The vast majority of phone screens these days have some type of cutout, whether it’s an Android or an iPhone. I can live with it. At least on the 13 series the notch got a decent bit smaller so I find it less distracting.

iPhone started the back gesture swipe from the left side of the screen, but in MY opinion Android did it better by letting you swipe from either side AND making it much easier to trigger. I find it finicky on the iPhone sometimes. If you’re scrolling even a LITTLE BIT forget about it. It also takes such a precise and defined swipe to get it to trigger sometimes. I like the iPhone UI overall, but this is one area where I see room for improvement.

I have the Sierra Blue currently. It’s definitely grown on me, but that dark Pacific Blue was really pretty.

I second this. I loved my Pacific Blue 12 Pro Max and miss it dearly since switching to the 13 Pro Max.

Bro’s Gold

I always use the port for charging, though I have a 13 Pro Max so topping up throughout the day isn't necessary for my use case. I can count on one hand the number of times I've used wireless charging since my first phone I had that supported it...in 2016. They could remove wireless charging from my iPhone and I would neither notice nor care.

I use Nord. Strictly speaking, I don’t need a VPN specifically for my iPhone, I use it mainly for torrenting movies on my PC. Nord is also one of the few VPNs that still works with CODm in Southeast Asia which is region locked. My girlfriend plays it on her iPhone and needed a VPN to play with her friends back home so we stuck with Nord VPN.

I recently switched to iPhone from Android as well.

I honestly find iMessage to be a bit of a gimmick. Its stickers and reactions are very limited compared to those of FB Messenger, and I can actually use FB Messenger on ALL of my devices, not just Apple devices. So just like on my Android phone, the SMS app will be used maybe 5% of the time for general communication. 3rd party apps like Messenger, Discord and Telegram do more of what I want.

iOS 16 still needs some work and polish. I was led to believe that iPhones were smooth stutter-free devices. Not really the case with iOS 16, at least that’s been my experience with the 12 Pro even after the 16.1.1 update. Random stutters when opening apps, switching pages, etc. Nothing game-breaking or outright laggy but not exactly what I was led to believe. I'm sure it'll get resolved in due time. I tried switching back to iOS 15, but I missed the useful lock screen widgets so I came back to 16 again.

The camera has been kinda hit or miss for me. I don't know if it's an iOS 16 thing, but the dynamic range has been really bad leading to some inexplicably poor photos in certain scenarios. Nighttime low-light photos have been really good, but often if there's weird lighting indoors or outdoor daytime shots, I find the lighting to be kinda blown out and the camera software doesn't know what to do. Not exactly the point-and-shoot experience I was hoping for in all scenarios.

CarPlay is fantastic for me, though. Over wireless it's so much better than Android Auto was for me and connects MUCH faster to my car's aftermarket stereo that I can't see myself going back to Android for this reason alone.

Apple Pay is awesome, too. Never had a moment when it didn't work for me and I've been using it OFTEN because it's so damn convenient.

FaceID is simply superb. I still prefer a fingerprint scanner for certain scenarios, but FaceID works very well for most scenarios I find myself in, including outdoors wearing sunglasses.

Haptic typing feedback is not good on the iPhone in my opinion. The tuning feels off to me and I feel as though I can't type as fast because the feedback doesn't feel fast enough. I love this feature on Android, but left it off on iOS. Hopefully they improve it later on, but I don't like this as a first attempt at haptic typing feedback.

The haptic feedback itself in every other part of the UI feels lovely, though. Very tight and crisp even compared to some of the better haptics I've felt on Android phones. It's clear they worked hard on making this feature feel very premium.

Battery life has probably been the worst aspect of the iPhone for me. The 12 series in particular Apple kinda dropped the ball. I'm glad I got this phone as a gift from my boss and didn't spend my own money on it, because this is kinda disappointing.

It's a pretty minor upgrade in my opinion, as iPhones sometimes are from one gen to another. The 13 Pro might be my next phone next year when they get a bit cheaper in the used market.

It costs $99 to replace the battery in your $1000+ phone at Apple. I wouldn't worry about it. If after 3 years you feel the battery isn't lasting as long as you'd like, just get it replaced.

You can get it from here In the first text edit box you need to put your Wi-Fi password and then you’ll be able to share it to others as long as you’re also connected.

On Android, my favorite Reddit client is Infinity. Nice clean interface with no ads and it runs smooth unlike the official Reddit app.

Thanks! I’ll give it a try then!

I love Edison Mail. Been using since I was on Android when I discovered how unreliable my push notifications were. Never had that issue again with Edison.

I was not a fan either. I use ReddPlanet instead. You can turn off ads without the pro version. The only thing I found it was missing was push notifications on the free version.

I use the Shortcuts app for a few things:

Set my phone to dark mode when using Apple Music(coming from Spotify where it's dark only)

Generate a QR code so I can more easily share my home and office WiFi with people(something Android does natively and I wish iOS could do also).

Automatically turn off Do Not Disturb when my alarm goes off in the morning(I know there's a sleep feature, but I don't want to use Apple's Health app for this)

I'm new to the iPhone so I'm sure I'll find more useful things as time goes on.

Does it save login info? I use FireFox Focused to block ads, but it's basically an incognito browser with built-in ad blocking.

Yes, but you have to also consider that iPhone batteries are usually much smaller than competing Android devices, unless we're talking about the Plus/Max models which have over 4000mah batteries these days. I came from a OnePlus 8T that could charge at 65W and it was downright insane, but I RARELY ever used it. Most of the time I used that charger for my Samsung tablet. My 12 Pro quick charges at 20W using that same 65W charger since it also supports up to 45W PD charging and I find the charging speed on my small 2815mah battery to be satisfactory.

All good! 👍

Same RAM on both. The 14 non-pro got bumped to 6GB compared to 4GB on the 13 non-pro.

I used to run no screen protector on my previous phones because they had in-display fingerprint scanners that could be finicky with certain screen protectors. I run one on my 12 Pro, but that's also because it was used and already had one. I'll probably continue running them on future iPhones, though, since they can be had pretty inexpensive.