10 ms·

Android isn't cool with teenagers, and that's a big problem

28 points by retskrad 3y ago

gustavus 3y ago
> surveying over 9,000 adolescents across America... According to this year's report, 87 percent of teenagers surveyed own an iPhone, while 88 percent expect to buy an iPhone as their next device. It's very easy to plan on buying an iPhone as your next device when mom and dad are paying for it. We'll see how many of these kids plan on buying an iPhone when they are paying for it.
- civilitty 3y ago
  > We'll see how many of these kids plan on buying an iPhone when they are paying for it. In their thirties? I'm only half joking: between the Samsung Galaxy S-whatever my parents gave me as a graduation gift and a work provided iPhone, the first phone I paid for myself was in my thirties. Phones are only becoming more durable and expensive and wealth inequality isn't getting any better.
- intrasight 3y ago
  Is a young adult really going to want to change platforms in order to save a couple hundred bucks? I doubt it.
- mikhael28 3y ago
  iPhones start at $400, new. Not exactly a budget buster. Pretty much the same as a Pixel Xa. 'teach a kid in their youth, and they will not stray' or something like that.
- skyyler 3y ago
  In my experience, people that want an iPhone but can't afford a new one will buy a used/refurb iPhone over an android phone. It seems like you can get an iPhone 12 in "like new condition" for around $300.
sdfghswe 3y ago
*American teenagers.
- anaisbetts 3y ago
  Yep. This phenomena isn't generally true outside of the US and it is 100% because of the abuse that is iMessage aka Blue Bubble Bullying. Having a phone that doesn't open iMessage is basically a guarantee in the US that you will be excluded and ridiculed if you're a teen, and tbh even as an adult, not having iMessage can result in being excluded in the workplace as well as socially. To be honest, Apple should be ashamed of themselves for literally inventing whole-cloth a new form of Discrimination. "Intersection of Humanities and Technology" sure does take on a whole new meaning in that light.
  - sib 3y ago
    I think you have your timeline wrong. Android phones were seen as "not cool" in the US before Blue Bubble was a thing. iPhones have been aspirational and cool since shortly after their launch. (Source, worked in mobile / mobile-related industries for >15 years in the US, worked at Google in Android division for part of that time.) IMHO: Apple invented and invested in creating a great product (iMessage / Messages) - far better than what was out there - and continued to invest in improving it. No one who calls themself a "hacker" and wants to "build something people love" should shame them for doing so.
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      Anyone who calls themself a hacker should shame lock in strategies and barriers to interoperability as much as they want.
      - sib 3y ago
        You can't truly interoperate with products that don't support all the features in the "originating" product. For example, iMessages long had full-resolution media support, encryption for multi-party messaging, and with addressing not tied to a phone number, which many other messaging products did not. As a user, I absolutely do not want a government forcing the vendor of the product that I have purchased to enshittify it by removing or breaking good features. And, if that government does force some sort of limited "interoperability" that causes a downgraded experience (e.g., no encryption, reduced quality media), then the "originating" app should absolutely indicate those issues and concerns to its users. I'm sure that there are lots of governments that would love to break Messages' encryption without Apple being able to tell users about it. And there we are with the difference between Blue Bubbles and Green Bubbles. If people want to use WhatsApp or SMS or WeChat or one of 15 different Google messaging products, they should do that. But don't f-up a product that works great for those who choose to use it.
simbolit 3y ago
Is Android 'cool' with anybody? I know some people who use Android because of customizability, I know some who use it because of price, some because of niche features, some because they want a folding screen, and I know some use it because they have to (for some reason or other). Does anyone here use Android because it is 'cool'?
- cglong 3y ago
  I actually chose Pixel because I thought it had a lot of cool features over the iPhone.
  - entropie 3y ago
    The "now playing" on the always on display is a game changer for me. I love it. Does any other phone has this?
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Screen split is cool. KDE Connect is cool. Maps.ME is cool. Installing your own apps is cool.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    It seems you might like GNU/Linux phones even more.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      I'm not sure I will be able to install all of the stuff listed, plus a decent web browser. In the end, I still need to run several Android apps.
      - fsflover 3y ago
        > a decent web browser I'm writing this comment from desktop Firefox running on my Librem 5. > Android apps There is Waydroid for that. All listed things should work, too: it's a desktop OS.
etchalon 3y ago
"What if we let the kids customize their phone?" and "Convince people Apple is lame" aren't solutions to the problem, and the fact the article pretends they are makes it difficult to take the author seriously. This belief that teenagers are choosing Apple because "marketing" and not because of legitimate differences between the platforms is a blind spot for a lot of pro-Android people. The author correctly points out the problem. iPhones last a long time – making them easy for parents to hand down to kids. iPhones are reliable – meaning kids don't have bad experiences with them. iPhones work – meaning kids don't have to spend hours learning how to root their devices to create a better Android experience.
- the_snooze 3y ago
