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The people at Google seem to think much more like me than the people at Apple. There are 3 primary decisions Google made that click with me, while Apple's choi

• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• cm2012 1y ago
  I think for most people its just whatever you are used to. That said I can't stand iPhone. My wife also switched to Android after being jealous of some features on my phone.
  • thewebguyd 1y ago
    > I think for most people its just whatever you are used to. Or in the US, it's whatever your family and/or circle of friends use, RCS or not. iMessage lock in is real (along with Facetime, Airdrop, Apple Pay, etc.)
  • criddell 1y ago
    I have an iPhone because at the time I bought it I liked the size (Mini 13) and it's fine. Before that I had some Android phone and it was fine too. I've never understood the strong emotions people have attached to these things. About the only thing I'm looking forward to when I upgrade my phone in a couple of years is getting a better camera. Phones were pretty exciting for a while, but now? It feels like a mature segment and not much is changing anymore.
• siva7 1y ago
  Nope, i wish Apple would do this the way Android does. Most people here prefer Apple, not because of the crap iOS but because of the hardware.
• meowkit 1y ago
  As someone who prefers iphones… - iPhone wobble is real. Mostly mitigated by a proper case. Does the iPhone get a better camera in return? Usually in my experience. - I don’t sort my photos. The semantic search has been sufficient, and I back everything up to my NAS via an iCloud docker shim. - Chrome/chromium is adware garbage now. FireFox is the only browser I use. The FS API does sound great though. Enviable given how annoying it is to do work on an iPhone sometimes.
  • izacus 1y ago
    Pixel phones have won blind camera tests last few years without Apple coming close though.
    • RankingMember 1y ago
      In my view Pixels have been dominating in still photos for years but their video has never been on par with iPhone. I'd put my old Pixel 3's still camera up against my iPhone 13 any day (if my Pixel hadn't bricked itself a little out of warranty like all of mine seemed to).
    • hbn 1y ago
      The difference between the photos on any flagship phone for the past 5 or so years is insignificant and mostly up to personal preference, but the difference between iPhone and anything else in videos is massive.
    • jama211 1y ago
      For pictures but not for video, the stabilisation is better on iOS typically
      • tick_tock_tick 1y ago
        Stabilization is about to all become post processing AI based and if we know there is only thing Apple sucks at now a days it's software.
• mvieira38 1y ago
  > Is this a "left brain vs right brain" type of thing? Do most HNers prefer Androids? I don't think so. The stuff you mentioned is objectively better as there's no reason for Apple not to let you do it. It's more of a "I've been in the Apple walled garden for so long and so are all my friends" or the so-called network effects. Examples: you can't "Facetime" and "Airdrop" on Android, your text confirmation marks are green instead of blue, you don't have access to the same apps as your friends (sometimes), you don't have integration with iPad. If you grew up in certain circles you may be bullied for not having an iPhone, too. Also there is a prevailing sentiment that Android doesn't "just work" as much as iOS, which is true tbh but not for Pixels which are basically the Android equivalent of an iPhone, where the device is pretty much tailor-made for the OS.
  • gowld 1y ago
    Logical analysis, like using folders and file APIs, is "left-brained".
    • andybak 1y ago
      The left/right brain thing is pseudo-science and even worse - a false dichotomy. It's much more about cultural snobbery and cultural tribalism around which pursuits are regarded as "more worthy". Look up C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures" - it was incredibly influential at the time but also described a prejudice we still labour under. It's pervasive in the English speaking world. I suspect less so in the non-anglosphere West and possibly even less so in Asia.
      • monkeyelite 1y ago
        > The left/right brain thing is pseudo-science It's real in terms of consciousness - brains switch between modes depending on activity. You can try it and feel the switch yourself. Whether that switch is localized, or whether people have more affinity for one than the other is probably what's fake.
        • andybak 1y ago
• arijun 1y ago
  Those are some very minor complaints, all of which would not affect my buying choice, given the larger differences. That said, I’ll tell you that I don’t notice (1), for (2) I would never sit there organizing my photos, I have other (mostly less productive) things to do with my time, and (3) seems like something I specifically _dont_ want.
  • packetlost 1y ago
    No, two of those are some pretty fundamental complaints about how GP wants to use their device. Just because you don't have those complaints doesn't make them any less fundamental. Ultimately the disagreement is primarily on the fact that Apple goes very far out of their way to hide the concept of a file and filesystem from the user. The wobbling one is minor, in all fairness.
    • gpm 1y ago
      The wobbling one would be pretty major if you ran into it all the time in your regular workflow...
      • packetlost 1y ago
        It's easily solvable with a case. I agree that it's silly that Apple does it this way, but I struggle to see how it rises to the level of being a fundamental flaw like file management is.
        • Ruthalas 1y ago
          The wobble actually factors onto my device choice as well. It's just annoying to live with for the life of the phone if you can't find a case that widens it, which many don't.
          • dpkirchner 1y ago
            Casetify makes decent cases that make the super annoying bump less annoying. My iPhone 13 Pro's bump is now more like 1mm, effectively.
• hattar 1y ago
  I use an iphone and have for many years. I was a phone geek who would always use custom ROMs and have everything dialed in just so. I'm sure this has changed over the years but back in the day it seemed like there was always some weird issue with my Android phone. Admittedly, a lot of that could have been my fault for constantly messing with the device. Eventually I got busy and just needed my phone to do the simple stuff and get out of the way. iOS has a number of really annoying behaviors and general flaws that are never going to be addressed. I don't recall having the same frustrations with Android, but maybe I did. I'm constantly annoyed that my iPhone can't do simple stuff my Android phone could do 15 years ago. I am also aware that if it could do all those things, I probably wouldn't spend the time to get everything set up, dialed in, and maintained anyway. The things that keep me on iPhone are unrelated to all of that, though. 1. I like the small form factor. I have a 13 Mini and there's no decent equivalent that I've found in any ecosystem (sadly, even Apple now). 2. I use Facetime with both sets of parents a fair bit. Trying to train them to use whatever app Google currently uses for video calls, and then retraining every time Google kills it off for another almost identical app, sounds like a lot of work and frustration. 3. Real or not, my perception is that privacy in the Apple ecosystem has historically been, and currently is, far better than Google. I don't like the idea of the device I'm constantly relying on to be the product of an ad company, it just feels gross. 4. Proper unlock with FaceID is so damn convenient. I don't know for sure, but suspect going back to a fingerprint would really bug me.
  • Zak 1y ago
    > Trying to train them to use whatever app Google currently uses for video calls, and then retraining every time Google kills it off for another almost identical app This seems like an argument for picking something third-party, perhaps Signal. It's probably not going away any time soon, and it supports both major mobile operating systems.
    • no_wizard 1y ago
      both iOS and Facetime are super slick and baked into the device. The end user doesn't even have to really know how to the app to use the feature as it were. It shows up on a contact as a button click. Signal does not, even on Android. You have to deliberately use it. That small friction isn't great when you're likely one of few people using it in day to day life of others. FaceTime on the other hand, just works
• hellisothers 1y ago
  2: you can organize photos into folders but nobody does 3: I actively don’t want this nor would I want anybody I care about to have to deal with this. But props to you for having an argument for Android aside from the usual “I have more control”
• thewebguyd 1y ago
  Same for me, although I currently use an iPhone (and the rest of the Apple ecosystem). I actually don't like iOS, and barely tolerate macOS but I love the hardware on mac right now. For me, it's Apple's privacy stance (which I know could change at anytime, but that's where we are at right now). Give me a Pixel & all the Google stuff but without Google, and with advanced data protection and Apple's tracking protection and transparency and I'm in. As long as apps on Android can do crap like the web-to-app tracking via localhost and other shady data harvesting that Google continues to allow, I don't touch it no matter how much better it is and how much I prefer the workflows. Also, on either platform, why is it still not possible to toggle off network access in app permissions. Its a glaring and deliberate omission.
