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I keep hearing stories like this and I remain utterly bemused that the median narrative about Android vs iOS has barely changed in response. There's a lot to lo

I keep hearing stories like this and I remain utterly bemused that the median narrative about Android vs iOS has barely changed in response. There's a lot to love about Android, but I think more people in the tech sector need to realise that their mental model of the phone marketplace has more to do with historical perception of Android being "hacker friendly" than the current realities. Android is open source! Oh wait— it's becoming more closed every release cycle, to the point that a pure AOSP experience is something only a determined geek would ever love. iOS and Android are now both blends of open and closed source, albeit in different ratios. Google's app store is developer friendly! Oh wait— approvals are now slower than Apple, they're banning developers with no explanation, yet the store is still full of crapware and scams. At least Apple's policies seem to have a tangible trade-off. Android gives customers hardware choices! Oh wait— the choice is between a cheap device that got its final software update five days after it shipped, a mid-tier device that might get updated next year, or a flagship which will probably get next year's major update and only security fixes thereafter. Android gives customers software choices! Oh wait— what's the current messaging platform that Google is pushing this month? Do you, the human reading this paragraph, really care if there are eight hundred or eight thousand camera apps in your phone's app store?

mav3rick 7y ago
Yes everyone should be rich enough to buy a 1000 dollar Apple phone. Also, you get to decide if I want more than one camera app or not ? Stop imposing your world view on others. Android made smartphones accessible to many people across the globe. You won't mention that would you ? Won't fit your narrative.
- nominated1 7y ago
  > Yes everyone should be rich enough to buy a 1000 dollar Apple phone. I bought an iPhone 7 from Net10 about 5 months ago for $220 shipped. It requires a minimum $20 a month plan for 12 months before I can unlock it. About 2 years ago I got my mom an iPhone SE for $140 with similar plan/unlock. Both brand new. They’re not everyday prices and not the newest model but it is possible to go iOS without breaking the bank.
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    Again why should consumers not buy a newer phone for cheaper. Who are you to tell them what's right for them ? In India $220 dollars is a luxury many people can't afford.
  - bad_user 7y ago
    So your iPhone 7 actually costs $220 + $20 * 12 = $460 Is that correct? Not sure what the situation is over there, but in my country I've got a $5 prepaid plan with unlimited minutes, 10 GB monthly bandwidth and I can stop paying at any time. So I hope you don't go around pretending that the $20 you're paying per month isn't for that phone ;-)
    - mav3rick 7y ago
      Thanks for catching that subsidy
    - maccard 7y ago
      You have to actually take the cost of the plan you were playing anyway off the monthly for a fair comparison. In this case $400. Chances are the OP doesn't have the option of a 5$ plan with 10GB data - I certainly don't (that's closer to $20 here).
  - amputect 7y ago
    The "1000 dollar apple phone" thing is such a weird myth. My wife has been using the iphone 5s for years now, because the later models are too big for her to hold comfortably. It originally came out in 2013. It is still supported by Apple, and hers currently runs iOS 12.4, which came out last month. She is on her second 5s, because she dropped her first one in the lake trying to take a picture of our dog. I use it from time to time to help pull up music or navigation in the car and it runs just fine, it's a perfectly usable phone. These days, you can get a "renewed" one for less than a hundred dollars, unlocked, straight from Amazon. Android is the phone ecosystem where you actually need to spend a thousand dollars* on phone hardware, because all of the inexpensive android devices are cheaply made garbage that feel like they should come filled with candy. They are stuffed with manufacturer bloatware (if you're lucky, or malware if you're not), and are obsolete right out of the box. If you spend a hundred dollars on an android phone, I absolutely guarantee you that you will regret it. I'm not exactly an apple partisan here, I work on android apps for a living, I've used android phones for years, I actually like the Android OS and I want it to thrive, but the current state of the overall android hardware and software ecosystem, outside of the very high end devices that most people frankly can't afford, is just dire. *- I have a pixel 3 XL, I know a thing or two about spending a thousand dollars to get a usable android device.
