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Very few reasons to stick with Android. Apple has the Apple Stores to fix your device, iMessage, and guaranteed OS upgrades for years. Not having iMessage is a

by tapoxi 3y ago

Very few reasons to stick with Android. Apple has the Apple Stores to fix your device, iMessage, and guaranteed OS upgrades for years. Not having iMessage is a social death sentence for many teenagers too.

lostgame 3y ago
Not only that, but I find Android to just be a miserable UI/UX nightmare, and the Play Store to be filled with somehow 9/10 apps being shit instead of the App Store's even 6/10 being shit. I recently purchased an Android (Galaxy S20) for testing a cross platform app I've been working on and was shocked at how much worse it's gotten over the years. If you have a choice, and you do - (just buy a used iPhone a couple generations back, I got an iPhone 8 recently for $100 CDN) - I can't fathom why you'd choose Android, especially with Google's telemetry. The iOS OS itself is incomparably easier and more pleasant to use (even my 120hz Galaxy S20 device has animations that are choppy as all hell) - and that's not even getting to the borderline unbelievable difference in hardware quality. I paid $250 CDN used for this S20, and $100 for the iPhone 8 I recently snagged. The 6-year-old iPhone 8 runs incomparably better than the 3-year-old S20.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > I can't fathom why you'd choose Android, especially with Google's telemetry. Because Google lets you remove their telemetry, and Apple doesn't?
- rorroe53 3y ago
  Yeah, I think buying an used iPhone is the best value for money at this point. Depending on the model you get the same or more years of support than from new Android for similar price. The iOS UX is so smooth I had zero trouble switching from Android to iOS, even though I had never touched an iPhone before. I'll reconsider Android phone only when manufacturers start providing as many years of software support as Apple does. Planned, premature obscolence is unethical and sucks.
- monkeynotes 3y ago
  My Pixel (and I wouldn't buy anything other than Google hardware for Android because the integration and UX is top in the industry IMO) syncs up to my Google account, all my photos are freely stored, my phone backup is free, and any other backup data counts toward my Google One account. If I bought an iPhone I'd have to buy Apple storage to do all of that, and I don't want to. My Google One account has Youtube Music and Youtube premium along with the storage. I never see Youtube ads which alone is worth every penny. Other than that I really don't miss one thing from my old iPhone. Smartphones are so good these days all iOS competes on is sugar on top.
  - nr2x 3y ago
    Apple offers full photo encryption as if this year, whereas Google can - and will - give your local gestapo your photo roll, mysteriously delete your account for taking pictures of your kids, and do god knows what with them for data mining.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      > whereas Google can - and will - give your local gestapo your photo roll Sounds[0] familiar[1]... [0] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/ https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/ [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
      - nr2x 3y ago
        Not with ADP enabled, which is new.
        smoldesu 3y ago
        End-to-end encryption can only be trusted up to a point when Apple owns both ends.
        nr2x 3y ago
        There are very steep legal penalties for lying about it, and it’s not available in China, so on balance I think it’s a reasonable risk, especially since Android makes no such promises.
smoldesu 3y ago
It's hard to imagine reading this comment anywhere but the US. There are dozens of reasons to stick with Android, even practical ones that people use on a regular basis. - Android is just cheaper and runs on more hardware - Android is freely licensed and offers secure transparency that iOS does not - Android doesn't claim authority over being able to install apps - It has actual desktop-grade APIs like Vulkan and Linux syscalls
- Retric 3y ago
  I initially swapped to iOS to save money, and it’s actually worked out quite well. Apple is expensive if you’re constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest, but at the mid range longevity is more important than initial price alone. People replace their phone enough the important bit is how much your paying per month not the actual device cost.
  - monkeynotes 3y ago
    How does iOS save you money?
    - nr2x 3y ago
      The iPhone SE is highly cost competitive with Android and has double or more support timeline, higher resale value (even for a trade in from Google store!), and better build quality and processor.
      - monkeynotes 3y ago
        So you bought an iPhone SE? Personally I think the Pixel 6a would be a better option, more battery, better camera, screen, worse processor though. I honestly think processor is much less of a concern than the screen and camera on a budget smartphone.
        Retric 3y ago