  >iPhones last a long time – making them easy for parents to hand down to kids. iPhones are reliable – meaning kids don't have bad experiences with them. iPhones work – meaning kids don't have to spend hours learning how to root their devices to create a better Android experience. iOS is a nice unified experience. Contrast that with your run-of-the-mill mid-range Verizon-branded Samsung, which has 4 phone dialers, 3 app stores, and insists you log in with 3 different accounts to get the "full experience." Unless you buy an off-the-shelf Android device with a fairly clean software environment, your experience with Android will be one full of non-removable outdated redundant bloatware. It's all on Google that they allowed OEMs and phone companies to push their crap software onto Android phones.
- nineplay 3y ago
  > making them easy for parents to hand down to kids This plus the last thing I need is to add another device with another ecosystem to my home datacenter. I am not going to hand my kid an Android phone and be on the hook for tech support when something goes wrong.
mikhael28 3y ago
(American, teenage) Girls don't like guys with Android phones. It's really that simple.
- standardUser 3y ago
  Not just teenagers. I see this trend among people in their 20's and 30's too. And it is primarily just about the proprietary gatekeeping Apple imposed on SMS.
  - mikhael28 3y ago
    True, regarding 20 and 30 year olds. And that's fine, that's their preference. Apple did a great job creating a sticky product.
  - joshmanders 3y ago
    > And it is primarily just about the proprietary gatekeeping Apple imposed on SMS. Or maybe, and this might be an absolute shocker to you, the color of text message to us signifies if we can have all the extra goodies that we learn to enjoy having. We don't look down on you for having green text bubbles, we look down because we like sending all the extra stuff like reactions to your joke with a "haha" instead of literally sending the "haha" text messages, or hearting something you said. Having multiple conversations in the same messages but being able to respond to each individual message, or sending "I love you" to your spouse with a slam reaction or hearts that float up behind the text. It's not about any gatekeeping or anything. It's about making our communication more fun instead of text 24/7. This is the same reason Slack won over IRC. Nerds may want to send ASCII emojis and that back and forth and be fine with that, but other people like the added fun stuff you can do in Slack that you can't in IRC.
    - standardUser 3y ago
      Instead of determining your social circle based on someone's ownership of a very specific piece of hardware, like a sociopath, you could use WhatsApp, which does everything SMS does on an iPhone plus significantly more. That's the norm for most people with a lot of international connections anyway.
standardUser 3y ago
The lack of full and seamless interoperability for SMS between Apple and Android should be illegal.
- darknavi 3y ago
  SMS sucks anyways. As a personal device, just remove phone and sms and give me data. The fact that international calling and texting can cost a ton of money when I can message someone over the internet for free via wifi is nutty.
  - stewx 3y ago
    You would probably regret that if you lived in an area with poor cell signal. SMS and phone calls work when data doesn't.
- mikhael28 3y ago
  Nah, why? Apple has delivered a lot of innovative features through iMessage. SMS texting used to be trash, until Apple iMessage forced them to improve the underlying protocol. It's STILL not as good as iMessage (memojis, extensions and games like Giphy, voice messages, etc) Paying for SMS messages, when it costs phone companies literally nothing, is what should be illegal.
  - standardUser 3y ago
    SMS is still trash compared to WhatsApp or half a dozen other platforms. But SMS is also the only standard we have and, as a standard, usage should be standardized across devices. Apple's manipulation of the standard turns it into proprietary gatekeeping. Why in the world should I know or care if a text I am receiving is coming from an Apple device or an Android device? That's not part of the standard, that's Apple naked attempt to coopt the standard.
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      SMS and iMessage are wholly separate protocols. People who are not you care if messages are encrypted. And reply differently when threads are available. And so on.
tuxxi 3y ago
As someone who used Android from day 1, and recently (about 1 year ago) switched to iOS, I think all of this comes down to the trend of unification and same-ness in smartphones over the years. All of the reasons I liked Android from the start — replaceable battery, SD card, headphone jack, diversity of of hardware options, customizable software/launchers/default apps, rootable — have been slowly one by one removed in flagship phones over the last 5 years. Sure you can still get a low or mid tier phone with some or all of these, but all the expensive Android models (read: good build quality, software support, acceptable perf and battery life) have slowly become more and more like an iPhone, yet without any of the small things that make iPhones good to use: excellent build quality, extended support, ecosystem… So android isn’t cool with teenagers, but it’s mostly because Android devices just suck now. As an allegory: when I was a teen, PCs weren’t “cool” compared to Macs (remember those old ads?) But in 2023 PC gaming is more popular than ever, so PCs are cool with the youth. Teens today will buy a PC so they can play CS or League with their friends, something they can’t really do well with a Macbook Air. Would you buy a $1000 android phone when it’s just a worse iPhone?
- mikhael28 3y ago
  This is a solid post. The Nexus 5x showed us what the future of Android phones was.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  I just don't understand why I have to buy midrange phones to get the features I want. It's the market force equivalent of dark energy.
