Switching to Android?

Last week, for my birthday, my wife got me a Nothing Phone (2a). No, it wasn’t an attempt on her part to turn me into an Android user (she uses an iPhone herself); two weeks earlier she asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and since I had recently shown her just how I liked the design of Nothing’s products and Nothing as a company, she said something like, Maybe you’d like a Nothing phone?

“I’d love to have a Nothing Phone (2), but I also like the (2a), and it’s even more affordable”, I replied. We had a deal.

The phone arrived via courier exactly on the day of my birthday; she got me the phone, an additional screen protector, and the transparent Nothing phone case. The unboxing was quick and fun.

I’m glad I chose the Milk colour variant. I think it makes the peculiar design of the phone’s back stand out more. It gives more of a ‘space age’ NASA vibe than the Black variant.

Also, as I was checking something on Amazon, I noticed they were already offering Black Friday deals, so as a little birthday gift to myself I purchased the Nothing CMF Watch Pro 2 (in orange). This smartwatch, already quite affordable at €69, was on sale at €55. I couldn’t resist.

So I have had the Nothing Phone (2a) for a week and the Watch Pro 2 for four days now. The general impression is that both these devices really punch above their weight. They may not be made of ‘premium’ materials, but neither feels cheap, either. Every time I look at the Watch Pro 2, and every time I consider just how seamless it was to pair with the phone, and to use the very good companion app, it boggles the mind that this is a €70 accessory.

Same with the (2a). It has a great display, decent cameras, great performance and responsiveness, and a long-lasting battery. One reviewer on the Nothing UK site said it well: It feels like a flagship, handles like an iPhone, but with a great battery life and a splash of personality. It also has two things I wish Apple gave to at least one iPhone model: a simple punch-hole front camera, and a fingerprint sensor using an in-screen optical scanner. These two features allow the (2a) to have a truly ‘all-screen’ experience — where the display doesn’t have an intrusive black area at the top like the notch or dynamic island on the iPhone — and I still can use a fingerprint reader to unlock the phone biometrically without being forced to enable an authentication method I don’t like. (By the way, the (2a) also features Face Unlock, in case you were wondering).

It’s still too early to write a proper review of this device, but first impressions do matter, and the (2a) so far has impressed me. My current smartphone is an iPhone SE 3, so the bump in performance when using the (2a) was expected. But sheer performance isn’t everything. There’s the UI too. And I really, really like what Nothing is doing with their Nothing OS. Visually, we can consider their apps and UI to be flat, minimalist design. But it’s done with intent, it’s mostly cohesive, and I feel it has the right balance between starkness/austerity and fun/whimsy to appear charming rather than bland. It certainly is distinctive.

Left: Nothing Phone (2a) lock screen, with the characteristic fluted glass effect applied to the wallpaper image. Right: Nothing OS Weather app.

Switching

Ever since I started talking about the Nothing Phone (2a) and the Watch Pro 2 on social media, a few have reached out asking me the predictable question — So, are you switching to Android? and the answer is: That’s happening, let me explain.

You see, with me and my kind of constant multi-platform curiosity, things are never black or white. While my main computing platform remains the Mac, I do own and use Windows PCs of various vintages, and even a ThinkPad with a Linux distro on it. While my main smartphone has been the iPhone since 2008, over time I have acquired and enjoyed Android phones, Symbian, Windows Phone, and MeeGo devices. My primary tablet is an iPad, but I also have an older Surface Pro, and I prefer reading ebooks on Kindle devices. Especially since the mid-2010s, I’ve always had a secondary device from another platform. Ecosystems are convenient, but they also trap you. And these aren’t the times to limit ourselves to just one platform, one ecosystem. Digital entrenchment is silly, and it’s wiser to have a more open-minded approach. Big tech companies aren’t your friends or even allies. ‘Rooting’ for one is naïve and cringe.

In the end, for me, ‘switching’ to Android doesn’t mean going all-in on it, ditching my iPhones and iOS and obliterating any other platform. Currently, and more mundanely, it means taking out the SIM card from my iPhone SE and putting it in the Nothing Phone (2a). It’s a literal switch, not a move. It’s a switch between my primary and secondary platforms.

But why, and why now?

After 16 years of iPhones, I’m feeling a bit fatigued, to be honest. When Apple introduced the iPhone X in 2017, it was the first time I actively disliked the device’s design. Every iPhone that has come after has kept doubling down on that absurd design decision that started as a notch and has become a slightly-reduced notch (that’s how I see the Dynamic Island, sorry). This has severely reduced the appeal of the iPhone for me. (And of MacBooks too since they received the notch treatment).

I’ve also preferred Touch ID as a method of biometric authentication, and it’s also the method I prefer in user-interaction workflows. Paying with my iPhone is faster, and authenticating by placing my finger on the sensor feels more like a purposeful gesture than just glancing at the device. Face ID still feels too abstract and feedback-less for me. Clicking the Home button to quit an app feels less error-prone than a swipe. Having a Home button means I can swipe to scroll inside an app without worrying that I may accidentally quit it or switch to another with a miscalculated swipe.

