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>> android also doesn't have the same polish as iOS As someone who switched from using Android for many years to iOS for the iPhone Mini, this seems to be all

• lapetitejort 1y ago
  Riffing on a comment I saw on one of LinusTechTip's "Switch to Android/Apple" videos: phone users misinterpret familiarity with intuitiveness and polish. Android is "intuitive" to me because I've been using it more than a decade. It's "polished" because I'm blind to the rough edges.
  • abandonliberty 1y ago
    I was really surprised when I first got an iPhone. After all the hype about it being so intuitive and polished, it was just different. Some things better, some things worse. But Apple devices take a bit longer to go obsolete, and seem just a tiny bit less invasive as they don't rely on an advertising model for revenue.
    • dotancohen 1y ago
      For the few months that I had to use an iPhone in addition to my regular Android phone, I also tried to convince myself that some things were better and some things were worse. But the iOS keyboard was completely unusable for me as a power user, and it cannot be replaced. I was missing so many features of Gboard. I absolutely could not consider an iPhone or any other replacement phone for that matter, if it does not support Gboard.
      • sanswork 1y ago
        You can install gboard on iPhones, I've been using it for several years on one.
        • jahnu 1y ago
          Interesting that it hasn’t been updated in three years.
          • sanswork 1y ago
            It's pretty terrible but it's still the best of what I've tried. Given the progress in LLMs the autocomplete/autocorrect choices and word suggestions are laughably bad. Swype and the MS one though still managed to be worse
        • whycome 1y ago
          It's crippled though. You can't do something simple like have the comma on main view.
          • sanswork 1y ago
            Is that an iPhone restriction or is that Google not maintaining a product?
            • whycome 1y ago
              Pretty sure it's limited due to iOS. Because it does allow period to be added.
              • sanswork 1y ago
                Just checked with the iOS keyboard development guide and app store review and see no rules against it. Why are you pretty sure it is limited due to the OS?
                • whycome 1y ago
      • whycome 1y ago
        iOS must have changed some things related to keyboards. On an iPhone many years ago it was definitely a better experience. I’m not sure if some sort of predictive text gets in the way or what. Or maybe something with the spacing. Or it also seems like some sort of thread priority issue because there are times where I can distinctly tell that there’s some sort of input lag that’s messing with it. Gboard is crippled on iOS — why can’t we just have a damn comma on the main screen?! And why can't I just get my keyboard to be at the very bottom of my screen. It's 2025 and we have gone so far backward.
        • dingnuts 1y ago
          today I was texting and Google Messages began to lag. Why DOES everything seem to get worse? I can hear the Doctorow fans coming out of the woodwork to tell me it's "enshittification" but that's a cute conspiracy theory that doesn't explain at all why Google would allow Messages to have a memory leak after working fine for years. There's no profit motive to making a core application shittier. We have to dig deeper, because this kind of thing is everywhere and hand waving at capitalism like Doctorow does is a cop out and an unsatisfying explanation IMHO
          • 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
            Why do you need to dig deeper? If you were the PM would you prioritise the fixing of the bug instead of other work that’s more important? How many customers will you actually lose?
          • murderfs 1y ago
            Because random performance bugs are a giant pain to even detect, let alone root cause.
          • moi2388 1y ago
            Because of agile and ci/cd practices. Meaning you ship features to production with at best a/b testing. Never mind writing tests. Of course written by some cheap devs from India or Bangladesh. If the code was even still written by a human at this point.
        • 1y ago
      • deleted 1y ago
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      • JustExAWS 1y ago
        You’ve been able to replace the iOS keyboard for almost a decade - including with Google’s https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gboard-the-google-keyboard/id1091700242 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gboard-the-google-keyboard/id1...
      • LexiMax 1y ago
        > But the iOS keyboard was completely unusable for me as a power user, and it cannot be replaced. If you're still on Android, try FUTO keyboard. I found the voice-to-text feature to actually be on par with Google's, but without the delay of a phone-home.
    • yepitwas 1y ago
      It’s gotten worse. 6 and earlier, it was uniquely friendly and approachable.
      • ruszki 1y ago
        In my experience, this was true also with Google’s version. The first few iterations were great, then went shit. I need only one thing: add diacritics, and fix basic misspellings. Now all of them try to be “smart” even when they should just add a diacritic to an “a”, they suggest me something completely different even when the word which I need is in their dictionary. Maybe most people need more, but it annoys me greatly that it tries to be more than simple misspell fixer.
