Have you been wondering where all the Google Street View car goes? Normally you can only see whether they drove down the street you're interested in by dragging the little man over the street.
But I wanted to see its route through an entire neighborhood or shopping center.
Here's how.
In Google Maps, position the map to where you want to start. Drag the little man onto the map. Notice that the routes the Google Street View car has mapped are highlighted with blue lines. But these lines are not persistent. They're only presented while you are dragging the little man.
Now drop the little man anywhere you want. That takes you into Google Street View.
Here's the fun part.
Now click the "-" in the lower right corner. This takes you out of Google Street View but leaves the routes highlighted in blue.
Some of these routes are interesting. Look at the outlots of Wolfchase Mall.
The Google Street View car drove through ALL the aisles of the Bed Bath & Beyond parking lot. Was he looking for his girlfriend's car or what?
I continue coming up to speed on Windows 10. Overall it is still going well. There are just bumps in the road here and there.
I'm working toward upgrading my wife's ThinkPad T420s. I want it to go smoothly (which I fully expect) and quickly (the subject of this post).
To make it go quickly my idea was to have the latest Windows 10 bits downloaded. To do this I ran the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool.
I had used the Media Creation Tool before. But this time it was different.
I tried it on a new PC. One where I had taken my own advice and made the default user NOT an administrator.
The tool downloaded successfully and ran through its first couple of screens asking for the administrator's password. I'm not sure why it needs administrator rights but anyway...
Then I gave it access to the USB drive I wanted to use for my fresh media.
There was a problem running this tool. We're not sure what happened, but we're unable to run this tool on your PC. If you continue experiencing problems, reference the error code when contacting customer support. Error code: 0x800704DD - 0x90016.
"We're not sure what happened?" C'mon Microsoft. Nobody but you can know what happened.
So I started searching Google for this and came across this.
The net of this is that to create a USB drive you have to run the Media Creation Tool while logged in as an administrator.
So Google Photos has free unlimited storage. Not. That's a whole another discussion. This post is to cover what to do when you discover that you are using too much of your free 15GB of Google storage for photos.
If you've been following my TiVomigration you probably noticed that I had a lot of equipment that I took out of service: 2 TiVo Premieres, a Western Digital 1TB My Book AV DVR Expander, and a Linksys WES610N.
When I called TiVo to ask them to discontinue service on the 2 Premieres they told me that they were eligible for lifetime service for a one-time fee of $99 each. So I suspended the service on the 2 Premieres and went to eBay to see what a Premiere was worth with lifetime service.
Let's just say I was inspired.
In the end I sold the 2 TiVo Premieres upgraded to lifetime service, the Western Digital 1TB My Book AV DVR Expander, and a Linksys WES610N (new in the box) and netted over $500 after all charges and fees.
This improves the business case on my Roamio upgrade to being in the black from the start with a long term savings of more than $37/month ($50/month for the the first year). And I doubled my recording capacity and added TiVo capability in the kitchen.
I didn't mean to start down this road but it just happened.
We had a 9 year old Astar MP-32HB TV in our bedroom. It was 32" but had the speakers on the sides so it was huge. Just before Black Friday Best Buy had a 40" Insignia NS-40D420NA16 on sale for $180. Why not?
Then the 8 year old 52" Sony KDL52W3000 in the den had a stripe near the left side. Sure it went away in 15 minutes or so but I knew it was going to get bigger and more persistent. Again Best Buy had a 55" Toshiba 55L310U on sale for $350. That was easy.
The TiVo Mini in the bedroom worked so well that I wanted to put one in the kitchen. I had been using a Comcast Digital Transport Adapter (SD only and no premium channels) and they were going up to $4 per month. I found Amazon had TiVo Minis on sale and bought a second one for the kitchen. By the way, the sale price was less than what I had paid for the first one so Amazon gave me a credit for the difference. Nice!
But wait, I don't have Ethernet in the kitchen. I thought about using a Linksys WES610N like I was using in the bedroom but that requires more wires.
Hmmm.
