by galogon on 4/23/22, 5:57 PM with 519 comments
by lumb63 on 4/23/22, 6:42 PM
I wanted to keep liking Android. The amount of time I spent arguing vehemently that Android was superior made the switch hard, but several factors came into play for me: - Extremely slow and fragmented upgrade of OS. This resulted in substantially older features and security patches. - Privacy. iMessage’s encryption (though I stand by that it is gimmicky to only offer for iPhones, and I despise that) has a serious network effect. Apple is also far more transparent in what data they use, how they use it, etc. - Ironically, price. At the time, the iPhone was cheaper than the equivalent Android phone.
The big downside is slower upgrades to the latest hardware features. Specifically, I am envious of the people who have 120 FPS phones, they’re beautiful. There is also a loss of customization, but truthfully I thought I’d miss it much more than I did. The fact that the iPhone “just works” is worth it to me.
by hn_throwaway_99 on 4/23/22, 7:08 PM
I recently went on a vacation with friends, 4 other folks on iPhones and me on an Android. Our group chat experience almost made me consider getting an iPhone. The inability to do emoji responds, and the fact that shared videos always looked like shit on my phone were just 2 of the examples. And I'm well past middle age! I can imagine what it feels like to be a high schooler or young adult feeling like the reason the group chat experience is sucking is because "you're the one with the Android".
by dougmwne on 4/23/22, 7:27 PM
by tim-- on 4/23/22, 11:02 PM
I love being able to put an SD card in my phone to get a bit of extra storage, without paying Samsung the extra $200 to double the provided storage. In the S6 era, they removed the SD card, only for it to return (briefly) with the S7. Since the S20, it has once again been removed.
I will keep my S10 until it dies, but there is no point me 'upgrading' to a new phone that looses the headphone jack, and removes the SD slot.
I'm looking at the Sony Xperia 1 iii as a possible new phone, but it's a toss up between that and an iPhone.
Phone support is another issue. Three years, and your device will no longer receive Android updates. Apple is much better in this regard.
I used to update my phone every two years, religiously. Phones are now fast enough that it simply is not required. What do I get if I upgrade to the S22? 120hz refresh, a little better 3D graphics? I don't really game on my phone, so these things are not important to me.
Samsung's desire to just copy Apple means it's probably better to just go get the device they are copying.
by me_me_mu_mu on 4/24/22, 12:44 AM
The iPhone just does the stuff you'd expect a phone to do kinda well out of the box- messages, email, facetime is cool, and camera. You install apps, they all look nice for the most part and work well enough.
On the flip side each time I use my samsung android tablet I'm overwhelmed by all these new settings (none of which I think I use?) and options.
by mmastrac on 4/23/22, 6:32 PM
Yeah, that duopoly is a lot of competition
by eugenekolo on 4/23/22, 6:53 PM
A thought: It seems that as people get richer around the world they move away from $200 Androids to what is more perceived as luxury: iPhones.
by galkk on 4/23/22, 7:38 PM
I lost my drive to tinker with os/apps long time ago, so the fact that everything is quite friction less makes me happy.
On Android I constantly had issues with lastpass, dji asks you to download apk to fly drone etc.
by hda2 on 4/24/22, 3:14 AM
Android is becoming just as locked down as Apple, but the ones doing the locking down (samsung) are nowhere near as good at software and attention-to-detail as Apple.
That coupled with android phones having unacceptably sparse security updates (6 months/1 year between security updates? Really?), and higher costs (Apple phones over 7+ years are much cheaper than equivalent samsung over 3 years or less).
If I accept that "my" phone is not something I can't control or fix, why wouldn't I buy the cheaper, better-designed phone with better security? Did they really thing that people wouldn't notice?
