I use iOS currently. I used Android for many many years, and loved it. I dreaded iOS and its walled garden.

But for various reasons, when my OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Edition died and nothing in the Android world really wowed me at a reasonable pricepoint, and knowing that I would be able to get full-quality images and videos from my family and my wife’s family without them having to change their messaging app to accommodate me, I decided to try iPhone for the first time since like, the 3GS.

I’ve had the 13 Pro Max for over a year now and honestly I love it. It took a lot of getting used to at first. Everything is a bit different, and getting over those differences was frustrating. There are still things I really miss. Android handles notifications better, Android does gestures better (being able to go back from either side of the screen is huge), and OnePlus at least, maybe Android in general, let me open the camera by double-tapping the power button, so I could have the camera loaded by the time it was in position. I’m still much slower on the draw with my iPhone, unfortunately.

But iOS has its advantages, too. The battery life is amazing. The Apple Watch kicks the shit out of every Wear OS watch I owned (and also fixes my issues with notifications). The search function is crazy quick to the point that I hardly ever open apps from their icons in the Home Screen or App Drawer equivalent. Everything is polished and rarely fucks up. And when anything IS wrong, there are local stores that can fix it that day. I had a faulty front camera on my phone originally, it was replaced within the day, didn’t have to send it off for OnePlus to replace it. When the back glass broke they replaced basically the entire phone for $30 or something, again within the day. Integration between devices is beautifully seamless.

Basically I’ve found that both are very good options these days. It’s silly that anyone really cares which device you use.

When I was younger I liked to root my Android phones and use custom ROMs. But it had been years since I had done any of that, and I realized that what I was giving up moving to iOS was much less than I had thought.

I may go back someday. I’ve tried to keep everything in Google still so that I don’t have to give up anything except app purchases if I go back. But for now I’m happy on iOS.