, I think, future-proof.

So all of these issues—the terrible iPhone 7 Plus camera, the ever-improving Android OS and devices, the availability and capability of Microsoft’s offerings on Android, and Google’s emergence as a new central ecosystem, all sort of play together to make Android the obvious choice. I’ll always be swayed by Apple’s incredible hardware—and tomorrow will no doubt be a moment of great weakness for me—but this is clearly the right way to go.

There are, of course, a few questions.

The first is which device I’ll use.

For now, I’ll stick with the bland Pixel XL, which, again, offers such superior picture-taking capabilities. But the model I have is the woefully-inadequate 32 GB version, so this can’t last long. The amount of content I typically sync to my phone—music and podcasts, especially, but also some reading material in Pocket and Kindle—would swamp this device instantly. My current iPhone has 128 GB of storage, and looking at it now, I see that I’m using 68.6 GB of it. This suggests I could get away with a 64 GB device. Pure Android is important to me as well.

So I’ll see what happens with the new generation Pixel handsets, which are expected in October. I’m hoping and expecting them to meet my needs, because tied to my Android switch is another switch. I’m leaving AT&T Wireless after 10 years, and am moving entirely to Google’s Project Fi. It is perhaps not coincidental that I switched to AT&T in 2007 in order to get the first iPhone.

I have waxed rhapsodic about Project Fi many times here on Thurrott.com. But let me just quickly reiterate why it’s so awesome: Incredibly inexpensive and transparent pricing, no-extra-cost international usage, and great domestic coverage thanks to network switching capabilities. I love Project Fi, and before making my switch decision, I wanted to make sure that it works well here in Pennsylvania. It does. So that was the one hurdle. (I might have switched to T-Mobile otherwise.)

On the face of things, I’ll save over $70 a month by dropping AT&T like a bad habit. But the reality is slightly less dramatic: Looking at my actual data usage over the past 6 months, I see that I’ve used a low of .5 GB and a high of 4 GB of data during this period, and I averaged at a bit over 2 GB. On Project Fi, I pay $30 per month (plus taxes) for 1 GB of data and unlimited talk/text. So my additional cost, on average, will be roughly $10-15, assuming all kinds of things. That 4 GB month would have cost me an addition $30. Long story short, it’s still a nice savings.

So I’ve already started the process of moving my AT&T number over to Project Fi. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, it’s a brave new world. Sort of.