  • AstralSerenity 1y ago
    I would love to have Android software on an Apple device. Their hardware is incredible! Ultimately, I tolerate Android from a privacy standpoint because we're still able to fully modify our devices and use open-source app sources. The minute that goes away (and it feels like Google isn't as tolerant of it anymore), I go.
  • moelf 1y ago
    >Give me a Pixel & all the Google stuff but without Google https://grapheneos.org/ https://grapheneos.org/
    • k4rnaj1k 1y ago
      Isn't battery life worse on it? I did consider it at some point but not having google wallet(apparently nfc payments are only available via banks' apps there) was too big of a downside for me.
      • j1elo 1y ago
        It is Google themselves choosing to prevent GrapheneOS from passing the validation checks required to make GPay work (which is the app that makes the actual payment). Wallet is there, you can hold digital cards, and transit cards, and your Ikea member card, etc. It's GPay that won't work to do the payment. And it's Google the one being a bully and deliberately making you think like that towards any alternative that's not in their list of approved systems that can be used in your own phone.
• bsimpson 1y ago
  I switched to Android when Google gave me an HTC EVO at that year's Google I/O. The deciding factors were: - The large, high-res screen was way prettier. - It had access to the whole internet, including Flash. - The kickstand was handy. (minor, but still a nudge) Android also had 3rd party keyboards with swipe-typing years before Apple did. I think Android has always been the preferred platform for tinkerers.
  • nfriedly 1y ago
    I miss HTC. They made some of the best phones, and they were always easy to put custom ROMs on.
• jamesponddotco 1y ago
  I can sort my photos in folders (or albums) in iOS, not sure what you mean? I can have personal and shared albums, unless you mean the fact you don’t have that in the filesystem, in which case I completely agree. I’m a Firefox guy myself and web apps are not something I care about for privacy reasons, but I agree that not having the option is a bummer. The camera bump never really bothered me on the iPhone or the Pixel Fold I had before this iPhone. I just don’t notice it, but then again, I also didn’t notice the crease in the fold. I miss Tachiyomi though. Panels is nice, but I had to built a whole OPDS-proxy to a manga website to have something close to Tachiyomi. Oh, and the ability to turn off network access on a per-application basis that came with GrapheneOS (plus the security of GrapheneOS itself). While I prefer Android and Pixels (using GrapheneOS), I have switched my family to the Apple ecosystem to have a middle ground between privacy and features, so I’m not coming from an “I love Apple and everything else sucks” background, mind you.
  • afavour 1y ago
    I think OP is describing using their main Photos album as an inbox of sorts, emptying it out by filing photos away. On iOS even when you add a photo to an album it still exists in the main album.
    • lnsru 1y ago
      I just went into trades and I do a picture every other hour of my work. It really makes me mad, that I can’t properly separate this photo-documentation from my personal private pictures. It’s a complete mess now in the main folder… Next phone will be one with GrapheneOS.
      • 9dev 1y ago
        Kind of sounds like your actual problem is not having separate devices for personal and work usage?
    • jamesponddotco 1y ago
      Ah, yeah, that makes sense. I simply ignore the main view and go straight to the albums. In iOS 26 it defaults to your last view, so that works for me.
• AstroBen 1y ago
  The biggest selling point of an iPhone for me is the easy connection with my Mac and the consistency between them. If it weren't for that I'd strongly consider a pixel
• delfinom 1y ago
  >3: On Android I can use Chrome. Which means web apps can use the File System Access API. This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files. Impossible on iPhones. Working as intended. Apple wants their 30% cut by all possible means. Web apps would bypass their cut.
• muizelaar 1y ago
  What web apps do you use that use the File System Access API?
• IT4MD 1y ago
  They also screw up the hardware. When I use a fingerprint scanner on other phones, it works. When I used it on my last Pixel (6 or 7, I cant remember) it failed over half the time. How does one screw up biometrics this badly? Lack of care/QA on a $1k device. GL with your Pixel. Note: I'm not an Apple fan boi. I swap every couple of years so I maintain skills in both OSes.
  • OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y ago
    If it was the Pixel 6, I can attest that the 6 (at least the 6 Pro XL) had issues with the fingerprint scanner. I had no issues with my 5 series (when the fingerprint scanner was on the back) but the 6 series always gave me trouble. I'd wager a guess the reason why was because it was the first generation with an under-display fingerprint scanner and they hadn't yet worked out the quirks. I've since upgraded to a 9 series and it works flawlessly so I can assume they've figured it out some time since then.
    • IT4MD 1y ago
      How much of your money for the pixel 6 garbage did they refund? Same here.
• tristor 1y ago
  As someone who started on Android but switched to Apple many many many years ago, I still find things like this that are quibbles for me, but in general my preference for Apple is because of security/privacy, battery life management, performance, update longevity, and hardware quality. That said, I think it's worth noting that #1 hardly bothers anyone because most people put their phone in a case, and that can quickly resolve this. #2 isn't a real problem, because you can absolutely sort your photos into folders, they're call albums though, and this is a first-class workflow in the Photos app since they switched from iPhoto to Photos about 6-7 years ago. For #3, I don't want my web browser having file system access via an API and I don't use Chrome.
• myaccountonhn 1y ago
  I knew apple wasn't for me when I tried to sync and backup my stuff on something that wasn't iCloud. Its just plain unusable if you don't want to be fully entrenched in their cloud services.
  • jama211 1y ago
    I’m an iphone user and I’ve always used Dropbox and google photos as my general backup mediums.
    • ThatPlayer 1y ago
      Isn't that photo specific backup rather than general backups? Last I tried, Dropbox on iPhone cannot backup any files owned by other apps automatically. You'd have to export it manually to Dropbox. Edit; It looks like this is possible on iOS for apps to access other app's file sandboxes with a somewhat recent iOS update. MobiusSync (Syncthing client for iOS) has beta support for it. But I see no mention of Dropbox adding support for anything similar
      • jama211 1y ago
        It’s true that I have some app data being stored in iCloud, but it is VERY within the free tier space limit. But depends on the app, many apps support Dropbox themselves and I store the data in Dropbox for those.
• carlosjobim 1y ago
  > This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files. Impossible on iPhones. The thing is that web apps are always a worse experience if you have native apps. Linux and Android (and now also Windows) depend on web apps because they don't have good quality native apps. For Apple devices you can always find a top quality native app to use, so web apps aren't any concern. The only people I have met who want to use apps in their browser on MacOS are Linux refugees who were attracted by the "specs" of Apple devices. It's a bit like buying an electric car and lamenting the lack of a gearbox. You don't need it anymore.
  • StopDisinfo910 1y ago
    > Linux and Android (and now also Windows) depend on web apps because they don't have good quality native apps. I fail to see any iOS without an equivalent native application on Android when the Android application is not actually significantly better. iOS really is a minority os here and it shows.
