I’m going to describe some very specific problems & irritations of moving from iPhone to Android or even Android to Android. This could take more than one blog entry, so I’ll start with first on my mind…
KEYBOARD TEXT REPLACEMENT / SHORTCUTS
On iOS, you can create “Text Replacements” that allow you to enter a shortcut like “abt” to get the word “about.” If you get tired of entering your address, you can make one like “addr” and up pops your whole address.
Now, you can do this on Android too. The problem is, YOU CAN’T SAVE YOUR DICTIONARY! If you upgrade from the S7 to S8, all your text shortcuts are gone even if you use their Smart Switch app. You can have months, even years, of valuable shortcuts lost with no way of transferring them to your new device.
Some will say, just use the SwiftKey keyboard! Hey, it’s a great keyboard. Love it. Been using it for a long time. Guess what?? Can’t save your text shortcuts there either! Many have asked for this feature. The company’s reply is they don’t offer that feature because many people are concerned about security so they don’t save them. What?! OK, we’re already trusting you with every keystroke and entry by using your keyboard! Also, shouldn’t you be encrypting that stuff anyway?! Fail.
People familiar with iOS come to expect their Text Replacement to work. Not only that, they bitch and complain when it doesn’t automatically sync between all their devices! If only Android had something remotely as functional!
Granted, for years, iOS has had such a basic, shitty keyboard without swype that it’s a major pain hunting and pecking on their tiny keyboard for anything, especially before Apple decided to build an iPhone big enough to actually use for heavy media and social networking capability.
Now, you can finally use a 3rd party keyboard on your iPhone, but you are given a serious warning of the dangers of using such an app… Uh, they can capture everything you type. They obviously knew this and have obliged people who wish to “hang themselves” this way.
In all my searching, I’ve not found a comparable solution for Android. You can find keyboards (if you trust them with your data) that allow you to add text replacement shortcuts, but none that save them so you can restore them on a future phone upgrade. Even more significantly, there’s no comparable program like iTunes for backing up everything on your Android to make it easy to change phones. Not even people who root their Android devices, I have, can succeed at this. Going to a new device with a backup of a previous and different Android device won’t work. I don’t even like iTunes, but at least it backs up your phone–even the details. Apple’s cloud backup isn’t as detailed, btw. If you upgrade your device, you can restore your old apps and data on the new phone. Android has this but in a partial way. It’s open to the 3rd party app developer but many don’t take advantage of this. So, you end up losing valuable data from specific apps. Apps like a keyboard or a GPS program with hundred of waypoints. Then you have to go in one by one to restore that data in each app. For text replacement shortcuts, there’s no solution. The idea of pressing one button to backup it all is a luxury Apple users take for granted and demand, while Android uses are used to taking a “back seat” and can expect to do countless hours of restoration. If you accept being treated like second class citizens, you probably will be.
This leads me to the next, and broader topic, of backup solutions for Android compared to iOS. I’ll cover that in another blog to come!
If you have found a solution to the above problem, I’d love to hear about it in the comments section!
Pine Mountain Walker 