[HN Gopher] US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android mo...
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US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone
Author : retskrad
Score : 153 points
Date : 2023-07-28 13:28 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.counterpointresearch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.counterpointresearch.com)
| nologic01 wrote:
| Article says iPhone market share was 57% in Q2 2022, so basically
| people get excited and spend quality time analyzing noise
| fluctuations
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| Android's problem is Pixel is the only good one, and it has not
| been flagship quality since the Pixel 2.
|
| The 3 had odd issues, the 4 had a laughable battery life, and 5-7
| are a weird mix of midrange and flagship capability (trending
| towards flagship, but not in the club yet).
|
| All other Android vendors are on a continuum of crap, between
| these points:
|
| 1. loaded with bloat and customizations that aren't better than
| what Google provides, whose main point is to say "but I'm not
| Google" (Samsung)
|
| 2. vanilla-ish Android but missing capabilities that are normal
| in Pixel
|
| If Google would take Pixel seriously, it would be a credible
| competitor.
| bitsandboots wrote:
| Sony's phones seem best to me. Vanilla android with headphone
| jacks and microsd slots. They're just expensive. Nobody ever
| talks about Sony's phones for some reason but I think that's
| great because I wouldn't want them to get an ego and start
| ruining a good thing.
|
| Overall though, what's killing Android is Android (through
| Google) Every release gets more limited & restrictive, as does
| the Play store & framework. If they want to downgrade android
| to be iOS, while iOS is improving, at some point I might as
| well just buy iOS. I think Android reached its peak around 4.4
| Kitkat. I'm still sitting on 9 knowing that things get even
| worse on 10 & 11. Who knows what Android 12 has? Who cares?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Sony makes you send your phone to the same service center in
| Laredo that does all the PlayStation stuff, so warranty
| service can take a while.
| trd716 wrote:
| As soon as Sony supports GCam, then I would personally buy.
| As of now, I'm using a Pixel 6a
| kyriakos wrote:
| Just got an S23U 2 weeks ago. Its an impressive device both
| hardware and software. I was expecting a lot of bloat but looks
| like only MS Office apps where Non-Samsung apps pre-installed
| and I was going to install them myself either way.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| The bloat is mainly in two forms:
|
| -All the pointless OS customizations.
|
| -Samsung-developed apps that do the same thing as extant,
| better Google apps.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I like their OS customizations, particularly for the Fold
| their taskbar and window split is great.
| pyrophane wrote:
| As a counterpoint:
|
| > -All the pointless OS customizations.
|
| I actually like Samsung's OS customizations and missed them
| when I switched to a Pixel.
|
| > -Samsung-developed apps that do the same thing as extant,
| better Google apps.
|
| Some of them are nice, though! I wish they would make their
| Notes app available on more platforms. I actually really
| like it!
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| Bloat isn't just things that you don't like. It is not
| uncommon for a "pointless" Samsung OS customization to make
| its way into stock/pixel android a few years later, at
| which time it will receive much praise and be considered
| revolutionary.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Hot take: I find recent Samsung flagships far superior to what
| Google offers, especially the latest S23: small and speedy with
| longer SW support than a pixel, better CPU/GPU and better
| cameras, at a decent price. Bloatware and Android
| implementation is also not too bad.
|
| Also Samsung DEX can save your bacon in case your laptop dies
| and you don't have a spare but need a quick desktop experience
| for some multitasking productivity task thill your laptop is
| being fixed.
| superfailboat wrote:
| This. Dex is Samsung's killer feature - but noone seems to
| know about it!? It's especially relevant to developers.
|
| It's now common to see monitors that have an integrated usb
| hub - so no docking station needed. Just plug your phone in
| via one cable, it will charge, send video, and use
| keyboard+mouse.
|
| You can have a 4k60 desktop, and then run termux and almost
| achieve a desktop-equivalent development environment.
| Unfortunately the newer android kernels are missing certain
| linux features so you can't run containers without rooting.
| If you do want to root then you can definitely have it all!
| Personally I don't want to spend the time tinkering to hide
| root from the banking apps.
|
| It also works great for running things like Geforce Now and
| streaming games in 4k resolution, with a paired bluetooth
| controller.
|
| To get the higher resolutions you need a newer Samsung
| flagship, S22/S23. And maybe also need to enable extra stuff
| via "i love dex" option in multistar.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Samsung blowtware is a problem though
| lurker919 wrote:
| Yes, the only reason that prods me away from a samsung
| phone. I don't want unnecessary apps on my
| screens/mindspace.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Which bloatware and what problems does it make you?