Then I noticed that the Minis supported MoCA. And the TiVo Roamio functions as a bridge between Ethernet and MoCA.
I configured the Roamio to support MoCA and put a MoCA Point of Entry Filter in front of the Comcast amplifier/splitter.
It worked so well in the kitchen that I converted the bedroom to MoCA and retired the Linksys WES610N.
I've had a 2012 Nexus 7 Wi-Fi since early 2013. It came with 4.1.2 JZO54K Jellybean. I've loved the size and the access to the latest version of Android. I dropped it late in 2013 and replaced the screen myself.
The Android journey has been long. Along he way I upgraded it from 4.1.2 to 4.2.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.4.2, 4.4.3, 4.4.4, 5.0 5.0.2, 5.1.0, and 5.1.1.
This was hard on the Nexus 7. The Internet is full of bad experiences of updating the 2012 Nexus 7 to Lollipop. My experience was pretty much aligned with these.
The Nexus 7 would just crawl. It especially seemed to be slow if you tried to do anything while you were letting the Google Play Store update apps. Once it got slow there was no fixing it. Rebooting didn't help.
But after my experience with adb on my Nexus 5 I got brave enough to reflash the Nexus 7 with 5.1.1 LMY47V.
That process was similarly complicated as the Nexus 5 process. At one point the screen displayed "REBOOT FAILURE." And when it finally came up it was sluggish for several hours.
But the result was well worth it. The Nexus 7 is working fine. Sure it's not as fast as a new Android tablet but its performance is consistently Ok. Not bad for an almost 4 year old tablet.
I left the bootloader unlocked so I'm watching for CyanogenMod to drop Marshmallow.
So there isn't a Google Photos Public Gallery, you say? Well, there is, Kinda. But you have to access it via Picasaweb.
This continues my rant about apparently deprecated functions from Picasaweb to Google Photos.
When you first login to Picasaweb you have to create your Google Profile. You used to have to do this to use much of Google but that has generally been eliminated. However this seems to be the key to having a public gallery of photos.
Once you create your Google Profile you are able to go to Picasaweb. You probably want to click on "View All" to see all your albums (collections?).
Now you can see all of your Google Photos albums.
To put one of these in a public gallery click on the album thumbnail and then choose "Album properties" from the "Actions" dropdown.
Under "Visibility" choose "Public on the web" and click on "Save". Realize that you just put all your photos "Public on the web."
You're halfway there.
Go back to Picasaweb and click on "My Photos" and then click on "Public Gallery".
Now copy that URL.
That's the URL of your public gallery.
You're done.
Unfortunately that doesn't present in the Google Photos UI. Honestly that's a mixed blessing.
Update: If you're interested in this you'd better hurry.
There are so many good choices for automatically storing images from your smartphone. I've been using a couple of them and wanted to review the resulting images and metadata.
On my Nexus I have Dropbox and Google Photos both set to automatically upload images when I'm on Wi-Fi. When I want to "archive" a photo, I transfer it from my smartphone to my laptop using Bluetooth.
Here are the actual images:
Dropbox
Bluetooth
Google Photos
To my untrained eye, the images are visually indistinguishable.
But the files are different. Here're the details as I observed. (complete data at the end of the post)
File Names Dropbox: 2015-12-16 16.12.47.jpg
Bluetooth: IMG_20151216_161246.jpg
Google Photos: IMG_20151216_161246.jpg
Notice that not only does Dropbox rename the file but the implied date/time is different than the other methods.
File Size:
Dropbox: 2,623,643
Bluetooth: 2,623,643 Google Photos: 1,557,928
This is using Google Photos "Upload size" set to "High quality", not "Original". In this test Google further compressed the image by 40%.
The other characteristics and metadata are all the same as far as I can tell.
So what am I going to change?
Nothing, yet.
For me each of these tools have different use cases.
For Dropbox, I really like having my images automatically stored in a Windows file system. There's probably some method to accomplish this with Google Photos but it doesn't just jump out at me. I really don't like that Dropbox renames the files.