        I think the 6a really illiterates the problem. Spec wise it’s fine, but as a phone you run into issues where for example battery size isn’t as important as battery life. Initially it came out at near parity with iPhone SE prices where today it’s at a significant discount. Unfortunately, it’s also much closer to end of life, and that’s the basic problem with mid range Android last years phone is already long in the tooth. “Whether it's the smaller battery, the demands of the Tensor chip or some other factor, the Pixel 6a fell flat on our battery test, in which phones surf the web continuously until they run of power. The Pixel 6a lasted an average of 6 hours and 29 minutes, which is more than 3 hours behind the Pixel 5a's result on that same test. Even worse, the Pixel 6a trailed the iPhone SE (2022), and we consider the 9 hour, 5 minute time that Apple's phone produced to be below average for a smartphone.” https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/google-pixel-6a https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/google-pixel-6a That’s the trend, a new model Android phone has near iPhone prices for a device that’s comparable but will have a shorter lifespan/ worse resale price. Buy an older model and you save money today, but need to replace the phone even more frequently.
wkjagt 3y ago
I just switched to android after years of iPhone, only to be able to use GrapheneOS.
occz 3y ago
I can think of a few vital reasons: - Browsers with add-on support, to make browsing the internet bearable - DNS-level adblocking, to make app usage bearable - Sideloading apps, to access software which Apple nor Google would condone All of these are dealbreakers for me. OS upgrades are less of a concern on Android, where apps tend to support very old versions of the OS (5.0 is not at all uncommon to be supported, which was released 9 years ago), as opposed to iOS, where it's common that only the latest two OS versions are supported. This fact alone makes it so that an Android device might even be useful for longer than an iOS-device, which is entirely locked out of basically all of the app store after 6-7 years, with no way to salvage the device any more.
- nr2x 3y ago
  Safari does have content blocking integration in addition to ITP whereas chrome on android has no means to disable ads and provided a virtually unlimited tracking surface. I use both platforms, and they have strengths and weaknesses, but for the average user Android is going to provide a massively worse web privacy experience.
- propogandist 3y ago
  >- DNS-level adblocking, to make app usage bearable it's possible with AdGuard Pro and similar apps on iOS, although it's obviously not possible to run these apps with root privileges, like AfWall and others.
- fifafu 3y ago
  Is there really a browser on Android that has better addon support than Safari on iOS? On iOS content blocking can be done on a very low level by ad blockers posing as local on-device vpns. This doesn’t require root and is super easy to set up. (e.g. https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardForiOS https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardForiOS)
  - occz 3y ago
    Firefox, with some work, offers access to most addons.
  - 3y ago
neves 3y ago
Funny how American centric it is. In the rest of the world people just use WhatsApp
- realusername 3y ago
  That's also my experience, part of the issue with iMessage is it's lack of Android client and the other half is that It's branded as an SMS app and SMS being dead for more than a decade in Europe doesn't help its case...
unethical_ban 3y ago
Sideloading, customizable home screen, better notifications (Samsung specifically), much cheaper bottom end for devices, USB-C port, ability to access the filesystem. Very few reasons to stick with Android *for someone who isn't technical or succumbs to pubescent peer pressure
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  Technical person here, don’t want any of that, just what it to work so I can focus on actual technical problems.
  - unethical_ban 3y ago
    I get it! I too want a phone to just let me do my work, which is why I have Android so I can get pictures off my phone without special software! Snark aside, Apple is really nice and if you're used to it, great, I don't have a strong opinion anymore. But I bought the 14 Pro then went back to my S21 despite the apple being much better hardware. The gesture nav and experience was just annoying to me.
- RowanH 3y ago
  +background/foreground services. Our product does tonnes of photo/video uploads and iOS is a user nightmare by comparison. Android - kick off a service and happy user! But that said the Android constantly-changing API's, device compatibility/fragmentation is a bit of a nightmare.
- realusername 3y ago
  On my case it's the translate bubble which I would miss the most, it's a simple widget but on iOS it's not a thing yet, if your hobby involves language learning, it's must have.
causi 3y ago
There are many reasons to choose android over ios. Unfortunately Google seems bound and determined to destroy them. Half of them now require you to get a device with an unlocked bootloader and use root.
silisili 3y ago
It depends on your use case. If the most important thing to you is the color of your chat bubble, sure go Apple. My wife and I don't give two sticks about that. Most her friends use FB Messenger, mine Whatsapp or plain ol SMS. Once that's out of the way, the 'which is better' becomes less clear. I don't like how locked down IPhones are, and feel Samsung has better cameras. What would an IPhone buy me, at that point?
dustyharddrive 3y ago
Aside from its inexplicably captivated US user base, what does iMessage have over Signal and its derivatives? Or Matrix, SimpleX, and XMPP?