|
| For me, I don't really consider Microsoft Office as
| bloatware as I can use it, plus, what's bloatware for you
| might be useful apps for others, and I found it stays out
| of my way once I push it to the side if I don't need it, so
| it's existence is a non-issue for usability.
|
| Samsung bloatware used to be bad in the past but now it's
| decent IMHO, and I think people are being overly pedantic
| and mostly overblow the problem of some bloatware just to
| win some religious argument of "my choice of phone is
| better than yours" while ignoring the other useful reasons
| people buy it.
|
| If you wanna see real bloatware, check out Chinese phones.
| tjoff wrote:
| ALL OF THEM.
|
| It is utterly insane how much crap they have in baked in.
| Everything tries to connect to you ludicrous samsung
| account and the best selling point their apps have is
| that they try to masquerade them as standard android apps
| and not a cheap samsung knockoff.
|
| I have to support friends with samsung a bit and I get a
| headache even touching them. Great cameras, wouldn't
| touch one even if I was paid to actually use it.
|
| And this is using top-of-line devices. They also have the
| absolute lowest range too, which is quite impressive
| hardware/dollar wise but the software situation is of
| course even worse on such an underpowered device.
|
| The telemetry and the dark patterns they utilize gets me
| in the stomach. The big problem is that for I guess the
| majority that don't actively fight it they get extremely
| tied to samsung. Which I guess is a key reason to their
| success. A big detriment to android though.
| Xeamek wrote:
| >Everything tries to connect to you ludicrous samsung
| account
|
| So, exactly as with google trying to sign into google's
| account?
|
| >the best selling point their apps have is that they try
| to masquerade them as standard android apps and not a
| cheap samsung knockoff.
|
| Again, same for google's apps which people think "come as
| a part of android", but in reallity they arent?
|
| >The telemetry and the dark patterns they utilize gets me
| in the stomach.
|
| As if google doesn't use telemetry?
|
| Not to mention, there are things in which the samsung
| apps are OBJECTIVELLY better:
|
| OneUI's customization is far beyond what stock android
| offers. Samsung Files has more features then google
| files, ie. mounting network drives.
|
| Sure, those are small differences, but people just
| default to "samsung bad" without actually giving the
| altenatives a fair shot
| tjoff wrote:
| >So, exactly as with google trying to sign into google's
| account?
|
| Massive difference though. Samsung tries to trick people
| to use it by not being up front with what account it is
| and what it is for.
|
| Now, don't get me wrong. Google would probably do the
| same, but in this case they don't have to - because it is
| their OS. It is trivial to skip the google account if you
| want but it actually has its place in android. A samsung
| account on the other hand just makes things objectively
| worse, and at every turn they dare they try to get you
| deeper into their dependence, always trying to trick you
| into depending on samsung for the _same_ stuff google
| already does for you (if you went that route).
|
| How you can compare the two boggles me.
|
| And even if the shady practices doesn't bother you and
| you feel like they are equally bad, then both of them are
| twice as bad. Why on earth would I want to use one I
| didn't have to?
|
| And above all, why would I tie my android experience to
| one vendor?
|
| > Again, same for google's apps which people think "come
| as a part of android", but in reallity they arent?
|
| Really not the same, but yes, google bundles crap too if
| that is your point. Samsung is way better at making crap
| though. Regardless, who should be bundling crap anyway?
| The OS vendor or the hardware vendor? The hardware vendor
| is more than fine to write apps directly related to
| hardware features but other than that they should just
| fuck off.
|
| > As if google doesn't use telemetry?
|
| You think it is ok if Dell installs telemetry on a
| Windows PC? As much as I hate google what samsung is
| doing doesn't compare.
| Xeamek wrote:
| >Google would probably do the same, but in this case they
| don't have to - because it is their OS. It is trivial to
| skip the google account if you want but it actually has
| its place in android.
|
| No, it's not. AOSP is free and open source OS that is
| completely functional without google's account or
| services.
|
| >Samsung tricks you into depending on them for the same
| stuff as google.
|
| Well yes, but either we give a pass to both of them or
| none. Giving a pass to google just because "they are the
| more popular one" is simply dellusional and puts unfair
| expectations on any1 who tries to challange the status
| quo of current market.
|
| >Why on earth would I want to use one I didn't have to?
|
| If you treat those companies as necessary evil, then you
| are correct, it's more logical to choose the path with
| the least ammount of "deals with the devils".
