My mother’s upgrading from a Huawei P9 to an iPhone she received as a gift (don’t know which model it is).
She doesn’t know how to use iOS and I’m finding it difficult to teach her, since I don’t know how it works either, so I was wondering if it was possible to install some version of Android on it.
Sorry if it’s the wrong community to post this in
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Sell the iPhone and get an android
more appropriately, “buy your mom an android”
I feel like selling gifts might look bad lol
I feel like selling gifts might look bad lol
So are bad presents. Just don’t rub it under the nose of the other person and when they ask just say “I’m sorry, my mom really tried but couldn’t adapt to iOS.”
Is not looking bad more valuable than the effort involved in one or both of you learning iOS?
You can’t seriously argue iOS is harder to learn over the myriad of android oses and their frequent updates
I’m not arguing that? I’m acknowledging that learning any new software takes some level of effort. Nice straw man though!
That’s not what strawman is but okay lmao.
Anywho, and realigning the conversation away from being passive aggressive… (I don’t miss Reddit do you?)
You specifically asked if returning a gift (tacky by many peoples standards) was worth learning a new (simpler) OS. Of course it is, not to mention the myriad of other reasons including security and privacy which you conveniently left out when posing an ultimatum of sorts.
Your reading comprehension needs work. Have a nice day.
Not surprised you ended the convo with an insult.
Hope you find out what you’re so mad at life and I mean that.
Recently, I’ve been watching a bunch of “an Android user switched to iPhone” and “an iPhone user switched to Android” type of videos.
From what I can tell, iOS is, in fact, harder to adapt to, compared to Android.
Even tech-savvy guys like Marques outright say that “unlike Android, it’s very easy to forget how to use iPhones” (not an exact quote, but similar meaning).
You know you bring up a good point, I was mainly thinking about the settings app when I had commented that.
There are lots of “gestures” that most android users aren’t used to but I don’t think they’re particularly “hard” to pick up, but there is definitely “more” to pickup. Ultimately, my reason from switching over from only Android to apple were the invisible notification bugs that I was plagued by for 2 different Samsung phones, and the security vulns in android. Then again, these days, apple is starting to pick up more and more nasty vulns. Not sure how Android OSes have been keeping along
Generally selling a gift is in bad taste.
However… In this case I wouldn’t have an issue with it, since she really isn’t comfortable using it.
Also, a gift is a gift… When you gift something to someone, you let go of it. What they do with it is up to them, as it’s no longer yours.
Honestly for most people who aren’t tech-savvy, iPhone is a better solution since things work one way, and you don’t have to figure out how to address the basics (like where is my data, is it being backed up, etc, etc).
It’s why I use an iPhone for work, but Android personally. iPhone “just works”, even if it’s in a way I find limiting and frustrating. But for the essentials - calls, messaging, calendar, utilities (calculators, estimators, etc) and most typical apps, it’s consistent and pretty straight-forward.
I find it frustrating when trying to approach it from a computer mindset, looking for files, copying things, etc. It just doesn’t work that way. Apple’s paradigm is about tasks and functions. You share data between apps, rather than save a file, browse the file system, and then open it or copy it somewhere. What you save on the phone (say a word doc) is retained in your files, and if you setup iCloud it all syncs there (with a few exceptions, you can save only locally, but you kind of have to do it intentionally, and it isn’t easy to work with local files like that anyway).
Set it up without her Sim card, and just work through it a bit, taking a blank-slate approach (act as if you don’t know anything about Android). Think of moving from one task to another, rather than the process of manipulating the system. You don’t open files, you go to the app that performs the task you want.
I can do most stuff on iOS that I do with Android, just not the computer-like things, and I don’t use iCloud, so it gets painful for me.
It’s not possible lol. Apple makes it as difficult as humanly possible to alter their OS. We’re lucky enough to be able to jailbreak iPhones
Honestly, though, as much as I hate how restrictive iPhones are, I gotta admit they’re restrictive in a way that makes things a lot easier for people who aren’t tech-savvy. What part are you struggling with? I haven’t owned an iPhone since the 5C but I could probably help.
I’m not sure that’s so true nowadays, I’m very tech literate, and find iPhones still quite filled with bugs and weird design choices that make me have to actually TRY to be able to use them.