  - jrockway 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure the biggest problem the phone vendors are trying to solve is you being able to recover from dropping your phone in the toilet. Most people cannot afford a $1200 loss like that, so getting rid of all water ingress points is the priority. That means the case is superglued together and there are as few I/O ports as possible. (I am surprised phones still have a speaker and microphone for making phone calls with; who does that?) While unlikely to be true for readers of HN, for many people, their phone is the most expensive thing they own. So it has to be protected against accidents, and that's what the sealed design is for. Sure, it's probably good for planned obsolescence or whatever, but that's a secondary concern. Another controversial aspect is that phones can't be repaired or sold for parts. This is another "loss protection" feature. Nobody steals mobile phones anymore because they are completely useless on the black market. The phone can't be used without the consent of the original owner, and the parts from that phone can't be put in other broken phones. The incentive to steal an easily-concealable $1200 brick of metal and semiconductors is nearly zero. I think that's amazing.
Spivak 3y ago
Really is crazy the weird place where seemingly otherwise normal adults think its their problem to popularize a for-profit platform built and controlled by an an ad-tech giant. Do y'all just not use your phones and that's the end if your relationship with the device? If Android isn't cool that's a problem for the giant billion dollar multinational corporations that build them to figure out. Also it's amazing that "teenagers use iPhones because it's what their parents use" has go to be the most out-of-touch statement of the decade. A teenager that wants to do literally anything like their parents, in what universe? I think Android as an ecosystem really suffers from the uncoolness of its insufferable community. I know exactly all the guys in my social circle that use android because they feel the need to tell you at every opportunity. I've yet to find any casual users of Android who aren't my parents age and call them "their Galaxy." Btw I use Arch.
- mikhael28 3y ago
  lol plenty of kids emulate and respect their parents dawg.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Respect, sure. But emulate while they're at the stage of life where they're actively trying to forge their own identity that's separate from them, hell no.
    - mikhael28 3y ago
      'hell no' is pretty strong. Lots of people that grow up in a stable household, with mothers and fathers they respect, will naturally imitate and emulate them. Monkey see, monkey do. Also, phone choice as 'rebellion'? That's just silly - how the hell does getting a Pixel when your parents use an iPhone help you establish an 'identity separate from them'? That's an all time reach - that's like me saying because I hate my dad, I'm going to start using Mac because he used Windows.
      - Spivak 3y ago
websap 3y ago
iMessage and Facetime are a huge part of this. I don't want to have 5 different apps - Whatsapp, Telegraph, Google Allo, etc. to communicate with different groups of folks. The point of these devices is to make communication easier. Google really dropped the ball on not making an inclusive messaging and video chat solution.
simbolit 3y ago
"With an average age just shy of 16, the respondents to this poll were nearly all born in a post-iPhone world." Okay, it's 2023 [1], the iPhone came out in 2007 [2], that is 16 years [3] ago. A person born in the post-iPhone world is thus 16 years or younger[4]. While the average usually refers to the arithmetic mean and not the median [5], it is good statistical practice to prune extreme outliers [6], and thus have the mean and median relatively close together. Given all this, it seems to me quite likely about half of the poll respondents were "born in a post-iPhone world." Last time I checked, 'about half' and 'nearly all' are kinda different. why are there such super-sloppy mistakes in "nearly all" (technical meaning) articles? (1) https://www.timeanddate.com/ https://www.timeanddate.com/ (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone (3) https://www.calculator.com/ https://www.calculator.com/ (4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogism (5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average (6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier
- itishappy 3y ago
  I bet it's not meant quite that literally, as most people aren't given a smartphone at birth. I believe the intent is that iPhones were available as their first phone. Your point still stands; I think I'd have preferred the phrasing "born into a post-iPhone world."
  - simbolit 3y ago
    "came of age in a post-iPhone world" "grew up in a post-iPhone world" "learned to communicate in a post-iPhone world" All of these were valid options for the author, and all of them would support the "nearly all" part of the claim, yet the author used "born". If you don't mean shit, don't say shit.
post_break 3y ago
Well it's obvious, in the US at least. iMessage is like 99% of the reason. Everyone using iMessage to group chat, facetime, etc. Then there are some of the non obvious. Remember when Instagram and snapchat took a screenshot of the screen instead of using the camera? That was embarrassing. Then you've got Airpods and Apple watch, those speak for themselves. The only decent tablets, if you listed the top 5 would all be iPads. Android has nothing to pull teenagers away from iPhones. But you can sideload and play emulators and customize the launcher! You might say, but in the end they want to have a group chat with friends and not be limited to 20 because one friend has an android. Or facetime and not use whatever Google decided to name their new messaging app 20 minutes ago. Blue vs Green is real and there's nothing Android can do about it other than lobby the government to open iMessage to android, and I don't see that happening in the US, maybe in the EU but there I think whatsapp took over and it's cross platform.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  > You might say, but in the end they want to have a group chat with friends and not be limited to 20 because one friend has an android. Isn't the group chat limit of 20 set by the carrier though, and not by the OS? Shouldn't people be complaining to their carriers? Also, RCS solves this limitation, not that it matters on iOS.