|
| But at the same time, this aproach is anti-competative.
| You will always buy into the biggest vendor, because it
| gives you the most features.
|
| >And above all, why would I tie my android experience to
| one vendor?.
|
| But you are alrady doing that with google's experience.
| Samsung just gives you an alternative. Some people like
| it, others don't. But it's just a preference.
|
| > Regardless, who should be bundling crap anyway? The OS
| vendor or the hardware vendor?
|
| AOSP foundation is vendor of base android. Google is
| vendor of google's android. Samsung is vendoer of
| samsungs OneUI. We are going to give google a pass
| literally just because they play a word game where they
| don't explicitly name pixels OS as "G-UI", like samsung
| does with their launcher? What?
|
| >The hardware vendor is more than fine to write apps
| directly related to hardware features but other than that
| they should just fuck off.
|
| But samsung doesn't markets itself as ONLY hardware
| vendor. They are software vendor as well, and their
| software is OneUI.
|
| Just as google's software isn't AOSP, it's google
| android.
|
| This whole distinction between hardware/software/OS is
| irrationall.
| drcongo wrote:
| If the apps are useful to some people but not others,
| they could just put them on the Play store, but they
| don't they force everyone to have them.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Sure, each to his own, but personally I and others don't
| really care about the preexisting apps as they're few and
| they stay out of my way and don't pester me.
|
| I just want a great phone for a decent price, that fits
| all my needs and I'm not gonna die on this "zero-
| bloatware" hill for the sake of a philosophical stance,
| because I'm not letting perfect be the enemy of good.
|
| What use to me is a zero bloatware device that doesn't
| have the HW, features or updates, that I personally need
| and value?
| Xeamek wrote:
| Just like google does with their apps, right?
|
| Oh wait...
| kaba0 wrote:
| I am just personally opposed to Google having all that
| much access to my data, which is quite funnily only
| possible to prevent on an android by having.. a pixel and
| installing GrapheneOS on top.
|
| Sure, lineage and such exist for other phones as well,
| but people seem to forget that it is not some thinkpad
| where you can just swap the OS to your liking -- plenty
| of phones have proprietary firmware that auto-wipes on
| reinstall. I wouldn't want my fancy, expensive
| S-twenty-X's camera to become essentially garbage.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > Which bloatware and what problems does it make you?
|
| Just about every single pre-installed app? Their store,
| their browser, Bixby, Bixby vision, messaging, their car
| mode, their friends, Galaxy smartwatch BS, SmartThings,
| their weather app. It's all - to an app - worse than the
| alternatives, and worse than Google's defaults if that's
| your preference.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > Just about every single pre-installed app?
|
| You can disable any app aside from the Galaxy Store, I
| believe. Takes like 5 minutes to do them all if you are a
| die hard Samsung hater.
|
| > Their store, their browser, Bixby, Bixby vision,
| messaging, their car mode, their friends, Galaxy
| smartwatch BS, SmartThings, their weather app. It's all -
| to an app - worse than the alternatives, and worse than
| Google's defaults if that's your preference.
|
| They don't have their own car mode or messaging, they use
| Android Auto and Google Messages.
|
| As someone who uses some of them, Samsung apps are
| actually quite good generally.
|
| Even if they were all hot garbage, there is nothing wrong
| with having more options IMO. All you lose is a bit of
| diskspace if you disable them.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > You can disable any app aside from the Galaxy Store, I
| believe.
|
| Yes, which is better than nothing, but not nearly as good
| as being able to uninstall that stuff.
| JohnFen wrote:
| At least they don't have that horrific Bixby Button
| anymore, though.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| This i want to be able to get rid of it all
| jwells89 wrote:
| I don't want the OS to have any material differences at
| all between devices. Android should be like Windows,
| which is the same no matter where it's running. Even the
| "good" changes that manufacturers make are unwelcome,
| because they dull much of the appeal of an OS like
| Android where hardware vendors are interchangeable and
| can be switched on a whim without software downsides. I
| don't want to become dependent on some manufacturer-
| specific change.
|
| If it were practical to do so, every Android device I buy
| would immediately have its OS replaced with something
| like LineageOS or Pixel Experience to eliminate these
| variances, much as technically inclined people will wipe
| the Windows install that comes stock on a prebuilt PC in
| favor of vanilla Windows.
| Xeamek wrote:
| That "OS should be coherent" argument would work if
| android itself was providing all those options. But it's
| not.
