Staggering stat: 87% of U.S. teenagers have iPhones
axios.com
axios.com
3-4yr old androids have been, in my very anecdotal experience, completely unusable (software bugs that’ll never be fixed, battery drain from OS updates released after manufacture year).
If I were to give a 13yr old a phone, I’d probably give them my used one, and then survival bias would mean they probably get an iPhone since more of them survive in a very usable state.
My dad actually likes Touch ID so much he uses a 5yr old iPhone 7 daily. Just replaced the battery for the 3rd time out of pocket.
On top of that you have constant tweaks and changes - often on useless things. This year, an update "improved" the clock app. It's now harder to set alarms - and about once per week I get an alarm going off without any UI to disable it. I just have to reset my phone.
Why in the world does a stable, reliable feature like the clock app suddenly introduce a major change.
Recently got access to Windows 10 LTSC from a company I worked with and installed it on my workstation, super fast compared to the modern version I was using (LTSC build is 3 years old IIRC) and didn't find any downside compared to 10 Pro, so can recommend that for any dev that feels like their machine is too slow.
as for disabling bloat in non-LTSC versions, there's various scripts floating around, eg. https://github.com/DrEmpiricism/Optimize-Offline/ or https://ameliorated.info/
What do you attribute that to? Is it software updates that slow it down or some kind of pile up of junk that somehow slows it down like Windows 95 used to get?
> On top of that you have constant tweaks and changes…
Yeah, that exists on the iPhone too. Can’t think of anything off the top of my head but I promise you they make things worse sometimes with redesigns and take a few point releases (or even entire releases) to fix them.
Compare that to Android 12 on Pixel phones. Users can't make phone calls due to some bug, and Google is going to provide a fix by the end of January! Do you think they'd delay it that long if they used their own products?
I'll add that in addition to software, Android hardware typically experience more NAND degradation, which can slow the phone down. A possible explanation being that iPhones use NVMe storage vs the cheaper eMMC/UFS type found on Android.
99% latencies increase as the flash memory wears or fills, and I think the UI gets intermittently blocked on writes.
have you tried lineageos? My 5 year android phone (flagship) is still usable with lineageos. The only lags I get are from heavy SPAs inside firefox.
However this is a hit and miss affair. You need to buy your phone with this in mind (always do this, even if you don't intend to use it yet) and many are quite unstable (LineageOS and /e/ are quite good).
I'm back on Android for now (it has some apps and freedoms I prefer), but I have been at a point recently at which I have said holy shit, fuck this and bought an iPhone. And it was nice. No constant worrying whether my battery would suddenly drain to 0. Much, much, much fewer random delays, frame drops and stutters. And that's on an iPhone X.
iOS may be locked down like crazy and have UX from 10 years ago, and the keyboard is atrocious (even swiftkey is way worse than the android version), but it works reliably.
My partner has an iPhone 8 that still works perfectly fine, and much faster than my 3 year old flagship Android. Why the performance degrades after 2 years, I have no clue, plus it happens across brands (seen it with Samsung, LG, Sony)...
I often use it when I’m around her for some reason or another. Works fantastically. My only complaint is that between the smaller screen (compared to a FaceID phone) and her having it in zoom mode (easier for her to read) the screen feels cramped.
But performance wise it’s not an issue at all. Nice and smooth. She’s not playing high end 3D games or editing video so it works for her.
Only reason she’s thinking of upgrading? The cameras have come a LONG way in 5 years.
I've thought of upgrading for the same reason as your mom though.
Walked in and tried to get the battery on my first gen iPad Air replaced. The guy said the model is flagged as 'vintage' in the system and he can't replace it.
Vintage...
But you can do it yourself. Repair kits for iPads: https://www.ifixit.com/Kits/iPad-Fix-Kits iPhones: https://www.ifixit.com/Kits/iPhone-Fix-Kits/iPhone-Battery-K...
Disclaimer: I sell these.
Oh no. Apple won't do shit (or at an unreasonable price, if you're lucky). That's one reason everyone's so mad about them making it so hard for everyone else.
7+ is considered obsolete and they won't touch it.
That is old enough that a battery update through a third party or through a DIY vendor like iFixit should be reasonable.
It's a 5 year-old Moto G5 Plus that I bought for ~$200. It got one OS upgrade to Android 8.1.0. I run Firefox, Signal, Google Authenticator, and the usual set of Google apps (GMail, Maps, Keep, Drive, Contacts, Calendar). It's a great phone. The only problem is that it stopped receiving security updates 3 freaking years ago. But I'm not going to throw away a perfectly usable phone.
