I recently installed iOS 14 on my iPhone 6S, and have now been using the OS about 2 months.
While I think I’ve already ruled out new iPhone’s as my Next Phone, I’m still interested to see what Apple has done to their mobile operating system.
So, without further ado, here’s my take on the update, and how I think it compares to Android:
Widgets on the Home Screen!
Finally, widgets can now be placed on the Home Screen next to app icons. It’s a nice feature to have, and is long overdue. You can still find & add widgets to the left panel for quick access, but adding widgets to the Home Screen now makes them more useful. Before, I’d forget they were even there, off to the left, and neglect to use them.
You can’t fully customise the size of widgets in iOS 14, as they are only available in the form of a square (equivalent to 4 app icons) or a rectangle (equivalent to 8 app icons).
Unlike on Android, you also can’t place these widgets wherever you please on your Home Screen. The rectangle widgets are only one size – 4×2 app icons – and span the whole of my Home Screen, either at the top, in the middle, or at the bottom.
The square widgets are worse. They’re more useful as they sit better alongside app icons, but they lock into invisible, vertical columns, with no option to place them in the middle of the screen.
The Home Screen on my iPhone 6S is normally a 4×6 grid (that’s 4 apps horizontally, & 6 apps vertically), but to make room for the square widgets, the apps are split into 2 vertical columns – with the widgets locking to either the left column, or the right one.
In my opinion, this is an inferior system to Android, where you can resize and rearrange apps & widgets at your pleasure. Assuming you have the same 4×6 grid, if you want a square widget in the middle, on Android you can have that square widget in the middle, with 2 vertically-placed apps either side. Not so on iOS 14, where the widget locks to either the left of right column, with the apps to its side locked into a group of 4 app icons.
Smart Stack Widgets
That said, the Smart Stack option is a nice touch, and one which Android would do well to incorporate. It allows you to ‘stack’ multiple widgets into the placement for one widget, and can be either a square or rectangle stack.
In fact, the Smart Stack expands the size variants by one – you can either have a rectangular stack (equal to 8 app icons, or 4×2), a small square stack (= 4 icons, 2×2), or a large square stack (= 16 icons, 4×4). However, at least with the small square stack, again it can only be locked into place into either the left invisible column, or the right one.
Smart Stack is a brilliant innovation, and makes iOS 14 that much better – even though, at the time of writing (November 2020), app support is limited to stock iOS apps (such as a list of ‘Shortcuts’ to Photos, Messages, Clock, & Calendar – as well as Safari, Notes, Screen Time, Maps, & Music) and only a handful of third party apps.
The third party apps currently appearing in Smart Stacks for me are: Firefox, Google Assistant, Google Photos, TikTok, Wild Journey, and YouTube Music.
On the one hand, we can now add multiple widgets to the Home Screen in one convenient tidy stack, that declutters the Home Screen while still making it more functional than before. It’s a feature I hope Android implements in the future, as it’s just so useful – and saves having multiple widgets placed untidily on the Home Screen, as per Android’s current predicament.
However, you can’t yet customise which widgets appear in these stacks. At least from my experience, they’re ‘Smart‘ because the widgets in a Stack are automatically selected based on your usage patterns. This means that only your most used apps will appear in a Stack.
On Android, the Clock and Weather apps are two of my least used apps, but I’ve got their widgets conveniently added to my Home Screen so I’ve always got access to their information. By contrast, it almost feels like iOS 14 is trying to be too smart – yes, Music is one of my most used apps, but I’d rather have the Weather displayed within a Stack, than to substitute that app for quick access to my Playlists.
In this aspect alone, it is iOS 14’s insistence on being ‘Smart’ that ultimately makes it a fool. Instead of showing me information that I want to see at a glance, without having to manually open up the Weather app, Smart Stack has instead become a useless feature – merely a list of pretty shortcuts to apps I’ve already got on my Home Screen.
It’s this lack of customisation that I’d love to see on iOS 14. Instead of a Smart Stack with pre-selected widgets, I’d prefer to have a scrollable Stack that includes the Clock, Weather, Calendar, a Google search bar, and my to-do list.
Also, limiting the placement of widgets and Smart Stacks means this new functionality comes at the cost of overall customisation, which has long been (and still is) a drawback of iOS.
Home Screen widgets and Smart Stacks are a step in the right direction for iOS, and makes your phone feel more personal to you, but I think iOS still has some way to go before it can feel as fully personal as Android.
