Apple vs Android 2019 Version
2019 version of Apple vs Android + I bought the 3rd generation of iPad Pro 12.9 version one week ago and I have something to say about it!
I remember I posted something end of 2017 that I’m ditching iOS development together with all iOS devices and switch to Android — Pixel 2 for my phone, Kindle Fire for my tablet, Kindle Paperwhite for my e-reader, Pebble for my watch. That was a fun experiment, but sucks. Below are my new gears:
Yes, iPhone XR, iPad Pro, Apple Watch, MacBook Pro. My life quality has stepped up to another level. Let’s have do a quick comparison between Apple & Non Apple devices before diving into iPad Pro.
iPhone XR vs Pixel 2
Price: I bought iPhone XR in one of the BOGO program from Verizon, basically I get the iPhone XR for half price $350. For Pixel, I bought an unlocked Pixel 2 for $700. They have very similar price w/o promotion.
Quality: I enjoyed Pixel 2 for less than 5 minutes before noticing my Pixel 2 has some issues with its camera — it crashes on launch occasionally and some photos it took are half red. After replacing my first broken phone, my second Pixel 2 is also buggy — whenever I switch from WiFi to LTE or vice version, it hangs for 2 — 3 minutes. It sucks because every time I stepped out of office and got into my car, I could not even open Google Map, it hangs there for 3 minutes. Every morning I turn off air plane mode at home, it hangs for 3 minutes — when you turn off air plane mode, it defaults to LTE and then switch to WiFi connection. Pixel 2 has no self protection mechanism against bad apps — I downloaded Mobike app and it drained 50% of my battery at night when I forgot to turn on air plane mode.
Customer service: the customer service of Pixel phone is the worst. I might try another Android phone later, but I’d never ever buy another phone from Google. My attempt to replace my first broken Pixel phone was a torture: one week after I figured the camera is super broken, I called the Google customer service regarding my phone’s broken camera, the customer service representative asked me to:
- Reboot my phone (did not help)
- Clear cache (did not help)
- Reinstall the app (did not help)
And they eventually asked me to format my phone!! I bought the phone for less than 2 weeks and you asked me to format my phone to fix a camera issue? I escalated to his supervisor and after one week of email exchange and some angry phone calls, the supervisor agreed to accept a replacement of the phone but — I need to send them the phone first so that their QA team could validate the phone is broken before sending me a new one.
We need to make sure your phone is indeed broken before sending you a replacement.
That would take at least 2 weeks since there is no physical store for Pixel 2. What phone do I live with during these 2 weeks ?! The floor supervisor declined my request to send replacement first before I return the phone firmly. I was completely pissed off and reported to all places I could find — Bureau of Better Business, Bureau of Customer Protection. Two days later, Google customer representative reached back to me and agreed on sending the replacement phone first. Can’t be worse.
OS: Android is a lot of fun, you could customize everything, even replace the operating system. I really love the widgets. On the other hand, iOS is very opinonated and you could not customize it at all unless it is jail broken.
Apps: Google Play Store is an open marketplace for everything. There are good apps but most are crappy. For the same app, it normally performs better on iOS than Android. I used to use an app called Duokan to read books (similar to Kindle Store), the Android app could not even search for books..
Conclusion
Android is a super fun mobile OS and Pixel 2 is a fun phone, but not suitable for daily usage. On the other side, iOS is not super fun for hackers but it provides much better performance, reliability and a slick UX — what you need for daily life.
Apple Watch vs Pebble vs Garmin Fenix 3
Bought an Apple Watch 3 series for $200, Pebble Time was $90 and Fenix 3 was $350.
- Apple Watch is state of the art. It looks nice & slick, it has all necessary health/workout trackers, it is seamlessly integrated with iOS and it is comfortable to wear all day long. It has a battery life of 1 day for active usage & 2 days if remained in standby mode for a big chunk of day.
- Pebble watch is purely a toy for hackers or kickstart lovers. The quality is bad and has extremely limited functionalities. It has a great battery life tho — 7 days.
- Fenix 3 also has a great battery life — 30 days but it’s not a modern smart watch. It doesn’t even support Unicode and it has been a pain to use it. It is super heavy and not comfortable to wear it while typing on keyboard. However, I do feel Fenix looks much more durable than Apple Watch in extreme environment.
Conclusion
No brainer Apple Watch.
Kindle Fire 10 vs iPad Pro 12.9 3rd Generation
iPad Pro 12.9 is beast in all aspects. It’s performance is nuts:
It aces all tablets at all performance required tasks, like video editing or photo editing:
I have never enjoyed a techie gear so much. This is the best tablet on market. I’m amazed by current screen technology, it has a super high resolution screen with true color and an incredible 120 Hz refresh rate. There is practically ZERO delay when you write with Apple Pencil, it also has a pressure sensor so that the touch point behaves differently when you touch with different pressure levels. In drawing apps, you could get a dynamic size of brush by pressing the pencil differently.
My favorite note taking app: GoodNotes 5
Favorite drawing app: Procreate
Favorite Journal App: Microsoft OneNote
You could also connect your iPad Pro to monitors via its USB C port, it could also charge your iPhone.
Conclusion
I know any audience would call out that — it is totally unfair to compare a $100 device and a $1000 device.. my take is: don’t waste that $100 on Kindle Fire.