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Comment by shortrounddev2 | Hacker News Reader

I use android because I dislike the Apple ecosystem and UI design. They could disable all side-loading of apps and I would still use Android because I just don't use mobile as my primary driver. For me, phones are for texting and browsing Reddit while I shit.

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> I just don't use mobile as my primary driver. For me, phones are for texting and browsing Reddit while I shit.

That's the reason I use an iPhone. I don't need a bunch of customization and homescreen tinkering, I just want a thing that gets the job done and is easy to troubleshoot.

I want the same thing, but which also isn't an Apple product

It really makes me think... should we all have bought into blackberry/palm/windows' smartphone efforts in the 2010s? They seemed inferior at the time but, in hindsight, it's hard to imagine anything worse than where we are now.

The Nokia Lumia 1310 was the best phone ever made. Best UI, best screen and Camera of its generation, and you could program apps in C# for UWP so they ran on Desktop or Mobile (For that reason, there are still hobbyists who sideload new apps on their Lumias since the SDK still exists and works on modern windows). Like all things, Microsoft made the best version of the product, but not the most successful version

But you don't HAVE to do those things on Android.... My Pixel is exactly that, gets the job done without problems or fuss.

Hah, I have exactly the opposite reaction as you: I think Android is a complete mess in terms of usability.

The big differentiator, though, is your social network. Having iMessages and FaceTime is about 95% of the value of the phone/tablet for me because my friends heavily, heavily use them.

I use Line (kind of like a Japanese/Korean whatsapp) to communicate with my wife's family (Wife, sisters in law, mother in law), I use Facebook to communicate with my parents, and I don't have any friends to communicate with on other platforms, so I don't miss iMessage (maybe I don't have friends because I don't have iMessage).

Otherwise the apps define most of the UI. Android is basically an app launcher to me.

I think it's the case of knowing what you know. IOS design language depends a lot on being familiar with iOS already - I think a lot of Android design is dictated to be understandable by people who really haven't used a phone before so things are a bit clearer and more obvious. I know when I use my wife's iPhone it's so frustrating because it feels like you should be able to do action X but there isn't any clear way on how to achieve it - I ask my wife and she shows me that it's hidden behind some invisible menu or gesture and I'm like "how were you supposed to know this???" And she just shrugs "it always worked like this". Ok, I guess, but that's really poor for discoverability.

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