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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Apple refuses to integrate RCS into iMessage despite Google publicly calling it out and inviting it to do so. Apple is not incentivized to do so since they enjoy the iMessage ecosystem lock-in. Google is further ahead than Samsung, and allows you to use RCS with their stock Messages app. Personally, I use Signal with all my friends and family which works on both iOS and Android.
Let’s go through your example features…
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Face ID: This is available in the latest Google Pixel models via Face Unlock. No it’s not as good as iOS, but you also have the fingerprint reader as an additional option with Pixel, which you don’t have on iOS. As someone who experiences Winter, I’m glad to not have to show my face to unlock my phone when I’m bundled up or skiing with a helmet/goggles on. Easier to just take a glove off for a hot second to unlock the phone.
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iMessage: This is blue bubble envy, and it’s pretty slick I can’t lie. Again, I’ve been beneficial to have my friends use Signal, but if all your friends are using iMessage it can be annoying. This is a problem of Apple’s own making, however, and I wouldn’t reward them (on principle) for sustaining the issue despite options being available.
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Home Screen UX: Not sure how Android doesn’t win this one hands down. Home screen customization is way behind Android, and even with the latest changes in the latest versions of iOS, it’s still behind.
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Battery Life: I don’t find my Pixel 7 to suffer from poor or even remotely poor battery life at all. There are Android phones like the Asus Zenphone 10 that are crushing even the best iPhone on battery life. It’s easily a two-day phone, and they do it all in a compact package.
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Extended Software Support: Again, it’s all in who you choose to buy from if you value long term support. Samsung gives four years of OS and five years of security updates for its phones. Google gives three years of OS updates and five years of security updates on its phones. Not quite as good as iOS, but not worth spending a bunch extra for an iPhone.
Ultimately though, it’s Apple’s hostile approach to allowing users to repair their own products that has me staying away from purchasing their phones. Not just in the build process, but in their unwillingness to sell component level replacement parts of any kind to independent repair shops. And their support for killing right-to-repair legislation.
I appreciate the thorough response, thanks! And I hear most of this but I’d give some pushback on a few things. Most of this comes from experience with Samsung devices so keep that in mind.
I recognize that the RCS thing is an apple problem that they’re making. But my issue is that even if they solved RCS, I think that iMessage is still somewhat running away with messaging and I can’t convince anyone to use signal. I like the security, but signal isn’t very feature rich. And I’m kind of done waiting for a better android alternative to exist unfortunately. If it did, I might come back.
FaceID: I too love the fingerprint reader. My Note 10 isn’t great with having it under the screen and I’d prefer face unlock personally. I can’t imagine FaceID to be any less convenient than having a wet finger and being unable to scan it. So I’d call that neutral for me personally.
iMessage: I know I’m rewarding them, I hate it, wish I could live without it but it’s stopping me from getting video messages from people.
Home Screen UX: it’s less about customization (not being able to place apps in certain places bugs me) but more about the design language itself. I guess less about the home screen specifically and I mean more about the general UI layout, drawers, and control panel. All those are mature on android and I just fine the Apple stuff easier to visually control. Especially comparing the Apple stuff to OneUI or material you. I know I can fix some of what I’m talking about, but I don’t necessarily want to fiddle with it.
And Battery: isn’t usually a problem for me with a note device, but I’ve had issues before. Like a weird bug used to drain battery for no reason (Linus of LTT noted this a few times on his Note device). But in general, Apple seems to be making advances in efficiency that aren’t present in android devices yet. Hence the larger (and heavier) batteries in many devices.
Again not trying to start a war, don’t feel obligated to respond. Just hope that explains my thoughts here.
On battery: Samsung seems to have a battery quality issue for many years now.
On longevity: I think every Samsung flagship I’ve had felt very noticeable slower after just like 3-6 months of use.
Ive sworn off of Samsung for the foreseeable future.
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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.
Apple is a walled garden and because of it I will not touch their products. Stuff tends to be over priced too.
Do not use face ID on phones other than Apple and maybe Samsung as most are easily spoofed.
A phone is a throw away device so my opinion is buy the cheapest one that does what you need.
In my case is because the stuff I buy has to be mine. It’s a matter of principle. I root and degoogle all my phones and install custom ROMs on them (and FOSS apps from external stores, such as fdroid). I couldn’t deApple an iPhone, so it’d kind of limited for me. Plus, frankly speaking, I couldn’t care less about RCSi/Message, it’s not like there aren’t enough messaging options out there.
I hate to disappoint you, but the software part controlling your phone is the baseband processor. No matter what you replace and root, that one is in control and you cannot in any legal way replace it.
I mean, you can say the same about nearly all hardware for sale today (coreboot etc being the exception). Being able to control what the OS is doing is enough for most enthusiasts.
