That is, until two weeks ago when I got my new iPhone. I had to, the old one couldnt upgrade to the newest iOS.
I feel ashamed to admit, that I had one or two days of extreme frustration just learning to do basic stuff. It was not about the shape of icons, but more along the lines of what you write. Swiping patterns, button press sequences, and the time you should hold down a button. It is ridiculous.
Some of the blame is on me for not being mobile phone savvy, but it is indisputable that the UX has deterioted significantly. I suspect it will just get worse going forward.
Except for the fact that you can’t scrub on the native video player by swiping anywhere, you now have to use the time-bar. Drives me nuts.
I find nowadays iOS is as complex as the Android I remember. I can navigate it just fine because I'm used to it but even my parents who've been using iPhones longer than me have found themselves getting lost in the OS with iOS 26 in particular.
I used to describe iPhone being an Appliance, with some smart function added to it. Android was a PC trying to made into a Phone form factor and act like an appliance.
It was that simplicity of iPhone that was great.
And you are right now iPhone and Android have converge in many ways it has added complexity. And no one seems to be doing anything about it. And somehow after 15 years of UX Craig Federighi is still popular and gets no blame for it.
Back then, the coolest way to use an iPhone or iPod was to put Cydia on it. You could run emulators, live wallpapers, sideloaded apps, pretty much anything that Android had was at the tip of your fingers. Once Apple pushed for a return to the locked-down software distribution philosophy, I gave up on iOS and started dailying Android instead.
I haven't used iOS 27 yet, but from what I've seen it's going to get worse. We already have swiping down from the top left or top right bringing up different things, while swiping down anywhere else in the middle of the screen brings up search... unless you're swiping down at the bottom of the screen, then it's Reachability. From what I understand, iOS 27 will also bring swiping down from the Dynamic Island to trigger Siri. So that's 3 different behaviors from a swipe down from somewhere on the top of a <3" wide screen, with no real way to know what's going on intuitively.
2. Can apple ‘regress’ the camera app so the it is easy to use. The interface is a disaster of mixed inputs and over loaded widgets. Theres so many modes and sub modes. Swipe to zoom works mostly except when it changes modes. I spend about 10 seconds every tone inise the camera app just making it take a picture because accidentally touching it in the wrong place switches to some other mode.
3. The genrel consistency has went downhill. Its difficult sometimes now to know just how to interact with an app.
4. Search box. If i do another attempt at a web search when i am in mail search box i dunno. Either unify it or make it distinct. Also sometime its at the top sometimes the bottom
4. The top vs bottom search boxes drive me nuts. I still instinctively reach for the top of the screen for search, so going to the bottom is weird. The move to the bottom is also a symptom of the phones being too large, so they have to move all the UI users interact with down to the bottom. Not being 100% consistent with it makes it hard to retrain my habits around it.
At least you can have 3-button navigation
If you're in Chrome, the previous entry in the history. If you're in YouTube, the previous video. If you were previously on the main screen and you just clicked into an app, the main screen.
What's confusing about it? Seems very intuitive to me, it's like CTRL+Z, it always changes what it does but the behavior is to undo the latest action.
2. Go to previous app view. This is app-dependent though it will probably, successively with each press:
a. Close menus if open (context, sidebar, etc)
b. Go to previous (web)page if web/file browser c. Go out of submenus (ex: settings/WiFi -> settings) if not in a browser or if the oldest page has been reached. Keeps walking the tree upwards.
3. Reach the main app view (usually the one you land on when opening the app)
4. One more press minimizes the app.
It is fairly consistent, but some apps decide otherwise:
* some will minimize as soon as you press it (I've seen games do it)
* some will open a new menu (again, games: pause menu)
* some will seemingly walk you the history of visited pages instead of the hierarchy -- which may make sense but can be confusing
* some old apps will display a toast "press back twice to exit". This used to be common back when physical buttons were the norm, but I haven't seen this message a lot.
So, mostly consistent with some weird-behaving apps. Same as on desktop I guess?
It breaks the intuition that one tap == one piece of state on the navigation stack.
Keeps walking the tree upwards.
If i switch to my browser and hit back what happens : I go back to my previous app ? I go back in my browser page cache history ? I go back to the page that opened that web page i'm looking at ? something else ?
also mixing Back and Up is just wrong. I've had arguments with people that don't understand the difference.
Cultural context, the same way you'd know tapping on an icon opens an app.