switching from Android to iPhone: how does it work?

I am really sincerely sorry, but you've just enumerated just about every feature that Android fans give about why Android is a better experience than iOS, because iOS has no equivalent. You may not have noticed, but also your iPhone keyboard is not especially obvious about when you're in CAPS or not. That's the last one you didn't mention. But that's coming in the next big iOS update, at least. And I think you can now install third-party keyboards? If so Swype or Swiftkey are good. I haven't run an iOS device in 3-4 years, but jailbreak from that era wouldn't get you all the way there either, just closer. At that time you could at least change icon themes, hide apps completely (not just in folders), and have better quick controls when you swipe, but home screen widgets were not a thing then. Lock screen widgets yes, but not home screen widgets. I think home screen widgets are still not a thing in iOS or jailbreak environments. The only/best way to clean up all the icons on your home screen is to put them in folders, then move the folders to another page that you never look at. You can of course rearrange the icons, too, but if an app is installed it must be somewhere on the home screens, including in folders. There is no separate app drawer. Most people have a 'Garbage' folder full of all the Apple crap you can't uninstall. You really cannot uninstall most of the apps that came on the phone, only bury them in a folder. Apps you install yourself can be deleted of course. Long-press the icon then click the red 'x'. Some apps have their own Back button in the app when the developer thought it would be useful, otherwise there isn't any parallel functionality. I was only 'happy enough' on iOS after jailbreak and extensive time in customizing. You may not want to bother, you might be able to adjust to iOS with time. I feel your pain. Good luck!

Apple makes most of their money selling hardware, not software or user information. They are actually pretty good on the privacy front, and i trust them more than a huge company that is built on data mining and an ad network. Apple’s https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf explains a lot about what they do with user data, not only encryption of data in transit but what happens on their end. Note that while there is a place in the system preferences to enter your Facebook or Twitter info to enable those stupid share buttons, that’s all it’s there for – the Facebook and Twitter apps are third party downloads thus deletable if you have them because you inherited the phone from someone else. For that matter, some of the Apple apps can be trashed as well (those that are optional installs, fer sure [but no, not the damned stocks app]). The app store sucks for finding good apps. Aside from the few things that are both good and popular, you’re more likely to find some cool free app by reading about it elsewhere online.

I don't know enough about Android to give helpful answers for a lot of your questions, which are based on a bunch of expectations that I only vaguely understand. There are no home screen widgets on iOS, so the main purpose of the home screen is to launch apps. If you want less stuff there though, you can move apps to another page or into folders. Tap and hold on an app icon. Drag it onto another to make a folder, or drag it off the right edge of the screen to make a new page. If you forget where you put something, you can swipe down to search (or hold the home button to ask siri to launch it). Also, is there a way for me to manage or at least view access permissions (contacts, network, etc.)? I do know iOS handles permissions quite differently from Android. Installing an app doesn't implicitly grant it permissions - when an app actually tries to do something, iOS will prompt you (something like "Skype has requested access to your Contacts") and you can grant or deny that app that permission. If you say no, the the app still has to run, and do what it can without that permission, though in some cases that won't be much (e.g., Shazam without Microphone access or Google Maps without Location Services). You won't be prompted a second time for a given app, but you can review and change permissions through the Settings app. Unfortunately this shows up in a few places. A lot of permissions are controlled through "Settings->Privacy". There's also "Settings->Notifications", which is self-explanatory. Unless an app is set to On under "Settings->General->Background App Refresh", switching away from the app suspends it, and it can't do anything except notifications. Finally (maybe?) Settings->Cellular lets you prevent an app from using your precious data plan. Unlike the other permissions, this is on by default. I don't think there's a way to stop an app from using Wifi. PRIVACY. How can I minimize Apple's well-known user tracking/privacy invasion? Huh. My sense was that Apple is one of the more privacy-friendly tech companies around. You can disable Apple cloud-hosting any of your stuff on Settings->iCloud. With iMessage when you're texting with another iOS user, it'll go through Apple's servers. It's encrypted and law enforcement is always complaining about this, but if you prefer SMS, you can disable iMessage through Settings->Messages. iMessage supports two levels of confirmation: you can see if a message has been delivered to the recipient's device, and you can see if they've read it. If you're using iMessage, you can disable the second one, but not, I think, the first. (SMS doesn't support any of that) Note in the messages apps, iMessages are blue, SMSes are green. (Also, an unrelated tip for Messages: to see timestamps, swipe the whole screen left.) Honestly, though, all the settings are in the Settings app, and your best bet is probably to spend an hour looking at them all.

An iPhone 4S is pretty crappy compared to recent devices. Sorry you have to use hardware from 4 years ago. There's nothing crappy about the iPhone 4S, and besides only just being released 4 years ago, it will be compatible with the upcoming (within a few days) OS update (iOS9).

As someone who's been an apple customer for years (3GS, 4S, 5S) then switched to android for a bit (Xoom running 4.0.4, HTC One running 4.4 then 5.0.2), and am now planning on switching back to apple with a 6S, I have some insight for you: 1) There's one way to do things, and that's the apple way. You get a grid of icons on your home screen, widgets on the pull-down notification screen, and notifications on the lock screen. Get used to that, as there's no real way to change it. 2) That being said, you can replace most apps (browser, mail, etc) with other apps. I mostly used Chrome/Gmail (later, Outlook)/Google Maps/Calendar, etc. When I left there still wasn't a good way to set system defaults for things, so occasionally an app would pop open Mail/Safari/Etc. 3) There are tons of great apps on the app store, and a lot of them are paid. This is a good thing. Apple very much encourages developers to charge for apps instead of including advertising the way Google does.

Do you live anywhere near an Apple Store? A lot of these higher level questions about different philosophies between iOS and Android would be best explained in person, so you can walk through various screens on your phone, etc. I would recommend making a genius bar appointment at your local Apple Store, or honestly, just going in to the store when it is off-peak hours and talk to an employee.

Try swiping right if you need to go Back, since that works in Safari.

Apps: most everything for Apple seems to be either not-free or sketchy. Most of the apps I had on my Android are apparently Android-exclusive. Am I doing this wrong? Can I sort my App Store searches by popularity, rating, or price? Do you have any specific free apps to recommend? There are lists of the most popular paid apps, the most popular free apps and the highest grossing apps (by in app purchases) in the Apple store, but you can't sort your searches. You can view the ratings before opening the app page to read about it, though. I like Documents for text files, PDFs and epubs. The kindle app is another good one for PDFs. It is hard to recommend apps without knowing what you want to do. Permissions for most apps are found in Settings.

Not sure what you mean by access permissions. Android apps have to specify what they want to do with info on the phone and what they need access to. Users see these "permissions" when the app installs and can agree or not to to allow them.