- lstamour 7y ago
  An iPhone SE is $238 in India, $299-449 in the US. Similar pricing exists for the iPhone 6 & 6s, and the iPhone 7 is quite good while still well under $1000 most places.
  - jeroenhd 7y ago
    The average wage in India is a little above 5 dollars a day. That's about 160 dollars a month. Translated to American wage standards, the $238 dollar iPhone would cost about $6000 (1.5 the average monthly wage). A $238 dollar smartphone is inaccessible to most people in India. A "well under $1000 dollar" iPhone much less so. Dollar values don't really translate as well to other countries as much as we'd like. Translating the price to a month's wage can bring a lot of perspective.
    - e12e 7y ago
      You'd probably want to use median rather than average for such comparisons - I don't have those on hand right now, but it'd be interesting to compare/contrast.
  - snaky 7y ago
    It seems iPhones ain't very popular in India. > Xiaomi has now been India’s top smartphone seller for eight straight quarters. The Chinese electronics giant shipped 10.4 million handsets in the quarter that ended in June, commanding 28.3% of the market, research firm IDC reported Tuesday. Its closest rival, Samsung — which once held the top spot in India — shipped 9.3 million handsets in the nation during the same period, settling for a 25.3% market share.
sieabahlpark 7y ago
I personally like that my phone has expandable memory and iPhone features 3 years before the iPhone.
- dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
  I'm not sure why you've been downvoted. The current trends are quite interesting: Huawei & co. are bending over backwards to introduce innovative solutions into their phones, whereas Apple seems quite conservative and seems satisfied with putting in more powerful chips mostly. I'm amazed what you can do with some Chinese phones, and I wonder why Apple is less aggressive about new features than they used to be.
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    HN hates Android or anything pro Google. Hence the downvotes.
Illniyar 7y ago
All those things don't really matter, the only thing that matters is that you cannot sideload apps in iOS. As long as you can sideload apps in android, it will always have a better reputation than somewhere you cannot. But even those things you mention, they are all part of a scale, even if android becomes more closed-source it's still miles more open-source than iOS, even if it delays new app submissions it's still doesn't require a mac to develop for, has a choice of IDEs and a dozen other development friendly features that we often take for granted outside iOS development. And it is ludicrous to suggest that android has the same hardware choice as iPhones just because apple now has mid-range level priced phones. Hardware choice means that some models have replaceable battery, physical keyboard, bendable screens, childproof, waterproof and many more options.
- mprev 7y ago
  Sideloading of apps is, at best, a niche interest.
  - indy 7y ago
    When the number of devices number in the billions then of course sideloading could be considered a niche interest. But for people involved in software development it's extremely useful being able to sideload the latest build of an app to show to stakeholders.
    - sjwright 7y ago
      You say that like nobody developing iOS apps has stakeholders. Apple gives developers solutions for that which are much neater and streamlined. For development life cycles, sideloading is an unnecessary kludge.
  - Illniyar 7y ago