    • carlosjobim 1y ago
      I had a really hard time finding a good email client for my Android tablet.
      • prmoustache 1y ago
        kmail has always worked great for me. I am using mostly web apps. Not because web apps are inherently better or more convenient, but because ublock origin on firefox allow me to disable any third party tracking.
• LeafItAlone 1y ago
  I use an iPhone. 1. I’m always going to have a case on my phone, so I don’t care about the camera bump. 2. You’re correct here. I mostly don’t care, but I want to have different hidden folders, which iOS doesn’t natively have. Otherwise I don’t care much. 3. Safari’s locked-down-ness is precisely why I use it. But TBH, at this point, there’s minimal differences between iOS and Android.
• afavour 1y ago
  I’m a former Android user (bought a Nexus One on release!) that switched to iOS many years ago and I don’t miss Android as much as I thought I might. To me the biggest thing to reflect on is how depressing it is that we must all fit ourselves into one of two boxes. My kingdom for a flourishing mobile OS ecosystem where we can all find the exact combination that scratches our itches.
  • xandrius 1y ago
    Well, we have 3 main boxes and 1 got mostly rejected (windows). One is a worse version of OSX and the other is basically what would have happened if Linux was initially created by a huge corp. My dream is for a top-notch Ubuntu for mobile. I'm still waiting for Desktop to catch up, so won't hold my breath.
• crinkly 1y ago
  I have an iPhone 15 Pro. I am a semi regular Pixel user as well. I prefer the iPhone by a mile. 1. Mine sits flat too. It's in a rugged case. 2. You don't know how to use Photos properly. You create collections from the pool and name them. You can create folders as well. In fact it actually does that automatically now. 3. There's literally a files app and filesystem abstraction on iOS. I use it for moving stuff around all the time. Add one gain: 1. All my photos are in real files in Photos.app on my desktop within seconds of me taking them. I do not have my files held ransom behind a web interface. Edits and folders are transparently replicated between both devices. When I back up my mac I have a copy of everything. And a total loss: Post processing on both devices for images is terrible so I use a dedicated camera.
• mikepurvis 1y ago
  My first smartphone was a cheap Android and then I switched to iPhone about eight years ago and mostly haven't looked back. That said, Apple's behaviour around locking out wearables from key system APIs does have me reconsidering. I found the inconsistent sync and notifications on my Fitbit to be a pretty big source of annoyance and if that continues on the new Pebble I would consider switching back to Android just for that.
  • xp84 1y ago
    I think the EU or the US (one of them) is trying to force Apple to give third parties access to the things Apple Watch has access to, so there might be relief coming for one of those continents (one assumes that the petulant child that is Apple's leadership will, after appealing to the maximum, region-gate any remedy, exactly as they did for third-party app stores in EU).
• coldpie 1y ago
  I prefer Android. Unlike iPhone, the Android notifications system actually makes sense, and I can use real Firefox on Android. But, I prefer phones sized to fit in a human hand even more, so I'm stuck on an iPhone 13 Mini. Please make a ~4.5" screen Pixel phone, Google :(
  • jpalawaga 1y ago
    iPhone notifications are leagues behind. Everyone you see with an iPhone has like 80 notifications--mostly stemming from how and when they're dismissed.
    • maxwellito 1y ago
      +1 SO MUCH After two years I couldn't understand them. Sometime one notification appear, then it disappear, is it in the bottom stack? No, it just disappear. Also when there's many of them grouped, will tapping expand them? open the app? It's random. But mostly, on Android, having quick actions on notifications. Receiving a useless email? The "Delete" action is right there. Boom, done. Move on. In retrospect, I think it's why I find Android so functional. Just from the notifications you can do everything. No need to unlock your phone and end up distracted.
  • javier2 1y ago
    13 Mini, best phone ever made :(
    • coldpie 1y ago
      My iPhone 13 Mini is just a touch too big for my taste. For phones I've owned, I'd probably give the nod to the HTC Incredible 4G LTE[1]. Relatively stock Android, 4" screen, headphone jack, soft touch plastic back. It was perfect. [1] https://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=3701 https://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=3701
  • Fishkins 1y ago
    Yeah, the main news I want to hear is the release of smaller Pixel phone. Secondarily, I'd like the return of the 3.5mm port. I don't care about any of the stuff they actually announce. I do currently use a Pixel, but I hate how big it is.
• flowardnut 1y ago
  I can download an APK and install it on android. Why can't I use my iphone like I use my macbook?
  • dsr_ 1y ago
    Apple would like your macbook to be more like your iphone: applications only via their store, thank you very much. But it isn't worth the bother; the macbook market is much smaller than the iphone market.
  • xp84 1y ago
    An underrated question. The answer of course is twofold: * Paternalism (Apple believes users are too stupid to be trusted to control their devices, and no amount of "I really know what I'm doing" confirmations could change that) * Apple's biggest fear is being disintermediated by Google or Meta, the way WeChat did to phone manufacturers in China. An ability to side-load an app could allow a foothold for a powerful competitor who could wean you off of all their lock-in features in favor of an experience that would tie into a competing ecosystem.
• vvvvtt340 1y ago
  I switched from Android to iOS a few years ago. I used to be deep into Android customization - custom ROMs, custom icon packs, etc. But today, I feel that iOS and Android offer pretty all the features that I could ever want. My deciding factors when I switched: - iOS UI animations are significantly better - access to iMessage - Apple got around to adding their version of "always on display" - I turn the vast majority of notifications off, so Android's better notification management stopped mattering to me - It felt like Google kept bending Android towards iOS anyway (camera app, moving away from the 3 button navigation)
  • cyberax 1y ago
    > iOS UI animations are significantly better And if you don't like them: tough luck. They're mandatory.
    • nomel 1y ago
      Well, technically... Accessibility -> Motion -> Reduce Motion I also usually turn off transparency, to reduce GPU usage by a negligible amount.
      • cyberax 1y ago
        Well, try it. It reduces motion, but it does not eliminate all animations. I turned off all animations on my Android phone, and now each time I have to use iOS (for development) it feels like swimming through molasses.
      • xp84 1y ago
        I don't like Reduce Motion as it still forces you to wait through the half second of delay while it slowly fades things. I just want all animations deleted to avoid delaying the action itself. You used to be able to do this on a jailbroken phone by setting the global animation duration to be like zero or something, but of course Apple basically won the war on us "users" having any control on the devices we buy from them, or should I say, 'license the privilege of using'?
    • 1y ago
• littlecranky67 1y ago
  To your 3: On iOS Safari, I can use extensions. That includes adblockers (uBlock origin lite) and others like Vinegar (allows youtube videos to play in background while display is off). No ads boosts productivity more than the file API - what would I need that for?
• Gud 1y ago
  Frankly, iOS could be a giant turd of an OS, at least it's somewhat privacy respecting(for the time being), I would still prefer it. As long as it's that, it's light years ahead of Android. Which is a vehicle for Google to spy on you so they can sell your data.
  • lpcvoid 1y ago
    Nobody privacy respecting uses stock Pixel android. Check out GrapheneOS.
