[camelNotation]

I feel the same way when someone hands me an iPhone. In 2020, the operating systems are equally capable and refined, it's just a question of what you're used to. If you had a great Android phone for a few months, you'd probably be just as comfortable with it as you are an iPhone.

When someone asks me what phone to buy, my answer is always "what phone do you have now?" because frankly, there is no reason to switch from one to the other. It's just a waste of time and energy to go through that.

[philsnow]

Setting aside the question of whether the OSes are equally capable and refined, the simple fact of the matter is that most android hardware (both by unique SKUs and by total deployed devices) is hot garbage. I have to remember to slow way down and wait for the UI elements to react to my input whenever I handle anybody's android phone.

[rjzzleep]

I just recently stopped using my XZ2 Compact for an iPhone 8 because the Androids software is really crappy and messed up. Thats a 2017 Apple flagship compared to a compact 2018 android flagship and the apple device feels infinitely faster.

I don't remember the details of it, but android uses more ram for applications, because of the dalvik VM. The iPhones also have way more cache on dye in the A CPUs. And apple completely decimates the competition in browser benchmarks.

I had a z3 compact before and was happily using it for 4 years before that(when I bought it was already old). Someone patched the system so that the camera apps still work on an unlocked device and I used a custom ROM which was working well.

Here's the thing about android devices. When you can keep them up to date with custom roms you gain things like fine grained privacy settings and faster lean custom ROMS.

But ... Sony is notoriously bad at that. Not only did their software quality degrade. They added more DRM and security features to make sure your Camera and other DRM functionality will not work on your custom ROM.

Compare that to Xiaomis Poco spinoff where they recently send all the XDA custom rom developers a free device to get the community involved.

I like Sonys devices but the software is utter crap. They completely botched the Android 10 update for most of their devices. It took them 2 months to release a version that wouldn't randomly fail and even then gesture navigation is not working in the older flagships. With Sony devices you can estimate only getting 2 major update the second one likely being buggy. Compare that to the iPhone update strategy which is a million times better.

To some extent the Android 10 disaster is to be blamed on Google since apparently the fingerprint problems existed in almost every vendors Android 10 release. I guess that when google moved their pixel 4 to no fingerprint/only faceID(or google face unlock) they just didn't care enough about other Android OEMs.

[safog]

Depends how old the phone is and how limited the h/w is though - Android is designed to work in some ridiculously under powered devices.

I highly doubt a top of the line phone like the Galaxy or the Pixel would have issues with input lag.

If anything, I get annoyed by how long animations on iOS take compared to Android. Everything feels like it's running in slow motion.

[camelNotation]

Technically, most Windows desktop hardware is hot garbage. That's what happens when you have a system that can run on pretty much anything. And yet, Windows is the system of choice for large enterprises that have to get work done. Just because a system can run on lots of different systems doesn't make it inferior. If you were to use an equally priced Android device, like the Galaxy S20 Ultra, you would see the same smooth and fast performance you get on an iPhone. And that Galaxy S20 Ultra is still going to fast in 3 or 4 years. I'm running an Android flagship from 2017 and it's as smooth and fast as it was the day I bought it.

[giovannibonetti]

Also, typing on the iPhone is a pain because of the horrible auto corrector. Remember all the jokes from people on iPhones cursing on each other because of it? I guess Apple is miles away from Google when it comes to AI for these kind of stuff. Android's keyboard is so good because of it that I often write words pressing all the wrong keys and it somehow figures out correctly what I want to say.

[bambataa]

I’ve had to turn off the iOS auto correct because it became so poor. It’s literally easier to type them out and correct the many mistakes than fight the auto correct.

[rangibaby]

“Ducking”

[FabHK]

> In 2020, the operating systems are equally capable and refined, it's just a question of what you're used to.

I don’t think that’s true if you work with sensitive data or are just generally privacy conscious. iOS is then recommended over the OS from the advertising company (eg by tptacek and other experts here, if I’m not mistaken).

[camelNotation]

And I don't think it's true if you want a system that integrates Google Assistant and the G-Cam software. Being privacy-conscious is not universal, it's an individual priority. For you, get an iPhone. My statement was, weighing advantages and disadvantages against one another, the math comes out pretty close.

On a Pixel, I can use Google Assistant like a secretary. It screens the calls, forces the caller to answer questions, then relays the answers to me to see if I want to talk to them. That's pretty damn awesome. But again, it's not everyone's priority.

[geoffbp]

I used to think this, however now I think for a lot of users iPhone is easier. Fwiw I use android..

[spurgu]

I used to think this as an Android user, however then I spent 1.5 years on iOS and now being back on Android feels like bliss.

Apple has the security advantage though if you disregard the information apps leak but then again on both OS's you can use Pi-Hole, or better yet NextDNS, to shut up some of the chatter.

[magicalhippo]

My mom (~75) got an S8+ last year. She had some prior smartphone experience with an old iPhone 4S but not as her primary phone.

First day she got the S8 I set it up for her and showed her how to make calls and send text messages. Next day I got an MMS with a picture from the garden, she'd figured that out on her own.

Mainly I think things are just different, some things are easier on Android, some on iOS and vice versa.

[kortilla]

Unless you care about privacy, in which case the answer seems to be iPhone. I haven’t found a good Android experience that doesn’t involve funneling everything to Google.

[searchableguy]

You can atleast remove the googleware to a great degree, you can't do the same for iPhones easily.

Huge difference. You have fdroid, apk slicer and alternative stores without google gate-keeping. You can reflash your phone with ungoogled android or open source alternative gapps package. Use microG to sandbox google stuff.

There are ton of ways to contain googleware.

[solarkraft]

I use LineageOS without the google play (/media) services, which is the first huge step, then I also use as much from F-Droid as possible.

Google is very strong in the data heavy areas. GMail, Calendar and especially GBoard and are extremely hard to replace, as are YouTube and Translate.

[camelNotation]

Your privacy has much more to do with the apps you use than the phone itself. Apple doesn't collect user data like Google, but the difference between them is 1 company.

If you have an iPhone and you use Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Microsoft Office, Google Photos/Docs, Spotify, the Dominos Pizza app, etc etc there are half a dozen companies holding your private information either way. If you want to go total lockdown, get an iPhone with a VPN and never use any social media or cloud apps, but don't pretend like having an iPhone alone is some huge change to your privacy problems.

[michaelmrose]

You can have access to the google play store and browse with firefox, use fastmail for email, use maps.me for maps, and text messaging + a million and one different messaging apps.

Then google knows what? That you installed fastmail, firefox, and maps.me?

[andrepd]

I must say I never understood why Apple is supposed to be any guarantee of privacy?

If you are technically minded, you can easily flash LineageOS + microg on your phone a use a virtually surveillance-free phone (as far as you can, ignoring stuff like cell tower tracking and opaque baseband, etc).