by tapoxi 3y ago

lostgame 3y ago

Not only that, but I find Android to just be a miserable UI/UX nightmare, and the Play Store to be filled with somehow 9/10 apps being shit instead of the App Store's even 6/10 being shit. I recently purchased an Android (Galaxy S20) for testing a cross platform app I've been working on and was shocked at how much worse it's gotten over the years. If you have a choice, and you do - (just buy a used iPhone a couple generations back, I got an iPhone 8 recently for $100 CDN) - I can't fathom why you'd choose Android, especially with Google's telemetry. The iOS OS itself is incomparably easier and more pleasant to use (even my 120hz Galaxy S20 device has animations that are choppy as all hell) - and that's not even getting to the borderline unbelievable difference in hardware quality. I paid $250 CDN used for this S20, and $100 for the iPhone 8 I recently snagged. The 6-year-old iPhone 8 runs incomparably better than the 3-year-old S20.

smoldesu 3y ago
> I can't fathom why you'd choose Android, especially with Google's telemetry. Because Google lets you remove their telemetry, and Apple doesn't?
rorroe53 3y ago
Yeah, I think buying an used iPhone is the best value for money at this point. Depending on the model you get the same or more years of support than from new Android for similar price. The iOS UX is so smooth I had zero trouble switching from Android to iOS, even though I had never touched an iPhone before. I'll reconsider Android phone only when manufacturers start providing as many years of software support as Apple does. Planned, premature obscolence is unethical and sucks.
monkeynotes 3y ago
My Pixel (and I wouldn't buy anything other than Google hardware for Android because the integration and UX is top in the industry IMO) syncs up to my Google account, all my photos are freely stored, my phone backup is free, and any other backup data counts toward my Google One account. If I bought an iPhone I'd have to buy Apple storage to do all of that, and I don't want to. My Google One account has Youtube Music and Youtube premium along with the storage. I never see Youtube ads which alone is worth every penny. Other than that I really don't miss one thing from my old iPhone. Smartphones are so good these days all iOS competes on is sugar on top.
- nr2x 3y ago
  Apple offers full photo encryption as if this year, whereas Google can - and will - give your local gestapo your photo roll, mysteriously delete your account for taking pictures of your kids, and do god knows what with them for data mining.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    > whereas Google can - and will - give your local gestapo your photo roll Sounds[0] familiar[1]... [0] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/ https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/ [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
    - nr2x 3y ago
      Not with ADP enabled, which is new.
      - smoldesu 3y ago
        End-to-end encryption can only be trusted up to a point when Apple owns both ends.
        nr2x 3y ago
        There are very steep legal penalties for lying about it, and it’s not available in China, so on balance I think it’s a reasonable risk, especially since Android makes no such promises.

smoldesu 3y ago

It's hard to imagine reading this comment anywhere but the US. There are dozens of reasons to stick with Android, even practical ones that people use on a regular basis. - Android is just cheaper and runs on more hardware - Android is freely licensed and offers secure transparency that iOS does not - Android doesn't claim authority over being able to install apps - It has actual desktop-grade APIs like Vulkan and Linux syscalls

Retric 3y ago
I initially swapped to iOS to save money, and it’s actually worked out quite well. Apple is expensive if you’re constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest, but at the mid range longevity is more important than initial price alone. People replace their phone enough the important bit is how much your paying per month not the actual device cost.
- monkeynotes 3y ago
  How does iOS save you money?
  - nr2x 3y ago
    The iPhone SE is highly cost competitive with Android and has double or more support timeline, higher resale value (even for a trade in from Google store!), and better build quality and processor.
    - monkeynotes 3y ago
      So you bought an iPhone SE? Personally I think the Pixel 6a would be a better option, more battery, better camera, screen, worse processor though. I honestly think processor is much less of a concern than the screen and camera on a budget smartphone.
      - Retric 3y ago
        I think the 6a really illiterates the problem. Spec wise it’s fine, but as a phone you run into issues where for example battery size isn’t as important as battery life. Initially it came out at near parity with iPhone SE prices where today it’s at a significant discount. Unfortunately, it’s also much closer to end of life, and that’s the basic problem with mid range Android last years phone is already long in the tooth. “Whether it's the smaller battery, the demands of the Tensor chip or some other factor, the Pixel 6a fell flat on our battery test, in which phones surf the web continuously until they run of power. The Pixel 6a lasted an average of 6 hours and 29 minutes, which is more than 3 hours behind the Pixel 5a's result on that same test. Even worse, the Pixel 6a trailed the iPhone SE (2022), and we consider the 9 hour, 5 minute time that Apple's phone produced to be below average for a smartphone.” https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/google-pixel-6a https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/google-pixel-6a That’s the trend, a new model Android phone has near iPhone prices for a device that’s comparable but will have a shorter lifespan/ worse resale price. Buy an older model and you save money today, but need to replace the phone even more frequently.