    • incone123 1y ago
      I went from OnePlus to Nothing recently. Differences in Android skin felt like rough edges at first. Google is collecting data but I do not see adverts in the OS.
    • dijit 1y ago
      in the very beginning, there was a lot of animation stutters on android. The UI was much less consistent, and the design language of different programs varied pretty wildly. This gave me at the time, a feeling of a distinct lack of polish.. I would say, though that in the year of our Lord 2025, largely hardware is good enough that the animations never stutter on android anymore, an android applications have largely converged on similar UI paradigms. So I think the issue with criticism is that people hold in the heads for a very long time, I mean a clear example is how people think Linux is extremely user hostile, despite most metrics of what makes something user hostile being significantly superior on most widely available in the next distributions except of course the power user focused ones. Whereas Windows 11 and macOS clearly do not give a shit about breaking muscle memory or having UI inconsistency. Criticisms live longer in our minds than they do in reality.
  • V__ 1y ago
    I would agree with you before Apple switched everything to gestures. Any time I now have to help a family member out on an iPhone I get extremely frustrated. Does the interface want me to swipe, long press or do something else? There are no real hints. Extremely irritating.
    • ThrowawayR2 1y ago
      I miss the three physical navigation buttons that phones used to have. Yes, they took up a bit of space but they were also unambiguous about what their navigational function was.
      • greesil 1y ago
        I know in Android you can switch back to three button navigation if you want.
    • lan321 1y ago
      I despise my work iPhone for the gestures and the screen lock canceling a call if it's not picked up yet, but turning the screen off if the call has been answered. Nothing more annoying than pinging someone by mistake and then calling each other with perfect timing so you both get the message that the other party is already in a call a couple of times.
• cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  Also just how important certain features are to you personally. For me notifications are generally more annoying than they are useful, and this doesn’t change under Android. In fact the emphasis that Android puts on them in the shade really sucks for me because it’d much rather have the quick settings pane fully visible than room for a couple more notifications — having to swipe again to see all the toggles is super annoying. So for me, the split shade that iOS does where swiping down on the top right edge of the screen shows only your quick toggles is preferable. Some people basically live in their notifications, though. I’ve never been able to understand it, but they do, and so the Android way works better for them. I think there are also less subjective aspects though, like the choice of animation curves through much of Android feels “wrong” somehow and different from almost everything else else out there, including Windows, Linux desktops, etc.
  • rickdeckard 1y ago
    > So for me, the split shade that iOS does where swiping down on the top right edge of the screen shows only your quick toggles is preferable. Just FYI, on Samsung Android Devices this is implemented as you describe. Useless info: I think the feature was first implemented on Android 3 (Honeycomb) but then abandoned again on Android 4 (ICS)
    • cosmic_cheese 1y ago
      One UI borrows a number of things from iOS so I’m not surprised. It really should be an option in base AOSP (and thus most Android installs) though.
  • kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
    Just block all your apps from generating notifications. Long press the ones that show up in the pane and turn them off permanently. Eventually you will have them all eliminated.
• unsignedint 1y ago
  “Polish” is subjective. If what a platform provides aligns with your needs, it feels polished. If it doesn’t, that same “polish” can actually work against you. In other words, polish depends on how much you agree with the platform’s way of doing things. iOS (and Apple overall) tends to be more opinionated. It says, “Do things our way and you’ll have a smooth experience.” Android, by contrast, has historically been more of a flexible “toolkit.” That gave you room to shape the platform to your liking, though it often meant less guidance and structure. In recent years, Android has shifted toward more out-of-the-box convenience, closing some of that gap. But ultimately, it comes down to what you value: iOS offers a cohesive, guided experience, while Android gives you more leeway to adapt things if you don’t agree with the defaults. Neither approach is inherently better—it’s about what fits you.
• ACow_Adonis 1y ago
  As someone who has an android personal phone and an iPhone for work for several years, I literally do not know what the hell people mean by "polish", beyond just the informal emotional utterance that can be translated back to "what I'm used to". Half of the stuff in the iPhone is equally arbitrary and mindboggling as the android.
