Android Owner Purchases iPhone 6 and Reports

by David Streit

Insights on the performance of iPhone 6 vs. the Android smartphone

This is not another article worshipping Apple and their products. I recently switched from my Verizon HTC One M7 smartphone running Android version 4.03 to an Apple iPhone 6 4.7” 64GB smartphone running iOS 8.02. While I’m enjoying many improvements and overall I’m pleased, I’m also disappointed to lose features of Android smartphones I took for granted. I’m truly surprised that Apple omitted these features which I consider should be “Standard Operating Procedures”. None of the issues are serious and I found ways around some of them.

Home Pages

Most Android phones come with launchers customized by the manufacturer. HTC calls theirs “Sense 6.0”. I used a third-party launcher called Nova Launcher. Apple has home screens. There are very similar in concept. Both let you store app icons on a home page. New home pages area automatically created when a home page is filled. Both let you drag one app icon on top of another to create a group of apps. But Apple’s home pages do not let you create shortcuts for contacts nor can you create groups of contacts. Apple added to iOS 8 the ability to see Favorites and Recent Calls in a line across the top of the screen if the Home button is pressed twice. That’s OK with me, but adding support for contact shortcuts would be a welcome enhancement.

Photos

 

 

iphone6 Latin Business Today iPhone 6 photos courtesy of Apple

 

The iPhone camera and camera software are terrific. The Photo app is terrible. Photos are displayed by Year, oldest at top and newest at bottom. So I have scroll through the years to get to my most recent pictures. I can display photos by album, but Photos doesn’t let me create albums or move photos around. I have to do that in the Pictures folder of my Windows 8 PC, then sync the arrangement using iTunes. I’m amazed that the albums cannot be nested. They have to reside under Pictures. I had no problem displaying sub-folders on my HTC One.

I found a way around the album problem. I created folder names that sorted the albums into order so they are grouped together alphabetically, i.e. Family – Graduation 2013, Family – Graduation 2014, etc. This method works for me, but I have to scroll through a lot of albums when I’d prefer to have just a few like Family, Friends, Business, and all related folders would be under those top folders. Then I can just drill down as needed.