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I think focussing on Android vs iOS might belie the true point which is not everyone has a 'good' phone. Almost any currently in use iPhone has a 'pretty good'

I think focussing on Android vs iOS might belie the true point which is not everyone has a 'good' phone. Almost any currently in use iPhone has a 'pretty good' processor and probably has up to date software. Even the iPhone 8 still holds up pretty well. On the Android side you get a wider spread of devices. I imagine a Pixel 8 or S23 compare pretty well to 'iOS'. The problem is old, low powered budget phones. I wonder how much of the problem one those phones is specific to the tech we use to build sites, and how much is the crappy hardware. I also don't imagine the expected value of a potential customers on a flagship iPhone or Pixel device is the same as a potential customer using a Huawei P20.

zitterbewegung 2y ago
The problem isn’t older phones FTA they show that there is a 60% difference in flagships. I agree with you that the latest pixel has a huge disadvantage to a Samsung phone . The bigger problem is how much money you can budget for supporting every phone and which platform is more profitable. This is a video game but, Warframe was ported to iOS and then to Android. If this isn’t an indicator that you will make more money than what is ?
Rhapso 2y ago
I still think it is crazy we assumed "everybody has a phone"
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  “Everybody worth transacting with” is more accurate. Makes sense for business, but a shame when government (or an essential business that should be a government utility) does it.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- jolux 2y ago
  Well as software engineers there’s not as much we can do for people who don’t have computing devices, but it’s still important that information be accessible without them.
  - arp242 2y ago
    Well, people can have laptops, or "unsupported" phones (i.e. non-iPhone/Android). Locking all sorts of basic stuff to two for-profit closed platforms sounds rather non-ideal to me. It's also quite a shift from stuff being web-based, where in principle you or I could sit down and write a compatible browser and/or port an existing browser (some work, but very doable). It's not all that different from locking everything to Windows and/or Internet Explorer like it was 20 years ago, except worse because it's so much more pervasive now. The old "mandatory Microsoft tax" got replaced with a "mandatory Google/Apple tax". Any startup has basically zero chance of entering the market.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      These were browser benchmarks not app benchmarks.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Worldwide, smart phone penetration is at 70%. I don’t know if that number is just considering adults. Statistics I saw for the US is 97% of adults have smart phones
  - Rhapso 2y ago
    Would you accept an engineering solution with 1 nine of reliability?
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      So do you have an engineering solution that will get bits over the internet to people who don’t have a phone or computer?
      - Rhapso 2y ago
        Probably a well supported postal service as public infrastructure! Yes, you can make an app or sell a widget without supporting transactions via mail, but many companies providing critical services are starting to require cellphones to participate.
        scarface_74 2y ago
        Or you could just have a program where you tax cell phone and home phone bills to subsidize giving phones to people who can’t afford one…. https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-consumers https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-cons... This use to be limited to land line phones. But now is expanded to cell phones It’s much cheaper than physical infrastructure. But do you expect Amazon to except postal mail and work like the Sears Catalog?
        Rhapso 2y ago
        TIL This is great to see. Yes, assuming it is implemented well this is better than the sears catalog.
- dotancohen 2y ago
  My country has a large religious demographic with dumbphones. I'm glad to have them, as I have a smartphone but I'm not about to install an app for banking, an app for charging the car, an app for the supermarket, etc etc.
scarface_74 2y ago
> I imagine a Pixel 8 or S23 compare pretty well to 'iOS’ In fact from the article it doesn’t. Modern Android phones have the performance of a 4 year old iPhone. When the new iPhone SE is introduced this year - Apples low end $400 phone - I wouldn’t be surprised if it is faster than high end Android phones. It will probably be based on the iPhone 16 SOC. > In fact, your looking at the iPhone 12 until you find a previous version of the iPhone that scores less than todays fastest Samsung Android device. To add a little more perspective, this device was first sold over 4 years ago!
- fidotron 2y ago
  Yeah, Apple started pulling away from Android with the 64 bit transition that caught everyone by surprise, and the Android performance has simply never caught up again. The halcyon days of the Qualcomm Krait (which certainly had some problems) are very long gone by now.
- crowcroft 2y ago
  This is a fair point, even an optimistic read for Android has their best phones sitting somewhere on the lower end of the iPhone distribution. I wonder if the relationship between Geekbench score and TTI etc. are linear though. My guess is the areas that slow Android down are crappy phones that are freezing up from lack of RAM lack of headroom in processing power due to system overhead. ie any phone above a certain threshold score is probably fine. I could be very wrong though!
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    He is comparing high end phones though and traditionally Android phones come with more RAM than iPhones. If a low end hypothetical iPhone SE comes out this year with the iPhone 16 SOC, there will be no iPhone that is as slow as the fastest Android phone. The iPhone 14 is the slowest iPhone Apple sells and soon won’t be selling that or the SE in the EU at least because they both use Lightning instead of USB.
    - crowcroft 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

