It makes sense that size is the most talked point in the HN crowd. But I think the headlining feature for most people would be the price.
I've been using Apple devices exclusively for 10 years until 2016 or so but I reckon it's become incredibly bloated UX on iOS devices, at least from my very anecdotal perspective.
Meanwhile Android seems much more 'sane' for me as a user, but more so software developer aware of the cost of bad UX.
So I'm wondering, in making this choice to go for SE rather than 4a, I'm assuming you're familiar with both OS, how do you think they compare?
I really like what I hear about the iPhone SE but immediately I remember how dreadful my experience is every time I have to use an iOS device, they're just so unnatural to me, just so weird UI/UX choices. I feel like they're maybe great for seniors but as a 37 nerd/geek I feel lost with iOS. It's just not doing what I want it to. Like Windows 10. Like Gnome. I tolerate KDE because it's great but it's not without big issues yet.
Am I too demanding? Have I been spoiled by the best products during 30 years of computing, such that 'average' in 2020 doesn't cut it for me, or did UI/UX really get worse as I suspect?
Please, someone, in this highly popular thread, help me make sense of this perception, and see where I fit in a large 'nerdy' crowd.
I don't think it's just you - there's a lot of basic everyday functionality that is pointlessly difficult and cumbersome in iOS.
E.g. data management is still the worst of any modern OS by a huge margin, and data sharing between apps is still a half-broken mess. Even things that _should_ work with straightforward data types often don't - e.g. you can't share audiobooks to iBooks even though it can play them, or trying to share an image to an art app might simply open the app with no indication of where the image went or what went wrong. Lack of default apps means you often have to open files the long way around through a convoluted series of download/share steps. These are all things that work fine on Android, and were never a problem on desktop OSes to begin with.
My opinion: With any phone, you are going to spend most of your time in a small set of apps. As long as the OS enables those apps to perform smoothly without being intrusive, you should be good to go. There are certain platform differences that can seem like paper cuts when making a switch -> share screen, default app settings, where settings are housed (centralized in the Settings app or hamburger menu in each app), default permissions, text manipulation, and the Home Screen. There is nothing like using the device to overcome the pain of these changes. also, the good apps out there have homogenized the platforms to some extent.
I’m speaking from experience. As someone who has had iPhones since the 1st OG iPhone, I used an android device for work email for almost a year. It wasn’t easy; there were some annoyances when I switched from work to personal, regardless of direction, but I found a way to ease the cognitive load: I used 3rd party apps for most of my tasks. For example, Chrome or Firefox, Overcast for Podcasts, Pandora or Spotify, Outlook for Email, Kindle for books, etc. The good app developers do a fantastic job of smoothing over the differences between Android and iOS.
Edit: Fixed a typo
I went from iPhone (4 years) -> Android (3 years) -> iPhone (4 years), plus I used a stock Android phone for a month a while ago when I soaked my iPhone SE. I don't really see that point. For me they are about equal in interface complexity. The only thing that annoyed me in Android were the hamburger menus that were on top, which becomes painful on a large phone screen. The primary annoyance with the iPhone is that the removal of the home button introduced more gesture-driven interaction (though I like the edge to edge screen).
Apart from that, UI rendering has always been much smoother for me on iOS than Android. On Android it's generally fast, but then there are some weird hiccups.
At any rate, even if iOS was ten times more complex (which I don't believe), Android has become an unacceptable option for me due to grave violations of privacy and the amount of malware pushed through the Play Store.
In my view it's devolving into an awkward, less and less usable system. I run a phone with stock Android 9, and it does not let me set notifications to "vibrate only". I only have a choice between muting the phone(which makes me miss calls etc. because it basically plays dead) or letting it annoy me with a notification sound every couple minutes. There is no inbetween.
Also, it does not have a way to toggle automatic screen brightness aside from the switch buried in the settings.
This is, to put it mildly, insane and near unusable in my opinion.
The last 5 years I've used exclusively Windows Phone 8 and Blackberry 10 OS, and both of those are still years ahead of Android's usability even though they're both not being actively developed anymore for almost the same period. I still don't see a current smartphone on the market that comes close.