Making the Switch from iPhone to Galaxy S8

Recently, I made the switch from Apple’s iPhone to the latest available Samsung Galaxy, the S8+. There was plenty of trepidation involved with making such a switch, and I think I can confidently address everything I went through and experienced now.

Ditching the iPhone

It certainly wasn’t easy to ditch an old friend like my iPhone. It was clearly time to upgrade, however, even despite the fact that I was using the five-year-old iPhone 5 model. The battery life had run down dramatically, and adding a backup battery only seemed to exacerbate the problem by overcharging the lithium to a point where it had started to expand. It was not a pretty sight, and a potential fire hazard to boot.

Facing the hard choices

Still, after five years on this phone and my experience with iPad as well, I had built a substantial library of applications, most of which would still be viable on the latest (and fancy) iPhone, the X. I had a lot of reasons to want to keep using the iPhone. Did I care about the headphone jack they designed out of existence? Sure, but I could’ve lived without it.

The things that tipped the scales were the iPhone X itself and the changes Apple made to the iTunes that made it no longer desirable to use.  Tim Cook’s embarassing iPhone X presentation aside, for me the bridge too far was Apple’s removing the ability to easily manage my ebooks from iTunes. I’m sure that probably doesn’t affect a lot of people, but reading on my phone was the top activity I engaged in, and that action made me seriously start looking at other options.

So, I won’t bury the lead any further: I absolutely love this new Samsung S8+. Some of the things I worried about when switching were hardly even worth considering. Example: getting my photos off of iCloud. Not much of a problem, but you do have to turn on the iCloud sync to get them on to your computer.  I was also able to connect the Samsung directly to the iPhone and it immediately recognized the device and started the Smart Switch process. About a half-hour later I had synced up all of my contacts and other important data. It even transferred the audiobooks I’d been listening to so I didn’t have to muck about getting those files transferred to the new device.

Pros of switching

The Samsung S8+ works great with Windows and many of the native applications I was already using like VLC player and Calibre have analogs on Samsung (iPhone has these apps also, apparently, but I hadn’t known). The expandable memory slot is also a really great feature of the phone. For an extra $42 I was able to bump up the memory an additional 128gb. Currently, upgrading the memory on the iPhone X to the 256gb model will cost an additional $150. And, unlike Apple, I do have the option of swapping out the memory if I need to, and since apps don’t get installed on the memory card it won’t cause issues if you remove it.

Discovering some dark iPhone secrets

The one thing I hadn’t anticipated during the switch was something I didn’t find out about until a week later when my fiancee tried to text me. Apparently, hidden deep within the labyrinthine Settings application on the Apple iPhone is an option to send your messages through Apple’s proprietary messaging service instead of through SMS if the person you are talking to is also using an iPhone. It’s also something you are somehow expected to know to turn off before switching over your phone (and yet none of the tutorials I had looked at online mentioned anything of the sort). Fortunately, Apple has provided a website form you can fill out to get the service turned off. After I had done this my texts started getting delivered again about 24 hours later.

Final thoughts

I know there are a lot of Apple fans who will remain undeterred despite the awful design choices that company keeps making every year (specifically, the conceit that taking away features equals better design). But I couldn’t be happier now that I’ve made the switch. There are so many new options the Samsung S8+ has opened up for me, I don’t think I could ever go back to such a closed system again.

If you are contemplating switching over it should be comforting to know that the process is fairly painless. I didn’t even need to go to the actual cellphone store. The whole switch-over was performed from the comfort of home and saved I some money doing it that way as well. I thought I would be missing all my apps, but I was able to quickly find analogs to all the ones I had used most frequently. There’s absolutely no reason to be afraid to switch over to Samsung if you think it’s something you’d be interested in. Cheers, and good luck with whatever choice you decide is right for you.