  - post_break 3y ago
    Sure, but are teenagers going to write to their carrier asking for more people in a group chat, if they even figure that information out? There are basically no solutions to this problem. Android will never be cool to teenagers, the lock-in started early, and will trickle down for decades.
skc 3y ago
So being cool now seems to mean conforming to what everybody else is doing. Slightly ironic.
jwells89 3y ago
This is a multifacted problem but I think one of the biggest components is that Google is very bad at being hip or cool, much as Microsoft is (to a lesser degree, perhaps). I don’t know if the issue lies with its marketing department or if it’s something that permeates the company, but it just doesn’t “get it”. This is also an issue with many popular Android manufacturers (chiefly Samsung). Apple doesn’t always hit the mark here, especially in recent years, but is much better in this regard.
twism 3y ago
To me comparing iPhones to android is like apples to oranges (or more like apples to a barrel of an assortment of fruits from different regions of the world) ... compare the Pixel line to the iPhone line
bambax 3y ago
> Personally, though, I think there's an even easier way to win back the hearts and minds of, at the very least, some teenagers, and — bonus — it's a tried-and-true method. Samsung and Google need to position Apple as the brand relied on by parents above all else. In the same way teenagers left behind social networks like Facebook, iOS needs to be seen as a platform populated by the exact crowd they're trying to rebel against. Android: the choice of a new generation (tm). Numbers for teenagers in the US having iPhones and smart watches are astonishing though. Where do they find the cash? And if it's only devices given by their parents, how is it that all parents have iPhones?
- mikhael28 3y ago
  Christmas baby.
- xethos 3y ago
  > Where do they find the cash? Presumably bundling with their parents plans, as birthday or Christmas gifts, or hand-me-downs. All three can take advantage of iMessage just the same. And personally, as long as we're sticking with the Pepsi tagline, I much prefer Pine64: The choice of a GNU generation.
MattPalmer1086 3y ago
Funny, my son used to have a cast off iPhone. He's now got a second hand Pixel phone and much prefers it. Then again, he doesn't seem to care about impressing his peers much. Edit: he likes that his new phone has a headphone jack.
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
Like everyone else I was impressed with the iPhone when it came out as a new device. A little later I got an Android, I've never liked mac desktops, it was cheaper, and I liked that it was more open. Then a little after that I was shocked seeing a friend's iphone that amount of features it lacked. No app folders, no widgets, no real customization at all, not to mention the walled garden not allowing a lot of apps and thus functionality I use, like torrents and ad-blocking. Since then it's always been Android only, either a custom rom or clean install. Then, it wasn't until last year I learned that in the US "blue text bubbles" is seen as a negative thing, a sign of being poor or some nonsense. It's a uniquely American thing, and utterly insane and idiotic. But then I figured it works as kind of a filter. If someone wants to judge and dismiss me for having "blue text bubbles", they are probably not worth talking to in the first place. I think it still works that way. Most of the teens are just following what's popular without doing any critical thinking about it at all. They'll either grow out of it, or grow into people not really worth dealing with.
yowzadave 3y ago
Sorry, it's just hilarious to me that there is an article worrying about the uncoolness of Android in a publication called "Android Police." Maybe people who want to be cops aren't the right group to ask about how to be cool? Do they go around handing out violations to people who don't love Android enough?
mjcohen 3y ago
This may be weird, but the main thing keeping me on my Galaxy S10e (and the Android phones earlier and Palm/Handspring even earlier) is the Note Everything app. I find this a very convenient app to keep text, photo, and voice notes in. It also allows you to backup everything and then reload it in a new phone. I have notes in there from 2010 and before. It keeps its info in a SQLite database, so, if I had to, I could move it to an iPhone, but it would probably take a lot of work which I am not willing to do now. If there was an easy way of moving the notes, maybe.
iteratethis 3y ago
Customization and differentiation is over-rated and can even be a downside. Just grab an iPhone, buy a cover for your "unique" expression, and change the wallpaper. What else is there to customize? Same for "replaceable batteries". An iPhone battery has solid performance for about 1,000 charges, or 3 years. That's when people buy a new one anyway, if not earlier. The things you want to be true are not necessarily actually true.
iteratethis 3y ago
Funny thing is that Apple could export this dominance across the world if only they would produce ever cheaper iPhones. There's genuine Android fans, but also a lot of people buying them for the sole reason of them being cheaper. Similarly, if they put their mind to it, Apple could conquer vastly more of the PC world.
1970-01-01 3y ago
I would trust sales trend data much much more than I would trust a teenager's honest response in a survey. Is this Cum Grano Salis or ageism? I leave it up to you to decide.
thefz 3y ago
This is not a thing in Europe where no one uses SMS anymore and so all the fuss around iMessage bubble color simply does not exist. Anyway, why should I care what teenagers use? They are not the pinnacle of rational thinking anyway, and buy out of pressure / impulse.
M95D 3y ago
> To me, Android's problems here lie in three distinct spaces: ecosystem lock-in, advertising, and bad experiences. No, that's not it. It's price => snobism/elitism => bullying.