Bluetooth is clearly the geek's solution. I only use this method when I want to preserve a high quality image. The file system target for the Bluetooth upload varies by whether the file is an image or a video. I probably could change that.
Google Photos is the slickest tool. It's fast and easy to manage. Using "High quality" (which really isn't high quality) is free. I wish that Google wouldn't recompress the images when they fall below 16 megapixels. Since my camera is 8 megapixels I tried changing the "Upload size" to "Original" and sending the image again. I had the same result of additional compression. There are still some outstanding questions to me about this. How long does it take to Google Photos to recognize and act on this Settings change? Does this Settings change on the phone propagate to the web uploading? I'll keep playing with this.
Have fun!
Image properties
Image name : 2015-12-16 16.12.47 (Dropbox upload).jpg
Folder : C:\Users\Ben Moore\Desktop\Uploads\
Size : 3200 x 2368 pixels ==> 44.44 x 32.89 inches (72.00 dpi)
Color count : 518272
File size : 2.50 Mb
Date : 12/16/2015 4:12 PM
EXIF
Date Time=2015:12:16 16:12:47
GPSDate Stamp=2015:12:16
GPSLongitude Ref=W
GPSLongitude=89 Degrees 33 Minutes 49 Seconds
GPSImage Direction=297/1
GPSLatitude Ref=N
GPSTime Stamp=22:12:34
GPSImage Direction Ref=M
GPSLatitude=34 Degrees 49 Minutes 55 Seconds
GPSInfo=692
Model=Nexus 5
Image Width=3200
Resolution Unit=Inch
YCb Cr Positioning=Centered
Image Length=2368
YResolution=72.00
Orientation=Normal
Software=HDR+ 1.0.106412213y
Color Space=sRGB
FNumber=F2.4
Date Time Digitized=2015:12:16 16:12:47
Subject Distance Range=Unknown
Focal Length=3.97 mm
Aperture Value=F2.5
Exposure Mode=Auto
Exif Image Length=2368
Custom Rendered=Custom process
Max Aperture Value=F2.5
Scene Capture Type=Standard
Scene Type=Directly Photographed
Digital Zoom Ratio=1/1
Saturation=Normal
Exposure Program=Normal
Sharpness=Normal
Exif Image Width=3200
Shutter Speed Value=0.0487 sec (1/21)
Metering Mode=Center
Date Time Original=2015:12:16 16:12:47
Components Configuration=YCbCr
Subject Distance=0/1
Flash=Off, surpressed
Exif Version=0210
Contrast=Normal
ISOSpeed Ratings=587
Sensing Method=OneChipColorArea
Flash Pix Version=0100
Exposure Time=48861/1000000 sec
Exif Offset=234
XResolution=72.00
Make=LGE
Comment
Dropbox
Image properties
Image name : IMG_20151216_161246 (Bluetooth transfer).jpg
Folder : C:\Users\Ben Moore\Desktop\Uploads\
Size : 3200 x 2368 pixels ==> 44.44 x 32.89 inches (72.00 dpi)
Color count : 518272
File size : 2.50 Mb
Date : 12/16/2015 10:03 PM
EXIF
Date Time=2015:12:16 16:12:47
GPSDate Stamp=2015:12:16
GPSLongitude Ref=W
GPSLongitude=89 Degrees 33 Minutes 49 Seconds
GPSImage Direction=297/1
GPSLatitude Ref=N
GPSTime Stamp=22:12:34
GPSImage Direction Ref=M
GPSLatitude=34 Degrees 49 Minutes 55 Seconds
GPSInfo=692
Model=Nexus 5
Image Width=3200
Resolution Unit=Inch
YCb Cr Positioning=Centered
Image Length=2368
YResolution=72.00
Orientation=Normal
Software=HDR+ 1.0.106412213y
Color Space=sRGB
FNumber=F2.4
Date Time Digitized=2015:12:16 16:12:47
Subject Distance Range=Unknown
Focal Length=3.97 mm
Aperture Value=F2.5
Exposure Mode=Auto
Exif Image Length=2368
Custom Rendered=Custom process
