Lifelong iPhone User Switches to The Google Pixel 4a By Pete Matheson

- Which one is better, the iPhone or this Google Pixel thing that runs Android? So if you're currently using an iPhone and asking yourself that same question of, "Is Android better than the iPhone. " Well, like Everyday Dad says, let's find out. Hi, welcome. My name is Pete Matheson and, from the outside, I'm pretty much what looks like a typical Apple fanboy. Now that's not 100% true but it's not far off. If you are new around here and this is your first time watching then, hey, thank you and stick around if you want more videos around tech, money, business stuff by clicking that subscribe button down below.

Whilst I don't really feel like an Apple fanboy, I have definitely off into the whole ecosystem. The fact I can pick up any device and have my documents, messages, photos, settings, and even things like a seamless audio switching between devices when I put down one and pick up another or the out of the box, global copy and paste which lets you copy some text on, say, your desktop computer and then paste it onto your mobile phone. Those features, put them together, are just fantastic. But for me, it has got to the stage where I'm so deeply and significantly financially invested into the Apple ecosystem that it kinda makes me question whether there are other things out there that perhaps could be better. But 2021, we're in a new year, we're all locked up at home, we can't go out, we can't do anything.

I've sold my business, life is just totally different. So I did a thing. I ordered this, the Google Pixel 4A, which I'll link down below. It's not really a flagship phone by any stretch and yeah, not really, but this is an affordable entry-level phone for me into the world of non-Apple. I've now been using this for a couple of weeks now as my daily driver and I wanted to give you my thoughts from the perspective of someone who's been using only Apple for literally the last decade.

Firstly, a quick bit of background and a bit of perspective. I generally have a very eclectic taste for anything. I like to try different things. I'm not the type of person who would just stick with something for convenience. Just ask my wife, though.

That actually comes off kind of wrong. Hopefully she'll understand. I change things so often it's unreal. I always want to make things better. So if there's something out there that can do something better than the one I've got, then I want it.

This still really isn't painting a good picture of my wife really is it? Any who, I've used Windows and Mac for the last decade, I still have a windows PC right here underneath the desk, which I use sometimes. Personal opinion, but I prefer Mac over PC. But there's a whole other argument that I just won't start just now. I'm sure I've already got the Android police and Apple police after me after this video anyway. But with Apple, I pretty much have every device that they've ever made and I mean literally every single device.

And if you want to see me talk about all their latest, every single devices, then you can check out a few videos which will be linked up here and down below for all their new M1 Ranger Macs, which I will say are awesome. Let's get straight into my thoughts, my likes, and my don't likes about switching to Android. Now, first up is notifications and I absolutely love the fact that you can customise notifications to the point that you just can't get and just is impossible on iOS. Using WhatsApp, for example, you can go in and configure group notifications, messages, alerts, media, and pretty much anything you can do within WhatsApp. And then going back to Instagram, you can pretty much enable and disable alerts for everything that you can do within Instagram, which is just incredible.

And I genuinely, genuinely do love this feature as it's such a distraction with all of the notifications you get today. And that I'm definitely somebody who would go in and customise everything and switch off all the unnecessary notifications. A really silly features are, but I genuinely love the animated backgrounds, too. It was a friend of mine told me to download this app called Betta, B-E-T-T-A, which comes with a free background of this fish swimming around. I'll be honest, it just looks stunning.

It doesn't seem to degrade the battery life or anything along those lines, so. And, speaking of the screen, that always-on display. There has been zero reaching out from my phone and tapping the screen just to check the time or check notifications because it is just always right there for you. Always on without any noticable effects on battery life and it is great, it's genuinely great. Though I would quite like to customise it a little bit more, but it seems maybe that's a Pixel 4a limitation, but that is just an incredible feature.

And I guess that brings me on to the next one, Customization. The sheer amount of customization you can do on Android is almost limitless. And I haven't really gotten into it yet just 'cause I wanted to test out the stock software as it came. Whatever I come up against whether it's a dislike or a slight niggle with a software, the answer has always been, "Well, you can fix that by installing whatever this is or configuring it or or doing something. " There's always a fix.

Other niggles that I've also experienced is pretty slow in like sluggish camera in comparison, but again, probably hardware, So I can't really complain about that really. There's no quick ability to get the torch, which on the iPhone is conveniently right down here on the lock screen. But again, probably something you can fix by just downloading some software for it. I also struggle with something I often used on the iPhone, which was tapping right at the top of the screen to scroll your way back up to the top of the page. It works in pretty much every app.

But then on the Android side, I noticed that the apps seem to have it baked into the app itself rather than being at the iOS level. On Facebook, for example, you would tap the home button which is now at the top of screen rather than the bottom of screen on the iPhone. On Instagram, you can tap the logo, which then scrolls to the top. On Google Chrome's browser, there isn't any way to jump to the top of the page and, actually, even after some Googling, it doesn't really seem that this is a feature which can be added or or fixed any way, which is just a bit of a shame. Now, swiping in from the edges also gave me different results in different apps.

On the iPhone, it lets you swipe in and out of menus, say, for example, for YouTube Studio, swipe in from the left and you get to see some menu options, whereas on Android, you go into the same app and sometimes it will kinda bring the menu out. Sometimes it goes back to the home screen. Sometimes it's like a page back button. So it goes to the previous page. It's just doesn't seem to be consistent, which is just weird.