And I still maintain that all the gestures to invoke Notification Centre, Control Centre, and the multitasking UI are better implemented on the traditional, pre-iPhone X design with the Home button.

But Apple has moved away from it. If it weren’t for the iPhone SE line, I would have already looked elsewhere. And given that it’s highly likely that the iPhone SE 4 will embrace the newer, notched design, it does really feel like the end of the line for me as an iPhone user.

And if I’m finding the iPhone hardware design increasingly off-putting, on the software side things aren’t getting better either. I still have a couple of devices on iOS 12, and I can’t really tell the difference between iOS versions after that one. Yes, on iOS 18 you can finally customise your iPhone screen the way you want. That and Apple Intelligence are what’s going to make this iOS version somewhat distinctive. That’s not something I find especially appealing or groundbreaking.

To be perfectly clear, while I find iOS increasingly stagnant and underwhelming as a platform, that doesn’t necessarily mean I find Android to be more innovative or attractive. But we have indeed reached a point of close similarity and feature parity. Yes, there are better-designed third-party apps on iOS; but most of the ones I keep returning to have equally good Android counterparts. One thing I’ve always loved about iOS, especially in the App Store golden era, has been the sheer amount of good-quality camera and photo editing apps. But I won’t miss those, as I’ll be taking my iPhone SE with me as a secondary device anyway.

There are, however, a couple of things in this personal transition (that’s how I prefer to call it, rather than a switch) from my iPhone to the Nothing Phone and the Android platform that make me feel a little bit hesitant:

Firstly, from a mere hardware standpoint, there’s no way around it: the Nothing Phone (2a) is decidedly bigger and bulkier than the iPhone SE 3. Here are their respective dimensions:

| iPhone SE 3 | Nothing Phone (2a)
Display | 4.7 inches | 6.7 inches
Height | 138.4 mm | 161.74 mm
Width | 67.3 mm | 76.32 mm
Depth | 7.3 mm | 8.55 mm
Weight | 144 grams | 190 grams
| |

In other words, size-wise, the (2a) sits roughly between an iPhone 15 Pro Max and an iPhone 16 Pro Max, while being fractionally thicker. But since it’s made of lighter materials, it’s a bit lighter (31 grams less than the iPhone 15 Pro Max, 37 grams less than the 16 Pro Max). Still, it’s a big phone — made even slightly bigger when enclosed in its protective case. I’ve been complaining for a while now that smartphones are getting more and more cumbersome and that Apple is happily following the trend. I really like the more compact size of the iPhone SE 3, which by now I can operate almost one-handed.

However, at least at the moment, if you’re looking to upgrade your smartphone, good luck finding one with the iPhone SE’s size. It seems that the only viable option to get a decently specced compact smartphone is to get a horizontally foldable device like the Motorola Razr or the Samsung Z Flip. Even if I liked the design of the current iPhones, and decided to get the regular iPhone 16, for example, it would still be a big phone for my hands.

So, if I have no choice but to get accustomed to a big phone, at least I now have one with an interesting and distinctive design and without those huge, unwieldy, and awful camera arrays a lot of other Android phones and the pro iPhones have.

Secondly and more importantly, there’s the privacy angle. Despite my growing disenchantment with Apple and my continued criticisms, privacy is something where Apple undeniably excels at. While I couldn’t wait to set up Apple Pay to easily pay with my iPhone when my bank finally decided to make their services available through Apple Pay, I’m still torn about enabling Google Pay on the Nothing Phone.

As for the rest, I don’t think this transition is going to be particularly rocky. I’m still at the first stages, where I’m familiarising with the new smartphone and looking for familiar apps in the Play Store. I’ve already found all the essentials, and now I’m mostly looking for ‘nice to have’ apps (I strongly encourage the Android power users in my audience to reach out with suggestions for great apps, especially in the photo and RSS feed reader categories).

All in all, choosing the Nothing brand at the moment feels right; the company seems like a little Apple in the Android universe, back when Apple was the underdog and not the giant it is today. There’s a strong sense of community, and the people at Nothing seem rather open, both in discussing their hardware and software design ideas, and in taking customer feedback into consideration. I think they’re doing a good job at presenting the brand identity and philosophy via their YouTube channel. They’re certainly being successful at making their customers (and me now) not feel like just another bunch of Android users, if you know what I mean.

That’s it for now. I plan to keep you all posted about this personal transition as it unfolds, and to speak more at length about the Nothing Phone (2a), the Watch Pro 2, and Nothing OS (especially after the big upcoming update to version 3.0) in the following weeks. Meanwhile, I really welcome any kind of feedback from iPhone users who switched to Android in recent times. I’d love to know more about your experience and if you have thoughts you want to share. Check my Contact page for ways to get in touch.