Max Aperture Value=F2.5
Scene Capture Type=Standard
Scene Type=Directly Photographed
Digital Zoom Ratio=1/1
Saturation=Normal
Exposure Program=Normal
Sharpness=Normal
Exif Image Width=3200
Shutter Speed Value=0.0487 sec (1/21)
Metering Mode=Center
Date Time Original=2015:12:16 16:12:47
Components Configuration=YCbCr
Subject Distance=0/1
Flash=Off, surpressed
Exif Version=0210
Contrast=Normal
ISOSpeed Ratings=587
Sensing Method=OneChipColorArea
Flash Pix Version=0100
Exposure Time=48861/1000000 sec
Exif Offset=234
XResolution=72.00
Make=LGE
Comment
Bluetooth
Image properties
Image name : IMG_20151216_161246 (Google Photos download).jpg
Folder : C:\Users\Ben Moore\Desktop\Uploads\
Size : 3200 x 2368 pixels ==> 44.44 x 32.89 inches (72.00 dpi)
Color count : 515986
File size : 1.49 Mb
Date : 12/16/2015 10:19 PM
EXIF
Image Width=3200
Image Length=2368
Make=LGE
Model=Nexus 5
Orientation=Normal
XResolution=72.00
YResolution=72.00
Resolution Unit=Inch
Software=HDR+ 1.0.106412213y
Date Time=2015:12:16 16:12:47
YCb Cr Positioning=Centered
Exposure Time=48861/1000000 sec
FNumber=F2.4
Exposure Program=Normal
ISOSpeed Ratings=587
Exif Version=0210
Date Time Original=2015:12:16 16:12:47
Date Time Digitized=2015:12:16 16:12:47
Components Configuration=YCbCr
Shutter Speed Value=0.0487 sec (1/21)
Aperture Value=F2.5
Max Aperture Value=F2.5
Subject Distance=0/1
Metering Mode=Center
Flash=Off, surpressed
Focal Length=3.97 mm
Flash Pix Version=0100
Color Space=sRGB
Exif Image Width=3200
Exif Image Length=2368
Sensing Method=OneChipColorArea
Scene Type=Directly Photographed
Custom Rendered=Custom process
Exposure Mode=Auto
Digital Zoom Ratio=1/1
Scene Capture Type=Standard
Contrast=Normal
Saturation=Normal
Sharpness=Normal
Subject Distance Range=Unknown
Image Unique ID=07daf91361effb820000000000000000
Exif Offset=234
GPSLatitude Ref=N
GPSLatitude=34 Degrees 49 Minutes 55 Seconds
GPSLongitude Ref=W
GPSLongitude=89 Degrees 33 Minutes 49 Seconds
GPSAltitude Ref=Sealevel
GPSTime Stamp=22:12:34
GPSImage Direction Ref=M
GPSImage Direction=297/1
GPSDate Stamp=2015:12:16
GPSInfo=738
The 16GB Nexus 5 was too nice to just send back so I gave it away.
Then the 32GB Nexus 5 arrived. I started down the road to updating it.
But...
The OTA updates came to a screeching halt after 5.1.1 LMY48B. None of my normal activities (e.g. power cycle, factory data reset, cache wipe, etc.) would get it to update further.
I posted my dilemma on reddit and began a very helpful dialog with raxiel.
raxiel walked me through sideloading the OTA updates with adb. I had trouble getting Windows to recognize the driver from the SDK folder usb_driver and had to create a new android_winusb.inf file using the information in this post. Even then I had to force Windows Device Manager to use that driver.
I sideloaded a couple of OTA versions but the Nexus 5 still wouldn't automatically apply the subsequent OTAs.
I began a non-productive dialog with the retailer about returning it as defective. This encouraged me to look for an alternative.
raxiel was hanging in there with me. He suggested that I just flash the factory image for 6.0.1 MMB29K. While that would have gotten the Nexus 5 current I wouldn't have known whether subsequent OTAs would apply.
