“Phones” in the title is doing lots of heavy lifting. “Android phones” is the key missing piece.
I love Free software too, and I wish I could run more of my life on it, but it’s no longer my hobby. I like cars, too, but I don’t work on a hobby car. The author’s experience is why I use proprietary stuff like Apple for these parts of my life. A new Apple device is usually a non-event: charge it, authenticate, wait for the back to restore while you go about your business.
The cost of more freedom (in this case, from proprietary toolchains and data lakes) is needing to exercise more control (compiling custom Android images). I just, honest to god, don’t want to spend the time on it. A kid, a house, cats, getting old. I like that someone else has solved multi-device backup and restore, and I feel happy watching it happen so perfectly, even if I’m not the one controlling it.
II2II 37 minutes ago [-]
> I use proprietary stuff like Apple for these parts of my life. A new Apple device is usually a non-event: charge it, authenticate, wait for the back to restore while you go about your business.
Most of the author's criticisms were centered on avoiding account creation and third-party apps. I'm not sure I would give Apple the benefit of the doubt here since the motivations are different: Apple is far more interested in locking customers into their own ecosystem. On the Android front, that isn't all that different from getting a Pixel. Of course, getting an Android based Samsung adds an extra company who wants to do the same as well as selling space to third parties.
While Android being more open does add complexity, it is mostly limited to those who buy devices produced by another vendor or those who choose to exercise their freedom (e.g. by choosing to install a third-party version of Android, or installing a third-party "app store", or developing their own software).
jraph 2 hours ago [-]
A lot of the complains expressed in this article are distinctly from the proprietary parts.
Stock Android, and especially stock Samsung, is far from being a free software solution.
A turnkey solution based (almost exclusively, and except the driver blobs) on free software would be to buy a phone running something like /e/. I think they also provide backups.
Of course, stuff requiring SafetyNet (or whatever Google current oppressive attestation system) may not work (though microG makes some of it work).
microtonal 1 hours ago [-]
I think they also provide backups
Sort of. They use SeedVault, but a bunch of apps are not backed up. When restoring another set of apps do not properly restore
dismalaf 2 hours ago [-]
95% of what was written in this article isn't required to set up an Android phone. You can literally log into your Google account on first boot and everything is done for you, automatically.
fn-mote 1 hours ago [-]
The point is that you have to turn off preferences and uninstall apps that come with the phone. (Samsung apps and OneDrive are mentioned.)
So you don’t have to do this, but if you don’t, you are under even more surveillance and experience more advertising.
hagbard_c 2 hours ago [-]
What is it in your life which makes it 'impossible' to use free software, Google-free AOSP-derived Android distributions being part of this? I run close to exclusively free software and have done so for decades and have yet to feel the need to change this. Of course there are exceptions, e.g. I need to run proprietary applications for banking and electronic ID but those are the exceptions to the rule. My server runs only free software, on desktop I sometimes run an older version of Sketchup to start modelling things but that's the only non-free package I use there. We have children, a cat, a dog, 4 horses, a farm, a large forest, the works. We have multi-device backup and restore as well. Things work fine, using free software, not using 'the cloud'. Where are the sticking points for you and what would it take to take those away?
fn-mote 1 hours ago [-]
The author is technical, but apparently the parents are not. “It works for me” turns into “just spy on my family members”.
tonyarkles 28 minutes ago [-]
For me, “impossible” isn’t the case. I’m deeply technical and could 100% run a setup like you’re describing. For me it’s, sadly, convenience and priorities. I oscillate between Linux and OS X for desktop/laptop use, have used Linux for server use for decades, have used both iOS/iPadOS and Android for tablets “in production”, and have only used Android as a secondary phone for doing development, and only iOS for primary phone use.
Convenience-wise, this is true both for the small daily stuff and large occasional stuff.
Day-to-day:
- For work I have to deal with .docx, .xlsx, .pots, and .pdf on a regular basis, both reading and authoring. Libreoffice mucks up formatting in both directions for Word documents. Web Office365 sucks in comparison to desktop O365. Linux PDF viewers are fine until you have to fill out a form and digitally sign one.
- Mechanical CAD: my team uses Fusion 360. There’s Windows and Mac versions. I haven’t tried it under Wine. I suspect it’d be painful. I’ve tried some OSS solutions. Not pleasant.
