A One-Year iPhone Update from a Former Samsung Loyalist
Welcome to The Crippled Cryptid.
Disability, chronic illness, service dogs, and survival without the performance.
If you’re new here, hi. I’m Sky.
Professional cryptid.
Unwilling amateur cyborg.
Medically complex enough to make my chart a jump scare. I cope with sarcasm and an unreasonable amount of coffee. (Try not to tell my cardiologist.)
Most days are lived in a haunted meat suit with a questionable warranty and a long-standing feud with my nervous system. I spend a lot of time in Bed Jail™, but I’m rarely alone thanks to Luna, my medical alert service dog.
Guardian. Enforcer. OSHA violation prevention officer.
There’s also M&M.
My Player 2. My soft place to land. The one who shows up when I can’t. She makes soup. She tends the garden. She gives headpats. She watches shows with me. She keeps me sane. There’s really nothing she can’t do, aside from reach the top shelf.
But that’s the kind of thing that we have my younger brother, the Yard Yeti for.
This space is for chronic illness without inspiration porn.
Disability without apologies.
Love without pretending it’s always neat or easy.
But it usually comes with dog hair.
Welcome to the Lunatic Café.
On today’s menu:
A one-year check in.
Digital boundaries.
And how the iPhone 16+ is still winning me over.
One Year Later
When I first switched from Samsung to iPhone, it was mostly about needing to change phone companies. AT&T was being sketchy. (I’m not going to sugarcoat it, I don’t lie to you.) They were trying to raise my bill for the umpteenth time for no reason, and T-Mobile was hosting a sale that gave you an iPhone 16+ and paid off your contract if you switched.
I decided we would go for it, and it wound up turning into something else entirely.
It stopped being about the phone company pretty quickly.
I’m not going to lie. I went into this thinking I wasn’t going to like the new phone. I figured it would either sit in a drawer or get returned. I’d lived in the Samsung universe for so long that I didn’t think I wanted to learn something new. I’d had LG phones. I even tried a Blackberry in my thirty years. But nothing prepared me for what I found with the iPhone.
It became about accessibility.
Certain built-in features simply worked better for my body. For my brain. For my energy.
But now that I’ve had this phone for almost a year, this isn’t a honeymoon phase review.
This is long-term use.
And I still love it.
I’ll leave my first iPhone vs. Samsung accessibility post linked here.
I’ll also link the first Apple Watch post I wrote here too, back when I thought it might be a gimmick before realizing it was something else entirely.
Accessibility: The Honest Comparison
Samsung has accessibility features.
I’m not here to dispute that. I used them. They helped.
But with Samsung, I often felt like I was adjusting myself around the phone.
With the iPhone, I feel like the phone adjusts around me.
That difference matters when your nervous system already requires constant negotiation.
The integration with my Apple Watch.
The way notifications behave.
The consistency across devices.
It feels less like managing a device and more like setting environmental controls.
What I Miss (Because Growth Includes Honesty)
Your ghoul did not walk away without looking back.
I miss the theme store.
I miss browsing aesthetic overhauls. Changing icons. Matching my mood. Coordinating colors like I was curating a tiny digital altar to my personality.
But it was also overwhelming.
Trying to stay on brand. Trying to find themes that didn’t glitch or drain the battery into oblivion. Animations misbehaving. Widgets stuttering. Five percent battery gone because I dared to be whimsical.
Or because I thought it would be cute to have a Christmas theme that didn’t even really feel like me, even though I was the only one who ever saw it aside from M&M.
The customization was powerful.
It was also loud.
And when you already live in an overstimulated body, loud costs something. Especially on a flare day. Even more so when you’re living in constant migraines.
Younger me wanted my phone to perform.
Current me wants my phone to behave.
Ringtones & Reality
I also miss how easy it was to customize ringtones without jumping through hoops.
Apps like Zedge were a gamechanger. I could find new notification sounds, text tones, alarms, and ringtones with almost no effort. The customization felt endless.
But here’s the honest disclosure.
My phone lives on silent.
