So, how is it going?  Everything is better.

I’m very surprised at how much I like both the iPhone and iOS.  I am not exaggerating (much*) when I say that every aspect of the iPhone 5s is better than any of my Android phones.  I should have switched earlier.

Here are the highlights:

• Smaller screen size and overall phone size are just right
• Battery life is outstanding, even with heavy use
• Bluetooth is actually usable as I can leave it on and not worry about battery life
• Usability, responsiveness and the screen are all huge improvements
• Audio quality on phone calls is amazing– I had no idea there was such a difference
• Control Centre and camera access from the lock screen work well and are very convenient
• Touch ID is great and works reliably (unless my hands are wet)
• Photos and videos are high quality, as is the camera app
• Surprisingly, apps that I used on Android and on iOS are universally better on iOS (Pocket Casts, Instragram, Pulse, Pocketweather, Strava, 1Password)
• I no longer accidentally hit the ever-present Android ‘Emergency Call’ button on the lock screen multiple times per day

(*)What aspect of Android do I miss?  I liked the ‘covers’ feature in Action Launcher Pro.  Folders in iOS approximate the functionality, but isn’t nearly as slick.  Anything else?  Not really.

Just to keep up with Android and get some use out of all of my Android apps I was thinking about upgrading from my c. 2010 first-generation iPad to the new Nexus 7.  But, after using this iPhone, I’m now leaning towards another iPad, likely an iPad Mini Retina.

So, I had a whole two paragraphs (!) complaining about my much-maligned Galaxy S2‘s shocking-poor battery life, the evil manufacturers bastardisation of Android, the irritating prevalence of ads on the platform and in apps, and the absence of reasonably-sized, non-bastardised Android phones (and the even smaller subset of devices I can even buy in Australia: no Moto X and no Google Play Edition phones whatsoever) all in an effort to explain why I switched back to iOS.  However, I realised that aside from all the complaints, it’s all much simpler.

Android used to be fun, and now it’s just work.

Here’s a story that makes me sounds old: I used Windows computers all the way back from when I switched away from DOS. Windows was fun, interesting and seemed to be worth the effort required.  In 2002 I bought the first of my many Macs, an iBook. The iBook and OS X were fun, interesting and required surprisingly little effort. OS X made it clear how much work it took (and to a lesser extent, still takes) to maintain a Windows system, and how much simpler and better things could be. I believe Android is ending up in this same position.  Keeping an Android phone running takes work, unnecessary and time-consuming work. iOS, like OS X, works and requires little effort to keep it that way. Here’s to hoping that iOS continues on the legacy of OS X and I can stop working on my phones and just use them.

I really wanted to export the square, over-filtered versions of my Instagram photos and I wanted the EXIF data intact. While attempting this, I found that, for some reason, Instagram deletes all of the EXIF data from these square, over-filtered photos. While the orignal rectangular and uncorrupted photos were saved on the phone, I *really* wanted the broken ones.  All of the utilities I tried exported low-resolution versions of the photos and reset the file creation date for each photo, which makes recreating the EXIF data very difficult.  Here’s how I got my photos out of Instagram and restored some of the EXIF data.

Frist, I coped the photo files directly from my phone via usb.  In the case of my Android phone, the files were stored in /Pictures/Instagram.

Next, I used ExifTool to recreate some of the EXIF data using the following: exiftool -v -P “-FileModifyDate>AllDates” “-Make=[phone make]” “-Model=[phone model]” [path]/[file(s)]

-v Verbose (level 1)

-P Preserves the file creation date for the new files

“-FileModifyDate>AllDates” Sets the EXIF date from the file creation date

“-Make=[phone make]” Sets the camera make

“-Model=[phone model]” Sets the camera model

The wildcard (*) cane be used to specify all files

Eg: exiftool -v -P “-FileModifyDate>AllDates” “-Make=Samsung” “-Model=i9100T” /Volumes/Data\ HD/Pictures/Clichéd\ Sunsets/*

Here’s the result.  The EXIF data isn’t complete, but it’s enough for my purposes.

More help from Stack Exchange: Is there any software which will set the EXIF Dates based on the file’s modification date?