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
I owned an iPod touch and an iPad and I’ll never buy in to the Apple ecosystem again.
Update after update the devices got slower and slower until they were unusuable. With no way to roll back (at the time, not sure if that still holds) the only solution was to buy a new device.
I have yet to have that happen with any of my other devices. Android phones, tablets, Linux machines, Windows machines, game consoles, or Roku boxes.
I’ve had similar experiences with android phones, seems like an older gen tech problem so I want to see if that’s still an issue.
Except that apple was intentionally doing this to drive consumers towards buying more of their product
The phone slowdowns were intended to prolong the lives of phones, not shorten them. The underclocking only happened after your phone had been forced to shut down because the battery wasn’t delivering sufficient power. I had a phone with this problem, and opening the camera would sometimes just immediately shut down the phone instead. I got a free new battery for it, but the general fix was slowdowns instead. They should’ve disclosed it and they also should’ve given users control, but if they wanted people buying new phones, I know from experience that the random shutdowns were worse than a slower phone.
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.
The only thing keeping me from switching to an Apple device is ads on youtube. You can get a modded youtube app on Iphone but it takes way more work compared to an android. If you don’t have a mac, file transfer is also a pain on windows machines.
On the other hand, Apple UX really is great. If you prefer UX over customizability, I don’t see why you wouldn’t go for an Iphone.
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 noticed that with all my friends and family, once they get into the ecosystem, they can’t get out.
Apple has a lot of proprietary systems that forces users to get into the ecosystem. That ecosystem is expensive to maintain. And say you wanna switch back to android. Then you’re met with the sunk cost fallacy. What are you going to with all the hardware and services you bought that is now useless outside of the ecosystem?
My issues with apple are mostly around repair. Cost of first party repairs and active fighting against user or third party repairs.
My iPhone got some water damage, and now faceid doesn’t work. Because it’s water damage, they won’t even do the “faceid repair” for like $200, they’ll only replace the device for $550. Like most parts on the phone it’s paired to the phone, so it’s impossible to salvage a part and do the repair myself.
So I’m here with no faceid for like a year because I don’t want to pay them that much for the repair (might as well get a new phone at that point) and I don’t want to buy a new iPhone and reward apple for this bs.
If I do buy another iPhone eventually, I might just give in though and play their fucking game fully and just buy the applecare. Just fully go in on the fact that I’m subscribing to the iPhone experience, not actually owning anything.
I switched a couple years ago, the stability was the best part for me, and the fact that all of your peripheral devices just work, it’s really nice.
I’m interested in why you think android has any privacy benefits. If you are talking full-google android, I don’t see how running an OS made by a company whose business model is finding out every bit of info they can about you is privacy positive.
Now if you are talking lineage and/or grapheneOS
Without gapps, sure.I like Apple because my phone just works. Sure the customization isn’t there, but I’d waste time on it if it was. Also stay on Apple because last time I checked, the Apple Watch was the only wearable that tracked wheelchair activity properly.
iOS has gotten far buggier since Steve’s departure though. The “paint the back of the fence” mindset got ruined by Tim Apple and capitalism.
I am a gadget fanatic, but I also love to maintain privacy. One problem I always see mentioned is wallet garden on iOS. I put some of my experience into the ring here. I use GrapheneOS as my daily drive for most things. This starts with no google services and ends with profiles where I can separate people and groups and install multiple of the same apps… like signal etc.
For lots of my work, I use a samsung fold 4. It replaced my laptop, and it’s convenient. With adg (remove many Samsung apps and the Facebook and microsoft bloatware) and block internet access to most apps via rethinkdns and decloudus, you get a pretty convenient yet private device. I monitor what goes in and out and block all i don’t need.
My family is all into apple so I also have an iPhone (not an excuse haha, I also love some of the wallet gardened things. Like apple music, imessage (for very few people) and I love the focus setup. I know you can do a lot manually on android to get it similar, but focus modes are a killer. I also never found as great looking and working mastodon apps (and yes, I use tusky, fedilab, and a few others on android. I still prefer what ios (some paid, some free have to offer, mammoth comes to mind on the free end). To make things more private, I use adguard pro in combination with decloudus and block apple our of the device. Still get push, and all works when you add a very few domains listing on the decloudus whitelist page.
So I use 3 options (GrapheneOS what is surly the best when it comes to privacy) but also wouldn’t want to miss ios or a fold.
iOS is great and if it works for you and you are happy with it, perhaps even have a mac then you can make it a great, private and secure device. Use lockdown mode is also a great way I didn’t see on android yet.
Surprisingly, iOS has better privacy than Google because Apple is a hardware company while Google is an advertising company.