That seems suspiciously high. I "manage" approximately that many phones and only one has stopped working without obvious cause of failure (eg. smashed screen).
- the Nexus One died when the power button broke
- the Nexus S died when half the touch screen stopped working
- the Galaxy Nexus died for some hardware reason that I cannot remember
- one of my Nexus 4 died when the battery ballooned and shattered the glass
- another Nexus 4 died in an infinite boot loop
- the spare BLU brand phone died in an infinite boot loop
- the Moto X died when the radio antenna (both WiFi and cell) stopped working
- the Nexus 5X died in an infinite boot loop
Nexus 6 though (it is very similar to Moto X hardware wise) only died after 4 years after taking a swim, and was perfectly functional until then.
though i used to upgrade after 1.5-2 years, current phone holds record, soon 4 years of use without any lag or anything probably attributed to not updating system, which would bring me no benefits and using clean lineage ROM, also not fan of crap apps
What sort of Android device? Flagships usually have a much longer life than cheap ones.
I had a Mi Mix 2S for 3 years (2.5 of it with literally a hole in the bottom left corner with a circuit bord visible after i dropped a heavy and sharp object on it) and it was as snappy and fast when it died due to water damage, and was still getting updates. I know people with OnePlus 6 or Samsung Galaxy S7 which work just fine ( there are no updates though). The updates part sucks but is getting better across providers, so hopefully will be better in the future.
Better privacy settings are great, it is so much easier to lock down permissions (though I hear Android has gone a long way). Everything else is worse.
Performance was OK, but now is so-so, phone definitely feels very slow from time to time, or Safari randomly crashing. Some websites will reload a bunch of times then crash completely. Typing is so much worse, autocorrect is more like auto-typo, compared to what I'm used to (which surely mined text data from my and everyone's phone but so be it). App availability for general stuff seems worse.
I wanted to like my iPhone, but don't, and I'm likely to go back to Android when this one finally dies.
The autocorrect can be fixed by using Gboard instead. I don't know why Apple can't make their iPhone keyboard work right.
No, they are poor so they simply can't afford new things.
I have a lot of the same motivations — I have plenty of money, could buy anything I want brand new within reason. Yet almost everything I own is secondhand — my phone, laptop, tv, clothes, car, cookware, records, guitar, furniture, picture frames, headphones, camera. I’m not even particularly environmentally conscientious or frugal compared to my peers. For me it’s bit of sustainability, a lot of being frustrated at how much waste comes from new things, a good bit of “good god why are new literally cut every corner”, and a lot of fuck capitalism and this consumerist bullshit.
Most people can't and that's exactly why they buy second hand. Turning this into a decision driven by concerns about sustainability seems very optimistic to me. Your concerns are admirable but I wager most people have more immediate aspects to consider - like being able to afford these things at all.
Here is my guesses:
* iMessage. Teenagers are pretty social and try hard to fit in. Teens may feel more "cool" and "in" to use the same type of device, and iMessage also cements that.
* Affordable. iPhone SE is $400 which is still expensive, many parents may see that as affordable for their teen
* Parental controls. Apple has a staggering number of parental controls, does Android match this in terms of features and ease of use?
My girlfriend is 21 and often doesn't add me to groupchats when we're organizing stuff with friends solely because the messages will be green instead of blue.
It sounded like it got to the point where phone companies were delaying so long (at least in the US) that Google is basically forcing their hand by doing everything themselves if the carriers don’t.
Meanwhile iMessage has been running for 10 years.
That said I agree with you that I see basically no reason for Apple to add it. That’s up there with iMessage for Android in probability.
However, I doubt people on other platforms would really appreciate it, because the level of integration won't be there.
That being said, I've had multiple tinder dates mention they don't go out with guys that have green messages since it's an indication that they are poor.
In other countries we use cross platform messengers like Whatsapp to avoid that. Of course that brings a whole other problem set with it but that's a different discussion.
It deals with sharing pretty well when both parties have Google Calendar accounts.
My sister joined matrix, but she didn't remember her password the next time I tried to reach her there.
Would you start using a second podcast app just to listen to one individual podcast? Or would you just go without?
I’ve always assumed Android users are used to multiple messaging apps already. Is that the case?
Messages (Google SMS app)
Slack
Discord
Facebook Messenger
And Google Chat for work.