So I flashed the factory image for 6.0.0 MRA58K.
The complete list of available factory images and flashing instructions is here.
That page makes it sound simple to flash factory images. The reality is that it's tricky. For example, if you haven't already unlocked the device's bootloader, when you do that it does a factory data reset on the phone and you have to go back and re-enable Developer Mode and then USB Debugging. Then you have to confirm the RSA signatures again.
In the end I found this YouTube video that walked though the process.
One slight twist that I made is that when I extracted the factory image from the download I copied the extracted folder to my desktop. Then since fastboot needs to be available for the flash-all script I copied (didn't move) the contents of the platform-tools subfolder installed with the SDK install into the new folder on my desktop. Read that twice before you do it.
Understandably this video edits out the elapsed time. And the adb output on the video shows a time of 122 seconds. I don't know what that time represents. Mine was 144 seconds. More importantly the total elapsed time was almost 10 minutes with long periods that appeared to have no activity.
When I completed the flash I re-enabled Developer Mode and then USB Debugging so I could relock the bootloader. And then a factory data reset to disable Developer Mode.
The good news is that as soon as I connected to Wi-Fi the Nexus 5 began an OTA of 6.0.0 MRA58N.
TiVo had a big Black Friday sale. I got to looking at replacing my aging TiVo Premiere (with a 1TB external drive) in the den and the smaller TiVo Premiere in the master bedroom with current devices.
I bought a TiVo Roamio Plus for the den and a TiVo Mini for the master bedroom.
This tremendously simplified the number and age of the moving parts.
I replaced the 1TB hard drive in the Roamio with a 3TB even before I powered it up.
The Mini is pretty much a regular TiVo with no tuners and no hard drive. It "borrows" a tuner from the Roamio as needed and streams recordings from the Roamio.
The Roamio supports streaming to mobile devices so I can watch recorded programs on my smartphone or tablet.
The November 2015 software update added QuickMode.
QuickMode allows you to play recordings faster - at 1.3 x normal speed - with pitch-corrected audio, so you don't have to put up with high-pitched squeaky audio while you watch your favorite programs in less time.
The Roamio came with 12 months of TiVo service included and going forward service will be less than half of what the Premieres cost. The Mini doesn't require TiVo service. Nor does the Mini require a CableCARD so there's less money to Comcast which is always a good thing.
The break even is just over a year and the savings are $20+ per month after that.
A while back my Comcast Internet connection and television service started going down every day around 9:00AM and coming back up just before noon. Needless to say this was frustrating.
And Comcast customer service was no help at all. I started asking them for credit for the outages. They would give me a day of service credit for each instance. I would call them up and ask them to put a note in my account. Then once a week I'd call them and ask for a credit.
This got to be a record keeping problem. And I wanted to know whether the problem was outside of my neighborhood, on my Comcast "LAN", just my modem or just my router.
Don't the specifications of the Nexus 5 look familiar? They're almost exactly the same as the iPhone 6. Look at this. And the iPhone 6 is a 10 months newer design.
iOS 9 has a "Back to..." button in the top left corner if you go from one app to another, e.g. Hangouts to Settings. But this is only one level and doesn't always persist if you navigate within the second app.
Screen Resolution
The Moto X is 720 x 1280. The OnePlus One is 1920 x 1080. The iPhone 6 is 750 x 1334 unless Zoomed (then 640 x 1136) which is the same resolution as the iPhone 5. Zoomed gives you 1 less row of icons.
SmartLock vs. Touch ID
Lollipop's SmartLock with Trusted Devices, Trusted Locations and On-Body Detection only requires unlocking the Android phone with a PIN a few times per day. The iPhone's Touch ID requires unlocking the iPhone with a fingerprint every time you want to use it. Further the sequence that you use, e.g. notification displayed, tap Home button, pressing thumb on Home button vs. swiping notification, pressing thumb on Home button, have different results.