- ECAD: KiCAD has grown up and has become my primary ECAD tool. Hooray!
- Time Machine: for my Linux machines I have a great setup that pushes backups to Backblaze B2 using restic. For my current laptop, I plug an external drive in every morning and Time Machine does its magic. I also run the B2 script for off-site occasionally.
- Phone calls: OS X and iOS have fantastic hand-off. I do most of my work communication through Teams and Slack, both of which work fine on Linux. Phone calls, though... if my phone starts ringing, I get a notification on my laptop and can just click "Answer" to take the phone call through the headphones I'm already wearing.
- Clipboard integration: I actually started writing this comment on my phone and then decided to move over to my laptop. Copying it on my phone automatically put it in my clipboard to paste on my laptop.
Hardware compatibility:
- My last Linux desktop was fabulous. Happily drove a 4K display, I loved living in XFCE every day. There was one issue that was extraordinarily frustrating: if the machine sat unused for somewhere around 24-72 hours it would enter a very strange power state. The machine was still powered up to some degree, but was completely unresponsive. I could use it every day with no issue, for weeks. If I didn't use it for that 24-72h timeframe, boom, it would get into this state. This only ever happened to me while I was travelling. I did several deep debug dives into this to no avail, including at one point setting up the kernel logger to log over serial to another embedded machine. I pointed a security camera at it to see if, say, a cat or some other obvious physical thing was causing it. I ended up hooking up an Ethernet-controlled power bar so that I could power cycle it and access the data that was on it. Tried multiple kernels, many different kernel command-line options, never did get to the bottom of it.
- My older 2014 Mac Mini that sat next to it was bulletproof. I could do 98% of what I was doing with the Linux desktop machine remotely on that machine just fine. Mostly there were some embedded Linux tasks that wouldn't work well on the Mac.
OS Updates:
- My current phone (iPhone 12 Pro) is 6 years old. It's running the latest OS. You can have an experience like this with stock Android distributions if you very carefully research which vendors and specific devices use... I forget what it's called... Google One? My dev phone is a Nokia and it got updates for a long time. I don't remember when/if they stopped.
- The idea of having to custom compile or hunt down OS updates from a third party destroys the convenience of this for me. I want to spend essentially 0% of my life thinking about what to do for an OS for my phone or tablet.
- My old 10-year-old Macbook Pro finally stopped receiving updates a year or two ago. It runs Linux now quite happily. It's a fantastic Linux machine.
Occasional new device setup:
- Back to the article, the Apple "I have a new phone/iPad/laptop" story is just unbeatable. I couldn't even tell you what the steps involve because they involve virtually no thinking at all. It's roughly "hold your new device near your old device". You maybe have to log into it first. It requires no thought at all.
lnrd 2 hours ago [-]
Giving an Android phone to elderly/non-technical people is asking for trouble imho. They will eventually tap their way into installing suspicious apps, adware or even straight up malware. It's inevitable, they are not aware of what they do and how to avoid the many risks of the digital world.
I remember having the same struggles of OP when setting up a cheap android phone for my grandma, the amount of bloat, adware and misleading content I had to remove was incredible (and some couldn't even be removed). The irony was that after a few months of light usage, the phone was in a state even worse, full of downloaded apps and opened suspicious websites in the browser. She would swear she never even noticed any of those.
This is one of the cases in which giving them an iPhone with its walled garden has great benefits. You can also setup parental control on top of that already locked down ecosystem.
rationalist 18 minutes ago [-]
My mother can no longer do the stuff she used to on her iOS phone because it is so complicated compared to the iPhone 4 I gave her a long time ago.
I screen her emails with her consent, very easy to do with Fastmail that imports her Yahoo mail into a folder she doesn't see and then I move okay emails to her inbox.
microtonal 1 hours ago [-]
FYI: you can also set up parental controls on Android.
Parental control is a also a hot buggy mess on iOS currently. Our daughter has an iPhone with parental control set up and a bunch of apps that are whitelisted regularly refuse to start at random moments (blocked by parental controls). We hoped that iOS 26 would finally fix it, but nope.
It doesn't really matter, both phone ecosystems are a mess, but in different ways.
nvartolomei 2 hours ago [-]
Upgraded to one of the latest iPhone recently. First time I clicked on “transfer data from old phone”. I’m used to reinstalling the operating system every couple of months from when I used Windows. It took maybe 15 minutes with close to 0 interactions. Everything was transferred. I was already authenticated in apps. What took manual steps was eSIM transfers.
