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.

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.

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.

> I don't remember the details of it, but android uses more ram for applications, because of the dalvik VM

Not sharing an opinion on anything written, however Dalvik was replaced with ART all the way back in Android 5.

> 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.

I feel that it is sad that Google phones mostly follow iPhone trends. It's as if the Google phone team are iPhone fans. Heck, I saw an Android team video and most of the people in the background were using iPhones.

I think customers would be better serve if each company play to their strengths, not on carbon copying each other.

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.

Apple software is pretty nice with their user experience. But I feel like 90% of this complaint stems from people comparing a $200 Android phone with $1000 iPhone.

Happens in laptops too. Its just silly. Go in the same price range and then make a judgement.

I have the exact opposite opinion. Don’t take my word for it, grab any Apple phone made in 2017 (worth about 99 bucka today) vs any entry to low mid ($100-400ish) android and the iphone will kick ass in most regards.

I long for the freedom of android and use iPhones reluctantly only because i really think they are a good value at almost any price point.

A three year old android flagship will also kick ass compared to a new low end android.

Can confirm. I did this, swapping my old SE for a Moto G7. After a few months, I still miss the iPhone. First, the convenience and care that shows in tiny aspects of the UI design. Second, Siri is usable while OK Google is not - it just fails too often to be worth even trying. I miss being able to use voice control.

Worse even, you can't pick up a Samsung flagship for trial in the store without the interface stuttering like crazy - at least if you're used to iOS.

Same with LG, Sony and others. The only smooth Android I have ever tried was Huawei's and I am reluctant to buy Chinese telco hardware.

> Go in the same price range and then make a judgement.

You can compare iphone and android performance benchmarks here [0] and here [1].

Apple devices still come out ahead of top of the range models from other manufacturers.

Yes I know benchmarks can be gamed and don't mean everything, but there is still a performance difference between top of the line Android models today, vs not only top of the line iPhones, but also iPhones from a couple of years back.

0: https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks 1: https://browser.geekbench.com/android-benchmarks

This is a funny comment given the post is a out the cheap SE, starting at $500.

I have a reasonably top-speced phone - A K20 Pro, with a Snapdragon 855 - and it stutters. It stutters more than the last iPhone I used, a 2016 SE, and I used it until early 2018. The only top of the line phone I found that was responsive and fun to use was OnePlus, and they seem to have made speed and responsiveness their company motto. It's a shame they dropped the headphone jack, because that was my deciding factor for picking the K20, which I find painful to use at times.

My Galaxy S20 Ultra has a 120hz display with 240hz input sample rate. It is stunningly gorgeous, and there's simply no input lag.

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.

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.

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.

is this something you noticed in the past couple of years? i dont remember autocrrect feeling so terrible...its like im being trolled every time i use it now. it suggests the completely wrong words and the wrong tense until i type out more than half the word.

Yes, it's got noticeably worse. It used to be pretty good.

“Ducking”

I just add all the variations of curse words to my dictionary which tends to take care of that issue.

I favor the gesture input, and it's surprising how many words have similar swype patterns for the keys.

Even when I turn autocorrect off, it replaces double word combos unpredictably, especially in Spanish. The biggest problem with iPhone in general is that it’s hard to tune for your needs, because Apple decided that one way is The Way.

I'm using android... sorry if that wasn't clear.

> 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).

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.

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

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.

Until you leave your house and use your mobile phone as a mobile phone, and then all access is granted to the data-sucking fiends.

And I say this as someone who runs Pi-Hole. But I feel like it is a battle I am using.

That's why I said "or better yet NextDNS", which is not tied to your home.

Apologies! I missed that! I'll look that up since it would server me well, thanks!

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.

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.

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.

Which of those do you think are accessible to the average user?

All of them if someone else does the initial set up, from first hand experience.

What about updates or when something goes wrong?

Does google provide you support when something otherwise go wrong? No. Unless of course it's a pixel.

And I have a custom rom which gets update every month. Ungoogled. :)

The comparison you should be making isn't with Google, but Apple.

My experience with custom ROMs was unfortunately a lot worse than yours. I had the original Galaxy Note, and picking a custom ROM for that was a "Updated, has features, doesn't kill your battery - pick 2" kind of deal.

Not too different from MS not being first line support for your Thinkpad, but offering more for surface laptops.

I'm still under update coverage for my Pixel 2XL, haven't felt compelled to upgrade at all. i do wish more handsets supported using Lineage or another open variant/option for after coverage expires at least.

