When I first asked why people dumped their Android phones for iPhones, I figured most people who replied would come from having a Samsung Galaxy S. Samsung just always seemed like the iPhone placeholder. In other words, the phone you get when the iPhone isn't yet on your carrier or doesn't yet come in the display size you want. Now the iPhone is on almost every carrier, however, and has bigger and better screens. Turns out the reasons were broader and more varied than I imagined. So, why did our readers switch to iPhone?
Over the last month or so we've gone over a lot of the most common reasons — Touch ID and Apple Pay, Apple Stores and AppleCare, better camera, better apps, and better privacy and security.
Some of you seem to have done it for sheer happiness, like reader MrMojoRaisin69:
I dumped the Samsung Galaxy S5 for the iPhone 6 and it was the best thing I've ever done !!! Never going back !
Others found the bloatware typically installed on Samsung phones annoying, like GGIBS
My S5 was also 16gb (never saw a 32 gb in the wild) and that was without the bloatware. Samsung phones on ATT come with lots of bloatware apps I can't uninstall without a jailbreak which honestly I didn't want to do. But space was at a premium all of the time. My new 64gb iPhone means I can put what I want and likely never have to think about it. I still use Google Play music but works just as well on the iPhone.
Same with mattjohnson78:
I was a longtime Android user, mainly the Samsung Note 1, 2, and 3 and other Samsung phones, but as the the phones became filled with Bloatware I spent more time rooting them and installing more ROMs to get rid of the Samsung UI and all the Bloatware installed.
TouchWiz, the interface Samsung shellacks on top of Android, was an issue for akin1025:
I also recently switched from Android (Samsung S4) back to iOS (iPhone 6+). To be honest, I completely loathed TouchWiz and nightlies became tiresome.
davinreader simply felt let down by the Samsung Galaxy S5 in general:
Switched from a Samsung Galaxy S5 to an (albeit older) iPhone 5S and I actually like it more. I mainly switched because I wasn't on a contract (T-Mobile) and I felt like the Galaxy S5 was a letdown. Poor design, laggy software and horrible low light photos made me feel like the phone wasn't "personal" to me, something very important in today's time.
Meh89052 just felt the Galaxy S5 kept getting worse:
I changed from a Samsung S5 to an iPhone 6 Plus. I got an S5 the week that it came out. I loved the phone up and until the first update. All of the following updates made the phone progressively worse. I could no longer rely on receiving phone calls or texts on a regular basis.
The camera, perhaps surprisingly for the megapixel fixated, also drove switchers like missygaw:
My entire family (4 of us) dropped our Samsung Galaxy for iPhone6. Various reasons - my son preferred the greater app options. But all of us HATED the photos that the Samsung took.
Why did you switch to iPhone?
I find all of these answers, and the many more I received, really interesting because Samsung has spent so much money on marketing to make its brand so recognizable in the phone business. Now that I've seen the wide array of responses, however, it makes me want to find out even more.
I'm especially interested because of the just-announced Samsung Galaxy S6, where the company not only jettisoned its own design language to once again ape Apple, but also jettisoned those features — user-changable battery, waterproofing, and expandable storage — that only months ago had been among its biggest competitive differentiators. I wonder if making an iPhone-like phone will keep customers who want an iPhone-like phone but not from Apple, or if it will push even more people towards just getting an authentic iPhone instead?
So, if you ditched your Samsung Galaxy S for an iPhone, I'd love to know why. Was it one specific reason, like the camera or privacy? Or was it a combination of reasons, from hardware to software, quality to feature set? If you haven't switched yet but are considering it, is it because of the changes made to the Galaxy S6? Leave your answer in the comments and we'll use some of the most interesting and insightful in future columns!
