I’m planning on switching platforms and I’m just curious of the opinions of people here. I think that Android can have advantages in areas of privacy and external app installation, but most of the benefits come with a lot of tinkering out of the box.
I’m a very capable person at modifying my phone and I don’t generally mind doing that. I can make the interface work however I want. But I find myself caring less and less about how I interact with things in the light of what Apple is doing.
I’m looking at Android and it seems to be pretty far behind iOS at the moment. The messaging service is a huge sticking point and progress isn’t being made to unify iMessage with RCS apps. It seems to me like Samsung is making more progress with the platform than Google itself is. Like they’re the ones carrying it right now.
Keep in mind, I’m not a shill here. I haven’t used iOS in years. I still think they’re overpriced phones and Apple isn’t a great company. And I wish USB-C was a thing. This isn’t an ad. I’m just frustrated with the android platform and Apple seems to be leaving it behind.
Example features: FaceID, iMessage, home screen UX, battery life, and extended software support.
So can anyone tell me if they feel the same or help me in my decision? Not trying to start a tech war btw
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I moved to iOS able a year ago after being a diehard Samsung fan. I have a long list of pros to switching. The parental controls if you have kids are way beyond Android. That’s really the reason we switched.
The only real con I can give you from a user perspective is the swipe typing is atrocious on every keyboard. I can’t express how much I hate typing on my phone. It makes bad corrections so often it’s pretty much impossible for me to post typo free posts of any length, and it goes back and changes the word before the one you’re typing so you check that the right word is there and nice on and when you look again later after you post, you find it switched the right word to the wrong one. But if you don’t swipe, you won’t notice.
I made the switch a year ago from android to apple. I did the whole rooting and degoogling thing but that took time and I had bugs sometimes which required more tinkering. At one point I was like I don’t have time for this and the nexus to pixel switch didn’t convince me to keep going with android. I switched to iOS and haven’t regretted me move. A few android phones like Sony and Oneplus almost convince me to go back but not yet.
Th blue and green bubble is blown out of proportion especially now that android made the update that green bubble people can emoji respond to messages now. Before you used to get this odd messages that was like so and so laughed at this message.
One thing I would warn you about is the App Store. Most apps cost money which is a pro and a con depending on how you look at it. There are money grabbing subscription apps but I can usually find an awesome one time fee app. Generally the apple App Store has good quality apps but there’s a fee. This kind of adds to the apple eco system because now you paid for high quality apps and they may not transfer if you go back to android.
Just one person’s opinion, but I switched to an Apple phone last year after several years using top of the line Android devices, and I’ve been really happy with it. The features are all rock solid, and their particular brand of walled garden is one that I don’t tend to mind much.
That’s pretty comforting. I’m kind of nervous to switch but it’d good to hear you haven’t had a bad experience
If your stuff just working is more important than customization and you take care of your devices you will probably be very happy. The platforms do have some significant differences in how notifications and the UI work vs Android so not everyone is a fan.
For me the typical 4 plus years of full OS updates and support is great. Never have to worry if my “insert android vendor / carrier” is supporting the next OS release.
Have had the iPhone 3, 3GS, 4s, 5c, 7, and am now on a 14. My 7 I used into the ground, did one official battery replacement on it (gets kinda short on battery life at year 2-3, but never had any issue with any App Store app. Of note my upgrade gap got a lot longer with the 5c as since about that generation they have become so reliable and powerful that it takes a lot for them to be obsolete.
No notes here, my thoughts exactly. I will say though, the info regarding android updates on older phones is a mess. Like okay new android update, but when will my phone get it? Or will it at all? No clue. It’s frustrating that I can’t even tell if or when or what I’ll get in any android update.
IOS is the best of the proprietary software platforms available, that doesn’t make it better. All of their statements are based on trust, since we can’t audit the statement, due to not being able to independently audit the code.
If you thought the San Bernidino iphone case wasn’t smoke and mirrors to try and build trust in the platform, i have a bridge to sell you. (Edit: I say this as an iphone user, who has had one for years)
but most of the benefits come with a lot of tinkering out of the box.
