Changed from iOS to Android?

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SomePostman

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#208912 4-Mar-2017 22:35

My mum (who is 72) has an old iPhone 4 that's on it's last legs. She also has an iPad that uses on the daily. Now that her phone is dying, she wanted to get an iPhone 6S ....until she saw the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge. It was actually quite funny to see how drawn to that phone my mum was. Well, until the salesperson said she had always had iPhones but bought an S7 and just couldn't get used to it and went back. My inclination is to tell her to make the jump and get the S7 edge and that I'll show her how to use it, but I don't want to risk her getting constantly frustrated.

I've never used an iPhone for any length of time, but I'm interested to hear from those that made the change to Android and just how easy/hard you found it. Especially if you are a little older and not necessarily that gadget savvy. How long did it take you to transition? Are you glad you did? Or did you give up in frustration?

SomePostman

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#1730163 4-Mar-2017 22:40

Oh I should also mention, they have a car with an infotainment unit that handles both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay - are either of these significantly better?

Klaatu

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#1730264 5-Mar-2017 09:49

Logistically, switching to Android is simple, as long as the user keeps in mind that preferences and settings and things like that are kept in different places than on iPhones. There's no loss of functionality, and in fact you gain a lot of flexibility. Generally, I feel that people switching to Android "should" be completely sold on it immediately.

But people being people, there's always that weird sense of brand loyalty to Apple and the comfort of being given less choice to contend with. My dad had that issue. He tried switching, but he runs Macs at home and is very used to the lack of user choice in that environment, so an Android was just too much for him to contend with. In the end, there were just too many apps available, too much Google for someone with only Apple cloud accounts, and lack of integration with all the rest of Apple's wares, so he went back to Apple.

But for someone not invested in Apple (literally or figuratively), if it's a nice phone that works well and responds quickly, the Samsung should be a welcome upgrade. If the user can handle learning new conventions (which she'd have to do with an upgrade as drastic as one from iPhone 4 to 6 anyway), then I think it could work.

tdgeek

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#1730267 5-Mar-2017 10:00

Does she use the function where all texts are also on the iPad and she can text from there also? And the calls can be made on the iPad? I think you would need to find out how she uses the iPhone and iPad to see what Apple integration is key for her. Does she have a Macbook? As she can also test call on that too, which I find a really nice set of integrations.

Doe she use apps much? If so, she may be able to get Android apps, but then they will all differ to some degree, and possibly lose any integration they have on the phone and iPad

Dingbatt

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#1730675 6-Mar-2017 09:27

If the phone is mainly for txts, calls, Facebook/Twitter, etc and photos, then probably won't have too much difficulty. However, if she has some special use apps on her iPhone, then it would pay to check that there is the equivalent on Android. In my experience, some apps that work well in iOS aren't ported to Android properly by the developer and you are left with a suboptimal solution. Android is, and will always be, a Google stalking horse, so she will need to be willing to 'Go with Google' to make use of what the S7 is capable of.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996