I don’t remember exact steps so there could have been a bit more. But it was an impressive experience and I told my geek friends about it. They were surprised this is the first time I used this feature.
microtonal 1 hours ago [-]
For some reason, iMessage always ends up in a very weird state when I transfer to a new iPhone. Also, some apps don't get restored settings, but I think they opt out (usually banking, credit card, insurance apps, etc.).
sentientslug 2 hours ago [-]
eSIM transfer also typically doesn’t require any intervention, usually it just goes across to the new device
wtmt 1 hours ago [-]
The key word here is “typically”.
Transferring eSIM from one iPhone to another can be restricted by the carrier. Here in India, the second largest carrier (Airtel), does not support the native iOS eSIM transfer process. It’s a separate set of steps (the ones published on Airtel’s website won’t work, despite customer care claiming that it does). What works is almost like applying for a new or replacement eSIM.
microtonal 1 hours ago [-]
Same here, KPN, NL. You have to install the KPN app on the new phone and log in. Then you request an eSIM on the new phone. You get an SMS auth code on the old phone. You fill the auth code on the new phone. Then you have to remove the eSIM from the old phone (with the new one not provisioned yet). Then confirm on the new phone and cross your fingers that provisioning works. Presumably (according to the docs) when it fails, you can reprovision the old phone again.
The process made me so anxious the last few times, that I went to the carrier shop and asked for a nano SIM. Now life is bliss again.
It seems that eSIM is primarily an advantage when you need to get a new SIM, but other than that I don't really see much of an advantage for me as a customer.
addaon 2 hours ago [-]
The article is about how setting up /Android/ phones is a nightmare.
Contrasting it to my experience setting up iPhones is… dramatic.
DiabloD3 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, its a nightmare because Android is becoming more and more like iOS: anything that the user used to be able to do... they can no longer do.
Android phone manufacturers want $1200 for something that is a toy, just like the Apple iToys.
Nobody wants those, and nobody wants this. Google needs to get out of the business and let the FOSS community handle it.
mikestew 2 hours ago [-]
Nobody wants those, and nobody wants this.
Just because you don’t want it doesn’t mean <checks notes…> a billion or so people don’t want an iPhone. Or rather, a phone they don’t have to dick with straight out of the box.
OTOH, I don’t really even know what you’re on about. Android is a nightmare because…it’s like iOS, which is “take phone out of box, restore from backup, sorted”? That doesn’t even make any sense, especially in light of what TFA describes.
mhitza 1 hours ago [-]
For many people around my area, iPhones are a status symbol choice. Not a coherent or direct software+ecosystem choice.
I've seen arguments around chosing iPhone for their camera. But the vast majority that is tech iliterate stops around that argument.
mikestew 15 minutes ago [-]
For many people around my area, iPhones are a status symbol choice.
People in your area are very forthcoming. Not once have I ever heard someone vocalize that they bought an iPhone as a status symbol. “Easy to use”, “it’s what my friends use, and they like it”, but never “it makes me appear higher in the social strata”. They might think it, and I’m sure some do, but it’s not said out loud. Or maybe that’s not why the majority buy iPhones, dunno.
fn-mote 1 hours ago [-]
> Android is becoming more and more like iOS: anything that the user used to be able to do... they can no longer do
The article shows this is not true, if you know the similar process for iOS.
The article could be compared to the iPhone setup process. There are some preferences to uncheck, but there is no third party spying software on an iPhone when it arrives. Contrast to Samsung.
latexr 2 hours ago [-]
That type of rhetoric won’t get you what you want. Don’t dismiss something just because you don’t like it.
iOS devices are not toys, and even if they were there is value in toys, and even if there weren’t it is provably false that “nobody wants those”.
Furthermore, if Google dropped Android it is misguided to believe “the FOSS community” would handle it and everything would be roses. What you’d have then are a couple of hardware vendors (like Samsung) publishing their own forks and dozens of different incompatible open-source versions that would get no traction.
bigyabai 2 hours ago [-]
> iOS devices are not toys
iOS devices are. My iPad is the most useless piece of technology I own, calling it a "computer" is an insult to the actual computers I own. It's a toy, and not even a fun toy compared to my Nintendo Switch.
