After over a decade of criticizing Apple for their high pricing, lackluster functionality and absence of real personalization options… it happened! I switched to an iPhone. Now when my friends, family or colleagues see me with an iPhone, the most common question that I get asked is what changed? The short answer is, I as a person have changed & Apple (as a company) is changing as well. For the long answer, you’ll have to keep reading.

Why did I consider switching?

Past 2 years have been very unlucky for me. First, my OnePlus 6T died on me only after a year of usage. Then I bought a Galaxy S20, used it for a few months but it had a Exynos processor so was ridden with issues. It kept on overheating, battery life was miserable and like any Samsung Android phone, the performance started degrading after about 10 months of usage. When I was on the look for my 3rd phone in 2 years, I had a realization: No single Android phone is a complete package.

Samsung flagships innovate but camera experience can be inconsistent, Exynos chips in non-US variants are ridden with performance/battery issues and charging tech is kind of old. Huawei phones have decent cameras but their Android skin feels like an iOS clone and they recently lost access to Google Services (so no Google Play Store!). OnePlus phones excel at performance, have a lot of personalization options and some of their charging tech is industry leading but they have to compromise on features here and there in order to maintain a certain price point. Lastly, Pixel smartphones have an amazing overall experience but there hardware is mostly dated and they can be bit of a hit or a miss.

Quite honestly, being a power user, I never considered iPhone as a viable option until recently (courtesy of my wife-to-be who is an avid Apple user and wanted me to at least consider iPhone as an option). On the outside, iPhone also seems to have some of the problems that these other phones have; charging tech is dated, they just recently jumped onto the OLED bandwagon but still don’t have high refresh rate panels and in a world where phones have minimal bezels, iPhones still have that big notch upfront. On the inside, the story is a bit different. Despite all these hardware limitations, how the software and the hardware comes together to provide an experience that rivals others is exciting. Don’t get me wrong here! It isn’t perfect — nothing in life is — but I feel that it has evolved over years into a phone that resonates with me now but didn’t a decade or even a few years ago.

What changed?

So, what changed? I think mainly two things influenced my choice of choosing an iPhone over Android for the first time in years.

Firstly, I figured that as I grew older, my priorities and the way I use my phone has varied significantly. Younger Haseeb was a power user focused on having a lot of personalization options & functionality at hand even if it meant his tech had some immature features that might not have worked 100% of the time. His priorities were always having the cutting edge technology at hand. Older Haseeb is a power user focused on being productive, who likes to be in-and-out of his phone as fast as possible while getting his day-to-day things done. My priorities now are having something fast that helps me in being organized, creating memories and staying in touch with the people I care about.

Secondly, Apple as a company is changing and that IMO is a good thing! My conflict with Apple has been their cult like attitude, including a selected few who are willing to buy their monotonous products at premium prices. But, in the past few years Apple has realized that as the hardware life increases and services — e.g. Netflix, OneDrive, Google One, etc. — boom, they can’t simply rely on monotonous hardware or a small group of users for revenue. This change can be seen in Apple’s iPhone lineup of 2020 because there is an iPhone for pretty much everyone now. Last year, Apple launched five iPhones — starting as low as $399 for the iPhone SE — in comparison to 2013 when Apple launched only two. Then, this year at WWDC, Apple announced that FaceTime is coming to Windows & Android — in some capacity — for the first time ever. These changes in strategy among many others mean that Apple is not what it used to be (go checkout this video by MrWhoseTheBoss if you’re interested in learning more).

How is it going so far?

It’s been almost three months since I’ve been using the iPhone 12 Pro and I kind of have a love/hate relationship with it but in a good way. There are things that I love and then some that annoy me. Also, Apple — being Apple — forces you into giving in to the ecosystem but me — being me — am at a constant effort of finding ways around it, which is a good topic for some other day. Nonetheless, I must admit that the iPhone has kind of grown on me and I think I’ll be sticking to it for now.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. If you recently moved from Android to iPhone or vice versa, please share you thoughts in the comments below. Till next time, Görüşürüz!