[tuxxi]

As someone who used Android from day 1, and recently (about 1 year ago) switched to iOS, I think all of this comes down to the trend of unification and same-ness in smartphones over the years.

All of the reasons I liked Android from the start — replaceable battery, SD card, headphone jack, diversity of of hardware options, customizable software/launchers/default apps, rootable — have been slowly one by one removed in flagship phones over the last 5 years.

Sure you can still get a low or mid tier phone with some or all of these, but all the expensive Android models (read: good build quality, software support, acceptable perf and battery life) have slowly become more and more like an iPhone, yet without any of the small things that make iPhones good to use: excellent build quality, extended support, ecosystem…

So android isn’t cool with teenagers, but it’s mostly because Android devices just suck now.

As an allegory: when I was a teen, PCs weren’t “cool” compared to Macs (remember those old ads?) But in 2023 PC gaming is more popular than ever, so PCs are cool with the youth.

Teens today will buy a PC so they can play CS or League with their friends, something they can’t really do well with a Macbook Air. Would you buy a $1000 android phone when it’s just a worse iPhone?

[trealira]

> So android isn’t cool with teenagers, but it’s mostly because Android devices just suck now.

You may be right about Android phones sucking more than they used to regarding replaceability, customizability, rootability, etc., but I don't think that's why Android isn't cool. I think it's because teenagers that have iPhones make fun of people who show up with green colored text bubbles in their texts, and make fun of Android as something for poor people.

[cykros]

Indeed -- never mind that a brand new Pixel or high end Samsung phone costs MORE than the equivalently new iPhone in many cases.

In the 90s, kids rebelled against the system. In the '20s, kids just want the approval of it.

When I was a kid, we'd have been fighting tooth and nail to get a Pinephone -- especially with some of that hardware you can add on to them.

[discardedrefuse]

Its not so much that they're making fun of the poors. It's that green bubbles break the group chat, so Android users are usually excluded from them. And this is 100% by design. Apple could support RCS (the SMS replacement introduced in 2007) or just release an iMessage app for Android. But they have chosen not to in order to alienate Android users from their iOS contacts and create pressure for Android users to switch for the most petty reasons.

I say fuck all that noise. The correct response to this behavior is to switch to Telegram or Whatsapp or whatever and just be free of vendor lock in for something as basic as messaging.

[tuxxi]

Yea, that’s a big factor in the “coolness”. But IMHO the root cause of this in/out group mentality is a feedback loop:

* android phones offer fewer meaningfully distinct features (or as another commenter said, apple catches up)

* people don’t see value in android due to lack of distinct features in flagship phones

* majority of android becomes cheaper models

* iPhone market share increases among rich and influential teens

Just my 2c :)

[askonomm]

That, and convenience. Android simply can't provide the same coherent, seamless ecosystem of experiences that Apple can. People can't be bothered to deal with the annoyances of separate systems from separate providers anymore, and I feel that, especially in HN circles, that's a very undervalued thing.

[kurito]

> but it’s mostly because Android devices just suck now

How do they suck now?

> Would you buy a $1000 android phone when it’s just a worse iPhone?

How is an android phone a worse iPhone? Genuine questions, my opinions are entirely opposite and I would like to understand your perspective.

[mezeek]

he's saying that all the better stuff about Androids like replaceable batteries are gone on 1000$+ models, so you're left with a device that has iphone like capability... with worse apps and UI.

[matthew28845]

I think there's also now less of a gap in features between the two. My Galaxy S7, when new, had tons of features I could flex on iPhone users with (water resistance, always-on display, 1440p OLED screen, wireless charging, etc.) but now iPhone Pro models have basically caught up, with iPhone "Normal" models only losing out on things that the average consumer doesn't care about. With this happening at the same time as the "feature drain" that you've described, it means there's fewer and fewer reasons to buy an Android.

[Jeff_Brown]

I feel like you might be attributing more technical savvy to the average teen than they might be due.

[whatshisface]

I just don't understand why I have to buy midrange phones to get the features I want. It's the market force equivalent of dark energy.

[jrockway]

I'm pretty sure the biggest problem the phone vendors are trying to solve is you being able to recover from dropping your phone in the toilet. Most people cannot afford a $1200 loss like that, so getting rid of all water ingress points is the priority. That means the case is superglued together and there are as few I/O ports as possible. (I am surprised phones still have a speaker and microphone for making phone calls with; who does that?)

While unlikely to be true for readers of HN, for many people, their phone is the most expensive thing they own. So it has to be protected against accidents, and that's what the sealed design is for. Sure, it's probably good for planned obsolescence or whatever, but that's a secondary concern.

Another controversial aspect is that phones can't be repaired or sold for parts. This is another "loss protection" feature. Nobody steals mobile phones anymore because they are completely useless on the black market. The phone can't be used without the consent of the original owner, and the parts from that phone can't be put in other broken phones. The incentive to steal an easily-concealable $1200 brick of metal and semiconductors is nearly zero. I think that's amazing.

[OfSanguineFire]

I don't think it is relevant to complain about lack of a headphone jack in a discussion of young people. Young people want wireless earbuds, those are very fashionable now, so the lack of a jack hardly matters. Generally people complaining about the headphone jack are comparative oldies.

[The_Colonel]

It's a mystery to me that I keep reading online how it's such a big problem that phones don't offer SD cards or rootability, but literally never heard that in real life.

[Gualdrapo]

The "rootability" thing can be due to the own efforts from OEMs to lock their bootloaders and stuff, and electronic payments not being possible with a rooted phone - which is a major issue for places where people no longer use cash.

And maybe the SD cards thing is because people just don't care anymore about running out of storage (they'd delete their stuff or store it on a cloud service somehow). One of the reasons I wanted a Sony Xperia 1ii (and could get ahold of one of them) was it, but since I do not listen to music from my phone anymore I replaced the SD card with a second SIM card.

Whereas the "rootability" thing is actually great in my case, since Sony just gave two years of major Android releases to it - I can use Android 13 thanks to LineageOS and its battery life is even better than with the stock firmware. And with my previous phone, a Sony Xperia Z1, I could make it to go with me for +7 years.

But yep, I do wish Android OEMs offered more major releases to their phones.

[cykros]

The removal of SD cards always just felt petty, but at the end of the day, you can either plug in external media, use a wireless hard drive/SD reader, or just access your content remotely on self hosted servers (or use "the cloud" if you must).

Rootability is easy -- the real issue these days is how many things stop working with a rooted phone which makes it much less desirable than it used to be. Though, it's also a lot less important than it used to be, as many of the old functions that required root just don't any more, either because of changes to the system design, or because of workarounds.

[hulitu]

Teenagers are thought that "bigger price= better quality". One told me that Apple is very secure (when Apple is closing holes only after they are made public and iMessages being a can of worms when it comes to security).

[ubermonkey]

iPhones had headphone jacks initially, too, BTW.

[mikhael28]

This is a solid post. The Nexus 5x showed us what the future of Android phones was.