I’m starting to feel old. Like, for real.

I used to love customising my phone’s home screen – to make it as minimalist as possible. Now, I look at all the widget apps in App Store… yes all very nice but I no longer have the urge to tinker with them. I also can’t think of a specific home screen look that I really wanna go for, so what I’m having right now is basic but utilitarian. Nothing fancy.

I’m trying to visualise what I would want to see if I’m gonna dig deep into this customising part, when I realised if I do go customise and overhaul the home screen layout completely, I won’t be able to get to the apps I want quickly. And right now, utility outweighs aesthetics in my mind (for now, that is).

Is it because I’m getting old, that’s why I’m starting to not care that much about aesthetics? I mean, no one’s gonna be looking at my phone but me. My phone is a tool (yes I’ve always said my phone is my boyfriend and it still is!) and being able to get to my apps should be my priority, aye?

That aside, I’m still trying to visualise a good looking home screen while having all that I want to see at the same time… if I can come up with an idea, I’d still go for it. Unless it’s gonna kill my battery life, which I’m sure can happen to some extent… widgets eat batteries quite a bit since they need constant background app refresh to work…

So after about 7 days of usage, here are some thoughts on my iPhone 16 Pro Max after using Android for more than a decade.

Pros:

• Face ID is quick, but a little iffy with mask on. Absolutely zero issues without a mask though. Authenticating apps without mask on is a breeze.
• Apps don’t need to be killed in order not to slow down the phone – iOS’ ram management is great (but it has it’s downsides obviously)
• Camera wasn’t as bad as I expected. Pretty sure digital zoom would suck more than my Pixel, but I’m already mentally prepared for that, and likely won’t even attempt to take photos that require max digital zoom. But at least I do get photos that appear to have the same colours as what my eyes are seeing. Whether I want any post edits or not – that’s up to me. And iPhone original photo already looks rather decent, just not as vibrant since iOS didn’t slap aggressive AI edit on the original photo.
• Battery life is amazing (yes, probably due to the phone being extremely new)
• I finally can have digital Suica and don’t have to fumble for the physical card anymore when in Japan!!!!!!
• Spatial audio is holy shit amazing
• Airpods Pro 2 ANC blows Pixel Buds Pro out of the water

Cons:

• Bought a magsafe cover, hoping to have my office access card in a magsafe cardholder that snaps to the phone so that I don’t need to juggle with my phone, office access card, breakfast and coffee every morning at work, but nah my office NFC reader just couldn’t read the office access card off the magsafe wallet. Meh. The NFC field in iPhone seems way too strong…
• Can’t set payment card to Express Travel Mode in Singapore yet… having to authenticate transport payments via Face ID is quite a pain with a mask on
• Phone isn’t that heavy, but slapping on the magsafe case makes it very heavy, thanks to the magnets on the case…
• Wish the snooze button on the alarm can be bigger and that I could choose my own song in the sleep schedule under Health app.
• Tapping the widget in control center to off wifi will only kept it off for the rest of the day – it auto connects back the next day. I have to go deep into settings to turn Wifi off. And I can’t turn on personal hotspot for other devices to connect if my Wifi is off. WTF? Why, Apple??
• I still can’t get used to the keyboard…… aaaaahhhhhh *tears hair in frustration* Gboard sucks in iOS too. Default keyboard sucks ass too. Worse still, iOS Swiftkey doesn’t have Chinese and Japanese language pack. Seriously, Microsoft?!
• Siri sucks. I miss Google Assistant T_T
• I miss Android’s “Mark as Read” feature in most notifications. Why do I have to go into the individual apps just to see what I’ve already seen in the notifications in order to clear badges? And if I turn off badges for all apps, I could jolly well miss some important messages because I swipe away the notifications too fast….
• Camera control button too iffy to use. I’ll be sticking to onscreen buttons instead…
• I miss my “back” gesture on Android. Swiping from left to right to go back in iOS is such a user-unfriendly feature. How to swipe left to right if you are a right hander holding a 6.9″ phone?! You probably need to have a hand as huge as Yao Ming’s in order to do that comfortably with one hand…

My main gripe is still the keyboard. And that I don’t have the “Mark as Read” feature in notifications anymore.

But, there’s no best of both worlds… I can only continue to try and adapt…

Am I happy with the phone? Yes, despite all the gripes and cons that I was ranting about, it’s still a very good phone, more than enough for my usage, actually. Can’t wait to bring it with me for my JP travel this coming December!