For updates, you hit the update button. When something goes wrong, same as others.

You can still use the google play store and switch email, maps, and browser and give almost no data to google and anyone can install apps in google play.

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.

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.

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?

If you have Google Play Services embedded into your system and you use Google Play: Yes. You have a good chance of avoiding that by downloading through Aurora, though.

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).

To be fair, most skinned Android variants are really horrible. My whole immediate family uses Android phones, but half the time I just don't know how to quickly tell them where an option is because I've used CyanogenMod/LineageOS on all my phones, and they're using Samsung's take on Android, which is shockingly different. Worse yet, they often are on much older Android versions than me which results in even more differences. Settings categories having different names is the biggest problem. At least on some newer Android versions there's a search in the settings so you don't have to guess where stuff is as much.

Yeah it's mostly Samsung but also Oppo and Huawei, that basically just seem to do a half-baked copy of Apple with their own peculiar weirdness thrown in to make it worse.

As a counterpoint, I think OnePlus's "Oxygen" shell is often quicker and better than the already spectacular default Android experience.

OnePlus’s customizations tend to be much lighter and more thoughtful.

That's the primary reason that I use Pixel devices. I want the stock Android experience and updates to the OS. I don't get those with other phones.

I hope you're not equating Samsung with Android. I find most (if not all) skinned Androids horrible as well. Spent some time with mine removing preinstalled bloatware using adb and then a bit more finding various settings restoring default Android behaviour on the Sony, even though it's relatively vanilla.

How could you not though? Skinned Android is how most experience android.

Yeah, which in mind tarnishes the reputation of Android. Well on the other hand most regular people don't even don't know what Android is, they only talk about "Samsung" phones, which is somewhat correct.

I think one of the main problems with Android is how _varied_ different versions are. When I pick up anyone's iPhone I find it equally easy to do everything. Even when I had an Android, picking up anyone else's phone and trying to change settings (you know, being the only computer person around, I had to help people fix problems) was an enormous difficulty. Just because I had figured out my phone well didn't mean I could even find the same setting on someone else's phone. It's been a few yeas - it may be more standard by now.

Learning new things is always hard, and some flavors of Android (eg; Samsung) are pretty atrocious. What problems did you face?

I have both an iPhone (work) and an Android (Nexus 2, personal) and use both daily.

I find (stock) Android to be a much more usable and capable operating system. Which is a shame because the iPhones really are better hardware, especially the smaller ones.

Part of that is of course what you're used to, but a lot of Android phone makers put their UI and crapware over Android. I don't know why they put extra effort into making their phones worse. I tend to look for the purest Android I can find.

> I don't know why they put extra effort into making their phones worse.

How else will you distinguish between them?

Hardware?

Yeah, unfortunately their hardware is getting increasingly identical. Same sizes, same shapes, same screens, same everything. In the early days of Android smartphones, we had phones with physical keyboards, phones made out of steel instead of glass, and tons of other physical differences. These days they all look the same and they try to make up for it by messing up Android in different ways.

There's still a few outliers, I'm dailying a. BlackBerry Key2 and have a backup UniHertz Titan on the shelf (which has a passport style 1:1 screen).

Love having a physical keyboard, and will gladly give up some screen size for a much comfier typing experience. That and the BlackBerry Hub is amazing and actually makes managing all my communication in a day much more effective. (Global shortcuts, gestured text navigation, a control key, etc):

At least Hub can be installed on other Android devices, for me a unified inbox is a killer feature.

> Yeah, unfortunately their hardware is getting increasingly identical.

Not to mention that you basically need to look at the latest iPhone to know what maybe 70% of Android hardware is going to look like for the next year or so (notch, cameras, software features like Animoji, even the absence of things like the headphone jack).

It's like everybody is supposed to have the same taste in hardware and features.

Both the state of smartphones and the state of laptops and OSs really make me want to get into that industry and make some better alternatives.

I have same experience with ios

Right? Simple things like selecting/copying text can be so annoying and unintuitive to the point where I wasn't feeling comfortable even after 1.5 years, and I'm somewhat of a power user in that I like to figure out the most effective ways of doing things. With iOS I've failed on so many different occasions and having to succumb to what I'd consider workarounds.

Another glaringly obvious thing with Android that frustrated me to no end with iOS: Why the fuck do you need to swipe twice to remove a notification. So many swipes wasted that I could've used for Tinder instead.