Now I would also love, absolutely love, to comment on the voice assistance too. But if you use Google for business, so either G Suite or, or Workspace, then it seems you have to apply for a beta programme to unlock most of the voice assistant features. And then you also have to then complete a second form, for some reason, a personal bugbear of mine. It asks you what version of G Suite licences you're using. And it doesn't even have Google Workspace licences names.

Kinda hard to keep up when you keep changing the name of your products, ey? And, well, I filled out both of these forms and I've yet to hear anything back. So yeah, that's just, I mean, that's a hard pass for me. Next would be the whole face ID versus fingerprint debate. But again, that's all hardware-related and, in some cases, actually found the fingerprint so much easier because, when you wear a mask, there's a phrase you never thought you'd be saying. And then my last issue, so to speak, is that the audio doesn't go very loud on the Pixel compared to the iPhone.

But again, 350, 1500. Then I guess the only real issue that I've experienced is when I go to pick up my iPhone now and, "Hey, hello? Yup, okay. " Do you remember when Phablets was a thing? I mean, this thing is a Phablet for sure. But other than all of those comments, most of which to be honest can be fixed by software or by buying a better phone, I don't really have any complaints. It certainly takes some time to get used to interface, yes, but I would think that most people could just pick up one of these things, follow the prompts when you first switch it on and then just be away with it.

If you wanna customise, then yes you can. But if not, then the stock experience out of the box, is still pretty great. So where does this really leave us? Well, I have to say, begrudgingly, I am very, very-- I always had this impression that Android phones were slow and buggy and nowhere near the quality or standard of the iPhones. I say that, it does open up a lot of questions to me of how does the Apple watch compared to the Android watch? So I think I might need to rerun this test somehow, I don't know if I can maybe grab a flagship Android phone, maybe the new Samsung Galaxy S21 along with the watch and maybe the earbuds to see how the whole experience works. So if anybody is watching who has a S21, a watch, and ear buds, let me know.

But, for me, there are still some challenges around messaging, mainly, which I hope apps like Beeper will resolve. I have been on the lookout for one app that can hold all of my messages from the likes of Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and WhatsApp and any other app where people just message you. I just want one app to log into and use that ties all of those things together because that is, by far, one of the biggest challenges for most iPhone users. What do you do with iMessage? It's built into every Apple device, it works super well. Again, it integrates with everything, so how do you change? Most people in Android world will tell you to use WhatsApp, which in itself is a great messaging app.

You can chat with people just like iMessage. You can even do audio and video calls straight from the app there, too. And one thing I do kind of love, secretly, is that you can add custom keyboards into Android, which means you can get quick access to all sorts of things. Mainly GIFs because I'm the kind of guy that will always send a GIF over text and when I can send a GIF, I will. And yes, it is called GIF.

But the love does stop right there as there are currently some limitations that prevents me, personally, from using WhatsApp. And basically it just doesn't do multi-device support that well. Unlike iMessage, which just works direct to the Cloud, WhatsApp actually works kind of like via your phone and talks to this WhatsApp web service thing. But when I go to work at my desktop or pick up my laptop, I have to then click to tell WhatsApp that now I'm using this device, which then completely locks you out of WhatsApp on the other device. Furthermore, there's no official iPad or Apple Watch apps.

Though, there are third party apps, but again, I'm pretty security conscious about things and I'm not really sure that installing third party apps is really that great an idea. You know, particularly with messaging apps, to be honest. Now I know you could say most of the exact same things about iMessage because it doesn't work on anything other than Apple devices, which is true or, rather, kind of true because there was a brand new service that was announced very, very recently called Beeper. It's been announced by the former Pebble Watch creator. Pebble Watch, remember those? Which claimed they can bring iMessage to Android.

Though, again, this is heavily caveated, but it's an interesting development to see how that pans out. But for me here, iMessage takes the win over WhatsApp. Though I do really like WhatsApp once you're in it, I just find the seamless ability to use iMessage across multiple devices, natively, without having to instal third party apps just works better for me. Let's get onto some positives here. So I'll be honest with you, there is a lot of them.

Yes, there is a lot of things that I like about this Pixel 4a and about Android in general. - What did you say? - And I'm gonna have to be careful here, as I'm very, very aware that this is a flagship, 1500 pounds iPhone being compared to a 350 pounds, kind of two year old phone, which is very, very difficult to compare because there's such a big difference in terms of the hardware, but bear with me, please bear with me. Who wins this whole Apple versus Android war of the worlds? Well, to be honest and truthful, I kind of think Android might win. - What? - For most people. Thanks for watching.

Don't forget, of course, to like the video down below, subscribe to the channel for more if you haven't already, hit the notification bell to be notified when new videos are posted and I'll see you on Sunday, where, if I have my calendar right, I'm gonna be comparing the base spec M1 Macbook Air to the top spec M1 Macbook Air. So sub for that, see you soon and bye-bye. Just a message to my wife, if you're watching this, I'm really, really sorry. I didn't mean any of those things that I said. I love you lots.

Bye.

Source : Pete Matheson