    Until it isn't. The moment a popular enough app gets banned by google play store, the use of sideloading will skyrocket. If apple decides to ban Telegram, there's nothing you can do (which it did btw at some point). The ability to sideload is more important than it's usage, both for your personal freedom and for keeping large companies in check.
bad_user 7y ago
I'm an iPhone user currently, have been for some time. However all of the points you mentioned are still true. There is no open source in iOS and the entire platform has an anti open source culture. Android has a lot of open source apps available, including an app store meant just for open source (https://www.f-droid.org/ https://www.f-droid.org/). If you don't like Google Play, at the very least you can distribute your app independently without jailbreaking the phone. It might take the users fiddling with their settings, but at least the option is legit. Also on Android you can have actual Firefox (not allowed on iOS), with ads-blocking extensions and everything, as the default browser. And apps don't necessarily insist on opening up their own freaking web view, or if they do, most of the time there's an option for opting out. And yes, you can find really good Android phones for cheap. Like the ones from Huawei. Which I stay away from, but for other reasons. Apple's phones age well and I like to be environmental friendly, so I'll keep this iPhone 8+ I have until it breaks. But my next phone is not going to be an iPhone, sorry.
- ninedays 7y ago
  > There is no open source in iOS and the entire platform has an anti open source culture. People really have short memory and unfortunately have too much biais to even make a simple Google Search to get some informations. Trying to define this as "one is better than the others related to X" is childish at best. https://developer.apple.com/opensource/ https://developer.apple.com/opensource/ Warm vibes,
  - bad_user 7y ago
    WebKit, you mean the source code that was forked from KHTML and because it was GPL, Apple would then do incomprehensible code dumps to comply with the law? WebKit that was forked by Google because they couldn't collaborate with Apple? I'm glad that they ended up releasing it, but to show that as an example of open source from Apple ... indeed shows that people have short memories ;-)
    - ninedays 7y ago
      > WebKit that was forked by Google because they couldn't collaborate with Apple? You say "they couldn't collaborate" I say "Google really wanted to compete". Remember that it was Google who decided to perform a fork because they had a different approach than Apple for how "multi-process" should be implemented. Google had an implementation that they didn't want to integrate into the Webkit branch - hence the Blink fork.[1] Also Apple would have been happy if they could use the Google's implementation instead of using their own - they said that repeatedly [2] You can also find more details of the story here. It looks more and more obvious that the decision to create a WebKit fork was more political than technical : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5490242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5490242 [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/05/blink-google-rendering-browser https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/05/blink-goo... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5490661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5490661
snaky 7y ago
> a cheap device that got its final software update five days after it shipped Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, released 2016, MTK-based cheap smartphone, current official stable ROM is V10.2.2.0.MBFCNXM released May 2019. > Apple shipped 33.8 million new iPhones during 2Q19, which was down significantly from the same quarter one year ago. Regardless of the slightly lower market share and device selling prices, the iPhone installed base continued to grow. The numbers show that now 3rd placed Apple may soon drop into 4th, with Xiaomi only 1.5 million handsets behind Apple.
nobrains 7y ago
Android gives customers hardware choices You dilute your argument by mentioning this point. Google does give better hardware choices. I am using a $150 android-one phone (Xiaomi A3) which has a high end comparable back and front camera. And comes with 2 years guaranteed OS updates. Compare with the cheapest latest iPhone (iPhone XR) which is 5 times more expensive at $750.