wkjagt 3y ago

I just switched to android after years of iPhone, only to be able to use GrapheneOS.

occz 3y ago

I can think of a few vital reasons: - Browsers with add-on support, to make browsing the internet bearable - DNS-level adblocking, to make app usage bearable - Sideloading apps, to access software which Apple nor Google would condone All of these are dealbreakers for me. OS upgrades are less of a concern on Android, where apps tend to support very old versions of the OS (5.0 is not at all uncommon to be supported, which was released 9 years ago), as opposed to iOS, where it's common that only the latest two OS versions are supported. This fact alone makes it so that an Android device might even be useful for longer than an iOS-device, which is entirely locked out of basically all of the app store after 6-7 years, with no way to salvage the device any more.

nr2x 3y ago
Safari does have content blocking integration in addition to ITP whereas chrome on android has no means to disable ads and provided a virtually unlimited tracking surface. I use both platforms, and they have strengths and weaknesses, but for the average user Android is going to provide a massively worse web privacy experience.
propogandist 3y ago
>- DNS-level adblocking, to make app usage bearable it's possible with AdGuard Pro and similar apps on iOS, although it's obviously not possible to run these apps with root privileges, like AfWall and others.
fifafu 3y ago
Is there really a browser on Android that has better addon support than Safari on iOS? On iOS content blocking can be done on a very low level by ad blockers posing as local on-device vpns. This doesn’t require root and is super easy to set up. (e.g. https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardForiOS https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardForiOS)
- occz 3y ago
  Firefox, with some work, offers access to most addons.
- 3y ago

neves 3y ago

Funny how American centric it is. In the rest of the world people just use WhatsApp

realusername 3y ago
That's also my experience, part of the issue with iMessage is it's lack of Android client and the other half is that It's branded as an SMS app and SMS being dead for more than a decade in Europe doesn't help its case...

unethical_ban 3y ago

Sideloading, customizable home screen, better notifications (Samsung specifically), much cheaper bottom end for devices, USB-C port, ability to access the filesystem. Very few reasons to stick with Android *for someone who isn't technical or succumbs to pubescent peer pressure

thebruce87m 3y ago
Technical person here, don’t want any of that, just what it to work so I can focus on actual technical problems.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  I get it! I too want a phone to just let me do my work, which is why I have Android so I can get pictures off my phone without special software! Snark aside, Apple is really nice and if you're used to it, great, I don't have a strong opinion anymore. But I bought the 14 Pro then went back to my S21 despite the apple being much better hardware. The gesture nav and experience was just annoying to me.
RowanH 3y ago
+background/foreground services. Our product does tonnes of photo/video uploads and iOS is a user nightmare by comparison. Android - kick off a service and happy user! But that said the Android constantly-changing API's, device compatibility/fragmentation is a bit of a nightmare.
realusername 3y ago
On my case it's the translate bubble which I would miss the most, it's a simple widget but on iOS it's not a thing yet, if your hobby involves language learning, it's must have.

causi 3y ago

There are many reasons to choose android over ios. Unfortunately Google seems bound and determined to destroy them. Half of them now require you to get a device with an unlocked bootloader and use root.

silisili 3y ago

It depends on your use case. If the most important thing to you is the color of your chat bubble, sure go Apple. My wife and I don't give two sticks about that. Most her friends use FB Messenger, mine Whatsapp or plain ol SMS. Once that's out of the way, the 'which is better' becomes less clear. I don't like how locked down IPhones are, and feel Samsung has better cameras. What would an IPhone buy me, at that point?

dustyharddrive 3y ago

Aside from its inexplicably captivated US user base, what does iMessage have over Signal and its derivatives? Or Matrix, SimpleX, and XMPP?