Hey there! I bought a Xiaomi 14T Pro this March. And I was using an iPhone 12 Mini from November 2021. Before that, I had been using the iPhone SE (2020) since November 2020. This means I have been using Android for 7 months after using iOS for more than 4 years. I would now like to share my thoughts.

Why I decided to change

First of all, I started using the iPhone SE because I dropped and broke the back glass of an Android phone, and then I began looking for a more durable and smaller phone. I watched a lot of drop-testing videos, then I decided to buy an iPhone SE.

Over the years, I started to get annoyed with things about using the iPhone.

My iPhone 12 Mini had 64 GB of storage. I found myself cleaning up the storage. But it was my decision to select 64 GB.

On camera, when I press the shutter, it takes 2 to 3 seconds to capture. When I wanted to share something on other apps, just the share page was coming slower and slower. It was OK, though. My phone was getting older, and I started to get the idea of buying newer models.

Charging, oh man…

I was trying to keep my battery healthy. I was thinking, phone users lose battery health by putting them on charge when they go to bed, even if the battery is half or more. So I did not put my phone on charge unless the battery percentage is lower than 20%. But sometimes when I decide to call someone, if I have less than 20% charge, I put my phone on charge. And I don’t like cables around my desk. So when I was changing my phone, it was away from my desk a bit. (I am working at home, by the way.) So I was postponing things. And usually it took one and a half hours to charge. Battery life was not great. But charging this long for this small battery was annoying. But it was my decision to buy a small phone. So a small phone means a poor battery, right? Right?

And, we had an earthquake in Turkiye 2 years ago. A lot of people died. It wasn’t in the city where I live. But it could have been. I saw a lot of people suggesting how the bags should be for this kind of emergency. And I thought of a scenario, if I encounter some emergency and I end up with a 35% charge in the middle of the night, in the debris. So I started to put my phone to charge when I go to bed.

I am working from home. But every couple of months, the company I work for invites us to go to Albania to work in the office. I was OK when I was at home if I needed to charge my phone. But in the office, I need to leave my phone in some random room, because there are not enough power outlets. There were not even enough desks for us. Even for themselves. 1 desk for 2 people. 1 day, one of them comes, and the other day, the other comes. They finally moved to the new office, but the plan to move was long ago. But still, sometimes the power outlet is not enough.

In the end, on one of my Albaina visits, I decided to buy a new phone.

How I decided to buy the Xiaomi 14T Pro

I was already following the tech YouTubers and the tech news. At the iPhone 16 launch, Apple did not bring fast charging. That makes some amount of sense. Because iPhone users already have a habit of plugging their phones in to charge when they go to bed. There is a smart charging feature. So it keeps the battery healthy, they say. Apple brought the stand-by mode. Some widgets on it. There are MagSafe cases, stands, chargers, wallets, and power banks. If they put super fast charging, people won’t need MagSafe accessories, right? So they won’t be planning to bring 90 Watt fast charging. I lost hope in Apple.

On the Android side, there are really good options. But phones are big. Especially after iPhone Mini. Some models are not on sale in Turkiye. And there is a price limit on customs. And there is an ever-increasing IMEI registration fee. So I should consider options in Turkiye.

I really wanted super-fast charging. Also, a big battery and a small form factor. And I don’t want old phones. 2 years old at most. Because I don’t want to be stuck with an old Android version.

A small screen limits a lot of options. Samsung S23, S24, S25; they don’t have fast charging or a big battery. Pixel phones are not for sale in Turkiye, even if it has a small battery. Asus Zenfone 9 and 10 models too. Xiaomi has good options. Xiaomi 13, 14, 15.

Xiaomi 15 has 90W fast charging. 5K+ battery. 50 Watt wireless charging is even faster than iPhone wired charging. The best CPU.

But, would it not be better if I had 120 Watt charging? Xiaomi 13T Pro and 14T Pro models have 120W charging.