Android handles serious workloads fine, macOS takes software seriously. iOS is the only operating system that treats gatchapon as the pinnacle of high-performance workloads.
bigyabai 1 hours ago [-]
Hell, I'll double-down if you really disagree with me. ChromeOS, the operating system/spyware installed on e-waste like Chromebooks, has a more serious OS than iOS. It is more functional and capable, and undeniably the better professional OS. I say that with no love for ChromeOS.
iOS exists in a class of it's own, functionality-wise. A class much closer to game consoles than anything resembling a computer.
butILoveLife 2 hours ago [-]
To be fair, they are doing with a Samsung phone, and Samsung is the Apple of Android (Big marketing budget, mid quality if we are being generous).
Samsung as a company is a universal No Buy. The fact OP bought Samsung makes me raise an eyebrow.
Credit to Apple where credit is due. When I unboxed my first iphone, I was happy to give Apple all my personal information, birthday, emails, ssn.... It was bizarre, I'm usually apprehensive to give this stuff away, but Apple made it fun. Within a few days, I was disappointed by a lack of widgets, slow transitions between screens, and a buggy podcast app. But the damage was done, my company was out $600 and Apple had my contact info.
jeroenhd 2 hours ago [-]
Samsung's UI and software behaviour may be shitty in general, but they're one of the few manufacturers reliably offering timely long-term security updates. When you go beyond Samsung, you quickly end up with brands promising "quarterly updates" or having months-long delays fixing CVEs.
Plus, when they do something novel, they do it quite well. Their flagship phones have great price/performance if you buy them a month or two after launch (often for three quarters of the launch price + free earbuds/smartwatch + cashback), their software suite is quite complete and generally well-localised, and they have support channels non-English support channels available.
I do wish they'd fix some of their terrible software design crimes and stop the endless race to the bottom shoving product placement into their apps, but it's hardly a no-buy to me.
microtonal 1 hours ago [-]
Pixel is much cleaner and ships security updates monthly like clockwork. Plus you can install GrapheneOS and you get security updates multiple times per month, no AI nonsense and sandboxed Google Play Services if you need it.
jeroenhd 2 hours ago [-]
My personal experience is that the setup procedure wildly depends on the phone's vendor.
The biggest difference between setting up a Pixel and an iPhone I experienced was that Google asked for certain settings beforehand that I had to turn off in the settings after setup on iOS. Both would've been a lot faster if I hadn't tried to disable optional account stuff.
Contrast that to Samsung, especially their non-flagship models, where the setup wizard took forever because of the crap Samsung added to the process.
That said, I do appreciate some "tutorial" parts of the setup process on Android. When I first set up an iPhone, I got the distinct impression that Apple assumed I already knew how to do everything. Their interface isn't exactly intuitive if you haven't used iOS before, no matter what online forums may claim. It took me several tries and a Google search to figure out how to remove apps, for instance. Perhaps one might find it an annoying extra step you're going to skip as a power user who's used to the platform, but it felt strange to be dropped into a strange, new operating environment with no instructions.
monooso 2 hours ago [-]
A Samsung phone. I've owned several (not Samsung) Android phones, and have never had to deal with such nonsense.
dismalaf 1 hours ago [-]
On Samsung phones you can skip making a Samsung account. All the Google bits still work and it's basically the same as having a Pixel, except you'll have a few unused apps, a different camera and phone app and a very slightly different UI.
dismalaf 2 hours ago [-]
This article is a disaster. Beyond logging into your Google account nothing they described in the article is required to set up an Android phone.
Analemma_ 2 hours ago [-]
It's pick-your-poison. iPhone setup is eight hundred screens, half of which are upsells for Apple services, but at least it's only Apple services. Android setup, if you're not on a Pixel, is an invitation for the vendor's dozens of "partners" to all get your money and all your data.
deejaaymac 2 hours ago [-]
If you use android and don't choose GrapheneOS then idk what to tell you, its been an awesome experience with no issues for the last ~5ish years I've used it.
microtonal 1 hours ago [-]
Yep, no cloud storage upsells, no pushy AI crap, just a fast barebones smartphone and you can pick what you want on top.
juancn 1 hours ago [-]
iPhones are basically effort free, it takes a while, but 99% of it is transferred without a hitch, some poorly written apps may need an extra step.
