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Comment by chetanahuja | Hacker News Reader

"If only iOS devices were made by other manufacturers"

This seems backwards. Only reason to buy Apple phones is the superior hardware. As far as the OS goes, Android (and the google services backing it... especially Google Now) have completely surpassed it and continue to increase the gap every day. Increasingly, Google is treating the mobile devices as just a conduit to access their cloud services (including their far superior machine intelligence backing it). While Apple continues to treat the iPhone as a beautiful device with mediocre cloud services backing the hardware.

Don't believe me? Imagine if you Google stopped creating apps for the iPhone. How big a catastrophe would that be for Apple management? Now imagine Apple ceased to exist. Would the Android ecosystem be affected in any way?

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I had an android phone a year ago. Battery life management is pretty horrible. It's really hard to figure out which apps are draining your battery a lot in the background.

For example, I rooted my phone to find out if any wake locks were draining my battery. It didn't show anything. Looked at the battery usage screen, it didn't show the culprit. Eventually I had to do a science experiment on my phone and disable all background processing and then switch on apps one by one to see the battery life change.

I finally found it was my carrier's generic usage app that was killing my battery. The app was installed from the app store on my unlocked device, so it wasn't carrier pre-installed crapware that caused this.

On iOS, I've never had to do this because app developers are not able to drain your battery like that.

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Camera software speed and quality has never been matched for me on iOS. Maybe motorola gets to iOS's camera speed. The software also makes getting good photos a lot easier with things like detecting your hand shake with the accelerometer and taking the photo when you're still in the moment.

Siri has better locked screen and in car voice interaction for me compared to android when I tried with android OS 5

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If google disappeared, you would basically get china and other companies would fill in the gap.

"Siri has better locked screen and in car voice interaction for me compared to android when I tried with android OS 5"

The series of caveats there tells a tale of it's own. Google Now is so far ahead of Siri, there's simply no comparison... starting with the basic magic of automatic contextual updates and notifications without even asking ("Your flight has been delayed by 30 minutes", "Heavy traffic on 101. Leave in 10 minutes to reach your meeting on time" etc.)

Add to that almost perfect voice recognition with any accents in the world, automatic language recognition etc and all that backed up by Google search engine. Sorry, calling out Siri as a Apple's superior cloud service is simply not credible at this point.

The technical engine behind it is better, but the UX for using it on a locked phone isn't good. All of my issues are solvable by android, they aren't technically hard. But it's still an issue after all of these years.

For me, I only use voice in a car and some other basic cases, since it fails on the locked phone case for me, it's not that useful.

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My basic issues with android:

1. A battery monitor that just works(tm) without playing science experiment. An OS that clamps down on apps to prevent it becoming an issue in the first place.

2. Faster & better camera software, quickly accessible from a locked screen, quick to start, helps me take photos without me realizing it.

3. A voice interface that works well when the screen is locked or occupied by another app, where it easily does things like:

a) Send & speak text messages

b) Control my music / podcasts

c) Change my GPS navigation.

4. An OS that really tries in security. Android is not as secure as iOS, as evidenced by the prices of jailbreaks.

5. An OS that will get updates on devices for years to come. Windows has being doing it for decades despite having similar hardware fragmentation, why can't android do it?

You basically want a Nexus or a Moto X device.

"The technical engine behind it is better, but the UX for using it on a locked phone isn't good"

The OK Google thing on completely locked device has been working on Moto phones (and later Nexus devices) way before hands-free "Hey Siri" thing became generally usable on untethered iPhone 6s last year (at long last).

And calling the incredible functionality of Google Now as "better technical engine" is quite an understatement. If iOS had this service integrated behind it, the entire world would be plastered with TV ads 24x7 calling out this "Magical" experience. Instead Apple's best effort is Siri, which works so well that this entire subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Siri/) is mostly devoted to Siri's hilarious fuck-ups. That's the reason you don't really see much marketing about Siri anymore. Instead the focus has shifted mostly on hardwares... especially the camera (which is indeed amazing).

"On iOS, I've never had to do this because app developers are not able to drain your battery like that"

https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how-to-see-whats-kil...

like that -> in secret like that

The difference is you don't have to play science experiment because you can clearly see what the cause is and how to shut it off. The android battery monitor is ineffective in comparison in my experience.

"If google disappeared, you would basically get china and other companies would fill in the gap."

The incoherence of that response (China is not a company) should be a clue.

get china -> get the chinese market

In china google play services don't really work due to the GFW, so everything is replaced with some local chinese equivalent. You have android without the google parts for the most part.

>Increasingly, Google is treating the mobile devices as just a conduit to access their cloud services

While this is a usage pattern familiar to HN'ers the average user doesn't care too much about cloud services.

Average users care more about things like camera, battery, music, playing games and overall ease of use.

The only critical Google service for iPhone users is search (and maybe Youtube). Both are available from the browser.

"While this is a usage pattern familiar to HN'ers the average user doesn't care too much about cloud services"

Umm don't know which world you're living in but Google Now/Search, Photos, Maps/Waze, Youtube, Gmail, Calendar, Hangouts, Drive.. etc. Pretty much every smartphone in the world is running one or more of those services on a daily basis.

Care to name one Apple cloud service that's so indispensable to that many users? Or perhaps, even just to iOS users?

I never said they weren't running one or more of those services. Of course they are. I said that aside from Search and Youtube they weren't critical.

But I also wasn't aware we're calling basic web search, email and other web applications that have been around for a decade or more "cloud services". When did that happen? I guess by that definition (everything is a cloud service!) then you're certainly right - cloud services are indeed very popular.

I'm particularly fond of IMAP "Cloud Email" or as it used to be called "email". That's a good one. There's also "Cloud Messaging" (I've been calling it "texting" but I guess I'm pretty old school).

>Care to name one Apple cloud service that's so indispensable to that many users? Or perhaps, even just to iOS users?

I'm not sure why you're trying to make this an Apple vs Google thing. That's not at all what I intended. But re-reading your original comment I see thats exactly the kind of thing you were trying to stir up. I'm not interested in that type of discussion. Not even a little bit. Goodbye.

Except for search and YouTube I think they can be easily replaced by the average consumer.

Android doesn't have three-clicks on headphones for going back one track. That's not superior by any means. I use both (Android for personal, iPhone for work) and I definitely prefer iOS. Android is cool, I can do a lot with it, but it's always buggier.

Which Google applications are actually used on the iOS? The only one I have installed is Youtube and only because the mobile version of the website is even worse than the app.

I don't think the disappearance of Youtube app in it's current form would make any difference.

Inbox (for Gmail) is the best email client in my mind. Particularly combined with Googles auto-filtering/sorting of non-important messages and notifying on-screen only when I receive important emails

Several companies that I consult for use Google Apps. All of their iOS users use GMail, Calendar, Drive and Hangouts at the least.

Answered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12449136

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