The Samsung Galaxy Ace was my first smartphone, and I’ve been loyal to Android ever since. Still, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t glanced over to the other side occasionally, wondering if I could switch from Android to iOS. I decided to venture out of my comfort zone and start 2024 with an iPhone in my pocket. The cameras are fantastic, the speakers are loud, and iOS doesn’t shy away from showcasing its smooth animations. Yet, I miss a few things from my time using Android phones.



5 A better typing experience

How has Apple not figured this out yet?

An Android device and iPhone with their keyboards in focus

After setting up my new iPhone with apps I use and a cleverly positioned wallpaper to hide the Dynamic Island, I ran into my first and biggest annoyance: the keyboard. The autocorrect is atrocious, there isn’t a quick way to enter numbers, and the concept of a clipboard manager is foreign to iOS.

There’s also a noticeable lag with my iPhone’s keyboard. Despite scouring through several Reddit posts, I found that switching to a third-party offering was the only way to have a usable typing experience. SwiftKey is my keyboard of choice. There aren’t many options on the App Store, especially with Gboard missing half the features on iOS compared to its Android counterpart.



SwiftKey can add a sticky number row at the top, features a clipboard, and provides stronger haptic feedback when typing. A built-in GIF picker, a way to generate AI images using the SwiftKey keyboard, and other additions add value to the typing experience or stay out of your way if you prefer not to use them. I occasionally deal with the dreadful default keyboard when typing in passwords for authentication, but the shift to SwiftKey has kept me from switching back to Android.


4 Faster charging

0 to 100 in 30 minutes is now just a memory

An Android phone plugged in, displaying fast charging on the lock screen

I’ve used OnePlus smartphones since 2015. While OxygenOS has matured over the years into something different, OnePlus smartphones have always been known for their snappiness and fast charging. Dropping from a charging speed of 65W to less than 30W on my iPhone seemed like a downgrade on paper, but it quickly boosts past the first 70%.



Still, I had to recalibrate my charging habits. Some of the fastest-charging Android phones take under 30 minutes to fully top up. I leveraged this functionality to my advantage for years and charged my phones a few minutes before my day began. The iPhone needs at least an hour to charge it with enough power to last a full day. I’ve mostly switched to charging my iPhone wirelessly through the night and waking up with a full battery. Still, I miss the convenience of five-minute quick charges from my OnePlus phone.

oneplus 12 emerald flow

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3 The snappier feel of Android

The iPhone loves taking its own time

A person holding an Android phone



Every review of the iPhone talks about iOS’s smooth and detailed animations. The way your apps and widgets crawl into place when you unlock your phone appears magical. However, this quickly gets old when you want to accomplish a task but must sit through convoluted transitions. This is why I speed up animations on Android. Dropping the duration of all transitions to 0.5x makes interacting with the UI snappier. You can turn off system animations on iOS by navigating to Settings > Accessibility > Motion and turning on the Reduce Motion toggle. However, the outcome is sluggish.

Android and iOS have inertial scrolling, which gives a smooth deceleration feeling when you let go of your finger. However, the iPhone scrolls slower than Android phones, which I had to get used to. I appreciate the universal back-to-top shortcut on iOS, which can be triggered by tapping the top of the screen.



There have also been reports of iOS 18 throttling the refresh rate of the Pro models to 80Hz. It didn’t take a side-by-side comparison to notice this. My iPhone is stricter regarding maintaining the smooth 120Hz refresh rate across all apps. This is likely done to promote better battery life, but I wish iOS had a Force Peak Refresh Rate toggle, like some custom ROMs on Android, which leads to another aspect I miss the most about Android.


2 The ability to install custom ROMs

Strength of a OnePlus with the heart of a Pixel

About Phone menu on an Android phone, showing a PixelOS build number

This one has less to complain about iOS but shines a light on how open and customizable Android is. Do you not like how the recent updates to OxygenOS ruined the stock experience? Flash a custom ROM that borrows the look and feel of a Google Pixel. That’s what I did when OnePlus dropped official software support for my phone. Now, I have the flagship-grade internals of a OnePlus device but with the fluidity and clean experience of a Pixel.



Custom ROM development has slowed down over the years. Manufacturers now deliver more years of software updates, leaving little reason to swap the OS on your phone.

A phone with a pirate Android logo on a table next to a red Android figurine

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1 The little things

More sacrifices than I’d hoped to make

A white iPhone 15 Pro Max laying flat on a wooden surface

I put too much faith in the iOS 18 update, which was supposed to be a UI overhaul. I love that you can place icons anywhere on the home screen without creative workarounds, expand their size, and choose a different tint. Short of customizing the Control Center, my iPhone looks pretty vanilla.



Instead, my complaints revolve around how the iOS operating system handles actions. There isn’t a universal back gesture, and swiping in from the left or right doesn’t always work. Sometimes, you have to swipe down to exit a dialog box in an app or tap the tiny X icon in the upper-left or upper-right corner of the screen. This unpredictability in the UI is frustrating.

I won’t touch on notification management. Even die-hard iOS users acknowledge how terrible it is. A bigger annoyance for me is how iOS pauses background activities for apps that should be able to bypass this restriction. I’ve seen the “Story hasn’t finished uploading” notification from Instagram countless times, which only resumes when I open the app.

Background upload paused notification on lock screen



If the iOS 18 Photos app redesign wasn’t controversial enough, the way your photos and videos go into a single Recents folder in your gallery is annoying. I’ve taken for granted how Android neatly organizes the media I download on my phone from different sources. Photos I save from Instagram appear in their own folder, and images I download from Chrome populate in another directory. While the Photos app on iOS makes it easy to search for an image using keywords, the problem is more pronounced in third-party apps and their media pickers that show your photos and videos as one big, cluttered mess.

Will I be switching back to Android?

With a MacBook replacing my computer and a pair of AirPods Pro in my pocket, I’m invested too deeply in the Apple ecosystem to go back to using Android. I also appreciate conveniences like AirDrop and Find My. However, when my iPhone requires two charges a day and I lose one of my earphones, I’ll be reluctant to hit the Apple Store again because Android 15 stands out over iOS 18.