I periodically switch between iPhone and different smartphones on Android, and it is always interesting to catch myself thinking or feeling with such a change of operating systems. Let's talk about one of them today.
The traditional advantage of Android over iOS is always the extended functionality of the first OS. Whatever people do on Android, from the banal replacement of the built-in dialers and applications for SMS messages, to getting Root and full customization of the device. I know very well about this plus Android, but at some point I realized that the possibilities iOS are enough for my eyes, and the synchronization between OS X and iOS becomes much more important than the functionality of the phone itself. However, from time to time I see some new opportunities in some Android – smartphones that are unlikely to ever have the same iPhone.
Just yesterday Lenovo ZUK Z1 came to me for a test, which will now be on sale in Russia. The model is very interesting, and we will definitely have a full review on it, today I would like to draw your attention to the firmware in the ZUK Z1, namely CyanogenOS. I myself rarely use 'cyan', because this shell is more suitable for users who have not changed smartphones for years. They can equip their gadget as comfortably as possible down to the smallest detail, and for this it is worth spending your time getting Root rights and flashing the gadget. When you test devices for a limited time, then there is simply no time to tinker with all this, and information about how stable the CM works on a particular device will be of interest to a very limited circle of readers.
It's another matter when the firmware is already preinstalled and is an immediate part of the smartphone. Then you can already thoroughly dig deeper into the settings, and subscribers on Twitter will always prompt you if they could not find some item on the fly.
I'm already used to the well-known advantages of any Android – smartphone as such over iPhone, such as an open file system, replacement of any application, support for memory cards, full-fledged work Bluetooth and NFC and more. But I have some very specific requests that cannot be solved even with traditional OS tools. For example, after the appearance of LTE in Russia, all smartphones that support this standard began to connect at home in this particular mode. This caused certain problems, since with incoming calls the devices could switch either to stable 2G or to less stable 3G, as a result, they had to approach the window to hear me better. Of course, it was possible to turn on the 2G Only mode, but doing it every time was not that tedious, but rather corny lazy. And now I have been thinking for a long time how nice it would be if, after returning home, the device would automatically switch to 2G mode, an indicator of this behavior may well be a connection to a certain Wi-Fi network. I have asked several times on Twitter about a similar niche use case, but there were no responses. And today our dear subscribers said that there is a similar setting in CyanogenOS, it is included in the profile. That said, the 'profile' options are much broader than the scenario I have described. You can set various parameters for all wireless interfaces, audio level, wireless sync and more when certain conditions are met. It's amazing how convenient it is and how quickly you get used to it! Should we expect something like this on iOS? I doubt it very much.
I understand that this option will seem like a mere trifle to someone, but it seems to me that it clearly demonstrates the key difference between Android and iOS, the very difference between an already finished apartment and a lovingly renovated one for yourself from scratch (I talked about this metaphor in this issue of 'Mobile Environment'). When you use a smartphone for a long time, you want to make it as convenient as possible for everyday use, just some people are more meticulous than others, and on Android there is such an opportunity for them, but on iOS it is not.