mav3rick 7y ago

Yes everyone should be rich enough to buy a 1000 dollar Apple phone. Also, you get to decide if I want more than one camera app or not ? Stop imposing your world view on others. Android made smartphones accessible to many people across the globe. You won't mention that would you ? Won't fit your narrative.

nominated1 7y ago
> Yes everyone should be rich enough to buy a 1000 dollar Apple phone. I bought an iPhone 7 from Net10 about 5 months ago for $220 shipped. It requires a minimum $20 a month plan for 12 months before I can unlock it. About 2 years ago I got my mom an iPhone SE for $140 with similar plan/unlock. Both brand new. They’re not everyday prices and not the newest model but it is possible to go iOS without breaking the bank.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Again why should consumers not buy a newer phone for cheaper. Who are you to tell them what's right for them ? In India $220 dollars is a luxury many people can't afford.
- bad_user 7y ago
  So your iPhone 7 actually costs $220 + $20 * 12 = $460 Is that correct? Not sure what the situation is over there, but in my country I've got a $5 prepaid plan with unlimited minutes, 10 GB monthly bandwidth and I can stop paying at any time. So I hope you don't go around pretending that the $20 you're paying per month isn't for that phone ;-)
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    Thanks for catching that subsidy
  - maccard 7y ago
    You have to actually take the cost of the plan you were playing anyway off the monthly for a fair comparison. In this case $400. Chances are the OP doesn't have the option of a 5$ plan with 10GB data - I certainly don't (that's closer to $20 here).
- amputect 7y ago
  The "1000 dollar apple phone" thing is such a weird myth. My wife has been using the iphone 5s for years now, because the later models are too big for her to hold comfortably. It originally came out in 2013. It is still supported by Apple, and hers currently runs iOS 12.4, which came out last month. She is on her second 5s, because she dropped her first one in the lake trying to take a picture of our dog. I use it from time to time to help pull up music or navigation in the car and it runs just fine, it's a perfectly usable phone. These days, you can get a "renewed" one for less than a hundred dollars, unlocked, straight from Amazon. Android is the phone ecosystem where you actually need to spend a thousand dollars* on phone hardware, because all of the inexpensive android devices are cheaply made garbage that feel like they should come filled with candy. They are stuffed with manufacturer bloatware (if you're lucky, or malware if you're not), and are obsolete right out of the box. If you spend a hundred dollars on an android phone, I absolutely guarantee you that you will regret it. I'm not exactly an apple partisan here, I work on android apps for a living, I've used android phones for years, I actually like the Android OS and I want it to thrive, but the current state of the overall android hardware and software ecosystem, outside of the very high end devices that most people frankly can't afford, is just dire. *- I have a pixel 3 XL, I know a thing or two about spending a thousand dollars to get a usable android device.
lstamour 7y ago
An iPhone SE is $238 in India, $299-449 in the US. Similar pricing exists for the iPhone 6 & 6s, and the iPhone 7 is quite good while still well under $1000 most places.
- jeroenhd 7y ago
  The average wage in India is a little above 5 dollars a day. That's about 160 dollars a month. Translated to American wage standards, the $238 dollar iPhone would cost about $6000 (1.5 the average monthly wage). A $238 dollar smartphone is inaccessible to most people in India. A "well under $1000 dollar" iPhone much less so. Dollar values don't really translate as well to other countries as much as we'd like. Translating the price to a month's wage can bring a lot of perspective.
  - e12e 7y ago
    You'd probably want to use median rather than average for such comparisons - I don't have those on hand right now, but it'd be interesting to compare/contrast.
- snaky 7y ago
  It seems iPhones ain't very popular in India. > Xiaomi has now been India’s top smartphone seller for eight straight quarters. The Chinese electronics giant shipped 10.4 million handsets in the quarter that ended in June, commanding 28.3% of the market, research firm IDC reported Tuesday. Its closest rival, Samsung — which once held the top spot in India — shipped 9.3 million handsets in the nation during the same period, settling for a 25.3% market share.

sieabahlpark 7y ago

I personally like that my phone has expandable memory and iPhone features 3 years before the iPhone.

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
I'm not sure why you've been downvoted. The current trends are quite interesting: Huawei & co. are bending over backwards to introduce innovative solutions into their phones, whereas Apple seems quite conservative and seems satisfied with putting in more powerful chips mostly. I'm amazed what you can do with some Chinese phones, and I wonder why Apple is less aggressive about new features than they used to be.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  HN hates Android or anything pro Google. Hence the downvotes.

Illniyar 7y ago

All those things don't really matter, the only thing that matters is that you cannot sideload apps in iOS. As long as you can sideload apps in android, it will always have a better reputation than somewhere you cannot. But even those things you mention, they are all part of a scale, even if android becomes more closed-source it's still miles more open-source than iOS, even if it delays new app submissions it's still doesn't require a mac to develop for, has a choice of IDEs and a dozen other development friendly features that we often take for granted outside iOS development. And it is ludicrous to suggest that android has the same hardware choice as iPhones just because apple now has mid-range level priced phones. Hardware choice means that some models have replaceable battery, physical keyboard, bendable screens, childproof, waterproof and many more options.

