Torture

Almost everyone knows — or should know — the feeling of excitement when a new gadget is being delivered. Especially if the new gadget is an upgrade to an older one. Spending days trying out new settings, finding out cool things, trying to work around habits you developed but your new gadget no longer supports. It’s an amazing feeling.

As a loyal iOS user this feeling does not surface as much as it should. Of course, every once in a while you get a new iOS update and it’s all fun and games — the iOS 7 upgrade was excellent — but in the end the system is so well made that, whenever you buy a new phone or upgrade to a new major release, everything is exactly as you left it. iCloud makes sure everything is backed up and placed back nicely; your contacts, your apps, your settings, your messages, your notes, your wallpapers, your browser history, everything is the same and remains the same. As if nothing ever happened. As if you didn’t just spend all of your hard earned cash on a brand new phone.

I miss that feeling of excitement. I even — well, almost — miss the act of copying my contacts from one phone to the other. Retyping all the names and numbers, scrolling through your contacts list and being reminded of ex-lovers or that great restaurant that you once made reservations at, leaving out a few people that never called you back anyway…

Over the last 5 years I’ve seen both Android and iOS mature as operating systems, communities and platforms. For better or worse, they both attract very different people and both systems have haters and lovers. But one thing is for sure; you can not ignore either of them. They are here to stay and they are both going to evolve even further. I’m deeply invested in iOS and I know it by heart — although it can still surprise me on a daily basis — but recently I’ve grown more curious to what Android has to offer.

Since I like to challenge myself to try new things — or torture myself, whatever you like to call it — I decided to spend a year with Android. A year in which my every day iPhone will be replaced by an Android phone. I thought it would be a fun addition to that experiment if I do a weekly story about my experiences. Coming up with ~52 posts on Medium on this life changing step, how hard can it be?

If I like it, I can continue buying Android phones. If I hate it, I can always buy a new iPhone and have a genuine exciting feeling about a new gadget. Either way I win.

Let the experiment begin!