This is by design, because who you’re buying your phone from is highly invested in fucking you over
The problem is that your soul has a price these days, and to keep it to yourself you’re going to have to shell out for it.
OSS phone with all the tinkering done for you. $2000. (edit 2: You can probably get their Librem 5 for under 1k with the discount code on the main page: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5)
This isn’t the only option, but all of them will be more expensive than an iphone, and that price is specifically to do the work you’re hoping apple does on your behalf.
For many years I used Android phones and enjoyed the customization, roms, rooting, and tinkering. Now, I don’t have time for messing around and just want something that will text and take pictures. Made the switch to Apple about 4 years ago. For a while I was travelling for work and gone for extended periods of time so Facetime was nice for connecting with people close to me. Yes, I know there are other apps.
Now my home is all Siri’ed up so I feel locked in, and I have a Macbook for work. I sometimes debate going back and running a privacy rom but my current setup is fine for my threat model. The only thing that fucking sucks is the price, other than that everything just seems “fine”. I am not too picky though. :)
Thanks for the feedback! The price is a sticking point but I’m not worried about it because I’m buying used and Apple products seem to have very good resell value. My 4 year old note 10 plus is worth about a 4th of what I bought it for. Meanwhile iphone 11 and 12 pro max phones are worth literally double that or more while starting at the same price. It’s wild.
Also luckily for me, my partner has a lot of apple tech so I expect I’ll be just fine in that regard. Other than the phone, I can mooch of of them lol.
I do not understand your frustration. Like how can google unify iMessage with RCS if Apple refuses to do so. I mean why would Apple even bother and lose one of its pro.
For FaceID there’s face Unlock but it’s not faceid. Fingerprint is the rule and I’m fine with that one. I’m not sure about the home screen UX but I use smart launcher 6 and it does a good job of providing a neat sorted apps catehpry list for me. As for battery life. The new snapdragon 8 gen 2 provides beastly battery life compared to previous generations which were a regression.
About extended software support. I agree google is a bit behind samsung. But, 5 years os support is not bad. You have samsung, some oneplus smartphones and than google.
In the end if none of that matters, you do you. You do not need justification to use or the other. Just read some reviews and make your decision.
I appreciate that response, very detailed. To be clear I don’t blame Google for not fixing the RCS thing. I just dont see them making any progress. Even if RCS gets through, every android messaging service is still far behind Apple and would take awhile to catch up. iMessage can send payments, play games, has custom reactions, a whole ton of stuff.
And fingerprint is nice, but most android phones have switched to under the screen readers and I just can’t. They’re extremely inconvenient when compared to scanning my face which is always looking at the device anyways.
And the OS support is a sticking point. Google and Samsung both suck at this and I can point it out using the Material You thing they did. When it came out, I had no idea what the features were. I had to go watch videos and even then, it didn’t seem like a big upgrade. Because it wasn’t a big functional upgrade for me. And then Samsung had no clue when it would even come to my Note 10 device. So I was left going: what is this update? When will I have it? And why should I care?. I couldn’t answer any of those and its a problem with every Google update imo. Because some features only come go the pixel. And then others will be changed by Samsung.
Not to mention that Google doesn’t provide support for their features anyways and frequently drops them. Like Apple arcade crushes it while the best that Google can do with gaming is just do a poor imitation of it with zero support.
So I’m just a little tired of thinking that android phones will improve these things and thought I’d at least try the other side for a change.
I like the freedom that comes with android. Being able to customize what I want, download third party apps, easily use third party accessories. I even have it connected to my computer so I can text and open my apps from there.
Apple is just so… closed off. I don’t own any other apple products (and I do not plan on it) so I don’t even get the full benefits of having the whole ecosystem going. There’s just not an upside to using iOS over Android for my personal use case.