Xiaomi 15 with a 6.3-inch screen, 90W, best CPU versus Xiaomi 14T Pro with 6.7-inch screen, 120W, good CPU?

With 120 watts of charging, it takes 21 minutes to charge up to 100%.

I decided to 21 minutes.

How is Xiaomi 14T Pro after 7 months

It usually gets charged 100% more than 21 minutes. Generally, it takes 25-30 minutes. But it is not a big deal. Still amazing how fast it is.

But the better side is that I usually charge my phone once every 2 days. How cool is that? I tell everyone when a topic comes to phones. Everyone. Sometimes my wife says, ‘Do not tell everyone, it will be attacked by the evil eye,’ which means: at some point it is going to break if I keep telling.

Only charging and battery life? NO.

Significantly cheaper. And better yet, you don’t need to pay 10% to 20% more if you select larger storage or more RAM.

I can use and I am using SyncThing to back up my phone to my PC. It improves life quality a lot.

I can install apps I developed without any extra configuration process and without a developer account. This is not the case for the Apple ecosystem. You need to go through a lot of processes. Yes, it is a time thing for each iPhone and Mac, but it is time-limited even if you have a paid developer account.

I can install older versions of apps if I want to. Mostly, I need this for the Expo Go app. In iOS, you can’t do that.

I can use a custom DNS server to block ads. You can do that in iOS for cellular data, and you have to configure the DNS server for each wireless network.

Is everything great?

Unfortunately no. It’s not always rainbows and butterflies. Sometimes I have a hard time using this big phone. How are the other people using big phones? Sometimes I say I wish I would buy Xiaomi 15. More compact and lighter.

And some Android gotchas. I still couldn’t get used to the share menu. When I share something, I see maybe 50 options. I don’t remember if it is the same on iOS. The crazy part is that it shows apps and contacts randomly.

When a notification comes up, sometimes I can see and expand to see details. But generally, I can’t see it on the lock screen. I need to open the home screen.

I can unlock my phone with face recognition, but it is not as powerful as iOS lidar. If there is no light, I should enter the PIN code.

And apps. Yes, apps are sometimes better on iOS and usually make us feel it is better on iOS. And I think that makes sense. iPhones have mostly similar aspect ratios, and even a 6-year-old iPhone is still using the most recent iOS version. But in Android phone companies make customization on the base Android OS. They have a lot of different form factors. You should target your Android version lower if you want old Android users to be able to use your app. The manufacturers also make some modifications to primitives. I myself encountered this issue on an app I built. On a page, the scrollview was super smooth on my Xiaomi phone, but it was laggy on Samsung S24 Ultra.

Transfer process

The last thing I want to touch on is the transfer process from iOS to Android. Over the years, both have improved the transfer process.

The only app that I was afraid of was WhatsApp. On the other hand, apps usually back up to their servers, or I can manually back them up. When I started using an iPhone in 2020, I lost all my chats on WhatsApp. So, I was afraid of the WhatsApp transfer. Before I buy this phone, I watched a bunch of videos that say it is possible. Thankfully, WhatsApp has a feature called ‘Move chats to Android’. And yes, I was able to move all my chats to the new phone.

Messages were not that smooth, though. I was using an SMS filtering app called Junkman. When I first opened the new phone, there was an option to transfer from the old phone. It was supposed to move my messages, too. But it didn’t. I did some research and found an app called iSMS2droid. This solved most of them, but some of them are still missing.

I store all my passwords on BitWarden. It is already on the BitWarden servers.

I backed up Apple Notes to txt files. Then I started to search for a good note-taking app. I ended up using Obsidian. It is ok.

Photos and videos are manually transferred to the PC.

I think that is all.

So far

I am happy so far. Still thinking of getting a smaller phone. Xiaomi 17 was released in China last month. It has a 7000 mAh battery. Mind-blowing. I might get one after the global launch in February 2026, and I can give mine to my wife. We will see.

I hope it is helpful and fun to read. Thank you for reading.

Said