28 points by retskrad 3y ago

> surveying over 9,000 adolescents across America... According to this year's report, 87 percent of teenagers surveyed own an iPhone, while 88 percent expect to buy an iPhone as their next device. It's very easy to plan on buying an iPhone as your next device when mom and dad are paying for it. We'll see how many of these kids plan on buying an iPhone when they are paying for it.

civilitty 3y ago
> We'll see how many of these kids plan on buying an iPhone when they are paying for it. In their thirties? I'm only half joking: between the Samsung Galaxy S-whatever my parents gave me as a graduation gift and a work provided iPhone, the first phone I paid for myself was in my thirties. Phones are only becoming more durable and expensive and wealth inequality isn't getting any better.
intrasight 3y ago
Is a young adult really going to want to change platforms in order to save a couple hundred bucks? I doubt it.
mikhael28 3y ago
iPhones start at $400, new. Not exactly a budget buster. Pretty much the same as a Pixel Xa. 'teach a kid in their youth, and they will not stray' or something like that.
skyyler 3y ago
In my experience, people that want an iPhone but can't afford a new one will buy a used/refurb iPhone over an android phone. It seems like you can get an iPhone 12 in "like new condition" for around $300.

sdfghswe 3y ago

*American teenagers.

anaisbetts 3y ago
Yep. This phenomena isn't generally true outside of the US and it is 100% because of the abuse that is iMessage aka Blue Bubble Bullying. Having a phone that doesn't open iMessage is basically a guarantee in the US that you will be excluded and ridiculed if you're a teen, and tbh even as an adult, not having iMessage can result in being excluded in the workplace as well as socially. To be honest, Apple should be ashamed of themselves for literally inventing whole-cloth a new form of Discrimination. "Intersection of Humanities and Technology" sure does take on a whole new meaning in that light.
- sib 3y ago
  I think you have your timeline wrong. Android phones were seen as "not cool" in the US before Blue Bubble was a thing. iPhones have been aspirational and cool since shortly after their launch. (Source, worked in mobile / mobile-related industries for >15 years in the US, worked at Google in Android division for part of that time.) IMHO: Apple invented and invested in creating a great product (iMessage / Messages) - far better than what was out there - and continued to invest in improving it. No one who calls themself a "hacker" and wants to "build something people love" should shame them for doing so.
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    Anyone who calls themself a hacker should shame lock in strategies and barriers to interoperability as much as they want.
    - sib 3y ago
      You can't truly interoperate with products that don't support all the features in the "originating" product. For example, iMessages long had full-resolution media support, encryption for multi-party messaging, and with addressing not tied to a phone number, which many other messaging products did not. As a user, I absolutely do not want a government forcing the vendor of the product that I have purchased to enshittify it by removing or breaking good features. And, if that government does force some sort of limited "interoperability" that causes a downgraded experience (e.g., no encryption, reduced quality media), then the "originating" app should absolutely indicate those issues and concerns to its users. I'm sure that there are lots of governments that would love to break Messages' encryption without Apple being able to tell users about it. And there we are with the difference between Blue Bubbles and Green Bubbles. If people want to use WhatsApp or SMS or WeChat or one of 15 different Google messaging products, they should do that. But don't f-up a product that works great for those who choose to use it.

simbolit 3y ago

Is Android 'cool' with anybody? I know some people who use Android because of customizability, I know some who use it because of price, some because of niche features, some because they want a folding screen, and I know some use it because they have to (for some reason or other). Does anyone here use Android because it is 'cool'?

cglong 3y ago
I actually chose Pixel because I thought it had a lot of cool features over the iPhone.
- entropie 3y ago
  The "now playing" on the always on display is a game changer for me. I love it. Does any other phone has this?
thriftwy 3y ago
Screen split is cool. KDE Connect is cool. Maps.ME is cool. Installing your own apps is cool.
- fsflover 3y ago
  It seems you might like GNU/Linux phones even more.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    I'm not sure I will be able to install all of the stuff listed, plus a decent web browser. In the end, I still need to run several Android apps.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      > a decent web browser I'm writing this comment from desktop Firefox running on my Librem 5. > Android apps There is Waydroid for that. All listed things should work, too: it's a desktop OS.

etchalon 3y ago

"What if we let the kids customize their phone?" and "Convince people Apple is lame" aren't solutions to the problem, and the fact the article pretends they are makes it difficult to take the author seriously. This belief that teenagers are choosing Apple because "marketing" and not because of legitimate differences between the platforms is a blind spot for a lot of pro-Android people. The author correctly points out the problem. iPhones last a long time – making them easy for parents to hand down to kids. iPhones are reliable – meaning kids don't have bad experiences with them. iPhones work – meaning kids don't have to spend hours learning how to root their devices to create a better Android experience.

