Thanks for the honest review and I’m glad you’re enjoying it, competition is good and helps us all towards our goal of modern and transparent banking!
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Been using Starling and Monzo at the same time lately and I find both are great, however I do miss the coin noises when you either top up or spend money
Other than that, honestly, I don’t really see any change - I still do not like the doughnut chart but that is something I can live with (and always makes me want to get a doughnut from Krispy Kreme) but Monzo with it’s moving graph has been great as I can see my cash flow and monitor how I have been spending. When I flashed my Starling card at work, one of my colleagues thought I won the lottery and had one of exclusive cards only millionaires can have (search Coutts purple card)
As I have said previously, Starling does have a 24/7 CS team (I understand Monzo will have this soon) and do not plan to start charging foreign ATM fees for the foreseeable future (they said this in a private tweet to me)
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In 2013 Coutts replaced its ‘Purple’ card (designed by Ozwald Boateng) with a new ‘Silk’ card.
To be fair, Starling’s purple card does look like a card very rich / exclusive people have, i.e. the old Coutts purple card and the old HSBC Premier Card to name a few
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In the past we had a lovely dark red leather card holder from Coutts embossed in gold with their logo 
and Drummonds chequebook holders were a soft leather royal blue embossed with their logo and gold edges I got a second one to keep my paying in book in (bank giro credits)
If Monzo give some kind of leather card holder just for your Monzo card that would be amazing, but seriously a leather chequebook holder?! What the frack! 
A holder for a leather chequebook. 
I would much prefer the graph that you Apple users get, but having the donut chart is infinitely better than having nothing, as we have on Android.
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Yeah, this is what made defect to Starling. I was shocked when I saw how far ahead iOS was with Monzo and it really put me off.
But I’m excited for Monzo again now I’ve been offered the current account preview and I’ve got renewed hope for updates and parity soon!
Specially since the top people at Monzo have apparently switched to Android now.
(My wife was given an iPhone the other day as a work phone. I had a quick play with it - I honestly don’t know how anyone could prefer that to Android. She also hates it - we both have S8s as our personal phones)
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Back in the mid 2000s, a friend of mine had a transparent Coutts card. It looked really cool.
I can find no trace of it ever existing though when I Google it
My problem is that the best android phones were made by Samsung - a deeply unethical and untrustworthy company. (You have to be part of the same family to get on the board, the ex CEO has just been jailed for corruption).
I may look at the essential phone though - if it can take a non reporting version of android.
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I am sorry but this is just bit lazy - I am a fan of innovation and technology Apple, Samsung or any other doing amazing stuff I would always appreciate but saying Samsung is somehow is more unethical than Apple has no justification I am sure anyone can find hundreds of articles how unethical most phone manufacturers are and have been.
Don’t be so sure that iOS won’t collect (report as you say) anything on you…
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There are loads of (very good) Android partners these days, I’d be interested as to why you pigeon-hole so narrowly on Samsung and the newer, unproven, Essential phone?
HTC, Huawei, Sony, LG, OnePlus and even Google’s own Pixel range all have hugely impressive specs and ranges available to suit every budget.
We do have a 24/7 CS team for our approx 400,000 customers on the prepaid beta. Just not for our 2,000 or so people on the Current Account Preview. By the time the CA figure is higher, we will have. It just doesn’t make sense just yet.
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I wish I could tell you what I know… but you know nothing about me, so your ad hominem is unwarranted
It’s not how many you have, it’s how they perform.
My experience, yesterday (with Starling), left me feeling like I was talking to a legacy bank. They really didn’t care about me with a query prior to my pushing the button on CASS to move to them. 
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Sure I know nothing I am a learner though and will keep learning.
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Ahh I see, apologies for that!
To be honest, I did look at asking Monzo about something during the night hours (around 2am on a weekend) but it didn’t seem that anyone was online so I left it til the morning - all in all great team and support unlike the high street banks!
Keep it up @simonb and team! 