|
| Go to AOSP source and the "phone app" you'll find there
| is deprecated, ugly crap that no one ever uses.
|
| The 'nice' one is just a google app that's not only
| closed source, but equally bloated as the samsung's one.
|
| People give google's apps this weird pass, as it's not
| the same kind of bloat as the manufacturers one, but
| there is no reason to treat them differently.
| jwells89 wrote:
| This is increasingly true as Google is moving further and
| further away from AOSP, and I think it's eroding the
| appeal of Android as a whole.
|
| That said, at least Google apps talk to just Google.
| Samsung apps for example have been shown to connect to
| numerous different analytics services and ad networks
| even if you spring for the most expensive devices they
| sell which isn't great.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > Even the "good" changes that manufacturers make are
| unwelcome, because they dull much of the appeal of an OS
| like Android where hardware vendors are interchangeable
| and can be switched on a whim without software downsides.
| I don't want to become dependent on some manufacturer-
| specific change.
|
| So you want a _worse_ software experience all the time in
| case you have to use said worse software experience in
| the future because of a hardware change? And you don 't
| want Android hardware vendors to be able to differentiate
| themselves with software, giving all of the power to
| Google?
|
| Doesnt make sense to me. Seems a bit like cutting off
| your nose to spite your face.
| jwells89 wrote:
| It's something I see as necessary because products
| manufacturers you trust can and will sour on a dime (see
| OnePlus) or even get out of the business entirely (see LG
| and countless other former Android handset companies). If
| manufacturers want my loyalty, they can get it by
| consistently producing superior hardware (both
| technically and in fit and finish) and treating me well
| as a customer. Those things on their own are stronger
| differentiating factors (excellence is unusual) than
| software gimmicks that rarely live up to promise.
| pmontra wrote:
| > Android should be like Windows, which is the same no
| matter where it's running
|
| Is it? I remember some HP specific software when I turned
| on my new laptop to reformat it with Linux.
| jwells89 wrote:
| It is, if you wipe it and reinstall plain Windows and
| whatever drivers are necessary, which is trivial on x86
| PCs and basically the default for technically capable
| individuals.
|
| But even then, PC manufacturer bloatware doesn't
| typically modify the OS itself and is just extra crap
| bolted to it. The versions of Android that gets shipped
| on phones and tablets by contrast are different at the
| source level, sometimes bearing significant divergences
| from AOSP.
| cma wrote:
| Razer and Nvidia drivers almost force a login on you and
| do things like constantly spin up and wear out your idle
| HDDs searching for games to "optimize." You often have to
| do a research project filled with SEO spam to get around
| stuff like that.
| jwells89 wrote:
| At least in the case of Nvidia, the drivers bundled with
| Windows are good enough for most peoples' needs. It sucks
| for those of us who want up to date drivers for more
| demanding use cases though.
| yabatopia wrote:
| How about Google bloatware? Samsung Internet browser is far
| more superior than Google Chrome, but you can't uninstall
| Chrome. Of Gmail. Or Play Store. Much of the bloat is
| coming from Google. After all, it's a Samsung device, not a
| Google device.
|
| I used to be some kind of Androis purist, owner of multiple
| Nexus and Pixel devices. But for several years now, I'm
| sticking with Samsung.
| pmontra wrote:
| It's reasonably small for today's bloated standards.
| Unfortunately it's heavy even if it's not a 200 g monster.
| The real problem is that it costs 3 times as much as a phone
| is worth. Not that I couldn't spend those money, but why?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> The real problem is that it costs 3 times as much as a
| phone is worth._
|
| Everyone values things differently. You're just not the
| target audience. There's other cheaper phones out there of
| lower specs, but all are much bigger in size though as
| cheap phones tend to overcompensate with bigger screens.
| Plus, they're full of spyware and adware, yes, way more
| than in premium Android phones.
| macintosh-hd wrote:
| Meanwhile, Google steps on the rake of not putting enough
| battery in the phone every single time. I swear I've not seen a
| single flagship pixel review that hasn't mentioned bad battery.
| If it's bad out of the box, how bad will it be in 2 years?
| bagacrap wrote:
| My pixel 5 is still going strong and has plenty of battery. I
| have noticed degradation, but it's still enough to get
| through a day or more depending on use.
|
| The one thing that eats the battery alive is Instagram, which
| is great as it gives me one more reason to avoid it.
| jansan wrote:
| > Android's problem is Pixel is the only good one, and it has
| not been flagship quality since the Pixel 2.
