I dunno what a Dynamic Island is, sounds like a really unpleasant place to take a vacation.
- It's waterproof, dustproof, and shock-proof out of the box. I can image an iPhone can pull this off in a third-party protective case.
- It can sideload software; I have some important apps managed by f-droid. Sorry, iPhone can't do this by design. It's not "strictly better", every such decision is a balancing act. But it's what I prefer.
Things like microSD card, 3.5mm jack, etc are nice but not the essential differentiating factors.
iPhones are engineered very well, and even stands up to abuse quite better than the run of the mill Android phones. Dust proof, water proof etc out of the box.
Man, do I wish regulators would force Apple to break their monopoly on App stores on iOS! Apple can keep their App Store exactly how it is today, but as a user I should be allowed to install “aftermarket” apps via side loading. Sure, I can fall for “insecure” unvalidated 3rd party apps pulling a scam on me, but that’s my prerogative, not Apple’s. They sold me hardware I paid for, they gave me an opportunity to spend and buy apps at their store, but that’s where it should stop. They shouldn’t be allowed to prevent competitors from selling apps to me unless they bend over to Apple. I just don’t see how this is any different from Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with Windows and pulling dirty tricks from preventing people from installing/using 3rd party web browsers in the nineties.
It was definitely a long way getting there but android is in a pretty great place right now.
I can't imagine ever going back to iPhones. I felt extremely crippled every time I tried to do anything. I remember having no access to the filesystem, having to use proprietary software (iTunes... never again) and having to jailbreak my iPhone to install custom ringtones from my own music. When I got my first android phone and could just plug it in, drag and drop files from my computer, I felt the strongest and weirdest catharsis, akin to "I don't have to suffer anymore".
I've been dismayed with the bloat that's been creeping into Android phones (I'm currently on a Huawei P30).
I've never tried the Zenfone, but now I have to - thanks for the recommendation.
This is how I look at it as well. Because anyone can make an Android phone, Android phone makers had to either race to the bottom or come up with their special gimmick. Those that came up with a gimmick became the phone for people who care about that gimmick. But this ceded the domain of "people who don't particularly care about which phones have which gimmicks," aka most people, to Apple.
Pixel managed to break out of this by having their gimmick be "flagship by the people who wrote most of the OS, so, just generally well-implemented," but it took a while to get there.