the_snooze 3y ago
>iPhones last a long time – making them easy for parents to hand down to kids. iPhones are reliable – meaning kids don't have bad experiences with them. iPhones work – meaning kids don't have to spend hours learning how to root their devices to create a better Android experience. iOS is a nice unified experience. Contrast that with your run-of-the-mill mid-range Verizon-branded Samsung, which has 4 phone dialers, 3 app stores, and insists you log in with 3 different accounts to get the "full experience." Unless you buy an off-the-shelf Android device with a fairly clean software environment, your experience with Android will be one full of non-removable outdated redundant bloatware. It's all on Google that they allowed OEMs and phone companies to push their crap software onto Android phones.
nineplay 3y ago
> making them easy for parents to hand down to kids This plus the last thing I need is to add another device with another ecosystem to my home datacenter. I am not going to hand my kid an Android phone and be on the hook for tech support when something goes wrong.

mikhael28 3y ago

(American, teenage) Girls don't like guys with Android phones. It's really that simple.

standardUser 3y ago
Not just teenagers. I see this trend among people in their 20's and 30's too. And it is primarily just about the proprietary gatekeeping Apple imposed on SMS.
- mikhael28 3y ago
  True, regarding 20 and 30 year olds. And that's fine, that's their preference. Apple did a great job creating a sticky product.
- joshmanders 3y ago
  > And it is primarily just about the proprietary gatekeeping Apple imposed on SMS. Or maybe, and this might be an absolute shocker to you, the color of text message to us signifies if we can have all the extra goodies that we learn to enjoy having. We don't look down on you for having green text bubbles, we look down because we like sending all the extra stuff like reactions to your joke with a "haha" instead of literally sending the "haha" text messages, or hearting something you said. Having multiple conversations in the same messages but being able to respond to each individual message, or sending "I love you" to your spouse with a slam reaction or hearts that float up behind the text. It's not about any gatekeeping or anything. It's about making our communication more fun instead of text 24/7. This is the same reason Slack won over IRC. Nerds may want to send ASCII emojis and that back and forth and be fine with that, but other people like the added fun stuff you can do in Slack that you can't in IRC.
  - standardUser 3y ago
    Instead of determining your social circle based on someone's ownership of a very specific piece of hardware, like a sociopath, you could use WhatsApp, which does everything SMS does on an iPhone plus significantly more. That's the norm for most people with a lot of international connections anyway.

standardUser 3y ago

The lack of full and seamless interoperability for SMS between Apple and Android should be illegal.

darknavi 3y ago
SMS sucks anyways. As a personal device, just remove phone and sms and give me data. The fact that international calling and texting can cost a ton of money when I can message someone over the internet for free via wifi is nutty.
- stewx 3y ago
  You would probably regret that if you lived in an area with poor cell signal. SMS and phone calls work when data doesn't.
mikhael28 3y ago
Nah, why? Apple has delivered a lot of innovative features through iMessage. SMS texting used to be trash, until Apple iMessage forced them to improve the underlying protocol. It's STILL not as good as iMessage (memojis, extensions and games like Giphy, voice messages, etc) Paying for SMS messages, when it costs phone companies literally nothing, is what should be illegal.
- standardUser 3y ago
  SMS is still trash compared to WhatsApp or half a dozen other platforms. But SMS is also the only standard we have and, as a standard, usage should be standardized across devices. Apple's manipulation of the standard turns it into proprietary gatekeeping. Why in the world should I know or care if a text I am receiving is coming from an Apple device or an Android device? That's not part of the standard, that's Apple naked attempt to coopt the standard.
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    SMS and iMessage are wholly separate protocols. People who are not you care if messages are encrypted. And reply differently when threads are available. And so on.

tuxxi 3y ago

As someone who used Android from day 1, and recently (about 1 year ago) switched to iOS, I think all of this comes down to the trend of unification and same-ness in smartphones over the years. All of the reasons I liked Android from the start — replaceable battery, SD card, headphone jack, diversity of of hardware options, customizable software/launchers/default apps, rootable — have been slowly one by one removed in flagship phones over the last 5 years. Sure you can still get a low or mid tier phone with some or all of these, but all the expensive Android models (read: good build quality, software support, acceptable perf and battery life) have slowly become more and more like an iPhone, yet without any of the small things that make iPhones good to use: excellent build quality, extended support, ecosystem… So android isn’t cool with teenagers, but it’s mostly because Android devices just suck now. As an allegory: when I was a teen, PCs weren’t “cool” compared to Macs (remember those old ads?) But in 2023 PC gaming is more popular than ever, so PCs are cool with the youth. Teens today will buy a PC so they can play CS or League with their friends, something they can’t really do well with a Macbook Air. Would you buy a $1000 android phone when it’s just a worse iPhone?

mikhael28 3y ago
This is a solid post. The Nexus 5x showed us what the future of Android phones was.
whatshisface 3y ago
I just don't understand why I have to buy midrange phones to get the features I want. It's the market force equivalent of dark energy.
- jrockway 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure the biggest problem the phone vendors are trying to solve is you being able to recover from dropping your phone in the toilet. Most people cannot afford a $1200 loss like that, so getting rid of all water ingress points is the priority. That means the case is superglued together and there are as few I/O ports as possible. (I am surprised phones still have a speaker and microphone for making phone calls with; who does that?) While unlikely to be true for readers of HN, for many people, their phone is the most expensive thing they own. So it has to be protected against accidents, and that's what the sealed design is for. Sure, it's probably good for planned obsolescence or whatever, but that's a secondary concern. Another controversial aspect is that phones can't be repaired or sold for parts. This is another "loss protection" feature. Nobody steals mobile phones anymore because they are completely useless on the black market. The phone can't be used without the consent of the original owner, and the parts from that phone can't be put in other broken phones. The incentive to steal an easily-concealable $1200 brick of metal and semiconductors is nearly zero. I think that's amazing.