Also, I’m currently using a Samsung Fold and I don’t know if I could go back to a regular phone lol. It’s just so unique and really fantastic for multitasking. I don’t think it’s possible to open more than app side by side on iPhone? (Correct me if I’m wrong) but I regularly use 2 to 3 side by side and even have the option to add a 4th in pop-up view if I wanted to lol.
It’s really all preference, but I’ve just never been a big Apple fan and I don’t really like the UI designs for most of their products.
Ah I’m jealous! I can’t afford a foldable but they’re very cool tech so enjoy it!
Luckily for me, my partner owns a lot of Apple devices which is what pressured me to switch and talk about this. So in my use case I think it makes more sense potentially. Thanks for the feedback though, cheers!
This is a “forced” pro for iOS, but if you were to get an android phone and another iOS user were to send you a video via text message, it will look like shit unless you have an iOS device. I’m an android user and I hate this.
I have a pixel 6 pro. I’d only recommend getting a pixel or a OnePlus phone because all others usually have their crap branded bloatware attached and are usually slower to get updates. Pixel does come with some Google apps, but I actually use a good bit of them so I don’t mind.
Fingerprint scanner on pixel is nice. I don’t do a lot of stuff on my phone so my bar is set at- has working Bluetooth, no bloatware, updates pushed out at reasonable time, can easily move photos to external storage so I don’t have to pay for cloud storage.
I guess I can edit in here that I actually use both. My work phone is some 2 year old iphone. I don’t know what number it is. If I wasn’t paranoid of my company spying on me I would probably use it more and get rid of my android.
There’s literally one reason I stick with android, you can just put files on it and use them, I know iOS has improved greatly here, now you can actually have some approximation of file system access, but I really don’t want to use a janky app like iTunes (at least on windows it’s kind of broken still) to get anything on and off the phone outside of iCloud. I end up using my phone more like a pocket linux computer enough of the time that I just can’t jive with such a locked down device.
I really like the hardware, and iOS is a very cohesive and easy to use experience it just doesn’t fill my use cases for a phone. I’m not the kind of person who just uses something, I always want to crack it open and tinker with it, I think my record for not modifying a car after purchase is 2 weeks (only because I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a lemon). Android just fits my ethos better.
I mean, getting files off of iphones is certainly a hurdle but I can’t say I do it often. I back up my photos and videos, so I don’t know what else I’d use on my phone in the way of files.
Yeah it’s one of those things, you know if you need it. Most people don’t need it. An android phone has been an extremely flexible part of my tech toolkit since 2011 and I haven’t looked back. If I want to do something involving another phone or computer I can find some way to do it. iOS has certainly become much much more flexible than it was early on, but I don’t think I can fix an old CNC controller with an RS232 adapter with one.
I’ve been really tempted to make my next phone an iPhone just because of the software support. There are rumors the next iphone will have USB-C as well.
It’s not just a rumor, as the EU made made it law, so Apple wouldn’t be able to sell them there otherwise.
It isn’t required until 2024 though so they could still pull an Apple and hold off another year
Lack of serviceability is a big one.
Walled gardens are another.
I have major issues with both. I bought the device, I should be able to repair it. It shouldn’t intentionally not work with other ecosystems that use standard protocols either. I should be able to integrate my device with standards the rest of the world uses.
Pretty much you buy apple devices, you are essentially an expensive renter renting a really strong internal ecosystem that purposefully forces you into buying more of that ecosystem and not working outside of it.
Right to repair is a thing in Europe now (https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2022/12/apple-launches-self-service-repair-in-europe/), though I’ve heard complaints about how it’s conducted.
I’m on iOS and the biggest downside to iOS in my opinion is the $100/year developer fee, the Mac requirement for development, and the lack of side-loading. What this ultimately means is that it can be hard to find free / open source apps for iOS, especially ones like newpipe that might not be approved on the App Store. It’s honestly a pretty big bummer. Some other restrictions also mean that Safari is pretty much the only viable browser on iOS and ad-blocking / extensions are fairly limited. Another disappointment is that ad-supported apps seemed to be a lot more annoying than the Google equivalents, weirdly enough. I guess Google maybe has more / different guidelines about making ads supremely irritating, or maybe I just had better options for free apps on Android.