1970-01-01 1 hours ago [-]
Setting up enshittified devices is the nightmare. Don't curse out on all phones because they made a poor purchase decision. You're literally buying it wrong. Next time go with a slightly used device that's fully supported by GrapheneOS and marvel at the frictionless setup.
hollow-moe 2 hours ago [-]
I fear every single time I have to switch phones. Being degoogled means I first have to choose hardware based on custom ROMs compatibility, and fight the thing to just install the ROM. Then the fun begins, for every single stupid feature I have to install and setup a solution (app) optionally restoring a backup individually. Contacts, calendar, files, maps, passwords, airtag protection, email, IM, keyboard, weather, notes, smart garbage:tm:, alternative YouTube client...The state of current tech is pityful, if it wasn't what I was doing to put food on the table I wouldn't want any of this garbage 10 meters near me.
Edit: Before any of the geniuses here says "at least you can use alternatives" I don't want to hear your copium, it's obvious this won't last.
ray_v 1 hours ago [-]
Is it not clear that's it's just the well-known phenomenon, "enshittification" at play?
- select a few checkboxes (basically just if you want to restore apps or not)
- done, everything else is automatic
All the fuckery they decided to do because they think they're tech savvy wasn't required.
iberator 2 hours ago [-]
It is not. Takes like 30 seconds
Pikamander2 2 hours ago [-]
If you want your brand new phone to be filled with adware apps and obnoxious default settings, sure.
hagbard_c 1 hours ago [-]
You bought the wrong phone and/or put the wrong distribution on it. Having said this it does take more than 30 seconds to get a new device up to your personal specs unless you're fine with whatever vendor distribution runs on it - which can work if you choose the right vendor but mostly ends up with your device serving someone else. I'd say it takes closer to 30 minutes than 30 seconds but I'm fine with taking this time given that my average Android phone lifetime is a bit over 8 years. I'm currently using a Redmi Note 5 Pro from 2018 which I'll soon relegate to second device status once I have a replacement, probably a Motorola G75 or something similar. That device should also last me around 8 years. Before the Redmi I'm using now I used a Motorola Defy from 2010 which, incidentally, is still in use as a trailer camera. Android devices can last a very long time because the firmware is open. Eventually they'll be too slow or lack the memory to support more recent Android distributions - which is what made me replace the Defy with the Redmi - but that does not mean they end up taking space in a drawer somewhere. They're in use here as trailer camera, media player, 3D printer controller and more.
dismalaf 2 hours ago [-]
Customizing it to your liking is different than "setting it up".
Rendered at 18:19:02 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I love Free software too, and I wish I could run more of my life on it, but it’s no longer my hobby. I like cars, too, but I don’t work on a hobby car. The author’s experience is why I use proprietary stuff like Apple for these parts of my life. A new Apple device is usually a non-event: charge it, authenticate, wait for the back to restore while you go about your business.
The cost of more freedom (in this case, from proprietary toolchains and data lakes) is needing to exercise more control (compiling custom Android images). I just, honest to god, don’t want to spend the time on it. A kid, a house, cats, getting old. I like that someone else has solved multi-device backup and restore, and I feel happy watching it happen so perfectly, even if I’m not the one controlling it.
Most of the author's criticisms were centered on avoiding account creation and third-party apps. I'm not sure I would give Apple the benefit of the doubt here since the motivations are different: Apple is far more interested in locking customers into their own ecosystem. On the Android front, that isn't all that different from getting a Pixel. Of course, getting an Android based Samsung adds an extra company who wants to do the same as well as selling space to third parties.
While Android being more open does add complexity, it is mostly limited to those who buy devices produced by another vendor or those who choose to exercise their freedom (e.g. by choosing to install a third-party version of Android, or installing a third-party "app store", or developing their own software).
Stock Android, and especially stock Samsung, is far from being a free software solution.
A turnkey solution based (almost exclusively, and except the driver blobs) on free software would be to buy a phone running something like /e/. I think they also provide backups.
Of course, stuff requiring SafetyNet (or whatever Google current oppressive attestation system) may not work (though microG makes some of it work).
Sort of. They use SeedVault, but a bunch of apps are not backed up. When restoring another set of apps do not properly restore
So you don’t have to do this, but if you don’t, you are under even more surveillance and experience more advertising.
