My personal preference.
It’s so funny that this post was only a bit below this one: Google Wants To Start Tracking 300 Million iPhone Users Within 5 Years
I do try it from times to times. My last try was with a Pixel 7 and although I loved Material You on it, my main issue was that the quality of apps wasn’t great and most just didn’t feel nice to use (even Google’s own apps feel better to use on iOS).
Didn’t help that the Pixel 7 was way too big and I couldn’t get used to that either, among a few other problems.
I technically have both since I’m a developer but my daily driver is my iPhone because when I have an android phone, I constantly want to put different roms on it so it ends up unstable. So, Apple’s walled garden saves me from myself making my phone unstable when I need a phone for calls/messages and not tinkering.
I don’t notice much of a difference these days, though. Sometimes, I charge my iPhone and grab my Pixel and I don’t even notice. Back in the day, iOS was generally more polished and Android was either slightly behind or ahead on specific features but I find that both are pretty much mature at this point. Flagship cameras are both excellent. Accessory ecosystems exist. There’s really not an overwhelming reason to switch, (especially if the Android phone is also a walled garden, which seems more common now).
Android phones are not walled gardens though. They still allow third party app stores and “sideloading”.
I just meant unlocking the boot loader and installing custom ROMs or whatever on it. It used to be practically encouraged.
You can still do that. Google isn’t really stopping you. They do however have to provide mechanisms for things like banks to detect it if they choose to.
Kinda random question: are you a FE developer? If so, is there a reason you would want to have an android phone instead of using a desktop emulator?
I guess these days, I’m primarily a manager and full stack web developer (which often means writing APIs and doing DevOps). But I’ve built several apps over the years. Nothing really consumer-facing. Mostly one-off things like apps for a conference or festival.
But to answer your main question, I use the emulator most of the time but I think it’s important (at least for me) to use a real phone sometimes. Like, “Does this design choice feel right in this OS’s ecosystem?” That can’t always be answered well via emulator. It matters less nowadays but back in the day, Android and iOS hadn’t copied each other yet and there were some big differences.
Beyond work stuff, though, having a spare phone that isn’t your daily driver is nice. Android devices are usually pretty cheap if you don’t need a new, current-gen flagship. I’ve used my spare while traveling abroad with a cheap SIM card. Friends have borrowed it after breaking their phone while waiting on a replacement to be delivered. I have a little camera drone that uses a phone as the controller screen. And I can fuck around with it and install custom ROMs or experimental stuff.
And I can sing “2 Phones” by Kevin Gates and pretend to be cool.
First thing: Privacy. I am aware that iOS is not entirely private too, but I trust Apple Photos much more than Google Photos. You can even enable end-to-end encryption iirc.
Second point is control over my data. I can easily export my photos from Apple Photos as files, whereas Google maliciously separates Photos and Metadata upon export. In my experience this is the same for a lot of other services as well. Being able to easily export my data enables me to escape the walled garden more easily should I get fed up with one system. I also try to use as many open source services as possible for this as well as other reasons.
Apple has a lot of malicious practices too, especially when it comes to EU citizens and third-party app stores, etc. - but in my experience Google is no better.
Lastly, I considered switching to an Android with Graphene OS (privacy focused Android derivate) a couple of times, but the added control over your data comes with a lot of other inconveniences. So for now, I’m just sticking to iOS.
Apple Photos is more private than Google Photos
Sure, but if you care about privacy at all, then surely you wouldn’t use either of them anyway? You’d use Ente Photos (available for both OS), or Immich (available for both OS), or any other private solution? So this shouldn’t really be a factor in choosing between Android and iOS. Same with the export point. Both have good options for photo backup, and neither Apple Photos nor Google Photos are one of them.
Pretty sure on iOS any other gallery app is just a frontend to the photo stock app. Beside, you can encrypt the whole thing on iCloud so it’s safe (which is what I do)
Yeah, all gallery apps show the same on-device photos, the difference is where they backup/upload them, which is the part important to privacy.
Apple iCloud having the E2E encryption feature is definitely an advantage over Google Photos. All I’m saying is that neither really have much to do with the OS. Google Photos isn’t even a preinstalled app on most Android phones, just one of many options you could install, same as on iOS.
Yeah but if you disable the iCloud upload for the photos app they are all on-device
Same goes for any other app, including Google Photos
Except google photos will nag you every few days to enable cloud sync if it’s disabled when you open the app and uses dark patterns to nudge towards accepting. I doubt iOS does that.
Yes, but that wasn’t the point was it?
I dislike this logic. It’s really a black and white / all or nothing approach. Also, I think the photos app is just a microcosm of a bigger consideration. That being which OS do I trust more overall if I trust some of the built I apps more?
Agree, you should look at the overall picture, not make a decision based on an individual app (which, in case of Google Photos, isn’t even built in unless you buy a Pixel or something, it’s just some app that happens to be available, for both iOS and Android).
Not entirely disagreeing with you but, what exactly is “malicious” about separating photo and metadata? It could be just how their servers process and stores those photos, with the added benefit of geotagging videos.
I use Google Photos and upload in original quality. When I download from takeout, the metadata is still in the original files. Iirc, only if you select upload in “high quality” where they compress it again, do you lose the metadata in the file stored in the cloud.
When you re-import the images into another program/library, they will not be displayed in the correct order and all other information will be lost as well.
Metadata in general is very useful and contains a lot of valuable information like location data, lens, focal length and device information which you have to manually re-integrate into each and every photo.