• cheema33 1y ago
  For me, it is the ability to tether my laptop to an iPhone to use the data service on my iPhone. This alone made me give up on Windows laptops and Android phones. Sure, you can tether Windows laptops to Android phones. But, it is a slow and cumbersome process. I use this functionality frequently enough that it was worth it to switch platforms over it.
  • corndoge 1y ago
    When I switched off Android >5 years ago, even then, it was as simple as turning on the hotspot and connecting to it. It was no more cumbersome than any other wifi network. This was with a Pixel device and Linux laptop, and I am sure it works on Windows too.
    • thewebguyd 1y ago
      It's the same now. Turn on hotspot->Connect to it on the PC. After that one step it's in your saved networks and you're good to go. The only difference is Apple will do this automatically for you. If you open up your mac, and don't have network, you get a little pop up that says "use iPHone's connection?" and will turn on hotspot and connect automatically. Nice, but hardly any different or time saving really.
    • cheema33 1y ago
      You have obviously not compared it to how fast a Mac connects to an iphone. There is no need to turn on the hotspot. You can leave that on on the iphone. Just open your MacBook and it quickly connects to your iphone if it does not find a standard wifi. I am very familiar with the Android hotspot feature. I used it for years. It works OK. But, it is not as fast as the Mac/iphone combo. Not even close. I am speaking from extensive experience.
• baby 1y ago
  I think photos on the pixel are messed up (long-time iphone user who switched for the pixel 9 folding pro), you have all these folders that by default don't get backed up, it took me ages to understand I had to go in settings and manually check all new apps that I install for photos to back them up (and display them in my gallery). It's never clear what's the "offline" vs "online" view of google photos (and why there are other google photos apps). With a bit of fiddling I can finally backup my whatsapp photos, but oh boy why aren't the default saner? For Chrome, it's inconsistancies after inconsistancies. First, I couldn't read PDFs from there, now I can but I can't edit the URL when I edit a PDF, also no built-in app to read PDF, it's crazy.
• Macha 1y ago
  > When I put a Pixel on a table, it sits there stable My experience with the Pixel 7 Pro is due to the very pronounced camera bump and the rounded edges, the phone would slide off tables with problematic frequency, to the point that mine just lives in its bike mount case full time now.
  • mvdtnz 1y ago
    What
  • edm0nd 1y ago
    you might need to level your table then
    • Macha 1y ago
      You'll need to tell that to about 30% of the bars in the country.
• OtherShrezzing 1y ago
  I do t think I’ve ever met anyone who doesn’t use a phone case, all of which fix #1
  • coldpie 1y ago
    I've never used a phone case. I don't understand why they make these things so small and then everyone just slaps on an extra couple mm. What's the point? If we're making them bigger anyway, at least use that space for more battery. Anyway, the wobble is real, and sucks.
    • dismalaf 1y ago
      Phones are too slippery these days. Everyone makes them of smooth glass or metal.
      • coldpie 1y ago
        Remember soft touch plastics? Grippy and didn't waste all the space of a case? Then some dingleberry marketer decided slippery metals and glass were "premium" and braindead phone reviewers happily parroted that crap and now everyone buys several mm thick cases made of soft touch plastics to cover up the "premium" materials they bought. Sigh.
        • dismalaf 1y ago
          I do. My HTC Amaze had nice soft-touch plastic on top of an aluminum back, was slim (for the era) and grippy. Also had a Galaxy Note (forget which one) that had a leathery soft touch back, was very nice. The physical design of phones definitely peaked long ago...
    • cosmic_cheese 1y ago
      I run caseless too and would be willing to sacrifice a few mm for better durability and no bump. Plastic is fine too. Bring back designs like the iPhone 3GS which were curved to fit your palm and if dropped would just bounce and tank it!
• meuman 1y ago
  4: the fact that Android has unified gestures: back, home and tray. Whenever I used iOS, I felt like every single app had a different way of going back somewhere. On Android, this is not an issue at all.
  • 3036e4 1y ago
    Uh. I used Android for 15 years and I still keep guessing wrong what the back button will do. Feels like 75% of the time it does not lead me back to what I expect and all apps have different ideas what they think it should do. I agree though that not having a back button at all is also not good.
    • rezonant 1y ago
      Apps can have questionable Back behaviors but they all have a unified way of invoking Back. Apps on iOS can also have questionable Back behaviors, but the method for invoking Back is not consistent.
• x0x0 1y ago
  A counterpoint: google intentionally broke the ability to backup photos in Google Photos. Yes, takeout sort of exists, but it doesn't work. If you sort pictures into albums, you get duplicates of each photo for every album. So one copy in the automatic year album; one copy for each album you have put a photo into. My 80gb of photos triples in size, and oh, sometimes downloads fail on the zips they put them into. And since I use a mac, who has 600gb of free disk to download and extract the zips for my dedup script to run. Additionally, they intentionally broke their api (well, just disabled it... but only for most users; it seems to still be available for Microsoft) to do incremental backup. tada! It's the most Apple thing.
  • thewebguyd 1y ago
    I like Apple photos in this regard on the mac. If you have the storage, you can just set it to download full copies automatically, now all my photos are stored locally on my mac almost as soon as I take the photo on my phone. All google needs to do is make a desktop app and allow automatic download.
  • rossjudson 1y ago
    What do you think Photos should do instead?
    • x0x0 1y ago
      1 - Not deprecate the api that allowed people to run incremental backups. They took positive action to intentionally break this. If they feel the need to break the api for ginned-up security excuses, provide a working solution for incremental backup. 2 - Fix takeout not to be entirely broken and hostile to users on 2 axes: usability and reliability. Usability: emit photos once only with a separate json specifying group memberships. Like, you know, competent engineers. Because that's how they store it internally. 2a - Either (i) fix whatever brokenness in their system regularly causes zip downloads to fail; or (ii) figure out or build a reliable alternate solution. Forcing users to wait hours to a day or two to access zips that they can't download is nothing more than a symptom of total disdain for their users while checking a compliance checkbox.
• hintymad 1y ago
  A mystery about Apple is that some of its software are ridiculously bad. iTunes sync was one of them. Another example is removing iCloud sync used to wipe out the content on the disconnected devices. Screen Time is pretty much unusable. It's really hard to batch update photos in iphone. Heck, it's even hard to batch move app icons on iphone screen.
• cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  I’d prefer the photo organization behavior you describe, but I don’t want websites to ever be dipping into the local filesystem outside of heavily siloed areas reserved for web apps exclusively. I don’t want the browser to even be capable of it, because regardless of what permissions and security measures are put in place, someone is going to find a way around them. The only exception I can see making for filesystem access is for PWAs explicitly installed by the user, and even then there should be restrictions in place like limiting access to scripts loaded from the installed PWA’s domain. The open web in a generalized browser like Chrome on the other hand is too untrustworthy. As for camera bumps, they’re all equally awful and I’d rather they just disappear entirely, even if that means thicker devices.
  • dsr_ 1y ago
    It's so strange that we don't have cameras which have write-only access to the image spool, galleries that have read-only access to the image spool, and a file manager app that can handle delete requests from other applications with the intent system.
  • Rohansi 1y ago
    > I don’t want the browser to even be capable of it, because regardless of what permissions and security measures are put in place, someone is going to find a way around them. You surely trust the permissions and security measures your phone provides to apps so what makes browsers worse in this area? Especially if you're using iOS where you only have Apple's web browser available to use.