mprev 7y ago
Sideloading of apps is, at best, a niche interest.
- indy 7y ago
  When the number of devices number in the billions then of course sideloading could be considered a niche interest. But for people involved in software development it's extremely useful being able to sideload the latest build of an app to show to stakeholders.
  - sjwright 7y ago
    You say that like nobody developing iOS apps has stakeholders. Apple gives developers solutions for that which are much neater and streamlined. For development life cycles, sideloading is an unnecessary kludge.
- Illniyar 7y ago
  Until it isn't. The moment a popular enough app gets banned by google play store, the use of sideloading will skyrocket. If apple decides to ban Telegram, there's nothing you can do (which it did btw at some point). The ability to sideload is more important than it's usage, both for your personal freedom and for keeping large companies in check.

bad_user 7y ago

I'm an iPhone user currently, have been for some time. However all of the points you mentioned are still true. There is no open source in iOS and the entire platform has an anti open source culture. Android has a lot of open source apps available, including an app store meant just for open source (https://www.f-droid.org/ https://www.f-droid.org/). If you don't like Google Play, at the very least you can distribute your app independently without jailbreaking the phone. It might take the users fiddling with their settings, but at least the option is legit. Also on Android you can have actual Firefox (not allowed on iOS), with ads-blocking extensions and everything, as the default browser. And apps don't necessarily insist on opening up their own freaking web view, or if they do, most of the time there's an option for opting out. And yes, you can find really good Android phones for cheap. Like the ones from Huawei. Which I stay away from, but for other reasons. Apple's phones age well and I like to be environmental friendly, so I'll keep this iPhone 8+ I have until it breaks. But my next phone is not going to be an iPhone, sorry.

ninedays 7y ago
> There is no open source in iOS and the entire platform has an anti open source culture. People really have short memory and unfortunately have too much biais to even make a simple Google Search to get some informations. Trying to define this as "one is better than the others related to X" is childish at best. https://developer.apple.com/opensource/ https://developer.apple.com/opensource/ Warm vibes,
- bad_user 7y ago
  WebKit, you mean the source code that was forked from KHTML and because it was GPL, Apple would then do incomprehensible code dumps to comply with the law? WebKit that was forked by Google because they couldn't collaborate with Apple? I'm glad that they ended up releasing it, but to show that as an example of open source from Apple ... indeed shows that people have short memories ;-)
  - ninedays 7y ago
    > WebKit that was forked by Google because they couldn't collaborate with Apple? You say "they couldn't collaborate" I say "Google really wanted to compete". Remember that it was Google who decided to perform a fork because they had a different approach than Apple for how "multi-process" should be implemented. Google had an implementation that they didn't want to integrate into the Webkit branch - hence the Blink fork.[1] Also Apple would have been happy if they could use the Google's implementation instead of using their own - they said that repeatedly [2] You can also find more details of the story here. It looks more and more obvious that the decision to create a WebKit fork was more political than technical : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5490242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5490242 [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/05/blink-google-rendering-browser https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/05/blink-goo... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5490661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5490661

snaky 7y ago

> a cheap device that got its final software update five days after it shipped Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, released 2016, MTK-based cheap smartphone, current official stable ROM is V10.2.2.0.MBFCNXM released May 2019. > Apple shipped 33.8 million new iPhones during 2Q19, which was down significantly from the same quarter one year ago. Regardless of the slightly lower market share and device selling prices, the iPhone installed base continued to grow. The numbers show that now 3rd placed Apple may soon drop into 4th, with Xiaomi only 1.5 million handsets behind Apple.

nobrains 7y ago

Android gives customers hardware choices You dilute your argument by mentioning this point. Google does give better hardware choices. I am using a $150 android-one phone (Xiaomi A3) which has a high end comparable back and front camera. And comes with 2 years guaranteed OS updates. Compare with the cheapest latest iPhone (iPhone XR) which is 5 times more expensive at $750.