  • ryandrake 1y ago
    I think a lot of it is just tribal mysticism. One gets used to their preferred devices, and then they mentally imbue them with positive qualities, conjured out of their own imagination/biases. There was an article[1] a while back where the author was complaining that Android apps feel "inert and rigid," and lack "comfort, fun, and panache." Like, really? How is anyone expected to compare one app's "panache" with another one's? You're just used to one ecosystem's apps, and other people are used to another ecosystem's apps. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34611552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34611552
    • woah 1y ago
      I looked at that link and the quote was: "But for the most part, it seems like third-party Android apps don’t even try to achieve the look-and-feel comfort, fun, and panache of iOS apps." (referring to Android Mastodon clients vs iOS Mastodon clients) Is nobody allowed to make any subjective judgement about apps?
• whycome 1y ago
  Why are notifications on iOS such a nightmare? It’s impossible to properly read just a selection or to quickly dismiss many at once.
  • FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    Because neither the shareholders or the userbase cares about this. Apple has a captive market who accepted this limitation for over 10 years and thee won't switch to Android because of that issue. Entification will only continue from here on both parties since they've achieved duopoly status, so as a customer you can only pick the lesser of two evils.
• ewoodrich 1y ago
  I've been using an iPhone I got from a carrier deal for the last year after using Android phones since the T-Mobile G1, and the notification shade drives me insane on iOS. Notifications in general are so much more annoying to deal with on iOS vs Android. For the love of god please just let me clear all notifications! Also, how Apple seems to deliberately avoid including a shortcut to the full settings anywhere in the control center or the shade. It honestly feels like one of those stubborn Apple things where at one point they decided Android including a settings shortcut (gear icon on the shade) was somehow an admission that its quick actions were poorly designed and iOS is above that.
  • kayodelycaon 1y ago
    I think these features are or can be implemented. But they are definitely not obvious. And it’s possible they weren’t there when you first used an iPhone. To clear all, swipe down on the top left to show Notification Center. You should see an X button right of the words “Notification Center”. If you want to launch an app from control center, open control center (swipe down from the battery icon), press and hold on a clear area until you’re able to edit it. Add a control. Scroll down until you see the Shortcuts controls and pick Open App, then pick Settings.
    • ewoodrich 1y ago
      1. That only clears notifications not considered “recent”. Any notifications above that cutoff have to be cleared manually (and sometimes there can be a lot). 2. This is actually helpful thanks, don’t think of using a shortcut and making one myself!
  • deleted 1y ago
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• jajko 1y ago
  My wife is a doctor but exact opposite of power user for phones and technology overall. She switched from android to iphone 13 mini when it came out, I recommended it to her and thought Apple is ideal platform for her. Bough her ipods pro too, chargers and so on. The only, literally only thing she liked was the seamless integration of airpods with phone, hated literally everything else about the hardware and mainly iOS/software. Too dumbed down for her, some trivial things she does often are simply not possible on iOS and that's it, no way on earth to change that without voiding warranty, if at all. So now she bought Samsung S24 and couldn't be happier. The switch made airpods pro basically useless or more like supremely annoying to use (there's an anti-competitive case or two against Apple in this, degradation is very obvious and on purpose), so she gave them away and happy with whatever plugs she picked up from ocean of available and good enough hardware for her use. My boss is same story - bought into Apple ecosystem with some older pro max variant maybe 5-6 years ago, then of course airpods and watches followed. The very definition of power user. Switching now back to android (pixel 10 pro), hates the products at this point. These are people who don't care about price much but want best usability and convenience for them. From opposite side of spectrum of users. Me, I never had A device and probably never will, but I respect them for success and innovation they bring to the whole industry. Good competition literally helps everybody in long run.
  • idiotsecant 1y ago
    It's wild how HN will consistently vote down comments that don't have good experiences with apple products, even well thought out ones like this. At the time of this comment you're pretty heavily voted as a negative comment.
    • jajko 1y ago
      Its fine I don't care, I prefer speaking whats on my mind (or experience of others around me) rather than chasing meaningless points by saying likeable stuff. Its not even my first account here.
  • thewebguyd 1y ago
    I've long said that if Apple didn't have their ecosystem lock-in, they wouldn't be able to compete on a level playing field. I like a lot of Apple's hardware, and as of now I'm still "all in" on their ecosystems. I have the phone, watch, AirPods, iPad, macbook both for work and personal use, even an Apple TV box. I can't stand iOS, but the only reason its "better" for me is just because I take advantage of all the other Apple devices and proprietary protocols + I prefer Apple Music over Spotify. If third parties were allowed to also use AirDrop, shareplay/airplay, clipboard sharing, etc. then I'd dump my iPhone in a heartbeat. But, I love my apple silicon macs too much to get rid of those, and KDE connect isn't great on it, so I'm effectively "stuck"