Google and samsung decided to give up the only competitive they had (openness, standards) by pretending to be Apple. Now they'll have to compete with Apple on everything else (they can't).
by jl6 on 4/23/22, 7:38 PM
by QuikAccount on 4/23/22, 7:00 PM
by jmrm on 4/23/22, 7:29 PM
For markets outside the more expensive parts of the US, this is a big deal, because in a country where the monthly income excluding taxes is between $1500 and $2500 (like most of the UE countries), paying $1000 or more in a phone is a huge thing, and this inexpensive iPhone maybe have a reasonable price for those clients.
by pavlov on 4/23/22, 7:19 PM
They’re really at a sweet spot here IMO in the mobile market: not too big, not too small (like the Mac used to be in 1995-2005). It’s better for the company if revenue growth comes from services, high-margin computers (like the Mac Studio) and new devices rather than selling more phones.
by cercatrova on 4/23/22, 8:47 PM
Android lets me do that, so I use it. No way I'd be without Vanced (rip) and other such apps. Android also has more interesting form factors, such as the folding phones, which Apple does not yet have.
by JansjoFromIkea on 4/23/22, 7:17 PM
That’s without even mentioning the nightmare of trying to weigh up dozens of Android phones over multiple years, finding out which ones still work reliably several years down the line, etc.
by dlevine on 4/23/22, 7:29 PM
So I upgraded to a year-old iPhone 5, and have never looked back. It just worked better. Every app just worked, and the UI felt somehow smoother. I'm on an iPhone 11 right now.
by jancsika on 4/23/22, 6:42 PM
In the time it took me to write this comment, they could have shipped anywhere from zero to one phones.
That's conceivably not nothing.
by rmbyrro on 4/23/22, 7:19 PM
I wonder why is it so hard for people to differentiate 6% from 6 percentage points
by ubermonkey on 4/23/22, 7:08 PM
I disdained the iPhone at first, but ended up getting won over pretty quickly. At introduction, it was just better than anything else, and the smooth connectivity between my Mac and my phone was really appealing. As the platform has grown, I've stayed with it; I've never really used Android for a long period of time except for a brief dalliance with a tablet a few years ago.
I'm not here to argue about which is better. I know which works better for ME, and is more appealing to ME. I say all this to establish my position. Silly people describe people like me as "fanboys," as though it's not possible to make a rational decision to use this ecosystem. Whatever.
HERE'S MY POINT:
I do not welcome news of Android market share loss. I do not want Apple to become the kind of dominant player in mobile that Microsoft was on the desktop 25 years ago. That kind of platform control inevitably becomes toxic, IMO. MSFT absolutely sought to exploit that position from the getgo; Apple doesn't seem to have the same kind of insane ALL PIE FOR ME motivation, but supermajority market share is a hell of a drug.
So while I have no interest in USING an Android phone or table, I very very much Android to right its ship and maintain their position as a peer or near-peer to iOS.
Credible competition is good for the market, and thus good for my preferred platform.
by fencepost on 4/23/22, 9:24 PM
Google (and handset vendors) started to make relying on an Android phone for more than a couple years just as unattractive as depending on a Google service for more than a few years. Combine that with the long-ago demise of "don't be evil" and the more recent utter failure of "fine, be evil, but at least don't be f*cking creepy" Google's a hard sell these days. The way all the rest of us get caught in the fallout of their internal (product) politics got old a long time ago.
by kgarten on 4/24/22, 7:41 AM
Switched from iPhone 13 to a Google Pixel running GrapheneOS for my phone and Samsung Fold 3 for mobile Internet. I love the freedom to develop and sideload apps.
Syncthing for Android is amazing! (all my pictures/music/files are synchronized between devices without any cloud service, no longer Apple Music deciding to delete some of my music and replace it with less ).
Gadgetbridge is amazing too. No more accidental cloud sync ...
SwiftUI is a mess and for the small apps I write for myself Flutter/Dart makes much more sense, it was easier for me to understand, learn, and write quick apps.
Don't think I will ever go back to Apple's ecosystem.
The fold 3 is the future formfactor of phones for me (I don't need a tablet after I got one, I can read/annotate papers, watch lectures using vlc on the go ...). The only negative point is the battery life, yet I get over the day.
by teekert on 4/23/22, 7:55 PM
by skc on 4/23/22, 7:44 PM
KaiOS is a long way from perfectly usable just yet but you know that wonderfully relaxed feeling you get when you forget your phone and decide against driving back to get it? Perhaps that's the impetus for a new kind of challenger to iOS. A phone /OS who's best feature is that it actually does less.
by Neil44 on 4/23/22, 6:44 PM
by bengalister on 4/24/22, 6:52 AM
I own a oneplus 8t on Android 12, I particularly like the 120Hz display and the very fast charging (65w). When my battery is almost dead I can get to 30% in just a few minutes. Android 12 has been a big improvement, it is really snappy and good looking (Android 11 was already good). I bought the phone 550Euros, and during the last black friday it was sold for 350Euros. The camera is ok makes decent enough photos.