Spivak 3y ago

Really is crazy the weird place where seemingly otherwise normal adults think its their problem to popularize a for-profit platform built and controlled by an an ad-tech giant. Do y'all just not use your phones and that's the end if your relationship with the device? If Android isn't cool that's a problem for the giant billion dollar multinational corporations that build them to figure out. Also it's amazing that "teenagers use iPhones because it's what their parents use" has go to be the most out-of-touch statement of the decade. A teenager that wants to do literally anything like their parents, in what universe? I think Android as an ecosystem really suffers from the uncoolness of its insufferable community. I know exactly all the guys in my social circle that use android because they feel the need to tell you at every opportunity. I've yet to find any casual users of Android who aren't my parents age and call them "their Galaxy." Btw I use Arch.

mikhael28 3y ago
lol plenty of kids emulate and respect their parents dawg.
- Spivak 3y ago
  Respect, sure. But emulate while they're at the stage of life where they're actively trying to forge their own identity that's separate from them, hell no.
  - mikhael28 3y ago
    'hell no' is pretty strong. Lots of people that grow up in a stable household, with mothers and fathers they respect, will naturally imitate and emulate them. Monkey see, monkey do. Also, phone choice as 'rebellion'? That's just silly - how the hell does getting a Pixel when your parents use an iPhone help you establish an 'identity separate from them'? That's an all time reach - that's like me saying because I hate my dad, I'm going to start using Mac because he used Windows.
    - Spivak 3y ago

websap 3y ago

iMessage and Facetime are a huge part of this. I don't want to have 5 different apps - Whatsapp, Telegraph, Google Allo, etc. to communicate with different groups of folks. The point of these devices is to make communication easier. Google really dropped the ball on not making an inclusive messaging and video chat solution.

simbolit 3y ago

"With an average age just shy of 16, the respondents to this poll were nearly all born in a post-iPhone world." Okay, it's 2023 [1], the iPhone came out in 2007 [2], that is 16 years [3] ago. A person born in the post-iPhone world is thus 16 years or younger[4]. While the average usually refers to the arithmetic mean and not the median [5], it is good statistical practice to prune extreme outliers [6], and thus have the mean and median relatively close together. Given all this, it seems to me quite likely about half of the poll respondents were "born in a post-iPhone world." Last time I checked, 'about half' and 'nearly all' are kinda different. why are there such super-sloppy mistakes in "nearly all" (technical meaning) articles? (1) https://www.timeanddate.com/ https://www.timeanddate.com/ (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone (3) https://www.calculator.com/ https://www.calculator.com/ (4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogism (5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average (6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier

itishappy 3y ago
I bet it's not meant quite that literally, as most people aren't given a smartphone at birth. I believe the intent is that iPhones were available as their first phone. Your point still stands; I think I'd have preferred the phrasing "born into a post-iPhone world."
- simbolit 3y ago
  "came of age in a post-iPhone world" "grew up in a post-iPhone world" "learned to communicate in a post-iPhone world" All of these were valid options for the author, and all of them would support the "nearly all" part of the claim, yet the author used "born". If you don't mean shit, don't say shit.

post_break 3y ago

Well it's obvious, in the US at least. iMessage is like 99% of the reason. Everyone using iMessage to group chat, facetime, etc. Then there are some of the non obvious. Remember when Instagram and snapchat took a screenshot of the screen instead of using the camera? That was embarrassing. Then you've got Airpods and Apple watch, those speak for themselves. The only decent tablets, if you listed the top 5 would all be iPads. Android has nothing to pull teenagers away from iPhones. But you can sideload and play emulators and customize the launcher! You might say, but in the end they want to have a group chat with friends and not be limited to 20 because one friend has an android. Or facetime and not use whatever Google decided to name their new messaging app 20 minutes ago. Blue vs Green is real and there's nothing Android can do about it other than lobby the government to open iMessage to android, and I don't see that happening in the US, maybe in the EU but there I think whatsapp took over and it's cross platform.

ryandrake 3y ago
> You might say, but in the end they want to have a group chat with friends and not be limited to 20 because one friend has an android. Isn't the group chat limit of 20 set by the carrier though, and not by the OS? Shouldn't people be complaining to their carriers? Also, RCS solves this limitation, not that it matters on iOS.
- post_break 3y ago
  Sure, but are teenagers going to write to their carrier asking for more people in a group chat, if they even figure that information out? There are basically no solutions to this problem. Android will never be cool to teenagers, the lock-in started early, and will trickle down for decades.

