The writing's on the wall when it comes to Android SOCs now anyway, Apple phones from 4 years ago perform better and still get updates. They have their own issues, but they're not existential level problems.
But frankly it's really hard to justify not getting an iPhone anymore. I have three kids and they all want iPhones and all their social life is on iMessage. Not to mention that all the apps I have to use for work are better supported in iPhone and have issues on Android but IT doesn't really care. It's becoming really difficult to justify not just getting my wife and I iPhones in the next cycle and planning to hand them down.
Its frustrating that all the big companies act like "we're big, so we'll do what we want, no matter how annoying it is to the end user" ... and the small companies really can't compete/disrupt the market because they're not big enough.
But also so many of the people around me use iOS devices now that I end up having to learn how to use them anyway. Yikes I sound like an Apple shill... but the opposite is true. lol
My wife went into iTunes and moved a bunch of songs onto her phone. Then she went out and tried to play those songs... and it tried to download them off the cloud (using data, which is a limited resource). Apparently, copying to the phone didn't _actually_ copy them, just put sort of "shortcut" there pointing at it on the cloud. That was definitely _not_ what she wanted, but the software decided otherwise.
When I tried Android I couldn't get the same device to stick around for more than a year. After my 5X bootloop fiasco I tried another manufacturer and found out I couldn't even upgrade my software to patch a security issue because I had to wait on the vendor to add their crapware before releasing the update. I waited 6 months after Google released their update and then gave up... I don't know how Android users deal with the update nonsense.
This right here is what sums this topic up for me.
I had my last Android phone for 5 years, and never had a problem until the last month; when it was just too slow and would reboot every now and again. It had security updates for the first 4 years.
My wife just switched off her iphone to an android because there were just too many places where it would ... just do it's own thing instead of what she told it to (like I noted in another response; placing songs on the cloud instead of on her phone like she told it to). It didn't "just work" in a lot of cases, for any sane definition of that phrase.
I was thinking about this the other day, and how Apple's departure from skeuomorphism made a lot of "just works" analogies a lot more dilute. I've never been particularly fond of Apple's design chops, be it from 2008 or 2018, but there's something to be said about how digital Corinthian leather and wood textures makes a person perceive a device. It also made their design philosophy fairly straightforward: if you're designing a digital bookshelf, it should work similarly to a physical one. There was no ambiguous frosted-glass layer of UI, nor "lickable" candy buttons littering your experience. It was just... functional. Modern Apple seems pretty disinterested in that stuff though. Relative to the rest of the tech industry, they're the same clowns in a different circus.
I feel like this gets talked about a lot in the abstract but it's rare that I actually run into a limitation in normal usage, and when it is I usually agree with the decision behind it (e.g. limiting cross-application data access for security reasons or moving away from kernel extensions). I think the best example is not supporting different browser engines but I have very mixed emotions there because I'd love to be able to use Firefox but iOS is basically the main thing keeping “the web” from meaning “what the Chrome team chooses to support”.
Apple were releasing updates to the 6s in 2021 still. That's a 7 year old device. Security updates only pretty much - but still its crazy. My wife will not upgrade her old phone as a result (I get one every year through work and just sell my old one).
It also really helps with resale value. I can't believe what I was getting for my old iphones.
I for one won't "upgrade" to a bigger phone with no fingerprint sensor and no headphone jack. I don't agree with many things Apple does, but their iPhone support is pretty damn good.
A SwiftUI app vs Compose app right now is night and day, bugs from iOS 13.5 to 13.6 are catastrophic meanwhile Android devices with extremely old operating systems run the latest UI toolkit with very few issues.
Does Apple give you a replacement before sending in your existing phone?
Maybe in the US, on Apple's homeland, but I doubt they do this in the EU. Would be cool if they did though.
Whenever I upgrade phones, I still keep my previous device around so that when I had to send my last gen to the service, I can always quickly switch to the previous one for a couple of weeks until it's back
If you had backups running to your Mac or PC (which can happen over WiFi automatically when both the phone and mac are on line power), you've got a whole-device backup that will have you up and running as fast as it takes the backup to restore.
Still annoying, and phones shouldn't die like that, but it was probably the best thing they could have done by that point.
The thing died on my desk at work, wouldn't even turn on, just a few days before I was going on a long trip so after a few hours of looking for fixes and talking to support I just went to an Apple store and got an iPhone. Now I at least feel comfortable that if I have an issue I can go to a physical store and get help in a pinch.
There are unlocked 4G phones such as the Nokia 225 for under $50 and the Nokia 6300 for under $70.
I could then either use the SIM from my iPhone, or if I didn't mind using a temporary number instead of my regular number while the iPhone is being repaired Mint Mobile has a "try before you buy" kit for $2 that includes a SIM and new number that is good for one week of service. It is meant to let people test out Mint Mobile before switching to make sure coverage and service are satisfactory, but seems like it would also work for someone who just wanted temporary service.
Google told me, a US customer, to send my device to Huawei's nearest service center in mainland China at my own cost for diagnosis and repair. That is unacceptable for a Google-branded product designed by Google, unveiled by Google, marketed by Google, sold directly by Google, warrantied by Google, and bricked by Google.
Imagine, if you will, Audi sending you to Bosch in Germany (at your own cost!) after an Audi dealership in Indiana bricks your ECU during a recall service.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/29/tumblr-ios-tags-ban-apple/
I escaped from such a world as a child. Apple's sanitization of the internet is fundamentally unethical.
Shame, because my Nexus 5 and Nexus 4 still run great. I don't use them as phones, but they're still solid devices I use for other projects.