switching after 18 years on iPhone

Publish Date: 2026-03-17 05:30:00

I’ve been an iPhone user for the past 18 years or so.

While it wasn’t my first smartphone (that honor goes to the HTC Touch HD; what a fun device), I’ve been using iPhones continuously since the iPhone 3G.

My Apple experience started with the first-generation iPod touch, however. If I remember correctly, it was my first Apple device, later followed by a white plastic MacBook.

Over time, I used basically every Apple product. To say I was in the Apple walled garden would be putting it lightly. From Apple Watch Ultra to multiple HomePods, AirPods Pro and AirPods Max, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad Pro, and MacBook Pro, I own it all.

But a few months ago I switched away from macOS to Linux. And that seems to have opened the floodgates, because a bit over a week ago, I switched from an iPhone (16 Pro) to a Google Pixel 10.

And while this device started out as a two-month loaner from Google, let me tell you: I don’t think I’m going back.

I am planning to make this into a weekly, diary-style series.

Over the next two months, I plan to write about:

the hardware experience,
what software I use,
how I have customized Android,
how I integrated it into my daily life,
my thoughts on Google’s AI push.

And finally, after the two months are over, I will answer the big question of whether I made the switch or not.

To kick off this series, I need to start at the very beginning of the journey. If I was going to leave the walled garden, I needed to make sure I wasn’t leaving my data behind.

On the iPhone, my data lived in a few places. Since I moved over to Linux earlier this year, I started moving data out of iCloud Drive onto something else (I built my own tool with Syncthing and my home-server). My passwords have always lived in 1Password, I barely use iMessage (this is Europe, we’re into WhatsApp), I use Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar, but my contacts are in iCloud.

I also still use Apple Music for now. I had a few app subscriptions running, used Apple’s HomeKit for exactly one…

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