5 shortcomings in iOS that those who switch from Android would find annoying

In the world of mobile technology, there seems to be nothing as polarizing as the battle between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems. With fans ready to start a holy war over features that one platform ‘borrowed’ from the other, and the endless discussion over which one is smoother, has the better apps, looks and so on, it’s easy to forget that those differences are often very minute.

In fact, we can safely say that the two most popular mobile operating systems are in many aspects on par, and both deliver a great, satisfying experience to most users.

However, after recently switching to an Apple iPhone from an Android device, we could not help but notice that while Apple has done some simple things much better than Google, there are some extremely annoying shortcomings in iOS 7 that we hope the company fixes soon. What are they? Take a look below to find out.

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5 shortcomings in iOS that those who switch from Android would find annoying

1. Sharing on iOS looks completely broken in comparison with Android

Without a doubt, the most annoying change for Android users coming to the iPhone and iPad is the way sharing works on iOS. Put simply, in comparison with Android, iOS sharing looks completely broken: trying to share a photo from the camera roll to Dropbox or Google Drive straight from the gallery app (as you’d easily do on Android) is simply impossible on iOS. The same applies for all apps - they just don’t communicate with each other as apps on Android do.

2. Confusing notifications system

The notification dropdown has been a signature feature of Android since its very early days, and iOS has only recently added a similar dropdown. Similar, however, does not mean the same - rather than being a one stop shop for all your notifications, the iOS notification dropdown is actually divided in three tabs: the today tab for a quick weather report, stocks update, etc; an all tab with all your notifications, and a missed tab for missed notifications. This is just confusing: what goes in the ‘all’ tab and what is bound for the ‘missed’ tab? This seems like an overcomplication for the otherwise simple iOS.

3. No landscape orientation for many apps

We’ve gotten used to an almost universal capability to switch between portrait and landscape orientation on Android, but on iOS many apps where the feature is available on Android, don’t have it on Apple’s platform. We just find this strange and confusing.

4. No battery stats

Some users might think this is not something that really matters to them, but wait until some app starts taking a heavier hit on your battery. In Android, you can easily detect such an app, and take some measures, and while such misbehaviour is much less likely on iOS, having the option to monitor how much energy apps consume would have been nice.

5. There is no ‘Clear all’ button for notifications

Those who have more than a dozen apps know what we’re talking about: there is simply no way to press one button to clear all notifications from all apps, you have to go and painstakingly clear notifications app by app. Not just this, clearing all notifications from a certain app requires a double tap. Argh