skc 3y ago

So being cool now seems to mean conforming to what everybody else is doing. Slightly ironic.

jwells89 3y ago

This is a multifacted problem but I think one of the biggest components is that Google is very bad at being hip or cool, much as Microsoft is (to a lesser degree, perhaps). I don’t know if the issue lies with its marketing department or if it’s something that permeates the company, but it just doesn’t “get it”. This is also an issue with many popular Android manufacturers (chiefly Samsung). Apple doesn’t always hit the mark here, especially in recent years, but is much better in this regard.

twism 3y ago

To me comparing iPhones to android is like apples to oranges (or more like apples to a barrel of an assortment of fruits from different regions of the world) ... compare the Pixel line to the iPhone line

bambax 3y ago

> Personally, though, I think there's an even easier way to win back the hearts and minds of, at the very least, some teenagers, and — bonus — it's a tried-and-true method. Samsung and Google need to position Apple as the brand relied on by parents above all else. In the same way teenagers left behind social networks like Facebook, iOS needs to be seen as a platform populated by the exact crowd they're trying to rebel against. Android: the choice of a new generation (tm). Numbers for teenagers in the US having iPhones and smart watches are astonishing though. Where do they find the cash? And if it's only devices given by their parents, how is it that all parents have iPhones?

mikhael28 3y ago
Christmas baby.
xethos 3y ago
> Where do they find the cash? Presumably bundling with their parents plans, as birthday or Christmas gifts, or hand-me-downs. All three can take advantage of iMessage just the same. And personally, as long as we're sticking with the Pepsi tagline, I much prefer Pine64: The choice of a GNU generation.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago

Funny, my son used to have a cast off iPhone. He's now got a second hand Pixel phone and much prefers it. Then again, he doesn't seem to care about impressing his peers much. Edit: he likes that his new phone has a headphone jack.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

Like everyone else I was impressed with the iPhone when it came out as a new device. A little later I got an Android, I've never liked mac desktops, it was cheaper, and I liked that it was more open. Then a little after that I was shocked seeing a friend's iphone that amount of features it lacked. No app folders, no widgets, no real customization at all, not to mention the walled garden not allowing a lot of apps and thus functionality I use, like torrents and ad-blocking. Since then it's always been Android only, either a custom rom or clean install. Then, it wasn't until last year I learned that in the US "blue text bubbles" is seen as a negative thing, a sign of being poor or some nonsense. It's a uniquely American thing, and utterly insane and idiotic. But then I figured it works as kind of a filter. If someone wants to judge and dismiss me for having "blue text bubbles", they are probably not worth talking to in the first place. I think it still works that way. Most of the teens are just following what's popular without doing any critical thinking about it at all. They'll either grow out of it, or grow into people not really worth dealing with.

yowzadave 3y ago

Sorry, it's just hilarious to me that there is an article worrying about the uncoolness of Android in a publication called "Android Police." Maybe people who want to be cops aren't the right group to ask about how to be cool? Do they go around handing out violations to people who don't love Android enough?

mjcohen 3y ago

This may be weird, but the main thing keeping me on my Galaxy S10e (and the Android phones earlier and Palm/Handspring even earlier) is the Note Everything app. I find this a very convenient app to keep text, photo, and voice notes in. It also allows you to backup everything and then reload it in a new phone. I have notes in there from 2010 and before. It keeps its info in a SQLite database, so, if I had to, I could move it to an iPhone, but it would probably take a lot of work which I am not willing to do now. If there was an easy way of moving the notes, maybe.

iteratethis 3y ago

Customization and differentiation is over-rated and can even be a downside. Just grab an iPhone, buy a cover for your "unique" expression, and change the wallpaper. What else is there to customize? Same for "replaceable batteries". An iPhone battery has solid performance for about 1,000 charges, or 3 years. That's when people buy a new one anyway, if not earlier. The things you want to be true are not necessarily actually true.

iteratethis 3y ago

Funny thing is that Apple could export this dominance across the world if only they would produce ever cheaper iPhones. There's genuine Android fans, but also a lot of people buying them for the sole reason of them being cheaper. Similarly, if they put their mind to it, Apple could conquer vastly more of the PC world.

1970-01-01 3y ago

I would trust sales trend data much much more than I would trust a teenager's honest response in a survey. Is this Cum Grano Salis or ageism? I leave it up to you to decide.

thefz 3y ago

This is not a thing in Europe where no one uses SMS anymore and so all the fuss around iMessage bubble color simply does not exist. Anyway, why should I care what teenagers use? They are not the pinnacle of rational thinking anyway, and buy out of pressure / impulse.

M95D 3y ago

> To me, Android's problems here lie in three distinct spaces: ecosystem lock-in, advertising, and bad experiences. No, that's not it. It's price => snobism/elitism => bullying.