Very few reasons to stick with Android. Apple has the Apple Stores to fix your device, iMessage, and guaranteed OS upgrades for years. Not having iMessage is a social death sentence for many teenagers too.
- Browsers with add-on support, to make browsing the internet bearable
- DNS-level adblocking, to make app usage bearable
- Sideloading apps, to access software which Apple nor Google would condone
All of these are dealbreakers for me.
OS upgrades are less of a concern on Android, where apps tend to support very old versions of the OS (5.0 is not at all uncommon to be supported, which was released 9 years ago), as opposed to iOS, where it's common that only the latest two OS versions are supported. This fact alone makes it so that an Android device might even be useful for longer than an iOS-device, which is entirely locked out of basically all of the app store after 6-7 years, with no way to salvage the device any more.
I use both platforms, and they have strengths and weaknesses, but for the average user Android is going to provide a massively worse web privacy experience.
it's possible with AdGuard Pro and similar apps on iOS, although it's obviously not possible to run these apps with root privileges, like AfWall and others.
On iOS content blocking can be done on a very low level by ad blockers posing as local on-device vpns. This doesn’t require root and is super easy to set up. (e.g. https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardForiOS)
Very few reasons to stick with Android *for someone who isn't technical or succumbs to pubescent peer pressure
But that said the Android constantly-changing API's, device compatibility/fragmentation is a bit of a nightmare.
Snark aside, Apple is really nice and if you're used to it, great, I don't have a strong opinion anymore. But I bought the 14 Pro then went back to my S21 despite the apple being much better hardware. The gesture nav and experience was just annoying to me.
- Android is just cheaper and runs on more hardware
- Android is freely licensed and offers secure transparency that iOS does not
- Android doesn't claim authority over being able to install apps
- It has actual desktop-grade APIs like Vulkan and Linux syscalls
Apple is expensive if you’re constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest, but at the mid range longevity is more important than initial price alone. People replace their phone enough the important bit is how much your paying per month not the actual device cost.
“Whether it's the smaller battery, the demands of the Tensor chip or some other factor, the Pixel 6a fell flat on our battery test, in which phones surf the web continuously until they run of power. The Pixel 6a lasted an average of 6 hours and 29 minutes, which is more than 3 hours behind the Pixel 5a's result on that same test. Even worse, the Pixel 6a trailed the iPhone SE (2022), and we consider the 9 hour, 5 minute time that Apple's phone produced to be below average for a smartphone.” https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/google-pixel-6a
That’s the trend, a new model Android phone has near iPhone prices for a device that’s comparable but will have a shorter lifespan/ worse resale price. Buy an older model and you save money today, but need to replace the phone even more frequently.
Further, in each case I did so after three to four years of use. The one exception is an iPhone 8 I a) bought used from Sprint/T-Mobile, and b) traded in after 18 months to the same carrier for an incredible deal toward a new iPhone 13; otherwise I would still be happily using it.[1]
There is no way that any used Android phone, even the most expensive flagship model, would ever be worth anywhere as much. And that's not including their lack of software updates. Meanwhile, the iPhone 5S I sold in 2017 after four years of use believing that it would soon lose software updates a) did not lose active support until 2019, and b) still is getting security fixes (the most recent four months ago)!
[1] More happily than the iPhone 13, really. I hate Hate HATE Face ID.
On the other hand, almost nobody I know outside the tech sphere gives a crap about security updates. OnePlus is a very popular brand with an atrocious update policy, but it delivers much better value than something like an iPhone. Xiaomi is also getting very competitive in this market, often ignoring or rescinding their software update promises but handing you an excellent phone for super cheap. The cheaper iPhone models also offer this, but often with weirdly outdated designs and comparatively inferior screens.
Basically, a device that’s got a 30% price premium for equal hardware, but lasts 50% longer saves me money.
PS: I would suggest a battery replacement at year 3 or 4, that dramatically reduces the issues with older phones and can push you well past that 50% mark.
I recently purchased an Android (Galaxy S20) for testing a cross platform app I've been working on and was shocked at how much worse it's gotten over the years.
If you have a choice, and you do - (just buy a used iPhone a couple generations back, I got an iPhone 8 recently for $100 CDN) - I can't fathom why you'd choose Android, especially with Google's telemetry.
The iOS OS itself is incomparably easier and more pleasant to use (even my 120hz Galaxy S20 device has animations that are choppy as all hell) - and that's not even getting to the borderline unbelievable difference in hardware quality.
I paid $250 CDN used for this S20, and $100 for the iPhone 8 I recently snagged. The 6-year-old iPhone 8 runs incomparably better than the 3-year-old S20.
Because Google lets you remove their telemetry, and Apple doesn't?
I'll reconsider Android phone only when manufacturers start providing as many years of software support as Apple does. Planned, premature obscolence is unethical and sucks.
If I bought an iPhone I'd have to buy Apple storage to do all of that, and I don't want to. My Google One account has Youtube Music and Youtube premium along with the storage. I never see Youtube ads which alone is worth every penny.
Other than that I really don't miss one thing from my old iPhone. Smartphones are so good these days all iOS competes on is sugar on top.
Sounds[0] familiar[1]...
That being said, I can use open-source projects like Syncthing or Owncloud to handle my syncing, and skip the whole mutual trust part. Though I'm sure the NSA does a wonderful job auditing Apple's private codebase, for whatever sense of security that offers.
(I know Apple is inching down that path too, but so far they have simultaneously maintained their privacy focus.)
My wife and I don't give two sticks about that. Most her friends use FB Messenger, mine Whatsapp or plain ol SMS.
Once that's out of the way, the 'which is better' becomes less clear. I don't like how locked down IPhones are, and feel Samsung has better cameras. What would an IPhone buy me, at that point?