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I switch between both every few years, on iPhone 14 ATM. Honestly Android does a lot of things better - there's so many stupid "because Apple" things on iOS. F

I switch between both every few years, on iPhone 14 ATM. Honestly Android does a lot of things better - there's so many stupid "because Apple" things on iOS. For example it's impossible to tell the charging speed/estimated charge time, I have a lot of charging bricks between places and I can't tell if I picked an iPhone compatible fast charger/cable or not ? Or when I have Chrome/Firefox installed, highlight text and tap search the web - it takes me to Safari ? A lot of small annoyances like these where you can't do anything about it because the OS is so closed down. Android is way more customisable, easier to side load stuff (like running GBA emulator on iPhone). Also a lot more exciting phones in the Android ecosystem (eg. Samsung flip phones) I like the ecosystem integration with my Mac but I wouldn't say one is clearly better than the other.

tEMporality7 3y ago
Both ecosystems have their own pros and cons but I wouldn't trade my Pixel for an iPhone ever. In fact, I recently got a refurbished iPhone 13 just to check the ecosystem out (as a mobile dev) and get a feel for things but honestly I prefer my Pixel more. There are so many things that Android does well like notifications and typing (these two stood out to me on Apple - horrible implementations really, especially the latter) that it will always remain my primary driver. But yeah, if someone thinks that Android is not for them and Apple's walled garden is worth entering then or vice versa then whatever floats your boat, I guess.
- rusk 3y ago
  Typing on iPhone is just such a bad joke.
  - TheHappyOddish 3y ago
    Typing on all touch screens is a bad joke. It's like you're comparing a dog turd with a cat turd.
    - rusk 3y ago
      It’s not the touch screen that’s the issue. It’s the autocorrect. And it’s not an imaginary comparison I used to have “t9” on my phone 20 years ago that was better than what maybe any phone now has. I’m pretty certain iphone was better once too. I remember being able to touch type on my iphone (yes on a touch screen it was that good)
    - nmfisher 3y ago
      If there’s one thing that infuriates me about the current crop of phones, it’s this. I’ve actually mostly switched to voice dictation because my iPhone touch screen sucks so much. Bring back physical keyboards!
- tornato7 3y ago
  Did you know you can install GBoard (Google's Android keyboard) on iPhone? I would never be able to use an iPhone without it.
BoorishBears 3y ago
I was a devout Android user in the early days, I've launched Android based consumer products and I still use an iPhone. I always joke that when Android can handle a screen rotation without blanking the screen, I'll switch back: It's not about the actual blanking of course, it'll just mean they finally ripped out a design tradeoff they made for a device with 256MB of RAM and just... never fixed. Android is full of decisions like that, like the horrible storage framework churn that randomly made a generation of devices dog slow as various terrible FUSE implementations. Decisions that are technical, but just end up affecting user experience every day you use the device.
- Vogtinator 3y ago
  > I always joke that when Android can handle a screen rotation without blanking the screen, I'll switch back None of the Android phones I've used blank the screen, there's a smooth animation.
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    Every single phone in existence running Android blanks the screen. It can be hidden by frankly disgusting animations where they do things like squish a screenshot of your current screen to hide it, but the literal UI is being tore down on every rotation. As you can imagine that's a pain in the ass to deal with on the app side, and until relatively recently the framework did a poor job providing support for handling it all. It's a very common cause of app crashes too. (To really get technical, apps can opt out of this... but doing so means you'd need to reimplement the entire view stack and rotation yourself, which doesn't happen for anything but video games)
    - vetinari 3y ago
      My several years old Samsung doesn't blank the screen. Android indeed does tear down the activity and creates a new one with different rotation and size; but activity is not the framebuffer currently displaying. Recreating the activity does not imply blanking screen.
corobo 3y ago
> highlight text and tap search the web - it takes me to Safari God damn this one is so annoying.
pjerem 3y ago
While I agree, I must say that GBA emulation is a bad example here. It’s one of the few things you can "easily" sideload on an iPhone without jailbreaking using AltStore (the emulator is named Delta, btw and it is excellent). I will not say that AltStore is really practical to use but GBA and GameCube emulators are basically the only things you can sideload without a lot of pain (along with UTM, a virtual machine runner.
- moonchrome 3y ago
  I didn't know about this - thanks ! I haven't tried this for a while, but just for comparison I actually got a GBA emulator on my Samsung via play store. It's very much an Apple thing again.
  - pjerem 3y ago
    Yes of course the situation is way better on Android on this topic. I’m really waiting for side loading to happen in Europe.