Take the browser for instance, why do I have to click the share button to use the “find on page” option? Well I learned from another dev that it’s actually the “action” button… but it’s almost exclusively used as a share button.
The mail app has some oddities. The pull down to search function is fucking stupid. I can’t quite remember all of them, but there are so many horrible UX decisions made for the sake of a “clean” interface.
And then there are the bugs, my AirPods won’t connect… they take forever to attempt, and then nothing happens. I after a couple of other troubleshooting steps, I figure out that toggling Bluetooth on my phone allows the AirPods to connect immediately.
Lots of bugs, with workarounds that I can figure out… but they’d drive someone else up a wall.
And we had a horrid time trying to use FaceTime on AppleTV to AppleTV. Apparently it was stability issues on my phones iOS version. And my phone wasn’t updating, despite updating multiple times on 17, the latest wouldn’t download until I went and removed an old ios16 beta profile. But I guess that’s kinda on me.
Other things that irritated me when I recently switched from android to iOS:
The keyboard doesn’t have the numbers along the top. Didn’t realize how much I used digits when typing stuff out so switching back and forth is annoying.
When typing long text messages I find it impossible to just click higher or scroll up to reread what I typed
Speaking of messaging the fact I can only do emoji reactions with such a limited range is really amazing especially in 2023-2024
The calculator doesn’t show you what you typed in….maybe I’m the idiot but I can’t figure it out
No ability to do Picture in Picture especially with FaceTime, so everytime I leave the app to look at another window it always blacks the video out
Printing things from my phone is so difficult now
Apple Pay for some reason only works when I double click the side button before placing the phone near the reader rather than scan and then double click
Speaking of wallet I can’t transfer in a local public transit commuter card from android….i need a physical card or number to scan. There is no option to manually enter that I can see
The action button why can I only do 1 action and not multiple with a click and then a hold option?
Speaking of action button I have mine set to silent bc if I keep clicking the volume down button it doesn’t automatically put the ringer on vibrate and then silent
Which leads me to why in gods name can I not turn off send noises from any app? I don’t need to hear the swoosh sound every time.
The Notification Center in general bothers me
Also I really miss the back button and menu buttons on the bottom.
I’m sure there’s more I forgot about but those are little things that have bugged me.
You can download a free app called pass2u wallet and it will allow you to add any image to your Apple wallet. That might be able to help you with your transit card issue
Oh didn’t know about that! I’ll check it out.
You can just type in the address bar to search, you don’t have to share. It’s always been that way since page search was introduced. It shows up under its own suggestion category as “Find on page (results number)”
What a wonderful example, there is a feature, but it’s in absolutely no way obvious, not if you look across your screen thoroughly, or if you’ve got a few decades of computing experience guiding you.
If I don’t scroll down, how would I ever know that the “found on page” is down there. I’ve been using iPhone and safari for years and didn’t know about this method. Other things like that have come up before, hidden features that no one in their right mind would naturally discover.
I wonder if safari on macOS has the same functionality, I bet it doesn’t. But even if it did…
I think that’s nitpicking a little too much.
There’s a hundred features available on every device at any one time. It’s gotta go somewhere. UX and UI design is very difficult, doubly so when discoverability has to be balanced with small form factor devices.
Safari on macOS doesn’t have address bar page search as you suspected but it’s a different device and thus has a different design / experience. More specifically a physical keyboard with shortcuts that are expected to be used but also a menu bar where features can be tucked away logically (e.g. edit > find, etc.) The share (action) button on mobile safari sure seems like a logical place to put it, given the space constraints and hey, you found it! And now you know the search bar also searches the page.
Beyond that, pull down to search has been in iOS for years now and is included in multiple locations, including the Home Screen itself and the settings app.
I won’t sit here and pretend everything is 100% consistent and that the design language is adhered to and perfect. It’s not and it’s probably going to get worse until a new set of rules is developed or is refreshed again.
Hardly anyone is going to find every feature and figure out how it works without help and the more that our devices advance in power and capability, the more that has to be tucked away and designed for. If a useful feature has 2 or 3 ways to activate it and you find one them, its mission success. Just because the other ways would be more convenient for you to actually use doesn’t mean it’s a terribly design. It doesn’t mean anything at all in fact. It just happens because there’s millions of users who use these devices around the world and we’re all different and you just happened to not discover all the ways possible to perform one specific action with multiple routes to access it. But you did discover how to use it. And you were taught a different way by someone else. What’s the problem again?