Convenience-wise, this is true both for the small daily stuff and large occasional stuff.
Day-to-day:
- For work I have to deal with .docx, .xlsx, .pots, and .pdf on a regular basis, both reading and authoring. Libreoffice mucks up formatting in both directions for Word documents. Web Office365 sucks in comparison to desktop O365. Linux PDF viewers are fine until you have to fill out a form and digitally sign one.
- Mechanical CAD: my team uses Fusion 360. There’s Windows and Mac versions. I haven’t tried it under Wine. I suspect it’d be painful. I’ve tried some OSS solutions. Not pleasant.
- ECAD: KiCAD has grown up and has become my primary ECAD tool. Hooray!
- Time Machine: for my Linux machines I have a great setup that pushes backups to Backblaze B2 using restic. For my current laptop, I plug an external drive in every morning and Time Machine does its magic. I also run the B2 script for off-site occasionally.
- Phone calls: OS X and iOS have fantastic hand-off. I do most of my work communication through Teams and Slack, both of which work fine on Linux. Phone calls, though... if my phone starts ringing, I get a notification on my laptop and can just click "Answer" to take the phone call through the headphones I'm already wearing.
- Clipboard integration: I actually started writing this comment on my phone and then decided to move over to my laptop. Copying it on my phone automatically put it in my clipboard to paste on my laptop.
Hardware compatibility:
- My last Linux desktop was fabulous. Happily drove a 4K display, I loved living in XFCE every day. There was one issue that was extraordinarily frustrating: if the machine sat unused for somewhere around 24-72 hours it would enter a very strange power state. The machine was still powered up to some degree, but was completely unresponsive. I could use it every day with no issue, for weeks. If I didn't use it for that 24-72h timeframe, boom, it would get into this state. This only ever happened to me while I was travelling. I did several deep debug dives into this to no avail, including at one point setting up the kernel logger to log over serial to another embedded machine. I pointed a security camera at it to see if, say, a cat or some other obvious physical thing was causing it. I ended up hooking up an Ethernet-controlled power bar so that I could power cycle it and access the data that was on it. Tried multiple kernels, many different kernel command-line options, never did get to the bottom of it.
- My older 2014 Mac Mini that sat next to it was bulletproof. I could do 98% of what I was doing with the Linux desktop machine remotely on that machine just fine. Mostly there were some embedded Linux tasks that wouldn't work well on the Mac.
OS Updates:
- My current phone (iPhone 12 Pro) is 6 years old. It's running the latest OS. You can have an experience like this with stock Android distributions if you very carefully research which vendors and specific devices use... I forget what it's called... Google One? My dev phone is a Nokia and it got updates for a long time. I don't remember when/if they stopped.
- The idea of having to custom compile or hunt down OS updates from a third party destroys the convenience of this for me. I want to spend essentially 0% of my life thinking about what to do for an OS for my phone or tablet.
- My old 10-year-old Macbook Pro finally stopped receiving updates a year or two ago. It runs Linux now quite happily. It's a fantastic Linux machine.
Occasional new device setup:
- Back to the article, the Apple "I have a new phone/iPad/laptop" story is just unbeatable. I couldn't even tell you what the steps involve because they involve virtually no thinking at all. It's roughly "hold your new device near your old device". You maybe have to log into it first. It requires no thought at all.
This is one of the cases in which giving them an iPhone with its walled garden has great benefits. You can also setup parental control on top of that already locked down ecosystem.
I screen her emails with her consent, very easy to do with Fastmail that imports her Yahoo mail into a folder she doesn't see and then I move okay emails to her inbox.
Parental control is a also a hot buggy mess on iOS currently. Our daughter has an iPhone with parental control set up and a bunch of apps that are whitelisted regularly refuse to start at random moments (blocked by parental controls). We hoped that iOS 26 would finally fix it, but nope.
It doesn't really matter, both phone ecosystems are a mess, but in different ways.
I don’t remember exact steps so there could have been a bit more. But it was an impressive experience and I told my geek friends about it. They were surprised this is the first time I used this feature.
Transferring eSIM from one iPhone to another can be restricted by the carrier. Here in India, the second largest carrier (Airtel), does not support the native iOS eSIM transfer process. It’s a separate set of steps (the ones published on Airtel’s website won’t work, despite customer care claiming that it does). What works is almost like applying for a new or replacement eSIM.
