after having spent a decade maintaining my own Android distro: https://divested.dev/misc/ios-review.txt
I think I covered everything I wanted to, but I might’ve missed a few things.
10 Likes
Great overview, but some questions/notes
For non lockdown users: No way to disable Game Center.
Doesn’t this disable it?
Has no VCF export mechanism.
Long press your contacts list, and the option to export appears.
No easy way to clear history/data.
I think this is new, so you might not have noticed it
Great review overall!
2 Likes
Every time you open a game you’ll get a toast prompting you to sign into Game Center.
Awful hidden, but thank you!
This is my issue, you have to go out of Safari into Settings > Apps > Safari > Scroll all the way down > Clear Hitory and Website Data > Clear History
1 Like
Does the clear button in safari not clear website data as well? I thought it did.
Edit: just tested and it looks like it clears all data as well.
Where is there a clear button inside of Safari?
The only button I see is deep in the Settings app.
Not gonna make a long list now 
but ads on AppStore? Have you ever seen Samsung Galaxy Store or Google Play Store?
For Safari it is not so deep hidden, but it could be better. Settings > Apps > Safari > Clear history
Have not at least not in a long while.
I just mean you can search eg. Orbot in the App Store and the first result is a scam app thanks to it being an ad.
That is 4 steps too many.
The harder it is to access, the less people will use it.
oh wow! for me I didn’t see it since my history was already blank, so it was grey on grey and hard to see
1 Like
Also the notifications repeating after 2 minutes is a feature not a bug. You can change it in settings → notifications → messages → customize notifications → repeats alerts.
2 Likes
Honestly very refreshing to see a non-biased, nuanced, balanced take on using iOS after maining android for so long. I’m in multiple tech subs on reddit, including both android and apple, and by the way they act you’d think you have to swear a blood oath to only one side. Like if you main android you’d spontaneously combust just walking by an apple store. Never allowed to acknowledge anything the enemy platform does right.
I’ve oscillated between the two since I got my first phone in 2013, being with each for a few years before switching sides, so I love comparing how they’ve evolved over the last 10+ years. I’ve been in an ios phase since 2023 but I have a pixel 7a running graphene and also a nothing phone 1 with nethunter as my side pieces. I was planning on switching to graphene full time this fall with the pixel 10 pro xl but after the aosp news I’m just gonna stay in a holding pattern until the devs can come up for air and tell us more about the future of the project.
1 Like
Maybe the Shortcuts app can help. Here’s the first result I got from DDG’ing;
I’d be interested to hear if your usage aligns with recommendations outlined from PG
Very interesting, thanks for sharing.
Have you tried iOS 26? That’s supposed to add the ability to swipe back from anywhere in the screen (towards the left side), at least on apple apps (not from both edges though)
I think the VPN always-on thing can be configured as an MDM configuration, but that’s obviously suboptimal.
No Internet permission for apps.
That’s quite annoying. Interestingly this is available on chinese iPhones (it has both a cellular and wifi data toggle, non-chinese models just have cellular data toggle).
Text selection and cursor movement is completely broken.
Did you try pressing and holding when selecting text? I heard that although you can’t tap in the middle of a word, if you hold for a bit whilst in there, it will let you direct select into the middle of the word.
Some extra things
Did you have any thoughts the app sideloading experience?
Did you try blocking ads with a VPN profile (e.g. with DNS set to a server that blocks smartphone ads)
Lockdown prevents using beta updates.
Also Liquid Glass looks horrifying for accessibility in them too.
I tried everything, I really don’t understand why it is so inconsistent.
I tried to avoid these options for now, but I might explore them in the future.
Haven’t tried it. Don’t even have a modern mac to run Xcode, hence why I recently made a PWA.
I’m using very few third party apps, and none that make such connections, so I only need coverage in Safari.
1 Like