[davidy123]

I've been an Android user since day 1, but am very impressed by some of these features. I'd love to have the half-click to focus feature and other dedicated camera button features, macro, a few other things that put this generation in a next category. I'd like to see them catch up and surpass all of Google's onboard AI features, and it looks like they're working on it. Being able to find a section of a video by a vague description, all on-device, is incredible. And they're finally improving their photo app. If Apple offered call screening, ambient song identification/logging, and allowed browsers to support extensions, I'd be tempted to switch, especially since they have a clearer privacy story. I'm glad strong competition is continuing, especially around privacy.

[makeitdouble]

> I'd love to have the half-click to focus feature and other dedicated camera button features

That would be Sony's phones for you. They're great for raw photography, especially if you process it yourself from raw.

Downsides behind...it's a Sony. And they also don't have any interest in AI and advanced software features.

[GreenWatermelon]

Lack of interest in AI is a pro for me, not a con.

[bitwalker]

iOS does support a form a call screening, called live voicemail, which transcribes the message being recorded by the caller and lets you pick up the call if you want. iOS also supports ambient song identification, with history, which I use frequently. Safari supports extensions, and I believe other browsers can as well, but can't speak to that as I really only use Safari in my phone, even though it's not my primary browser on desktop.

Figured I'd drop a comment to let you know about the others though!

[76SlashDolphin]

> iOS also supports ambient song identification, with history, which I use frequently.

Does it? I can't find any info about this online and all I can find seems to indicate that you can run Shazam and it scans for some amount of time afterwards but iOS kills it to save battery. It doesn't seem like you can get Google Pixel-like "Now Playing" which I sorely miss on my iPhone 15 Pro.

[davidy123]

That's great news, I didn't know they had rolled out those features. I don't really want to rewrite my extensions for another browser, but I'll see how applicable the others might be.

[talldayo]

> I'm glad strong competition is continuing, especially around privacy.

Until Apple releases an iOS platform equivocal to AOSP, there's really not any competition at all. Apple claims to care about privacy, Google proves they do.

[njbentley1]

I disagree.

Google’s entire business model is dependent on personal data. AOSP may have privacy features that are verifiable but Google Play Services is not open source and undoubtedly collect lots of data for Google. Most AOSP-based phones all largely include GPS. Sure, you can limit what access GPS has but then you’re sacrificing features. The majority of people probably opt-in.

In contrast, Apple doesn’t need your data for most of the products / services they sell. Privacy is a selling point, so they’re incentivized to build robust privacy features. I’d love to see more commitment to open-sourcing underlying technologies but imo Apple is way more privacy conscious than Google.

I will however give Google credit for their privacy initiatives in recent years. They seem to be taking it more seriously.

[kanbara]

i actually dont know how you can say this with a straight face

[teaearlgraycold]

Are you running AOSP without GMS?

[fsflover]

This is a false dichotomy. They both are terrible at privacy (see my other post here with links). Try GNU/Linux phones if you actually care about it.