I’m curious what you mean by “in light of what Apple is doing”? As far as I know iOS isn’t really miles ahead of Android in any particular area – they’re more or less comparable in my experience, with iOS being a bit more limited in terms of customization and stuff (the fact that you still can’t place icons anywhere you want on the homescreen is baffling to me).
If I’m being entirely honest, I think I probably like the Android operating system more than I like iOS… Which is weirdly part of the reason I like iOS – I’m a little less tempted to look at my phone and a little less tempted to tinker with it. And there are are things that I like about my iPhone. The hardware is nice, the Apple Watch is really nice, FaceID is great, some things I thought would be silly like live photos are actually kind of nice, some of the iCloud features are great, and it’s nice that it pairs with other things in the Apple ecosystem well. Ultimately the main reason I’ve abandoned Android is that I just got sick of my Android phones dying all of the time and only getting software support for like 9 months. Apple’s support window is massive in comparison, which is also a big plus.
I appreciate the detailed response, it’s good info. I’ll just respond to the curiousity part. I mean that their phones and tech seem to be maturing and aren’t slowing down. I saw their last WWDC and I know most of it is marketing but even then, it seems like all of their interface gets updates yearly. I can’t say the same for Android phones as I never see updates aside from major ones. And when they happen, I have no idea what’s in them.
Like the messaging app on iPhone is light years ahead of anything available on Android. FaceTime continues to be a standard for calling and alternatives exist but Google has changed the service they use like twice now since I’ve been on Android I think. Not to mention that Google meet is just… not good enough. FaceID isn’t a thing really. The health apps on iOS aren’t talked about enough and they’re pretty good as far as I know. Privacy still does seem to be with iphone, the ad blocking is great.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s some Android phones that do some of these things really well or maybe even better. But the iOS stuff is just a really good package overall that delivers a consistent experience. And from what I’ve had in my decade on Android, it continues to be inconsistent for me.
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Be sure if another apps or features are as important for you as those you said Face ID, iMessage, home screen UX, battery life. For example, not being able to run syncthing on IOS is a dealbreaker for me. Another app is minimalism launcher, etc…
not being able to run synching
Do you mean syncthing? I’m just asking for clarification, because that’s an important piece of software for me.
Yeah, that’s what I meant
I used custom roms for years on Android and in 2020 decided to give iOS a go. I bought a used iPhone 7 to just dabble for a bit and have stayed with it ever since. I have no more desire to constantly modify the system as it just works. I miss a few things that were great on Android, such as NewPipe (Ad-free YouTube app), being able to open any file easily and emulating GameBoy games on the go. I also miss the way the photo gallery on Android worked, as iOS forces you to have every single photo (screenshots, downloads, etc.) in your library and you can’t file it away. I hope that the coming laws (in the EU and US ) will force Apple to allow other app stores which might fix these shortcomings with third-party apps.
There are a lot of answers running the gamut.
The bottom line is, as it has always been: you use the technology that works for you. iOS isn’t better or worse than Android, and vice versa. Both OSes are valid, and it’s the individual’s choice as to what works best for them. I would be miserable with an Android device. I happen to get great value from my Apple devices - especially when there is trade-in value and the devices get recycled.
I personally don’t think it’s productive to “tribalize" the two OSes. They are developed to completely different designs and strategies. Android is basically designed for a wide range of manufacturers, each having their own needs and wants, which includes frequent sales cycles. Apple has always, ALWAYS, been a hardware manufacturer first, and any software they develop is intended to enhance the user’s experience of the hardware in a very measured and structured way. Android (and PC) is aimed for mass market distribution. Apple has always been premium boutique. Hell, one big reason the iPhone was originally released by Apple because the existing cell phone market refused to support the Mac platform: essentially the iPhone was the “premium add-on” to the Mac experience. But Apple also has a slower sales cycle - releasing yearly, sure, but with the understanding that every year someone will want an upgrade, not every year everyone will want an upgrade. My last iPhone went 5 hardware versions before I upgraded, or about 3 years, and I average 3-5 years on small devices, and 5-7 years on desktop).