Hotspot
I had to call AT&T to activate the hotspot although it had been working fine under Android. And you can't change the SSID without renaming the phone.
Google Voice Voicemail
Something in the back and forth migration disabled my Google Voice voicemail. Almost certainly a one time issue.
iMessage
iMessage was turned on by default. There are stories about how difficult it is to migrate from iMessage back to native SMS. After weeks of discussions with Apple Care I'm still not receiving group MMS from some iMessage users.
Also, you can't integrate Google Hangouts into iMessage so I had 2 different messaging apps.
Voice Controls
I hadn't realized how much I depended on Android's voice controls, Moto Voice and Ok Google. I had to turn off Ok Google detection on the OnePlus One but I still could dictate brief text messages using the microphone icon on the keyboard. And on the Moto X I could listen to and respond to text messages without even taking the phone out of its holster. None of this is available on the iPhone.
I didn't exercise Siri.
Motorola Connect
The Motorola Connect app on the Moto X connects to a Chrome extension on a PC to giving me bi-directional connection to the Moto X's SMS. I din't realize how much I used that until it was gone. iMessage has this function on other Apple devices.
Motorola withdrew Motorola Connect in November 2015.
Accessories
Obviously accessories for the iPhone are widely available. I've struggled with my niche Android phones to find holsters and charging docks. More mainstream Android phones likely wouldn't have that problem.
I like carbon fiber on my smartphones going back to my Samsung Captivate. The iPhone 6 I bought was space gray so I added a nice carbon fiber skin.
Conclusion
I loved the size of the iPhone 6 but with the differences in how iOS operated compared to Android I couldn't rationalize the $500 expenditure.
As I discussed this journey with the president of our company he said "iPhone users just don't understand what they're missing." I'll leave that attributed to him.
Next I wondered how to get photos from the iPhone to my PC. I had been using Bluetooth on my Android devices. (I will discuss Dropbox and Google Photos later.)
Again iTunes came up. The only alternative I came up with was a USB cable. Not as capable as I expected.
Non-Apple App Configuration
Hangouts notification sounds - You can't setup a custom notification sound for Google Hangouts.
Notifications for Hangouts didn't work at all (not even an icon badge) until I had the Hangouts app active when it received a message. Hangouts worked anywhere after that.
GasBuddy startup - You can't set a startup page for GasBuddy like you can in Android. If the app has closed it starts at the "Find Gas Near Me" page. Otherwise it returns to the last used page
Pocket Casts - You can't set a unilateral playback speed. Changing the "Up Next" sequence requires an extra step to "Edit" the list where in Android it's just tap and hold to move. It's very unusual for an Android app to have a more optimal user experience.
Direct dial icons - You simply can't do it. This would be a homescreen widget in Android. There are some workaround apps that use Safari but they aren't very elegant.
Swype - Swype caused the Gmail app to terminate when tapping the "Search" button on the Inbox screen. This worked fine using Apple keyboard. I'm sure that will be fixed. Also, Apple switches back to the Apple keyboard when entering passwords. Probably a good idea but a little disconcerting.
Google Maps - When using Google Maps navigation with the origin being the current location, iOS doesn't seem to give Google Maps the current location. It seems to give Google Maps the location that you were at when you last used Google Maps.
Other iDevices Ringing with iPhone
By default all devices on the same iTunes account ring when the iPhone rings. It took a little while to find that setting with some spousal consternation.
Background Processing
Google Photos - Google Photos doesn't upload photos until you launch the app. And if it starts uploading and you navigate to another app it stops after 5 minutes. Here's a "cool hack" to get around this.
Dropbox - To overcome this background limitation Dropbox uses Location Services to trigger background uploads. The effectiveness depends on how often iOS notifies Dropbox that the location has changed. Casual observation indicates that iOS' location granularity is less than Android's. (more later)
Pocket Casts - Pocket Casts doesn't begin downloading podcasts until the app is launched even when plugged in. Don't forget to launch it before you go to bed. On Android Pocket Casts pauses while Runkeeper announces its intervals. On iOS Pocket Casts just keeps playing.