I mean yes, I could write a quick and dirty Python script for this, but why should I have to do this in the first place?
In my subjective opinion this is malicious as in it only being this way to make it as hard as possible to migrate away. I highly doubt this is the way their servers store the images as it is very inefficient and the images are likely stored in a database instead. This means in order to retrieve a file they have to process each image anyway, so why not follow the universally accepted and well defined standard and include the metadata in each file?
I don’t want to.
History: I used/preferred Android until the iPhone 4S. I still have Android phones/tablets laying around for software testing.
- I’m a developer and as much of a PITA the App Store is to deal with, their APIs are really productive to work with, especially in the SwiftUI world.
- I’m a Mac user (have been since 1990) and the platform integration is really good.
One fun story: I had to implement the Google Pay equivalent of Apple Pay QR code passes and holy crap was that a shit-show. One Android phone I had had literally two different things called Google Pay, one as an app and one hidden in the Settings menu, with different feature sets and different passes. What the hell???
I’m an Android user contemplating moving to Apple because of audio applications. Android’s audio implementation was absolute garbage for years and years, and as a result, all of the good, mobile audio production software is for iOS. Android is finally catching up in terms of latency and whatever else, but the software side is still a total shitshow.
How can you do music on auch small screen estate? A double screen computer setup already seems not enough.
It’s music! Screens are hardly a necessity. Many electronic producers these days are going “DAWless”. Mind you, dedicated hardware has come a long way. Things like Elektron’s Digitakt and Synthstrom Audible’s Deluge (and a bunch of other options) verge on being hardware DAWs themselves.
If you do everything via VST in DAW, then yes, you want lots of screen space. I downsized to 1 monitor recently, and I really miss the second when I’m in DAW.
I just switched back to iPhone a couple of months ago, after 10 years on Android.
In short, I trust Apple more than Google. That’s not to say Apple is 100% trustworthy, but I definitely trust them more than Google.
Switched from Android to iPhone.
Everything just works in the Apple ecosystem. Android has an app for everything but none of them work well. They always require some sort of configurations, etc, etc. what really set me over was consistently missing calls because my phone just didn’t receive them.
Seriously, nothing in the Android ecosystem works well together. It all just sucks.
As an Android user, I’m considering switching to iPhone due to how much worse the Android experience is becoming without Google Play Services. I’m using a custom ROM with microG, which potentially means no RCS since it is only available through Google Messages which doesn’t work with microG.
As much as it would suck jumping ship, at the very least, Apple is still a consumer hardware company first & foremost while Google will always be an ads company. Android exists to that end & that end alone.
- There is no reasonably sized android phone. They’re either huge (>6“) or tiny (<4“) and the smaller variant usually has ancient and slow specs.
- I passionately dislike google. And yes, it’s possible to use Android without Google but it’s quite a hassle. Big parts of that is privacy, which Apple might not care about as much as they should but Google isn’t caring about at all.
- I prefer the UI of most apps on iOS to the equivalent on Android. It’s fairly consistent, usually following certain standards (like the menu bar on the bottom).
- Most android phones I’ve used over the years have an ungodly amount of bloat. Why would anyone want to use a second, worse app store? Why are facebook and tiktok preinstalled and can’t be uninstalled?
- I also have a Mac and an AppleTV. The iPhone fits right in.
- I’m used to it. It works. As long as Apple doesn’t do a major privacy oopsie or someone releases a small android flagship phone again, I have no reason to leave because android offers nothing I desire beyond what I already have.
Same, no reason to switch. The iPhone just works and it actually never slow down while I had this problem with my parents android phones and my old android
Keywords there are ‘old Android’. I haven’t had a phone do that classic android slowdown in years.
If u really care about privacy that much then why are u using the closed source system of apple. Also the bloat apps of android are removable,u dont even need to root, just use https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater
Because it’s more convenient. I trust Google less than Apple and degoogling android is a hassle. Or rather getting all the apps you need with a degoogled android. I do want privacy but I also don’t want to give up useability.
Also, the point is less, that you can’t remove or deactivate bloat apps but that they’re there in the first place. I‘ve got a similar issue with Windows.
And the other factors still play a large roll. If I could have a reasonably sized, speced and priced android phone, I might consider it and maybe will in the future when my iPhone 13 mini gives up the ghost.
Fair enough,I misjudged ur threat model. But is there any reason as to why u trust apple more than companies like google even tho both are closed source and non auditable by the general public. Is it cuz of the privacy font that apple tries to show?
To some degree, as apple tries to appear privacy conscious, at least, while Google is very open, that all they want is your data. But that gets enforced by their business models. Google is first and foremost an advertising company. That’s how they make money. Less so with hard and software. Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. They do sell some software and services but it’s not their main business. Advertising even less.
#1 is the most legit reason itt. I had an iPhone for work. Perfect size even with a rubber case. Despise almost every other feature… Size was perfect. Now I’m stuck with 6" after 6" (gigiddy)… At least they’re cheap and fit in my pockets.
4 might be where people are getting their phone. Haven’t had this on the last 2 phones at least (unlocked, not bought from carrier)
They made a huge oopsie with Siri once, when it was revealed that audio was reviewed by real people without my consent. It made me question everything for a bit. But is it better at Google? I don’t think so. And Apple fixed the issue.
Safety. I like the locked down ecosystem.
Don’t want to, I’m used to it.
Google.
I used to have Android, from HTC Desire upto Pixel 4a 5g. But Android 11 and 12 really ruined the experience for me. And I went to iPhone. I’m not going back anytime soon.