    • cosmic_cheese 1y ago
      Intent. Apps can only ever be installed by me, barring complicated exploit chains, while browsers can navigate without any input from me whatsoever. That serves as an extremely narrow funnel that vastly reduces surface area. This is also why I’m more receptive to installed PWAs being more capable. They’re both on the other side of my intent funnel and assuming a good implementation can’t ever navigate to domains that aren’t that PWA. Besides that, it’s just annoying for apps to be dressed in browser chrome. On macOS ever since Safari added the ability to install sites as PWAs, I’ve been making heavy use of those just to remove extraneous browser toolbar items and such. I don’t know how people can live with all their web apps in regular browser tabs, I’d go nuts.
• gralab 1y ago
  These are all extremely minor issues. 2 and 3 are not even relevant to 99% of normal users. Very few people want to spend time manually organizing photos like that, and albums do essentially the same thing. The wobbling thing is a non-issue. It doesn't even wobble unless you're pounding down on the phone on a table.
• appease7727 1y ago
  My pixel 8 does not stay where I put it. Without a case, it will slide right off of any slightly tilted surface. It should be illegal to put glass on the back of a phone.
  • xp84 1y ago
    I agree so much. I get why: "Designers" consider plastic to be low-class, metal is radio-opaque, so that leaves glass as the only option even though it has zero functional advantages over plastic (glass is heavier and more fragile). Imagine if it was a panel of plastic, and that you could easily replace it if it got too scuffed up.
• dismalaf 1y ago
  I prefer Pixel phones, for slightly different reasons. One, it takes really good photos. Better than phones with supposedly better specs. This is big for me, I have a 3 year old, being able to snap photos that look great with no effort is huge. Two, the Google integration is just really a gamechanger. My laptop is my "computing" device. So my phone is mostly for calling, navigating (I travel a lot), searching for businesses, that sort of thing. It's really effortless with Pixel devices, takes a tad more work with other brands. All browsers are equal citizens. I use Vivaldi, it's nice it can be the default and work just as well with the phone as Chrome. And finally, in all my dealings with big tech over my lifetime, Google has been the only one that I feel doesn't try to abuse users. With MS it's endless nagging and annoyances, plus their security sucks, with Apple they're very anti-consumer unless you do exactly what they want, all the time. Even Samsung annoyed me with bloatware and trying to make their apps default over and over. If I change something on a Pixel phone, it stays changed. I pay for some Google products so no ads for the most part. Their security is great. They prefer open formats and protocols and have done a ton for the open web. Just the best ecosystem I've bought into.
• SwamyM 1y ago
  > 2: When I sort my photos on a Pixel, I sort them in folders. The "camera" folder is where the unsorted photos are. When I sit in a bus or in a cafe, I go through it and sort the new photos into folders. This seems impossible on iPhones. Everything stays in the main folder forever. You can add photos to albums, but that does not remove them from the main folder. So there is no way to know which photos I have already sorted. This along with iOS dumping pictures from WhatsApp, etc. into your main pictures folder is such a huge deal breaker for me. If I am backing up my pictures to a hard drive, there is no easy way to select just the pictures taken on my phone. Seems like such an oversight but I suspect it's a way to drive people to sign up for iCloud storage.
  • hammock 1y ago
    I can’t believe there isn’t a fix for this. I thought I was the only person with these problems. How have they persisted for so long?
  • nielsbot 1y ago
    Isn't that something WhatsApp is specifically doing tho? I haven't seen this behavior.
    • kawsper 1y ago
      Yes. You can disable it in WhatsApp.
  • odo1242 1y ago
    > This along with iOS dumping pictures from WhatsApp, etc. into your main pictures folder is such a huge deal breaker for me. This is WhatsApp's fault. "Settings > Chats > Save To Photos OFF" should fix it
    • ars 1y ago
      That doesn't fix it, that just means I don't see WhatsApp photos. I want the two photos in different places.
• dwaite 1y ago
  1. If the phone is bare. If you have a case (or a magnetic wallet like mine) it is stable. Rumors are they are moving to a camera bar in the next release. 2. There is a filter 'not in an album' which would do what you want. The library view is the equivalent of "All Mail" in Gmail. In newer versions, this is a distinct view - they are moving albums, automatically generated collections and search to be a primary interface. 3. Both WebKit and Mozilla have said they consider the local access variant of that API to be harmful, since they do not have an adequately prominent way to surface and manage that you've given a web application permanent access to sensitive directories and files, potentially in the background via service workers. Both do support the origin private filesystem variant. Are there productivity apps direct filesystem access would be useful for other than IDEs?
  • rezonant 1y ago
    > Rumors are they are moving to a camera bar in the next release. If the renders out there are correct, it seems the camera modules will still stick out beyond the camera bar for some reason, so I'm not sure it won't wobble-- though it does look like the issue will be reduced
• haspok 1y ago
  > 3: On Android I can use Chrome. On Android I can use Firefox (with uBlock Origin, and the ability to play Youtube videos in the background or with the screen locked). There, I corrected it for you.
  • nielsbot 1y ago
    The Vinegar extension on macOS/iOS lets you use the system video player on YouTube. (It has a few glitches but works fine and let's you use PiP and play videos with the screen locked.)
  • jahnu 1y ago
    I’m a reluctant iPhone user (nobody seems to be making music on Android and we make plugins) and I use Brave on it and have those features.
• jama211 1y ago
  FYI rumour has it the iPhones about to be released will have the same sort of full width camera module so the “wobble” won’t be an issue. Not that it ever was for me before, I have a case on it.
• dyauspitr 1y ago
  None of those things matter to me. What does matter to me is that to get stuff off my iPhone I have to do a weird sync process and/or use iCloud. Infact, a lot of my issues with the iPhone stem from refusing to use iCloud. Can’t use Apple Pay or FindMy. For now I use Airdrop to move photos from my iPhone to the computer but it’s very error prone and fails 1/5 times and way more often if you try to do it with more than 30 images/videos. Is this situation better in the Pixel?
• pkulak 1y ago
  2/3 of your complaints seem to be down to Apple's insistence that filesystems are silly and should be hidden from users. Unless it's iCloud, then show the user 2 identical filesystems and scatter everything at random between the two. Really, it's a write-only filesystem. Apps will constantly save things there, but god help you if you ever want to find something.
• m463 1y ago
  I can understand point #1 - 99% of people put a case on their phone - the more thickness you have for the camera (sensor+lens), the better you can make the optical design. (bigger sensor, more range of focus, etc) - the camera - especially wide angle lens - must be even with surface of case, not below it (otherwise the case occludes the edges of the photo)
  • eloisant 1y ago
    Pixel phones also have a camera bump, but it's a band symmetrically placed on the back on the phone. Which is why it's stable.
    • SirMaster 1y ago
      Well it certainly looks like the iPhone 17 models will have a camera bump all the way across the width of the device now.
• 6thbit 1y ago
  This comment is flamewar bait that doesn't even acknowledge the post. Not every phone related post needs to become one.
  • thegrim33 1y ago
    Gotta love it, open up the comment section about a new Pixel 10 phone, and have to scroll through a massive comment chain of what, 200? 300? comments that aren't related to or addressing the article in any way.
• laleck 1y ago
  For #2, on iOS, you can move photos to shared albums and then safely delete them from library while retaining them in shared album. Shared albums use iCloud space, so it’s not ideal.