* Messages (SMS & iMessages)
* Slack
That’s it. I don’t have work stuff on my phone. I suppose if I did I’d have Google Chat.
For some reason I don’t see Messages and Slack as competitors in my mind. They fit in different “categories” (for whatever reason). Messages is for everything but one long running group chat that used to be on-prem at my last job as a sort of social room. I think of it more like IRC and not personal messages. Messages is 95% one-on-one for me.
I use element for some random people. And interacting with open source communities.
I use slack for work.
I don't use fbmessenger/WhatsApp, discord, or any other closed source messaging app besides slack.
Do you consider close friends and family comparable to podcasts?
I’m open to better examples.
I'm experiencing that with WhatsApp (in Israel it's pretty much 95%+ WhatsApp). I moved from Android to iOS, and WA have yet to add cross-platform migration ("in the coming months"), and I don't trust any of the 3-4 sketchy apps that offer this. So I end up using WhatsApp Web and switched to texting for family members.
This led to more than a couple "oops I forgot I need to text you" because iOS Safari doesn't allow web notifications, and I didn't check WhatsApp Web yet.
[1] https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/498 (page 19)
[2] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360031836512-St...
[3] https://www.theverge.com/tech/2016/9/23/13005160/imessage-st...
This factor alone probably explains why teenagers amplify Apple's market advantage. They have a stronger impulse for conformity with their peers: ie, they tend to all use the same phone as their friends. Coupled with the fact that most of them have more than one social group they identify with, it makes it unlikely that a social subnetwork of teens all using Android could survive the competing peer pressure from neighboring connected social iPhone subnetworks.
It was the same thing with MSN Messenger (when Millennials were teenagers) and with BBM was well.
In certain locales the same thing is true with WhatsApp.
Especially amortized over the longer life of the device; $400 over 5 years is only $80/yr and iPhones can reasonably last that long
Sorry if that all sounds basic to you, I'm new to this and just speaking from the Android front.
Not really, that’s the main reason why iPhones aren’t very popular outside the US.
I can get 2 good Xiaomi phones for the price of an (outdated) iPhone SE. I’d love to get my parents and grand-parents on iPhones to simplify their life but at that price that’s not happening.
Every android I had died/missed updates less than 2 years after I bought it, exception to the original moto x that was the pinnacle of android for me
The iPhone 6 lost support in 2020 or 2021.
The original iPhone SE (the little one from 2016) is equivalent to a 6s (both use A9) and it’s widely expected that Apple will drop support this year.
However the newer/bigger iPhone SE that was released in 2020 has the same chip as the iPhone 11, the A13. It should still be good for many years.
You likely are using a version of the App Store which doesn't support pinning older OS releases on older app releases either -as soon as they released a build for iOS 7, the iOS 6 version would no longer be accessible.
You are also missing about seven years of security updates, including several browser-accessible remote exploits. Not using Safari would be a good idea.
I agree that Apple's durability as a hand-me-down goes further in explaining this number than "convinced parent to spend $400 because green bubbles would make me an outcast"
Key line: "87% of teens own an iPhone and 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone; Apple is No. 1 watch brand for first time"
Also of note: "Cash is (still) king for teens as top payment method followed by Apple Pay"
so a PR and sales document
>Survey is executed in partnership with DECA
and nothing on the survey methods or details beyond this ambiguous statement
I somehow did well for my first day, getting through 3 50-question surveys. It was not enough. I was sent home halfway through the day. I was supposed to tell them it was my first day so they would be lenient but I wanted to go drink beer instead.
I was in DECA too and it's a shame they don't disclose details on how they conducted this survey.
I obviously never voted before I was 18, but I presume my registration still helped him with his stats for the day.
I confirmed this report is indeed for 2021
People are still willing to pay decent money for a 3-5 year old phone or laptop...sometimes as much, or even more, than their much more recent and powerful competitors from other brands.
The people that are willing to filter me out are exactly the people I don't want to date.
Everytime I see a green bubble I consciously notice and for whatever reason slightly disapprove. Does this make me shallow and stupid?
Yes, probably, but it is what it s.
No. In the dating sphere, people have a thousand things that go into their preference.
If someone living a 25 minute drive away can be a deal-breaker, having them sometimes not get your message asking if they want to go do something can be too.
The problem is that the choices are entirely in between proprietary systems, or a system like SMS which has a bunch of crappy behavior, or the new contender RCS which is kinda both. (missing arguably essential privacy features, still isn't really deployed as a standard since Google is running all of the infrastructure rather than carriers).
