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Comment by krzyk | Hacker News Reader

It depends if you want to hack around on the phone.

Android allows app to read gps status, do background stuff that is impossible on iPhone:

- you can't upload photos using e.g. Google Photos or Nextcloud in the background

- there are no custom apps that could do phone tracking (it is available to find my device) e.g. like GPSLogger on Android

Can you integrate a ~smart/dumb watch to do action that you want? (e.g. send a http request, make a call)?

Basically iPhone doesn't have Tasker like functionality and for me that is a no go.

Also is there a way to search for an app that is installed or should I still browse a long list and play "finding nemo"?

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> Also is there a way to search for an app that is installed or should I still browse a long list and play "finding nemo"?

The iPhone does have a search for apps. Plus they now also will group your apps into categories on the last screen.

And apps like Google Photos on the iPhone do upload photos in the background.

They do upload in the background, but they don't notice new photos while being in the background.

You need to start the app and only then they will notice the new photos. (my life is miserable because my wife has iPhone and I have to deal with strange limits on iOS).

> you can't upload photos using e.g. Google Photos or Nextcloud in the background

You can certainly upload/sync to your personal NAS at home with third-party apps. Many of my beta users use Resilio Sync, PhotoSync, or SyncThing. Synology and QNAP both have their own proprietary sync apps as well.

Nope, it does not work. Tried it, it appears to work for first time and then you notice that if the app is not launched in the foreground after you take a photo it won't notice it.

> - you can't upload photos using e.g. Google Photos or Nextcloud in the background

You can. I use PhotoSync to upload my photos in the background to my Nextcloud server via WebDav. Nextcloud and Dropbox have their own special functionality to automatically upload photos in the background.

>Android allows app to read gps status, do background stuff that is impossible on iPhone:

You are very much behind the times here. The newer Android (since 10 I think?) behavior for the last 2 years are permission prompts just like Apple. In fact many apps are not allowed to request background location updates anymore either.

But there are still apps that have permission to run location service in the background e.g. Tasker, GPSLogger.

I'm on Android 11.

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