I bought my first Apple device in February 2011. It was an iPhone 4. As a first time smartphone user, I was excited by the possibilities and became a heavy user soon. Even as android gained popularity and became the dominant mobile operating system, I was firmly entrenched in the apple ecosystem and with more and more fragmentation on the Android side and with concerns about malware on android devices on the rise , I thought I would never move out of the iOS camp. But here I am typing this post on an android phone. So what changed?
This was my fourth year with my iPhone 4 and the device had started feeling sluggish. Typing on the device was painful and was not going to improve without upgrading to iOS 8. But Apple’s latest operating system was not going to come to iPhone 4. All said and done, it was time to consider the new iPhone 6 for me.
Ever since iOS 8 was announced, I was excited since the new features like third party keyboards was exactly what I was looking for. However things changed quickly when the actual hardware was announced. You see while there is no denying that iPhone 6 will break records and earn a lot of money for Cupertino, I was disappointed by two aspects. One was the protruding camera at the back of the phones. More importantly, I was put off by Apple’s decision to eliminate the 32 GB model instead of making it the entry level option instead of the 16 GB one. It symbolized greed over customer experience as was soon evident when users upgrading from previous OS versions found that the increased size of the download left hardly any free storage on their 16 GB device. The major reason why storage matters to me is that given the premium pricing of iPhones, I typically plan to use the new device for four years before replacing it and if the device has little free storage at the time of purchase, it is natural to expect the situation to deteriorate over the next three years.
Since my four year old device was still functioning fine as a phone, I also considered buying an iPad. But the latest iPads revealed earlier this month repeated the storage folly Apple committed with iPhone. The 16 GB remains the entry level option while the 32 GB option had been dropped. This same storage space issue also meant investing in an year old device at a slightly lesser price didn’t seem to be the best use of my money either. Having exhausted all my options to get my hands on an iOS 8 device, I started exploring Android options and soon narrowed down on the latest Moto G.
The latest Moto G costs INR 13,000 only and going by the reviews will definitely be a fine device for at least two years. I won’t go into a review here but so far I have enjoyed my first 7 days with it. Taking screenshots isn’t easy and one hopes Motorola had thought of a better way that pressing power and volume down button together. But other than this, the stock Android serves me well. Yes, Android lacks the all round polish of iOS but this is not glaring and one hardly feels it in normal day to day use. Considering that you pay one-fourth the price of an iPhone 6 for Moto G, there’s hardly a case for complaining. The built in storage is 16 GB but there is an option to add a microSD card and this phone also supports OTG USB drives. All in all a neat package. And the icing on the cake is that Moto G will receive the upgrade to Android Lollipop – the latest version of the operating system and the eye catching & flat Material Design UI.
So there you have it. The full story of how a loyal iPhone user felt compelled to switch to Android because Apple for some reason has developed an aversion to 32 GB.
Shades of Gray 