The process made me so anxious the last few times, that I went to the carrier shop and asked for a nano SIM. Now life is bliss again.
It seems that eSIM is primarily an advantage when you need to get a new SIM, but other than that I don't really see much of an advantage for me as a customer.
Contrasting it to my experience setting up iPhones is… dramatic.
Android phone manufacturers want $1200 for something that is a toy, just like the Apple iToys.
Nobody wants those, and nobody wants this. Google needs to get out of the business and let the FOSS community handle it.
Just because you don’t want it doesn’t mean <checks notes…> a billion or so people don’t want an iPhone. Or rather, a phone they don’t have to dick with straight out of the box.
OTOH, I don’t really even know what you’re on about. Android is a nightmare because…it’s like iOS, which is “take phone out of box, restore from backup, sorted”? That doesn’t even make any sense, especially in light of what TFA describes.
I've seen arguments around chosing iPhone for their camera. But the vast majority that is tech iliterate stops around that argument.
People in your area are very forthcoming. Not once have I ever heard someone vocalize that they bought an iPhone as a status symbol. “Easy to use”, “it’s what my friends use, and they like it”, but never “it makes me appear higher in the social strata”. They might think it, and I’m sure some do, but it’s not said out loud. Or maybe that’s not why the majority buy iPhones, dunno.
The article shows this is not true, if you know the similar process for iOS.
The article could be compared to the iPhone setup process. There are some preferences to uncheck, but there is no third party spying software on an iPhone when it arrives. Contrast to Samsung.
iOS devices are not toys, and even if they were there is value in toys, and even if there weren’t it is provably false that “nobody wants those”.
Furthermore, if Google dropped Android it is misguided to believe “the FOSS community” would handle it and everything would be roses. What you’d have then are a couple of hardware vendors (like Samsung) publishing their own forks and dozens of different incompatible open-source versions that would get no traction.
iOS devices are. My iPad is the most useless piece of technology I own, calling it a "computer" is an insult to the actual computers I own. It's a toy, and not even a fun toy compared to my Nintendo Switch.
Android handles serious workloads fine, macOS takes software seriously. iOS is the only operating system that treats gatchapon as the pinnacle of high-performance workloads.
iOS exists in a class of it's own, functionality-wise. A class much closer to game consoles than anything resembling a computer.
Samsung as a company is a universal No Buy. The fact OP bought Samsung makes me raise an eyebrow.
Credit to Apple where credit is due. When I unboxed my first iphone, I was happy to give Apple all my personal information, birthday, emails, ssn.... It was bizarre, I'm usually apprehensive to give this stuff away, but Apple made it fun. Within a few days, I was disappointed by a lack of widgets, slow transitions between screens, and a buggy podcast app. But the damage was done, my company was out $600 and Apple had my contact info.
Plus, when they do something novel, they do it quite well. Their flagship phones have great price/performance if you buy them a month or two after launch (often for three quarters of the launch price + free earbuds/smartwatch + cashback), their software suite is quite complete and generally well-localised, and they have support channels non-English support channels available.
I do wish they'd fix some of their terrible software design crimes and stop the endless race to the bottom shoving product placement into their apps, but it's hardly a no-buy to me.
The biggest difference between setting up a Pixel and an iPhone I experienced was that Google asked for certain settings beforehand that I had to turn off in the settings after setup on iOS. Both would've been a lot faster if I hadn't tried to disable optional account stuff.
Contrast that to Samsung, especially their non-flagship models, where the setup wizard took forever because of the crap Samsung added to the process.
That said, I do appreciate some "tutorial" parts of the setup process on Android. When I first set up an iPhone, I got the distinct impression that Apple assumed I already knew how to do everything. Their interface isn't exactly intuitive if you haven't used iOS before, no matter what online forums may claim. It took me several tries and a Google search to figure out how to remove apps, for instance. Perhaps one might find it an annoying extra step you're going to skip as a power user who's used to the platform, but it felt strange to be dropped into a strange, new operating environment with no instructions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Here's how you actually set up an Android phone:
- log into Google account
- select a few checkboxes (basically just if you want to restore apps or not)
- done, everything else is automatic
All the fuckery they decided to do because they think they're tech savvy wasn't required.