I tried last week-end my mum's iphone 13 and was really disappointed. She was not aware of faceid so I set it up with her, and the forced swipe up after unlocking the phone is annoying. On my phone, the fingerprint scanner is almost instantaneous and I get directly to the last opened application.
Also I saw that the phone gets constant ads for Apple products (we disabled notifications): Apple pay, Apple watch, Apple TV, etc. really annoying.
For me the main selling points for the iphone are the good camera and apple ecosystem integration. But the latter means that you are stuck with Apple hefty prices.
by culopatin on 4/25/22, 3:36 PM
by pt_PT_guy on 4/23/22, 11:42 PM
- More and more locked down bootloaders
- Less and less support and updates guarantee
- A mess on the interfaces provided: each brand as its own that no one can expect to be consistent
- Devices loose support after 2 years and enter in maintenance mode after that
- Expensive as iphone
So why would I want an iPhone? for locked down expensive experience then I should got an iPhone. Apple is pushing for updates and device support, so yes.
by akulbe on 4/24/22, 1:54 AM
I ditched macOS and iOS after major issues with the butterfly keyboards, and switching back to Windows. If iOS were more Windows-friendly in that way, it'd seal the deal.
But that'll probably never happen.
by criley2 on 4/24/22, 1:41 AM
I personally love my Android device and using my iPad is kind of torture. It feels like being transported back in time to 2014. The springboard hasn't changed in a decade and wasn't great when it was introduced (auto-arrange icons to the top left, as far from your fingers as possible, with no ability to lock icons and build muscle memory? What is this 2014?)
You open the App Store and things like "Temple Run" and other bangers from the 2012 era are prominently displayed. It's like nothing changes.
I do like iPhone for my parents, it's very easy for me to offer tech support over the phone.
I think ultimately it's nice not to be a slave to the status symbol culture. Most people I know with the expensive phones... it's only about status.
by jillesvangurp on 4/23/22, 7:43 PM
That's the challenge in this space. A four year old cheap smart phone actually doesn't look half bad compared to the latest and greatest Google has to offer. Whatever Google did since Android 9, I don't really care for any of it. It's not really any better in any way that matters to me. IMHO the gesture bullshit is gimmicky & annoying and the endless Android theme tweaking close to irrelevant at this point. It doesn't feel exclusive to me; just different in a way that doesn't matter to me at all.
The reason Apple has progressed in terms of market share is that they doubled down on what matters. People seem to like IOS as it is and they did not mess with that too much. Other than that, good hardware improvements, software updates for almost anything they sold in the last eight years, and improvements where it matters (screen, camera, speed, etc.). You pay a premium for it but you get what you expect. And then you use the device until it breaks down and you get another one. They offer stability and incremental progress for the life time of the device. There's nothing that Android offers that IOS needs. It has it all.
With Android you're haggling on a lot of different specs between different vendors. And somehow you get a worse deal no matter what you choose. You can go Samsung and deal with their proprietary crap-ware. You can go generic Chinese & out of favor brand and deal with the fact that they've been cut off from the Google Play services. Or you can buy a few me too products from generic Android OEMs and obsess about how many pixels the screen has; how many redundant camera lenses they have, how bad the battery is, etc.
I actually like the Pixel 6 as a phone. But excuse me for not getting too excited about it because it's not exceptional in any way and Google will abandon supporting it in hurry for whatever their next shiny new hot thing is in six months.
by kenoph on 4/23/22, 11:42 PM
I honestly don't know what Google designers/engineers get paid to do if they can't even QA the software of one of their main devices.
I don't like Apple but I'm way happier now. Main complaint is the stupid photo/file separation. Just give me a normal filesystem please.
by lizardactivist on 4/23/22, 8:49 PM
But they will certainly have to push for devices with longer support than 3 years to keep that upswing.
by poisonborz on 4/23/22, 6:54 PM
by cronix on 4/24/22, 12:47 AM
by eternityforest on 4/23/22, 7:49 PM
by officeplant on 4/23/22, 11:03 PM
But now I just want a stable quickly updated and patched phone I don't have to worry about. I want half a decade+ of updates.