With something as small as the Home Screen – which is your gateway to all things iPhone – iOS still possesses that caged feel, of imprisonment, when using it.
It is the “it’s our way or the highway” approach to smartphones – instead of letting the end user decide how smart their phone should be, how their apps & widgets appear on their Home Screen on their phone, and how their phone functions for them, Apple Sri has this tight lock on everything to do with iOS.
It’s as if Apple is still under the impression that an iPhone can only be customised by them – and that, if you buy an iPhone, you accept their way of doing things.
On a Windows PC or an iMac, this isn’t the case. You can rearrange apps, programs & files around on your desktop as you please – a concept that has thankfully translated down into Android. I just can’t understand why Apple is still holding out on this for iOS – why isn’t something as simple as the Home Screen fully customisable?
If millions of people weren’t so locked into the walled garden of Apple’s ecosystem, or the claims of ‘security,’ I can’t think of any reason why someone would rather use a locked-down device, than one that allows you to fully express who you are and what information you need, at a glance.
‘App Library’ – an App Drawer for Apple
Finally, we also have an app drawer to declutter your Home Screen, which Apple has called the App Library.
I’d like to say it’s a useful feature, but in all honesty, it’s a confusing system. Unlike on Android, where you can customise app placement & folders within the App Drawer – and rearrange apps into different folders, and rename those folders, at your convenience – the iOS App Library automatically sorts apps for you, and that’s it. There’s no customisation, as per Apple’s tradition of locking you into their way of doing things.
It’s that limiting feeling again, as with the Home Screen Widgets and Smart Stacks. iOS operates like a ‘Smart’ phone, and that’s great if that’s what you want – a smartphone where everything is organised for you, where everything is done for you.
Where the App Library fails for me, is that you can’t change which folders your apps appear in, meaning that unless an app is on your Home Screen, should you forget which folder they’re stored in, finding many apps is a laborious process that often ends in clicking the search bar at the top, and using the vertical alphabet on the right side of the screen to find those apps.
Hopefully, this can only get better with future OS updates, but at the moment, the App Library is an inconvenience rather than a way of decluttering your Home Screens. It adds an extra step to doing what you need to do, and goes against the Apple motto of It Just Works.
For example, both ‘Pocket Casts’ and ‘Reddit’ appear in the ‘Information & Reading’ folder. Why is Reddit not with Facebook & Twitter in the ‘Social’ folder? Also, why is Pocket Casts not with BBC Sounds, Google Podcasts, Apple’s own ‘Podcasts’ app & TuneIn Radio in the ‘Entertainment’ folder?
The placement of apps in the App Library makes no sense. The two Sony apps I have installed – Headphones Connect, and Sony Music Centre – are separated into the Utilities and Entertainment folders respectively. Why aren’t they together in Utilities, as that’s what they are?!
Why is the Philips Hue app listed as Other, and not also with Utilities?! It’s a ‘utility’ that I use to change the brightness and colour of my smart lights, so why is that confusing for a supposedly ‘smart’ OS like iOS?
It may sound like I’m needlessly nitpicking, but the whole purpose of the App Library was to make life easier, and to declutter the Home Screen.
Journalists and fans alike are often quick to point out that, while Apple aren’t necessarily the first company to do something in technology, they’re the first ones to do it the right way. But in this case, I feel they’ve done it the wrong way. Sure, they’ve shown what a smartphone can really do of it’s ‘truly’ Smart, but to me it just feels like they missed the point of the App Library.
It’s nice that everything is organised for me, but if the App Library isn’t going to be a list of apps like the Windows Phone-style Apps list, or a Windows XP-style My Programs, I’d really like the option – via a toggle button, if necessary – to organise my apps the way I want them to appear in the App Library.
At least give us that, Apple.
Conclusion
These may only be small mistakes and misgivings here and there, but it means iOS ultimately now lacks the polish it once had.
Personally, I feel lucky I only spent £250-ish on my iPhone 6S last year, but if you’re paying a lot of money for a newer phone – such as the iPhone 12 Pro Max Best Ultimate 5000 – you need to be getting a brilliantly polished, optimised, sublime user experience for that price tag.
The problem is, though, with iOS 14 showing the scars of the R&D department’s best but ultimately lacklustre ideas, I can’t see why people are paying so much money for an iPhone…
– Chris JK
KPH tech blog 
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