• coldtea 1y ago
  >1: When I put a Pixel on a table, it sits there stable. Because the backside is symmetrical. When I put an iPhone on a table, it wobbles So? Big deal...
• epolanski 1y ago
  I think most HNers prefer iPhones because they seemlessly integrate with the rest of the ecosystem.
  • rezonant 1y ago
    Assuming you mean the rest of the Apple ecosystem this is kind of like saying most countries speak French because all the road signs are in French. Someone who doesn't have an iPhone doesn't necessarily have twenty other Apple devices around.
• 3036e4 1y ago
  As a, mostly, happy Android user since the HTC Magic in 2010 or 2009, the one thing I really wish they could fix (but I suspect it would never be possible) is the extremely confusing thing with intents and apps opening as views in other apps. Like when my mail app opens a PDF it looks like I am now in the PDF app and after reading for a while I completely forget that I am actually still in the mail app, and then I go BACK and instead of ending up in my PDF library view as I expected I am suddenly in my mail app. Or when I look at the running apps list there can sometimes look like I have two PDF viewers or two browsers running since some other apps used intents to open views from those apps that now exist in parallel with the real apps. Somehow that manages to surprise and confuse me almost every day. In desktop operating systems, and, I belive, in iOS, there is no need for such thing? Opening a PDF from a mail application usually just opens the PDF viewer as its own application, or it is embedded in some nice way that does not make the entire mail app suddenly look like a PDF viewer app instead. Unfortunately they can probably never fix that because app lifecycle and intents are connected to everything and a good fix for this would probably break everything.
  • yellowbkpk 1y ago
    It's interesting that this feels awkward to you, because when apps don't function this way it feels broken and odd to me. When I tap a PDF attachment in an email I expect the back button to go back to the email I was just viewing, not the list of PDFs on my phone. If I wanted to view all the PDFs on my device, I would start at the PDF viewer and tap into PDFs from there. I wonder what experience made this feel more awkward for you (and conversely, why it feels more natural for me). What a weird/complex world we live in!
    • 3036e4 1y ago
      I kind of agree and see what you mean, but what I described happen often that I forget where I came from and have no idea that the PDF I read was opened from some other app. It's part of what I mentioned in another comment, that BACK button can feel random. "Did I open this PDF from within the PDF viewer or from some other app? What app?" Instead of the BACK button having a predictable, known, function, it depends on some hidden state.
• jimbokun 1y ago
  I think a lot of developers think like you, but most users of phones don't. I don't think most people care enough to put time into organizing their photos, but would rather the phone or backend AI just find the photo they want by searching for it. I'm not sure if most users even have a strong conception of "file" or really understand what data is physically on their phone vs "the cloud". (The symmetry thing though probably does bother a lot of people regardless of their level of technical expertise.)
  • 9dev 1y ago
    Well I’m a very technical person, and sorting photos into folders seems like a colossal waste of time to me, when I can also just search for a thing on the image, the place or time when or where it was taken, a person or animal on it; I could add it to an album, star it, add tags to it; that should be more than enough sorting facilities, I think.
    • thewebguyd 1y ago
      Same. In fact, I don't organize much of anything that's digital, photos or files. I just use search, it's pretty good these days, and with OCR even better. Just give me a big flag structure with robust search and I'm happy. Heck I don't even bother to organize or layout the apps on my home screen. quicker for me to search with spotlight than scroll around and find what I want.
• seviu 1y ago
  The older I get the more I value screen real state. And that foldable phone is really calling me. Aside from that the fact that I can sideload apps. Run a VM. Work. All this with 16Gb of Ram. And the list goes on and on. Honestly having an iPhone these days feels more a punishment than something else.
• lawlessone 1y ago
  Decision 3 is a no brainer. Apple want you to use the apps they've curated , not web apps, not apps or games from 3rd party stores etc.
• infecto 1y ago
  I prefer an iPhone but only because it has generally given me the best experience where I am not having to fiddle with anything. Maybe android has changed but I made the swap, maybe a decade ago, because android had very weak boundaries on apps running in the background.
• gertrunde 1y ago
  I have to admit, my experience with #1 was quite different. 1. Put pixel on a flat surface. 2. Half an hour later, discover that the the surface wasn't actually flat, as phone the phone crashes to the ground, having been slowly inching its way off the 'flat' surface by virtue of the magically friction free back case of the phone... No joke, by far the slipperyest phone I have ever had, and the one I slapped a case on the fastest, but not fast enough to avoid many dents.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • slipperydippery 1y ago
    No! They still do that? Reading this thread had me thinking back to an early Nexus phone I had back in my Android days, maybe around 2012, and here’s this post! I had no idea that wasn’t some odd one-off problem. You could place the phone back-down on a surface a marble wouldn’t roll on, and 20 minutes later it’d magically be on the floor. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. I can’t believe they’re still doing that (how, though?! And why?!!)
• vbezhenar 1y ago
  I prefer iPhone for a miriad of little things. Can't name one particular thing, but it's just constant annoyance, when I have to use Android. I probably could write a list of 100 items, if I'd care to document it all. That said, after Apple started drinking AI juice, I don't want to deal with it anymore. Another major annoyance with iPhones is that they ditched touch ID. Face ID just doesn't work with me at all, it's like 30% of success rate, absolutely terrible. My last phone was iPhone SE, but new models switched to this Face ID, and that's a real deal breaker for me. I even considered buying few iPhone SE phones, while they're still selling at the stores and keep them for later use, but that seems weird and they'll get obsolete with software updates anyway. I switched to Arch on desktop and I'm going to switch to GrapheneOS on my Pixel (native Pixel Android is absolutely terrible experience, GrapheneOS is bad, but everything else is just worse).
  • TylerE 1y ago
    The single thing that solidifys it for me is that every Android device I have ever used has suffered from noticeable micro stuttering. Their current top of the line TV device drops an entire video frame every couple of seconds while watching 60fps content, cause very noticeable jerking.
    • StopDisinfo910 1y ago
      Could you remind me which brand still sell a 60Hz screen on their 1000$ phone?
      • kgabis 1y ago
        Stable 60Hz is still preferable to stuttery 120Hz.
        • StopDisinfo910 1y ago
          It’s good Android has stable 120Hz then. But if you are happy overpaying for a mediocre phone, that’s your right. I did it once. I’m not planning to do it ever again.
• pier25 1y ago
  I've been using Android for years but for reasons recently switched to an iPhone. I gotta say Android is superior in a number of things like call and SMS spam. Also typing on iOS is a frustrating experience. I type "Im" and the iOS keyboard won't offer "I'm" as a correction option. I've even tried using the Google Keyboard on iOS and the multilingual predictions are just not as good as on Android. I would have preferred to get a Pixel but Google doesn't distribute their physical products where I live.
  • DANmode 1y ago
    Being dumb is cute on iOS.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • jpalawaga 1y ago
    The keyboard is completely nonsensical. I really don't understand how iPhone keyboard is so bad. Even if you install the Google Keyboard, iPhone keyboard is still bad. I can't fathom what is going on here, but I really dislike typing on an iPhone. It drives me bananas. Completely obvious suggestions are never made. Android--you can just faceroll on the keyboard a bit and it'll have everything perfect. I thought I was really good at fast text input on mobile devices until I switched to an iPhone and then realized that Google's ML and autocorrect integration is just way better in this area.