zitterbewegung 2y ago

The problem isn’t older phones FTA they show that there is a 60% difference in flagships. I agree with you that the latest pixel has a huge disadvantage to a Samsung phone . The bigger problem is how much money you can budget for supporting every phone and which platform is more profitable. This is a video game but, Warframe was ported to iOS and then to Android. If this isn’t an indicator that you will make more money than what is ?

Rhapso 2y ago

I still think it is crazy we assumed "everybody has a phone"

lotsofpulp 2y ago
“Everybody worth transacting with” is more accurate. Makes sense for business, but a shame when government (or an essential business that should be a government utility) does it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
jolux 2y ago
Well as software engineers there’s not as much we can do for people who don’t have computing devices, but it’s still important that information be accessible without them.
- arp242 2y ago
  Well, people can have laptops, or "unsupported" phones (i.e. non-iPhone/Android). Locking all sorts of basic stuff to two for-profit closed platforms sounds rather non-ideal to me. It's also quite a shift from stuff being web-based, where in principle you or I could sit down and write a compatible browser and/or port an existing browser (some work, but very doable). It's not all that different from locking everything to Windows and/or Internet Explorer like it was 20 years ago, except worse because it's so much more pervasive now. The old "mandatory Microsoft tax" got replaced with a "mandatory Google/Apple tax". Any startup has basically zero chance of entering the market.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    These were browser benchmarks not app benchmarks.
scarface_74 2y ago
Worldwide, smart phone penetration is at 70%. I don’t know if that number is just considering adults. Statistics I saw for the US is 97% of adults have smart phones
- Rhapso 2y ago
  Would you accept an engineering solution with 1 nine of reliability?
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    So do you have an engineering solution that will get bits over the internet to people who don’t have a phone or computer?
    - Rhapso 2y ago
      Probably a well supported postal service as public infrastructure! Yes, you can make an app or sell a widget without supporting transactions via mail, but many companies providing critical services are starting to require cellphones to participate.
      - scarface_74 2y ago
        Or you could just have a program where you tax cell phone and home phone bills to subsidize giving phones to people who can’t afford one…. https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-consumers https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-cons... This use to be limited to land line phones. But now is expanded to cell phones It’s much cheaper than physical infrastructure. But do you expect Amazon to except postal mail and work like the Sears Catalog?
        Rhapso 2y ago
        TIL This is great to see. Yes, assuming it is implemented well this is better than the sears catalog.
dotancohen 2y ago
My country has a large religious demographic with dumbphones. I'm glad to have them, as I have a smartphone but I'm not about to install an app for banking, an app for charging the car, an app for the supermarket, etc etc.

scarface_74 2y ago

> I imagine a Pixel 8 or S23 compare pretty well to 'iOS’ In fact from the article it doesn’t. Modern Android phones have the performance of a 4 year old iPhone. When the new iPhone SE is introduced this year - Apples low end $400 phone - I wouldn’t be surprised if it is faster than high end Android phones. It will probably be based on the iPhone 16 SOC. > In fact, your looking at the iPhone 12 until you find a previous version of the iPhone that scores less than todays fastest Samsung Android device. To add a little more perspective, this device was first sold over 4 years ago!

fidotron 2y ago
Yeah, Apple started pulling away from Android with the 64 bit transition that caught everyone by surprise, and the Android performance has simply never caught up again. The halcyon days of the Qualcomm Krait (which certainly had some problems) are very long gone by now.
crowcroft 2y ago
This is a fair point, even an optimistic read for Android has their best phones sitting somewhere on the lower end of the iPhone distribution. I wonder if the relationship between Geekbench score and TTI etc. are linear though. My guess is the areas that slow Android down are crappy phones that are freezing up from lack of RAM lack of headroom in processing power due to system overhead. ie any phone above a certain threshold score is probably fine. I could be very wrong though!
- scarface_74 2y ago
  He is comparing high end phones though and traditionally Android phones come with more RAM than iPhones. If a low end hypothetical iPhone SE comes out this year with the iPhone 16 SOC, there will be no iPhone that is as slow as the fastest Android phone. The iPhone 14 is the slowest iPhone Apple sells and soon won’t be selling that or the SE in the EU at least because they both use Lightning instead of USB.
  - crowcroft 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]