I remember that era of Huawei copied apple in ui styling. Like my friend had a Huawei from that era and his settings page looked really similar to iOS.
You could also look into the guides and courses by Apple or a local library. Those are designed to help people get used to the OS and they could help with common points of friction
The other replies answered your question already, but this may solve your little “problem” here: Apple offers free in-person training sessions on how to use their products. They’re intended precisely for non-technical people like your mother.
So, if you don’t want to be the person teaching her how to use iOS, you could look into getting her to attend these sessions instead.You can fault Apple for many things but this offer of theirs is just great on every level IMHO.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if this programme made them a rather sizeable profit even if they had a typical margin on their products.
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It’s just a less expensive OEM with smaller profit margins can’t afford to do things like this
No, that’s what I mean by “even if they had a typical margin”. I’m saying it could be profitable despite their insane margin because you get people buying more of your products.
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Updoot for this - my ex-mother-in-law got a lot out of this by both taking classes and dropping in to ask questions. They were always helpful and polite, and spent whatever time she needed
Technically speaking its a ‘plausible’. Practically speaking it’s a hard no.
It’s perfectly possible for tech folk to create a version of android for any iPhone. Apple has locked the hardware so that that can’t happen.
As others have said, you can sell the iPhone and get a nice Android.
Best case, it would be astronomically more complicated than just learning to deal with iOS. That’s if it’s technically possible at all.
Maybe just swap the phone out for something that runs Android natively.
There’s Project Sandcastle but it’s nowhere near ready and it looks like development has ceased.
Project sandcastle was always a PoC thing to me. On release, only the iPhone 7 was even close to being able to properly house the OS. Most devices would be missing important things like sound and cellular support, and wouldn’t be able to use the camera (among other things, some losing out on more than others depending on the exact device, there’s a whole spreadsheet that shows what works and what doesn’t for all Sandcastle-compatible devices)
Not to mention, file changes on Android using Sandcastle wouldn’t save, essentially meaning every time you reboot it’s like a factory reset (your iOS files are fine, just the Android bits wouldn’t be saved through a reboot)
There was some fork or continuation of this that brought on a bit more progress since then, but I can’t remember the name anymore. No new updates from that one for a while either
Just sell it and get an Android if iOS isn’t working for them. No reason to go through all that extra trouble trying to make iOS like Android when it isn’t.
Looks like you technically can, but it’s not really worth it.
TL;DW: it isn’t really usable.
Technically yes, but basically nothing works on it and it works on one phone (iphone 7)
Outside of settings being somewhat confusing, everything is basically close enough to most Android phones in terms of usage. Iirc that era of Huawei phones had basically similar looking settings pages to iOS.
I’d just compare both side by side and I’m pretty sure there’s guides on specific things you’d worry about.
What is something youre struggling with?
(I currently own an iphone x)
Pretty much the UI has been the biggest problem, I’ll try to find something like the microsoft launcher to make it look more familiar, thanks anyway
This is apple - that isn’t going to be an option.
iPhone is easy for people to use because they are all exactly the same. The downside of this is apple products start losing features and app compatibility after like 2 OS versions.
Does iOS allow launchers now?
no
Nope.
As you just learned, launchers aren’t a thing on ios. You can customize it a lot to make it more familiar with widgets and shortcut. I have never used the Microsoft launcher, only the pixel one so I don’t know how it looks
No Android and no custom launchers on iPhone, she’ll have to learn using iOS, I think it’s just a tad more of a fuss than moving to a different Android flavor, I’d try to look up some videos and materials about it to help her if I were you
Apple is crap and a hugely evil monopolistic destroyer of humanity. There is definitely way to screw iPhones boot loaders and install android.
Simply put - no its not! I would try to return it and get her an Honor phone. Honors “Magic UI” Software is very simmilar to EMUI on Huawei phones but they still have Google Play Services.
Sell the iPhone and use the money to buy another Honor phone.
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don’t know how helpful it is but here’s a video https://youtu.be/O0_Aou3eZl8?si=2OZRbLw7iAIi-VyL
Sell that thing, get a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS
