Zen Buddhism & the Samsung Galaxy S8

4 hours. That’s how long I lasted with an Android device before suffering from severe iOS withdrawals. Buddha said this would happen…

After Buddha gave up worldly life and sat down for meditation under the Bodhi tree, he attained enlightenment. He laid down his teachings in easily understandable language for the common man in the form of Four Noble truths.

Over the course of 4 hours I experienced each of the noble truths on the path to mobile enlightenment.

First Noble Truth — To Live Means To Suffer

Lately I’ve become really tired of Apple’s ecosystem of mediocre apps that are shoved down my proverbial throat. Mail works well enough but hasn’t kept pace with the continuing improvements by apps such as Outlook, Airmail, and Spark. Snoozing, intelligent inboxes, great Gmail support etc are all lacking. Although I can install these third party apps and remove the default Mail app, I still can’t set one of these mail apps as the default.

The same set of circumstances goes for other core apps such as the web browser, calendar, and reminders. All are functional, none are great. None are the ones I want as the defaults.

Siri often takes 20 seconds to start a 1 minute timer, answers simple questions with web searches, and for the most part only works with the default Apple apps. Want to search for a song while you’re driving? Good luck. Apple would literally prefer that you die in a fiery crash than to surface music from Spotify via Siri.

Every day at some point I think “this is a really mediocre experience, with the resources at Apple’s disposal it should be better.”

Second Noble Truth — The Origin Of Suffering Is Attachment

Having been eager to leave the iOS ecosystem, I’ve abandoned Apple Music in favor of Spotify, left Apple Notes in favor of Google Keep, replaced Apple Mail with Spark, and replaced my Apple TV with the new Amazon Fire TV box. For the most part I am no longer wed to the Apple ecosystem.

When Google announced the Pixel I was intrigued. It looked nice and perhaps the Android ecosystem had matured since the last time I tried it. I use Apple pay a lot and Android pay is just so far behind that I wasn’t willing to abandon the app that nearly replaces my wallet at many retailers.

I began to consider the possibility that someday Android would make switching from iOS an upgrade. Perhaps I could detach from the Apple ecosystem.

Third Noble Truth — The Cessation Of Suffering Is Attainable

So when the Samsung Galaxy S8 was released I was intrigued. It appeared as though the hardware was superior in every way, that the OS had matured, and that the application ecosystem was robust.

Was it possible? Could it be that finally I could have a phone that allowed customization but was also beautiful, stable, and didn’t require sacrifice?

I went into the AT&T store to buy a no-contract Galaxy S8. After about 30 minutes of playing with the devices I was convinced that in fact this was superior hardware. In what can only be described as a manic moment, I pulled the trigger and walked out with an Android device. It was a freeing experience. I would no longer be a slave to the iOS ecosystem. I was defining my own path in life. I’d pick applications that met my needs, I’d set them as the default. I’d create widgets and I’d finally stop letting Tim Cook tell me what I was allowed to do with my devices.

Then as I started configuring the device, I began experiencing the realism of the Android ecosystem and all the crapware that Samsung had shoved into the phone. Bixby is terrible and Bixby is everywhere. Physical buttons launch Bixby and the hacks to work around that result in a semi-functional Google voice search replacement, but one that still makes Siri look sophisticated and reliable.

As I plodded through the AT&T sponsored phone app, and the Samsung proprietary messaging app, I realized that getting this device configured would require days. Removing the stock AT&T DirectTV app is not possible. You can disable it, but it still sits there mocking you and taking up storage space. As I began customizing the applications I wanted, things began slowing down, and the phone began heating up.

Every time I opened the device I was presented with the “Always On” screen, which after unlocking took me to the “lock screen”. So effectively to get to the phone I have to unlock it twice. Great job Samsung.

Notifications came in for new mail and new Twitter messages, but the notification system itself doesn’t open the application that caused the notification when clicked.

After a few hours of playing with this fucking cesspool of bastardized corporate shit branding and installing a bazillion hack applications to customize launchers and bypass settings, this is how I felt.

But still I pressed on. Until true panic set in.

My daughter plays with the neighborhood kids. It’s awesome, after school they are climbing trees, selling lemonade, and playing with puppies, it’s truly Rockwallian. The neighborhood parents have an ongoing group text where we keep track of where the children are playing. I always know that my daughter is safe, even if she’s not with me.

So when I hadn’t heard from anybody in a few hours on a Friday after school, I shot off my usual “Has anybody seen _____?” text to track her down.

No responses. No typing indicators. Nothing. Panic set in.

Despite having followed the steps to disable iMessage entirely. All of the other parent’s texts were going into a black hole. I wasn’t receiving them on any device (iPad, Mac, Android via text).

Panic set in and it was at that point that I realized that Tim Cook has me by the short & curlies. iMessage is irreplaceable and there is no alternative for Android that even begins to approach it’s ubiquity.

Fourth Noble Truth — The Path To The Cessation Of Suffering

Although I may have been willing to stick with Android for a few weeks to really give it a fighting chance, the iMessage debacle was enough. No amount of early adopter techno pride could justify losing access to group texts with all of the other iOS users that i know (which is essentially everybody).

So four hours after purchasing my S8. I was standing in line (for an hour) at the same AT&T store asking them to put my iPhone back on the plan.

Now, when I look at my mediocre Apple iOS device, I’m satisfied that at least everything mostly works most of the time. I’ve settled. I’ve accepted that despite it’s imperfections, iOS is still orders of magnitude better than Android in virtually every way.

Love this article? Awesome, be a doll and do 3 things:

1) Click on the 💚.
2) Share it on Twitter.
3) Share it on Facebook.