Every user’s experience is personal, and anecdotal, even mine. So I ask: what do YOU want in a phone? What you YOU want your phone’s OS to do? Make a decision matrix and list all the pros and cons of each phone. Which ends up with the most pros? How many of the cons are show stoppers? If Android matches best, by an Android phone. It’s fine.
You’re not wrong about all of this. I wasn’t trying to tribalize or start a fight (said so in my post even) because I know that people do that. However, my view has changed from when I last owned an iphone.
When I last owned an iphone, the fights made sense. I could see why people fought over platforms because they were very different and comparing and contrasting them at the time was pretty difficult to do directly. Like was it better to have back and forward button bars? Or were curved phone edges a good idea?
But nowadays my opinion is diffent. Phones do a lot of the same things. They’re all very mature platforms for the most part. So when I ask my question I’m asking why, for most general use cases, anyone would want an android. And the response I’m getting back for the most part is: you don’t.
This is coming from someone who desperately wants the competition. I ditched iphone about a decade ago when the S7 edge was a thing. I left behind all of the features iphones have for connecting with people for a platform that I believed had better tech, was more affordable, and had similar software support.
Nowadays I’m looking at the platforms and most of my reasons no longer make sense. Android phones are expensive. They aren’t at apples level, but some of them are and none of them hold value. So why not wait two years and get a brand new android? Because the software updates aren’t going to keep up. So for a higher initial investment, I can get a phone that will have decent resale value when I’m ready to upgrade and still get software updates.
All of this is to say that my ability to connect with friends over FaceTime and imessage aren’t worth sticking it out on android to me. I don’t see a lot of hope for the platform in the directions I want. I haven’t seen the improvements I was hoping for. And so I’m jumping ship. Maybe I’ll be back, maybe I’ll hate iphone, we shall see!
I’m sorry if I implied you were causing tribalism. I was ranting into the void on that one. :-)
What you are experiencing though is effectively “paralysis through over analysis” a failing many of us have. This is why you have to pull back a bit and think pragmatically. Which is not easy, but with everything getting expensive, you have to think about the best investment of your hard-earned money. There is always going to be a “next best” especially right after you buy a device. You should always shoot for “the best you can afford” at the time you need to buy.
If Apple is giving you the best value for your purchase, then you are being frugal. It may be by the time you are ready to purchase a new devise, you may find that Android scratches an itch the iPhone can’t. I, for one, would love the more delicate chimes most Android devices have - instead of Apple’s “Fisher Price” sounds.
The bottom line is, this is your money - don’t let anyone’s opinions drive you to a purchase you will be unhappy with. If an iPhone is serving your needs now, that’s awesome. If you find that you miss being on an Android, you can use the time to keep an eye out for an Android device that you feel is an upgrade. It’s all about what the device can do for you, and how long that device will remain useful to you.
To be honest I think the phones are very equal which is actually why I want the opinions to color my decision because I’m finding it hard to decide. I bought the phone, but I’m not set on switching to it so I wanted to hear what people have to say before I get it.
Sometimes experiences are useful and I’ve heard experiences from people who use their phone very similar to me be happy with the switch. I’ll have to report back.
But yeah I’m conscious of the frugal part. I even calculated out how much my android phone has cost me in depreciation and decided that the best way to think about it was in terms of that.
For example; my Note 10 plus cost about $1000 new and I’ve had it about 4 years, now it’s worth $250. So my cost is roughly $200 to own the phone over that time. However, I can (and did) buy an iPhone 12 pro max for $600 and I expect it to follow a similar depreciation at $150 per year-ish.
So when people say that apple phones are more expensive, they’re right, but there’s an upfront investment. After that, owning a used iPhone is similar to owning a used android phone. Just a thought.