I have a boatload of stuff that annoys me about iOS, to the point where at one point thought about opening a Twitter account to send a daily tweet about something that sucks on iOS.

Emojis look good though.

Just to pile a couple more on, why is the only way to get to the bluetooth device list by going through settings?! Long-pressing/right-clicking on the bluetooth tray icon does that in every other OS I've used, phone or desktop.

And for the love of god why does your spellcheck keep trying to replace the word "talk" with "ya'll?" I've had to manually set text replacement for way too many word pairs like that, and if you do typo the word you're going for in a way that's not in the text replacement, it defaults to the weird choice anyway.

> Just to pile a couple more on, why is the only way to get to the bluetooth device list by going through settings?! Long-pressing/right-clicking on the bluetooth tray icon does that in every other OS I've used, phone or desktop.

This is something Android messed up since Android 9 (IIRC). You used to have a small arrow below the Wifi and Bluetooth (and whatnot) icons where you could select what to connect to. Removing those since 9 was partially what drove me to angrily expore iOS.

Can't say about the spellcheck because I used Swiftkey on iOS but the Android version is miles ahead of it. In hindsight I should've probably just reverted to the iOS built-in one.

Gboard for iOS was a bit worse than the Android version the last time I used it (years ago), but it was usable.

That might be, and might've been better than the native keyboard, but SwiftKey on Android is still on a level of witchcraft that I've yet to seen anywhere elsewhere.

Long pressing on the Bluetooth icon in iOS 13 gives you a device list now, if you wanted to know.

Well, that's a life-changer. Though it's annoying that it only seems to work after a second long-press to go from the condensed version of that little window to the bigger one.

My ideal is that I can flip up and change the source in the time it takes for a song to change, which I used to be able to do seamlessly in Android. Though according to the sibling comment, Android got worse for that use since I switched too.

Ok I kind of feel like an idiot now, I just checked and apparently on Android 10 you can long-press as well to get a menu of available devices/networks. I'm not sure whether this was already there in Android 9 or whether they introduced it later but I'm quite sure that I read the release announcements (and reviews/articles[0]) at the time and turned up empty-handed.

Just wish both had some kind of UI indicator that there's a long-press action available... it's not like people are reading mobile phone manuals nowadays, even if they existed.

[0] For example no mention here https://www.xda-developers.com/everything-new-android-p-deve...

A lot of this works on the basis of intuition and I think that's pretty okay for shortcuts. It becomes more problematic when it's an essential path, but then again right-click-abilityis also undiscoverable.

It's a totally intuitive thing, but after a few years of using something you stop trying to intuit as much and are just doing the things you know work.

True.

It works on my Android 8 device.

Are you saying you don't have a down arrow below the icon? I might be wrong as I said initially, I thought they removed the dropdown in 9 but might've been 8?

I do have a down arrow, which takes me to a sub-panel listing the devices, but also I can long press on the icon to go to the full list.

Personally I think the down arrow is way too small for me to press so I always just long press the icon anyway.

Ok then my memory was correct about the versions at least. Long-press or not, the arrow is still a great indication that there's an action besides a single click - wish everyone implemented something of the like.

Well this is an awesome thing to learn today!

As an iPhone/iPad user, yes, selecting text is absolutely jackiechan.jpg befuddling on iOS. To the point that you wonder if anybody at Apple actually uses it.

They've actually made it worse in a way by removing the magnifying glass, but at least the new copy/paste/cut swipe gestures are handy, if a little odd on smaller screens.

I agree that removing the magnifying glass was a terrible idea, but what's befuddling about selecting text?

The biggest loss for me on newer devices is 3D touch, since that's the best way to select text quickly and easily.

Try getting the cursor after tapping the Safari address bar with a long URL.

On many websites it will zoom around unpredictably.

Very awkward to select specific text in Notes etc. sometimes, especially around links and other clickable items.

> Try getting the cursor after tapping the Safari address bar with a long URL.

I’ve found that if you try to move the cursor with the keyboard it’ll show up.

I think that's less to do with realistic differences than it is familiarity... I've used google experience for the most part, and even then using someone's Samsung devices is different enough to be annoying.

For the most part, I adapt along the way... I've felt similar with iOS, but refuse to buy from Apple.

Refusing to feed anything more to Google whenever I have the choice, is the reason I will probably always avoid Android.

Familiarity may be one factor you never use one device long enough to get familiar with it.

It may also because idiots keep "innovating" with the home screen experience but for most androids the home screen is just another app you can replace with one not made by incompetents.

Nova is nice for example.