Changing sides in the Apple vs Android tribal war

There’s a real pressure to be one thing or the other, isn’t there? Like Blur or Oasis, Pepsi or Coke. You’re either iPhone or Android, people seem to think. Well, I’m not. Like almost my entire friendship group, I went from Nokia to Sony circa 2006, then Sony to Apple circa 2009. Ever since, I'd openly identify as an iPhone man. But, I don't mind admitting, I’ve experimented with Android handsets, and found some of them quite sexy. I’d take them out for a night, but I’d never put my SIM in one. I was Android-curious, you might say.

I didn’t take the plunge and switch sides permanently for one principal reason: you know where you are with an iPhone. (Not literally, of course, if you’re using Apple Maps; Google famously have the upper hand on geo-location.) Their iOS software is quick to embed itself in your muscle memory, and difficult to shake off. For example, let’s say I have a call from my radio producer asking me to go out and record some vox-pops. I can, without hesitation or deviation, open Voice Memos and get on with it. Let’s say I miss an edition of The News Quiz (perish the thought). I know, without doubt, if I were to open up Podcasts, there it would be, ready to stream or download. And when I am done using those apps, I know I can double-tap the Home button and shut them down, and somehow feel a sense of real-world accomplishment because I’ve touched an actual button rather than a virtual one. This is how Apple lock you in.

Old familiar: Apple's iPhone 5

Android phones provide none of this reassuring familiarity. There is, often, no physical button on the device aside from the on/off switch and volume control. The Android store, Google Play, is clearly not as consistent nor as user-friendly as App Store on iOS, and some apps I use regularly on iPhone – Tweetbot, TomTom, Yahoo! News Digest, Platter – aren’t available from it. And, whilst the look and feel of the screen is more customisable than on iOS, the default settings, to my mind, have always seemed clunkier than Jony Ive’s clean, legible minimalism.

So, despite my flirtations with the likes of Samsung’s Galaxy S4, Sony’s Xperia Z and even the Windows-running Nokia Lumia 925, I’ve always felt any non-Apple phone worth making the switch for would need to provide hardware so clearly superior to the iPhone it was worth sacrificing the convenience and intuition of Apple’s operating system. Finally, with the HTC One M8, I found that phone. I bought one last week.

The inbuilt speakers are clearly more powerful than the iPhone’s. The dual camera on the rear proffers fewer megapixels than the iPhone, but the editing options are much more advanced, so you can alter the focus even after you’ve taken the picture. It also takes much, much better photos in low-light than the iPhone. (Why is ‘low-light’ so important? A disproportionate amount of my photo opportunities happen in bars. Be honest, you’re the same, you old pisshead.) The grown-up aluminium cladding is as aesthetically appealing as anything coming out of Cupertino. The battery seems to last longer. Best of all, there’s a Micro SD slot, providing up to 128GB of additional storage.

What really surprised me, after a week of using the M8 as my actual, day-to-day phone, is that some of the software is better than Apple’s, too. For instance, I love that when I get a call from an unknown number, I am now prompted, upon ending the call, as to whether or not I want to save that number to my Contacts. HTC’s BlinkFeed program, a Flipboard-esque enterprise that collates your news and social media feeds and puts them a simple swipe away from your home screen, is delightful. I’ve even discovered apps to rival some of my iOS favourites, such as the excellent PocketCasts to download podcasts.

My main quibble is that the 5 inch screen means I can no longer text with one hand: my thumb simply won’t stretch to all the keys on the keyboard. But that’s a trade-off Apple will probably make the with iPhone 6 too; the current trend towards ever-bigger screens being seemingly irreversible.

The only truly tedious outcome of my new purchase is having to justify it to my iPhone-centric compatriots. Whenever they first realise I’ve ‘switched teams’ – perhaps when I plonk my phone down on a table in a restaurant, or whip it out to take a photo – they’ll exclaim, "WHA??? You’ve gone Android?".

No. I was always a little bit Android. I’m still into iPhones, too. Perhaps I am a phone slut. Or perhaps I’m just open to opportunity, and would not even consider judging others for their choices. Apart from you Blackberry users. You’re idiots!