Muted.
Vibrate at most.
Loud sounds trigger migraines. Sudden noise is not invited to this house.
Most of the time my Apple Watch taps my wrist gently anyway.
She doesn’t scream.
She just says, “Hey. Something happened.”
And that’s enough.
Often, more than enough.
The only people who really need to reach me are a few family members and my care team.
Everyone else can either hope to get through or text me.
If I’m not feeling up to being a person, that’s just how the cryptid cookie crumbles.
Focus Modes: The Real Gamechanger
This is the feature that sealed the deal for me.
And here’s the part that really shifted things:
You don’t just turn Focus Modes on.
You can build rules.
You can automate them.
For example, my Writing Focus doesn’t rely on me remembering to activate it. If I open my word count app on my phone or my iPad, the Focus Mode turns on automatically. No extra steps. No extra brain power required.
Because everything syncs across Apple devices, it follows me. If I open it on my iPad, same thing. The boundary snaps into place.
I built the system once. Now it protects me.
And when your brain already runs on limited spoons and suspicious firmware, automation feels like mercy.
Do Not Disturb.
Family Time.
Sleep.
Driving.
Writing.
Service Dingo™ Training.
Health Mode.
Reading.
Reduce Interruptions.
Each one filters the world differently.
Each one protects a different part of my life.
And I don’t have to explain myself every time I need space.
That’s not just convenient.
That’s energy conservation.
And one of the best parts is being able to send automated messages, things that tell people that I’m unavailable whether that means that I’m busy with the family, driving, or in Bed Jail™ trying to relax and recover. Some people understand, others don’t.
But you know what, that’s why I get to decide who gets the automated messages and who doesn’t. So, chances are, only the people who I trust the most are going to be getting those messages. And most of those people live with me so if they need me, they’re going to come check-in on me anyways, not text or call.
The Watch
I bought a Series 7 off eBay for twenty dollars just to test it at the beginning of January.
I use it consistently.
No skin irritation.
That shocked me because when I got a FitBit from the thrift store to try out, I couldn’t even wear it for 3-days without my skin wanting to fall off.
Vitals tracking that actually helps and isn’t hidden behind a paywall.
Water eject that feels dramatic and correct.
Breathing. Pulse. Blood oxygen.
It feels less like a gadget and more like a quiet assistant that notices things before I do.
And the feature I bought it for has already caught me more times than I’d like to admit.
Fall Detection. The little moment where it asks, “Did you fall?” or says, “It looks like you took a serious fall. Do you need us to call 911?”
These aren’t toys.
They’re data I can show my medical care team. Evidence. Numbers. Trends.
And those numbers help guide my care.
That matters. A lot.
If You’re On the Fence
If you’re chronically ill and considering switching ecosystems, here’s what I’ll say:
It’s okay to hesitate.
It’s okay to be loyal to what you know.
But you don’t owe loyalty to a brand if your body needs something different.
It’s okay to worry about relearning everything when your brain already has enough on its plate.
But a year in?
I don’t regret it.
I don’t miss the chaos as much as I thought I would.
And I didn’t realize how much quieter my digital life could be until it was.
If what you need is less noise, more intention, and tech that supports instead of competes with your nervous system, it might be worth exploring.
Not because Apple is superior.
But because sometimes different fits better.
I didn’t expect to love this phone.
I expected to tolerate it at best.
Instead, it adapted to me.
Turns out the scariest part wasn’t switching phones. It was realizing I deserved things that made my life easier. And that’s something I still struggle with, even though chronic illness and disability are not new to me.
And for someone managing chronic illness, writing projects, service dog training, and daily survival?
That matters.
If something here hit close to home, you’re not alone.
If you stayed anyway, thank you.
You don’t have to earn your place here.
Love you, now say it back.
-Sky
© The Crippled Cryptid
Disability. Honesty. A little chaos.
Maybe a little dog fur.
🔗 https://linktr.ee/skylanarissa
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If you’d like to support the long, slow work of staying alive, stable, and mobile:
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