So we have no clear winner; instead we have tribes. Any time two tribes have to fall back to SMS it is going to be miserable.
Worth noting that the price floor is set by Apple's trade-in program - https://www.apple.com/shop/trade-in
Quality apps and products support iOS first. Apple has great UX people, most things are obvious and they just work smoothly as expected. The hardware is insanely good, I can live with being behid android with features for the durability and long term updates.
Ofc I’ve come to find plenty of things I hate about it as well. Notably text editing is the most miserable experience I have day to day. Managing to select the correct bit of text, or moving the caret to a specific position in some text I want to select feels impossible sometimes.
They literally told me that iphones are for "old people"
The Chromebooks at school are having their effect
Mobile is everything, and no one can make any headway against Apple. Apple and iPhones are just too "cool" - and the iMessage and facetime lock in is very, very real.
If you aren't shipping hardware, you don't control the platform. Someone will be charging you rent.
Android software and hardware UX is typically subpar, with very little attention to detail, and things just feel out-of-touch and made by engineers and marketing bots. My hypothesis is all these things contribute to a lack of "coolness" (for lack of better word), which has a tremendous impact on the market.
It goes the other way around as well. If you are used to Android you will be very disappointed by the lack of customization available on iOS. I know I can't stand to use an iphone because of that.
Maybe the broke ass kids have that shoddy cheap Android. That’s like wearing Payless or knock-off sneakers. No, not me, everyone’s got Jordans mom, and the new iPhone dad. It’s almost like you don’t care about me and want me to be seen as a loser in school. Gosh.
Why do you think that is?
https://www.fastcompany.com/90391587/why-we-dont-want-you-an...
Also when the poor kids has cheap androids then kids will associate those with low status. It isn't like kids ask for items from their parents based on very rational reasons, they want the items that the popular kids in school has and avoid the items the poor kids in school has.
Lets say one group had iphones and the other group had androids. The iphone group starts to talk badly about the android group due to issues like this, and slowly the other groups will switch to using iphones.
If iphones were that much better value then adults would be using them at similar rates, but they aren't.
Also the other effect is similar. The android ecosystem is affordable so poor people can get it. That creates the same problem as poor neighbourhoods, you don't pay to live in an expensive neighborhood due to the neighborhood itself, but to ensure that poor people can't afford tolive near you. Iphone creates the same effect, you can get an android for super cheap so it is worth a lot of money for kids to create a group where they can ensure that the poor kids can't easily take part of.
This assumes adults, including all the old people who grew up without computers and phones or even smartphones, would be using the devices in the same capacities as a teenager, which seems like a very poor assumption.
I'm tired of people shitting over teenagers as if they can't even think at all.
I mean he'll I'm an adult supposedly and am as susceptible to trends/fashions/being cool as anyone else.
So either American teens are very discerning of UIs, or they just try to fit in within a network of existing iPhone users.
Why even talk about other markets unless you can control for all of the other variables? The other markets are completely different, there is no market like the US market just like there is no market like the market seen in China or India...or maybe if you think as you do, you should ask the question why teenagers in the US market are more likely to try to "fit in" than other teenagers in other markets...
Most non flagship Samsung shipping today with Android 11 will only get Android 12 then security updates only. So technically Samsung only provide 1 year, if security update counts then Apple is still supporting iPhone 5s, a phone released in 2013.
Doesn't sound very "open".
They also don't stop people from outside of those countries from ordering it.
Even as an OSS believer I just love apple design too much to not support this :(
If you launch an android-only app, how much of your press-audience are you excluding?
https://www.dignited.com/48795/why-do-ios-apps-generate-more...
The kids use Chromebooks all day long and all the apps on their phones are Google apps, so it's not like Apple has some kind of monopoly on their virtual lives.
You can lock specific apps, with time slots and max time for each app.
Not sure if you can have a school and bedtime as separate limits, though. That'd be handy.
I don't need statistics to know there's a teen who committed suicide because of it.
Bitch, this flagship costs MORE than your piece of fruit.
I was on the iOS side, they cost too much for what I do with my mobile phone.
Now I always buy mobile phones under $200, my current mobile phone battery last for 5 days without recharge, previous mobile lasted for 5 years (using a custom ROM).
If the title is correct - it's pretty bad. 87% market share for Apple in any demographic is horrible.