Gmail - My wife (using Gmail on iOS) has commented that she had received a notification of new mail but when she went to the Gmail app there was nothing new there. Then quickly she'd say "There it is." It seems that Gmail doesn't load new mail until the application is launched. There could be some other subtleties here but this is the general observation.
Google Location Tracking
iOS seems to have (or at least shares) much lower granularity of location than Android. Here is a comparison of the same GPS sensitive app (Runkeeper) running on iOS and Android. Notice that there are many more GPS fixes under Android.
Notifications
Active apps don't have a notification tray icon. This makes it difficult to negotiate back to a running app. For example if you are listening to Pocket Casts and go to Gmail and then want to return to Pocket Casts, there is no notification icon for Pocket Casts. You have to either double tap the Home button and locate Pocket Casts in the task manager (unfriendly to me as is Android's) or you have to tap the Home button to go back to the home screen, locate the Pocket Casts icon and tap it. If you haven't run another app in the interim Pocket Casts has a lock screen "widget" that you can use to manage Pocket Casts. This issue is not specific to Pocket Casts but not all apps have the lock screen interface.
Sending a text has a "whoosh" sound. If you're a "Good Wife" fan you'll remember that's how her son got in trouble. To eliminate the sent text notification tone "u can flip the switch on the side to vibrate and you wont hear anything." Really?
On the Moto X you can eliminate camera shutter sound. The OnePlus wouldn't let you do that. On the iPhone "The only way to turn this off is to turn on the mute switch." See above.
Here's the point by point comparison of my Androids and the iPhone 6. Operating System
Android Lollipop has been through 5.0, 5.0.2, 5.1, and 5.1.1. The "cellular standby" bug doesn't look like it's going to be fixed in Lollipop and my Moto X isn't getting Marshmallow.
The OnePlus One came with CyanogenMod which I originally thought was a plus. It shipped with CM 11S (4.4.4) and was upgraded to COS 12 (5.0) and COS 12.1 (5.1.1) and has gotten no updates since then (i.e. Stagefright).
iOS 9 has had its share of updates as well with 9.0, 9.0.1, 9.0.2, and 9.1.
Incidentally my gazelle iPhone came with a beta release of iOS 9.1 which caused me problems with Location Services.
Battery Life
The Moto X struggles with battery life as a result of the Lollipop "cellular standby" bug. The OnePlus One didn't have the over the top battery life I had expected. Surprisingly the iPhone 6 battery life wasn't as good as my wife's iPhone 5S. Here's my spreadsheet with battery usage.
Default Apps
As I was using Google apps I was worried about the limitations of iOS of setting alternate default apps, e.g. Safari. What I discovered was that while you're within the Google ecosystem Google can handle directing you to the desired Google app.
Ringtones
There are dozens of ways to get ringtones over to an Android phone. When I searched for how to do that on the iPhone I came across this article.
Really, 16 easy steps?
When I reached out to a friend who is very technical and a died in the wool Apple user he replied:
Lastly, while I don’t really recommend iTunes if you can avoid it since it has turned into a bloated pig... I don;t find I have to use iTunes for anything.
But when I pressed him for alternatives:
I have iTunes running on a shared Mac in the house...
You can draw your own conclusions.
I used iTunes and moved my ringtones to the iPhone.
After my OnePlus One experience, I was ready to look at an iPhone. There were 3 major drivers; stability, size and battery life. The OnePlus One was FLAKY and the 2013 Moto X has suffered through Lollipop 5.0 and 5.1. And Motorola has promised NOT to put Marshmallow on it. I expected (and found) that iOS was very stable. The OnePlus One was also BIG. The iPhone 6 was enough bigger than the Moto X but not so big as the OnePlus One. I had expected better battery life from the OnePlus One but didn't experience that.
So I jumped and ordered a 64GB iPhone 6 from gazelle. Their selection was good as was their price and given that I was trying an iPhone I wanted a generous return policy.
The iPhone 6 is the perfect size for me. And it's so thin.