tEMporality7 3y ago

Both ecosystems have their own pros and cons but I wouldn't trade my Pixel for an iPhone ever. In fact, I recently got a refurbished iPhone 13 just to check the ecosystem out (as a mobile dev) and get a feel for things but honestly I prefer my Pixel more. There are so many things that Android does well like notifications and typing (these two stood out to me on Apple - horrible implementations really, especially the latter) that it will always remain my primary driver. But yeah, if someone thinks that Android is not for them and Apple's walled garden is worth entering then or vice versa then whatever floats your boat, I guess.

rusk 3y ago
Typing on iPhone is just such a bad joke.
- TheHappyOddish 3y ago
  Typing on all touch screens is a bad joke. It's like you're comparing a dog turd with a cat turd.
  - rusk 3y ago
    It’s not the touch screen that’s the issue. It’s the autocorrect. And it’s not an imaginary comparison I used to have “t9” on my phone 20 years ago that was better than what maybe any phone now has. I’m pretty certain iphone was better once too. I remember being able to touch type on my iphone (yes on a touch screen it was that good)
  - nmfisher 3y ago
    If there’s one thing that infuriates me about the current crop of phones, it’s this. I’ve actually mostly switched to voice dictation because my iPhone touch screen sucks so much. Bring back physical keyboards!
tornato7 3y ago
Did you know you can install GBoard (Google's Android keyboard) on iPhone? I would never be able to use an iPhone without it.

BoorishBears 3y ago

I was a devout Android user in the early days, I've launched Android based consumer products and I still use an iPhone. I always joke that when Android can handle a screen rotation without blanking the screen, I'll switch back: It's not about the actual blanking of course, it'll just mean they finally ripped out a design tradeoff they made for a device with 256MB of RAM and just... never fixed. Android is full of decisions like that, like the horrible storage framework churn that randomly made a generation of devices dog slow as various terrible FUSE implementations. Decisions that are technical, but just end up affecting user experience every day you use the device.

Vogtinator 3y ago
> I always joke that when Android can handle a screen rotation without blanking the screen, I'll switch back None of the Android phones I've used blank the screen, there's a smooth animation.
- BoorishBears 3y ago
  Every single phone in existence running Android blanks the screen. It can be hidden by frankly disgusting animations where they do things like squish a screenshot of your current screen to hide it, but the literal UI is being tore down on every rotation. As you can imagine that's a pain in the ass to deal with on the app side, and until relatively recently the framework did a poor job providing support for handling it all. It's a very common cause of app crashes too. (To really get technical, apps can opt out of this... but doing so means you'd need to reimplement the entire view stack and rotation yourself, which doesn't happen for anything but video games)
  - vetinari 3y ago
    My several years old Samsung doesn't blank the screen. Android indeed does tear down the activity and creates a new one with different rotation and size; but activity is not the framebuffer currently displaying. Recreating the activity does not imply blanking screen.

corobo 3y ago

> highlight text and tap search the web - it takes me to Safari God damn this one is so annoying.

pjerem 3y ago

While I agree, I must say that GBA emulation is a bad example here. It’s one of the few things you can "easily" sideload on an iPhone without jailbreaking using AltStore (the emulator is named Delta, btw and it is excellent). I will not say that AltStore is really practical to use but GBA and GameCube emulators are basically the only things you can sideload without a lot of pain (along with UTM, a virtual machine runner.

moonchrome 3y ago
I didn't know about this - thanks ! I haven't tried this for a while, but just for comparison I actually got a GBA emulator on my Samsung via play store. It's very much an Apple thing again.
- pjerem 3y ago
  Yes of course the situation is way better on Android on this topic. I’m really waiting for side loading to happen in Europe.