An Android Convert with an iPhone

I'm a couple of months into iPhone ownership. The honeymoon period is over, so it's time for a review.

Summary

The iPhone 7 is stable. This was my primary goal in switching from Android, and Apple has held up their end of the bargain. I used to have to restart my LG G3 every day or two to keep it from slowing down. In weeks of continuous uptime I have yet to notice a slowdown in the iPhone.

Now that we've gotten the headline out of the way, it's time to air some grievances.  If you know fixes for these, let me know!

Features I Miss

Automatic contact lookup by dialing (e.g., dial 5-6-7 to start autocompleting J-O-R and suggest the contact "Jordan").

Swipe typing is not available natively. I don't trust non-standard keyboards, since they get all of the text I enter.

Notifications are Inconsistent

When viewing from the lock screen, users dismiss notifications by swiping left and pressing "clear". When viewing pop-up notifications from an application window, users swipe up to dismiss the notification.

Icon Arrangement is Frustrating

When you remove or rearrange applications on the iPhone, you can't just move one at a time. The icons stack, so if you remove one the others all move into the unoccupied space. When I've gotten used to a particular app in a certain spot in my home screen, it's really frustrating to have to rearrange my home screen just because I removed an app.

Touch tone Interfaces are Unintuitive

Pushing these keys will leave you confused and angry

During an active call, the iPhone typically darkens the display. When prompted to "press a key to make a selection" the obvious next step is to unlock the display and press the "phone" icon. However, pressing buttons at this point does not send touch tone signals. During an active call pressing the "phone" icon still tries to initiate a new call, rather than connecting you to the active call.

Cross-App Launching is Limited

If I click on a Washington Post link in Facebook, I want to launch the Washington Post app (for which I have a paid account). Instead of opening the Washington Post app (or even prompting me to decide what to launch) I'm stuck using a web browser within Facebook that is not associated with my Washington Post account.

Sharing is Limited

I frequently want to send a web link to my wife. I send lots of texts with Google Voice, and perplexingly Google Voice does not appear as a sharing option. Similarly, uploading to Google Drive does not appear as an image sharing option either.

Inconsistent Back Button Locations

The back button is in the upper left, then it becomes a camera, then it moves to the upper right

I think the thing I miss most from Android is the back button. Since iOS has no standard back button, applications get to put it wherever they want. They can hide it, or in Facebook's case, even move it around.