The boring and reliable iPhone: My Story
So I have been an iPhone user since 2012. But first of all, how did I get started with the world’s slowest changing smartphones? Here’s the story:
It all started with my first iPhone, which was back then the iPhone 4. I really enjoyed it. What an upgrade it was over my first ever Smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Ace (Many of you probably don’t even know it). This Samsung phone was one of the biggest pieces of junk I had ever seen. The battery life was pretty much three hours at full use and even though the phone had a dual core processor, the whole operating system did not run smooth AT ALL, not to forget that it will set your hand on fire if you tried to play a game. I believe it ran Android 2.3, which did not really grow on me. I just absolutely hated the user experience I got from it.
But why the hate? Simply because David had an iPhone 4 I could compare it to. At the time, iOS 4.3 or whatever it was, blew me away. I just couldn’t believe that this whole phone was just running so fast, fluently and responsive. At the time, 80% of all smartphones my friends had were just endless loading, lagging and obnoxious failures in form of tech.
Now, I was aware that there was about 500€ difference between the Samsung and the iPhone 4, but still, I loved his iPhone. So what does a 14 yeard old now do? Of course, assume from now on that all Samsung phones are crap, and Apple makes the best smartphones in the world. Which means, I wanted an iPhone.
I think about 2 to 3 months later I finally ditched the Ace and got a brand new iPhone 4 (which I smashed the screen just 2 days later by some stupid accident, but I got it replaced eventually). And boy - was this a beauty! From now on I was the happiest smartphone user on the planet. The apps, the camera (yes, 720p was cool in 2010), the touchscreen and the overall feel of the phone made me love my iPhone. I used the 4 until about late 2013, where I replaced it with an iPhone 5S. I did not really have a reason (like any smartphone user who upgrades their smartphone), but the fact that later generation iPhones got cool features I thought I was going to use on a daily bases just pissed me off. Now did the iPhone 5S change anything? Not really. Yes, it is faster. Yes it is a tiny bit bigger. Yes, it has a 1080p camera, which still sucks at night. But the whole phone experience. The same. The OS, the same, with some additional features that you could just install on your old iPhone by jailbreaking it. Touch ID however, really grew on me and I find it way better than having always to enter a stupid code on your phone (which I never had on the 4).
Here we are now in the year 2016, and I - eventually - got really bored with my phone. Why that? Because every iOS version is just the same. iOS 7 introduced some nice new features, but the whole thing never really changed a whole lot. Now we have the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus and iPad Pro, all with amazing screens and processors and other stuff, while the operating system is still the very same on every device. So why should I care upgrading?
Because of this boredom I did actually switch to Android using a cheap Medion P5001 with Android 4.2.2 for a couple of weeks but I found myself going back to the iPhone after all. The reason is simple. You can say what you want, but the iPhone is a damn reliable device. Sure it is boring and got a little stale, but it is there for you when you need it. I could not state this from the Medion (yes, it is probably not the best phone to get a good Android experience from). And I want my phone to be working. I like Android, and the fact that you don’t have to watch confusing Youtube videos that tell you the next jailbreak is coming out in 5 years and will be patched with the next version of iOS.
To conclude this, I use my iPhone because I know it works. Sure, you will definetely be disappointed if you want to customize something because Apple wants to have control over everything, but since my interest in Smartphones is really fading out, I’ll just stick with my 5S. Why should I care spending a lot of money on a new phone, when I don't even need one?
And when the day comes where I can't use my 5S anymore for some reason, I'm actually unsure what phone to get next.