Leaving the tinkering to the dirt cheap pinephone I have at home.
by sharken on 4/23/22, 8:14 PM
To me one of the best Android phones is the OnePlus 8T, it has a large effective screen, modest weight and very good battery life.
But the IPhone X and also 13 are very tough phones, that can take a lot of abuse. With panzer glass it's an extremely durable (and fast) phone.
by kyriakos on 4/24/22, 12:40 PM
by psyclobe on 4/24/22, 12:09 AM
Oh and I can pick it up in 30 minutes locally.
Android cannot match this level of integration.
by giantg2 on 4/23/22, 7:03 PM
One thing I do like about Android is that I can develop and publish apps for a reasonable fee. Apple wants $100 per year to be a developer. My apps are free so they don't make money. I would simply stop developing if I had to pay that.
by sylens on 4/23/22, 7:48 PM
by tyingq on 4/23/22, 9:26 PM
That is, a sub $200 used iPhone is now very usable, where it hadn't been in the past.
by Oanid on 4/24/22, 4:06 PM
Also, the apps that Google does have are pretty terrible. Google Keep is not a strong competitor to Apple's offerings. The UI is terrible, it provides you with a long running list of your notes, labels instead of folders which is a fine option, but I'd rather have both for my workflow. Google Maps is an ad infested mess with more bugs than I can count. I'd be interested in knowing if it's as inconsistent and unreliable on iOS. There are features that straight up just do not work — it's unacceptable.
My biggest annoyance though? Google's love for A/B updates. There have been times where I've had a feature or option exposed to me just to disappear a few months later. I remember reading about new offerings in Google apps that could be accessed by doing x, y, and z. Often times the feature would be unavailable to me because it was "rolling out." I'd spend weeks repeating the steps to see if that new feature was available to me, but nope, it still was not. I eventually lost interest.
I'm not sure what I want to do for my next phone. The benefits of Android outweigh the cons, but on the other hand, maybe it's time for a change to experience what iOS is doing more. If Apple improves how notifications are handled with iOS 16, that might just provide me with the push that I need.
Oh... I also really love Twitter and iOS really seems like the best platform for Twitter. They have Tweetbot which has always been a gold standard, but there's also timeline syncing via iCloud. Mind you to take advantage of that I'd have to get an iPad and a Mac, too. At least the option's there though. Android relied on tweetmarker and when they died it left Android users SOL. Also, the only good third-party Twitter client on Android, Flamingo, is starting to show it's age and is no longer updated.
Ugh. The gaps between Android & Windows are becoming more and more apparent to me. Heck, Windows 11 still doesn't come with a good native calendar app. The default one by Microsoft is not optimized for productivity or even desktop displays. I digress, but still...
Anyways, I'll likely continue living in the Android world as its offerings are more aligned with my views. It's just hard accepting the recent mediocrity as a UX designer.
by theawless on 4/23/22, 7:09 PM
by chaosbutters314 on 4/23/22, 8:42 PM
my biggest complaint with smartphones these days is front facing camera makes no sense. put mini screen on back with back camera for selfies. if people want face unlock, a low quality, underscreen front facing camera should be suffient but to me, finger unlock on back is superior experience.
by smrtinsert on 4/23/22, 8:49 PM
As to the green bubble fracas, Google only has themselves to blame. Maybe they should hire competent leadership to make an genuinely interesting or useful social product. Years of focusing on leetcode has rotted their brains.
My next phone will be an iphone. Sorry Samsung, it wasn't your fault.
by cloudwizard on 4/23/22, 6:59 PM
by orthoxerox on 4/23/22, 7:45 PM
At least with my Android phone I can simply plug it in my PC and copy the files I need in either direction.
by Seattle3503 on 4/23/22, 8:11 PM
by om2 on 4/23/22, 7:59 PM
Wow, Android share went down because iOS share went up? Thank goodness we had a finance expert to provide this amazing insight.
by kgbcia on 4/24/22, 9:25 AM
by mgh2 on 4/24/22, 12:48 AM
by jccalhoun on 4/23/22, 10:15 PM
by Mikeb85 on 4/23/22, 6:48 PM
by bezospen15 on 4/23/22, 8:38 PM
by naoqj on 4/23/22, 6:46 PM
by marcodiego on 4/23/22, 6:20 PM