    • pier25 1y ago
      On Android I rarely had typos (and never used autocorrect) but on iOS I make constant mistakes. And I mean constant. It's rare when I type a word without a typo.
      • JamesSwift 1y ago
        I had the exact same experience when switching to iphone. Hasnt gotten better after... 4 years now? It actually seems to be getting worse, if anything.
• dt3ft 1y ago
  With an iPhone, when you click on an input field, the on-screen keyboard pops up, and you can type right away. On an android (latest samsung flagship), the keyboard shows up but is frozen for a second before you can type. I feel this and I’m guessing iOS is a lot more closer to the hardware, while android runs on top of Java, so there is more to process. Maybe its just me.
  • shreddit 1y ago
    Yes, I’m used to this too. But lately on my 13 mini, there is a slight delay between the keyboard showing and it registering key presses. I would say it misses the first key press 60% of the time when the keyboard pops up… It’s very annoying
  • prism56 1y ago
    Sorry, can you explain a little more? I'm interested where it doesn't pop up or I'm misunderstanding
    • dt3ft 1y ago
      The keyboard pops up, but is not responsive right away. This very thing happened today on my work phone (which has a bunch of MS defender/enterprise policies and apps managed by the company, forced background app updates etc, which could explain this) but I recall it also being a regular thing with all Samsung flagships I've had over the years. It's the feeling of a very slight delay (it could be a matter of as low as 200 ms) for important components which are operating-system controlled, such as the on-screen keyboard. It feels laggy, as if an app or a background process impacts the responsiveness of low level OS features. On iOS, this was never something I had to experience. Slow apps are killed, iOS is brutal in this regard, but it protects the core OS-level components such as the keyboard. Try it out, load a few apps and try switching between them, where one of them had the keyboard uplled up. This is something regular users will likely never feel, but if you've been around since amiga 500, you'll definitelly feel it.
  • mrb 1y ago
    This must be a glitch particular to Samsung phones. I use flagship Google Pixel phones and have NEVER witnessed such a lag. I tap on an input field with my left thumb, immediately the keyboard shows up, and I immediately smash any letter with my right thumb and it does register it. So, blame Samsung, not Android. I am not too surprised though. Samsung has a reputation for bloating their Android stack with junk.
• npteljes 1y ago
  I like Pixels because I can put Graphene on them.
• paulddraper 1y ago
  I recently switched to an iPhone. I legitimately struggle to find anything better. (Battery, perhaps?)
• signal11 1y ago
  > When I sit in a bus or in a cafe, I go through it and sort the new photos into folders. This is exactly the sort of thing a lot of smartphone users (including Android users) won’t do. The point of post-PC devices is to actually be post-PC. For many, futzing around with files isn’t the answer. For instance I gave up doing this to my email years ago. It was very liberating. If I want something, I search. I can save searches I frequently perform. iOS’s Photos app isn’t perfect but it allows me to find stuff just fine. I can search for places (“Seattle”), for things (“bicycle”) or even combinations (“plants Vancouver”). It’s pretty neat. And you can actually add stuff to folders (‘albums’) if you really want to. > local files iOS has them too. There are apps which allow you to access and manage local files — including the built in file manager. It’s not as laissez-faire as Android, though. Even the file manager has come a long way, and it’s improving further in iOS 26. tl;dr — iOS isn’t for everyone, but it’s not like it’s not well-designed with a certain audience in mind.
• abraxas 1y ago
  Wobble or no wobble, I really want the camera tumours to disappear. Make the phones thicker or make the cameras more slender. Don't make these ugly protrusions. Those phones are 2cm thick anyway you're not fooling anyone with "thinness" when they still have those massive hunchbacks.
  • brookst 1y ago
    Optics say you’re not getting thinner cameras. Otherwise they’d do that, and all those foot-long lenses you see at sports events would just be phones. Given thickness constraints at the lens,‘I don’t see any reason to make the rest of the phone that thick. Why? Extra battery and nearly double the weight of the phone? Empty space? Cord storage?
    • therein 1y ago
      Sell a version of the phone that's 3 generations behind on camera tech, make it a little cheaper or make it the same price. I promise you I would buy it over your flagship if it means no camera tumor. I am okay capturing daily moments I use my phone camera for at a lower fidelity than the bleeding edge optics and sensors offer. I have mirrorless cameras and DSLRs for photos I care to take at a good quality anyway. Not to even mention with all the latest generation post processing done on photos automatically by phone cameras, I don't like how they turn out most of the time at this point.
      • Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
        > Sell a version of the phone that's 3 generations behind on camera tech, make it a little cheaper or make it the same price. I promise you I would buy it over your flagship if it means no camera tumor. Two things: 1. Your desire is in a minority that would not be profitable to cater to. 2. Even if they tried, half the people sharing your opinion still wouldn't buy it. So many people claim they want something, but then don't buy it even when it's offered. I remember in 2011 being sad that physical slide-out QWERTY keyboards were disappearing and seeing some poll that showed that like 60% of smartphone users wish they had a physical keyboard, yet nobody was buying the Motorola Droid series which had them, opting instead for the sleek-looking iPhone. People complained about phones losing the headphone jack or getting a notch or hole punch in the screen for the front-facing camera, and yet they bought the phones anyways.
• hajile 1y ago
  File System Access API has some serious issues. To quote Mozilla's position on the topic > There's a subset of this API we're quite enthusiastic about (in particular providing a read/write API for files and directories as alternative storage endpoint), but it is wrapped together with aspects for which we do not think meaningful end user consent is possible to obtain (in particular cross-site access to the end user's local file system). Overall we consider this harmful therefore, but Mozilla could be supportive of parts, provided this were segmented better. I think most users would probably be better off without this proposal.
  • benatkin 1y ago
    It sounds like this would prevent users from backing up their own data, which is hard with localStorage and sessionStorage, and instead having to rely on the site owner. However this doesn't go into any detail, so maybe they have some convenient way of being able to access these files in mind, but we'll never know. It reminds me of another shallow dismissal by Mozilla: https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/36294 https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/36294 https://webreflection.medium.com/mdn-doesnt-trust-you-should-you-trust-mdn-93fce7768076 https://webreflection.medium.com/mdn-doesnt-trust-you-should...
• himeexcelanta 1y ago
  I used Android for many years. I got to the point where I didn’t care about or want to customize my phone anymore. I was tired of my Android phone feeling like it was falling apart after a year. I have enough things to think about, troubleshoot, and tinker with…I don’t need my phone to add to that list.
  • rchaud 1y ago
    Which phone brand did you use where it was falling apart after a year? The rest of your comment sounds like you're saying you preferred the iPhone because it takes the option of customizability away from you entirely, instead of simply sticking to the level of customization on Android that worked for you.
    • himeexcelanta 1y ago
      Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC EVO 4g, Motorola Droid. I used to do all kinds of things…tether to my laptop without it being supported in my data plan, torrent, etc. I also got tired of the platform skins depending on the manufacturer. If I’m not going to utilize the customization of Android, then I might as well go with the more consistent and refined experience out of the box. Also iMessage! Hate to say it but my social group is primarily iOS so the experience is superior.
      • hamdingers 1y ago
        > Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC EVO 4g, Motorola Droid. Sharing your opinions without first prefacing they're 12-17 years out of date is disingenuous
      • rchaud 1y ago
        Might as well disqualify the iPhone for not having an Instagram app or a file manager if your frame of reference is 2010.
    • mrheosuper 1y ago
      for my case, my S21U's back literally fall apart, not the battery issue, the glue just simply gave up
• Melatonic 1y ago
  As someone who used Android for years and only recently switched to iOS the lack of file system access is really the only dealbreaker. It's damn annoying. The hardware is reliable and solid but why do we get such a crippled operating system ?
• tomaskafka 1y ago
  I’d love to use the android phone, as they seem to have much better and actually useful AI integration, but they are not phones but “advertising company tracking devices with tacked-on end user functionality”. Similarly, Chrome is not User Agent, it’s Corporation Agent.
• tgma 1y ago
  What good is optimizing for the open web when the Pixels lack a sufficiently fast processor for bloated web pages. Haven't tried the 10 yet, but Pixel 9 is sufficiently slow that you can see tearing artifacts when you scroll. This is at least two or three years behind the modern Qualcomm in Samsungs let alone Apple.
• observationist 1y ago
  Apple imposes "Artificial Incompetence" on their users. It treats them like children, gives them no agency, and limits their freedom, all while praising them for their taste and superior sense of... something. This current iteration of Apple lacks the geniuses and visionaries that might have possibly justified their behavior at some point in the past, so you have a soulless corporate churn reinforcing the biggest walled garden in the history of humanity, with no apparent purpose except self perpetuation. Doing things weirdly and badly, and not allowing any other way, prevents skill transfer between operating systems and environments. It prevents easy transfer of software - it forces software to treat the weird and bad things as canonical. Apple users, with their imposed muscle memory, not realizing how good things could and should be, insist on their high taste and discrimination, and point to things "just working" and other inanities as vehement cover for one of the darkest of dark patterns. Interoperability, protocol, and freedom should be mandatory. Google is hardly better, but at least you can own the device you purchase.
  • darkhorse222 1y ago
    If you cannot understand what made Apple successful then or today what makes you think you're not failing to grasp something? You head right on to making an argument when nakedly revealing that you can't comprehend the other side. Not surprising, this site is made for the Woz's of the world (and that's fine!).
    • selcuka 1y ago
      > Not surprising, this site is made for the Woz's of the world (and that's fine!). I'm pretty sure Woz perfectly understands why iPhone has a larger market share. I use a Pixel too, but I can see that an iPhone is more appealing to 80%+ of world's population.
      • leptons 1y ago
        Except iPhone doesn't have a larger market share, and they aren't being used by 80% of the world's population. Where are you pulling these numbers from? iPhone only has a larger market share in the US, and not by much. Worldwide they are very small compared to android.
• nyarlathotep_ 1y ago
  > Is this a "left brain vs right brain" type of thing? Do most HNers prefer Androids? I can also just plug my Pixel into my Linux machine (I think I needed some other program to do this on Mac, bit it's still easy enough; can't comment on windows) and drag and drop photos, videos, ebooks whatever onto the device. This is huge for me as I work at a location with no BYOD WiFi and poor (very low bandwidth) connection speeds so I often download YT videos for offline listening later. Also worth mentioning VLC is really good on Android and merely OK on iOS. Also very important when you're low on storage from photos, you can unload them with no hassle. I can't do the same with my iPhone; even when I can mount it successfully, its always an arcane directory structure in DCIM sorted by date or something. This is HUGE for me. I cannot understate how much utility I get from this alone.
• culi 1y ago
  > 3: On Android I can use Chrome. Which means web apps can use the File System Access API. This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files. Impossible on iPhones. Safari has support File System Access API since 2022. Maybe you haven't kept up but Apple has done a 180° on PWAs in the past few years
• _def 1y ago
  Of course it's a matter of taste, personality, culture, etc. That's why flame wars about anything don't make sense, whether it is about Operating Systems, browsers, gaming platforms, text editors, phones, cars, coffee, or whatever else you can come up with to arbitrarily argue about.
• dwd 1y ago
  > 1: When I put a Pixel on a table, it sits there stable. That was the first thing I noticed. I assume the extra protuberance is to enable the insane zoom level but it goes full width for stability. I have G85 Motorola - great phone (and primarily a phone/modem/camera) for the price, but it wobbles slightly. Yes, I prefer Android, but have a M4 Air that goes everywhere with me to do actual work.
• bongodongobob 1y ago
  1. You don't have a case???
• ksec 1y ago
  It is a combination of many things. Number 1 being moving between two system is difficult. The biggest obstacle is WhatsApp. And Meta / Facebook / Zuck is making it hard for people to switch. While it is not yet a thing in US, WhatsApp has 2B user world wide. And their life lives on WhatsApp. Less of an issue if you are on Line, KaKaoTalk and WeChat. Number 2 is choice of phones. Android is basically Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy and Chinese Brands. I don't even think Pixel has double digit market share and Google Pixel isn't available everywhere. Their distribution channel is still appalling 10 years later. Making it pretty much the choice of Samsung or Chinese Brands. These two obstacles are there before user could even make a choice and compare. At one point I really thought Microsoft could get back into the game of Mobile. But after many years of waiting it doesn't seems that is a direction they want to go to. I think the iPhone 17 coming later next month won' wobble. So that is one problem solved. In the long game it seems we can better count on "Apple can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”
• bapak 1y ago
  > sort them in folders. They had that in iPhotos and dropped it in Photos. I missed it for about a month and then I got over it. I'd never sort my photos now, I can just search them or find them on the map. If you want to sort photos by folder, no one stops you from using other apps. Google Photos itself is available. Very, very few people want to spend time sorting all their photos, it's a fool's errand.
• monkeyelite 1y ago
  I never want to sort photos in folders.
• dxxmxnd 1y ago
  I use an iPhone because Apple is more focused on privacy, and I don’t really need that many features on my phone.
  • makeitdouble 1y ago
    > Apple is more focused on privacy A more precise way to put it: Apple is focused on customer control, and will fight whoever tries to touch what they see as Apple's exclusive customers. This has privacy benefits against tracking agents, reduces functionalities against third party services (Amazon, Spotify, Google, third party payment etc.), and forbids whole use cases (e.g. non Apple backup service). As a customer one can be happy with the privacy windfall, but we've seen again and again that it's not Apple's focus per se.
• leokennis 1y ago
  Regarding the second point, while I gladly agree the current iOS Photos app is a mess, doesn't it make sense to have photos in multiple albums? If I went on holiday to Brazil and made a nice photo of my son there, I'd like that photo to be in both the "Brazil holiday" and "Beautiful photos of my children" albums, not just in one folder.
• SomeHacker44 1y ago
  I like that I can run whatever software I want on it. I do not like that it is overly locked down without rooting. But still way more open than iOS, regardless of what the mobile phone lawsuits from Epic decided.
• stgr_codes 1y ago
  can you elaborate a bit on this please? > "When I sit in a bus or in a cafe, I go through it and sort the new photos into folders." Are you using the native application called "Files"? I tried to add photos to album via the GooglePhotos application but it will not create a new folder, right? also this: > "web apps can use the File System Access API. This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files." Can you share which web apps are you using? Or do you create your own web apps to work on your local files? Thanks in advance, I'm trying to improve the photo management on the pixel because I want to create a simple way to back them up on my NAS but I'm still struggling.