|
| You should have added that this only applies if you exclued
| non-US products.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| Huh? Samsung is South Korean.
| jansan wrote:
| Yes, and they are good. So Pixel is not the only good one.
| kmac_ wrote:
| I have an old Samsung flagship with a 120Hz display, snappy and
| clean UI that never lags. It has survived several drops without
| a scratch. I was on the edge of moving to Apple but decided
| back then to give Android one more chance, and it was a good
| decision. What bothers me is the very mediocre ecosystem that
| stopped developing some time ago. That's the place of the
| actual battle between Apple and Google. Apple moves forward,
| and Google doesn't know what to do.
| rado wrote:
| Samsung's hardware is great and their One UI is a most
| impressive skin. Saying this as an iPhone user.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| One UI is superfluous. Native Android is great.
|
| It's fixing something that's not broken just to say "not
| Google", in the process creating bloat.
| Xeamek wrote:
| You can think of the extra options as unnecessary, but
| oneui objectively gives you more fine grain controll over
| styling your phone
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >Android's problem is Pixel is the only good one
|
| Lol ok. I have a pixel 5a and honestly, I regret getting it
| over a $200 moto g power. Those phones are fantastic and you
| can slap a third party rom like lineage on there and use it
| basically forever.
| sliken wrote:
| Well the pixel is generally about the newest android that's the
| flagship software experience, with a decent camera, running on
| 1-2 year older hardware. But in my experience the lack of
| crapware and gaming benchmarks means it feels pretty snappy
| compared to Samsung.
|
| I tried Samsung a few times, even with more ram it was vicious
| about killing tasks in the background so switching apps always
| did a splash screen and relaunch. Some apps do that well,
| others not so much. I tracked it down and apparently that
| behavior helps it win benchmarks. Even on a generation older
| hardware the pixel felt much snappier, I could multitask with
| 3-4 apps going, and the home button was _MUCH_ snappier. I
| verified it wasn 't hardware by installing Cyanogen on the
| samsung, and suddenly everything felt fast again.
|
| I switched to GrapheneOS, it's only for Pixels. The seem to
| have moved the needle on making it your phone, not just
| Google's phone that they let you use. You can remove every app,
| even the play store. Play has to ask permission to install
| things.
|
| I think of GrapheneOS as a leaner Pixel that's more secure.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| Pixel software + Samsung hardware #FTW
| sliken wrote:
| How?
| fluidcruft wrote:
| I think Motorola phones are OK. I personally will never buy a
| Motorola after an early experience with them prior to Google
| buying and re-rolling them. But my wife used them and liked
| them and they seem less shitty than they once were.
|
| I've had a series of Nexus and Pixel phones. I had a Pixel 3
| for a long long time and really, really loved it. It was such a
| perfect phone. I'm on Pixel 7 now and it's... alright. Compared
| to Pixel 3 it's big and heavy and the fingerprint scanner is on
| Pixel 3 was so much better. Pixel 3 was just about perfect.
|
| I just cannot stand iPhone. Everything about them is so
| annoying. My kids have them. Apple's parental controls are a
| complete joke. I just cannot understand why anyone thinks
| iPhone doesn't suck. The parental controls are constantly
| breaking whenever one phone upgrades and etc. Screen Time
| settings are the most infuriating and dumb as hell stupidity
| ever. On the other side Google's Digital Wellbeing is also
| useless trash (Seriously... only per-app time limits? Does
| anyone at all dog food that bullshit?). But on Android you just
| swap it out for something that doesn't suck.
| p1mrx wrote:
| > the fingerprint scanner is on Pixel 4 was so much better
|
| Are you sure you're talking about the right phone? Pixel 4
| doesn't have a fingerprint scanner.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Doh. I meant Pixel 3.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| This "Pixel is the only good Android" sentiment is so bizarre
| to see. Similarly the point about Samsung devices being loaded
| with bloat and customizations that aren't better.
|
| That second argument was valid like 5 years ago, but definitely
| not today. Samsung devices do still have a lot of
| customization, but most of it is actually pretty useful in my
| experience. Lots of little features that I hadn't realized
| would be nice to have and similarly to Apple, lots of cross-
| device integration conveniences, except that unlike Apple, they
| don't lock you in anywhere near as strongly. The S23U and Tab
| S8U are amazing devices both in hardware and software.
|
| And then there are other pretty great devices from Sony,
| Motorola, OnePlus etc.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > That second argument was valid like 5 years ago, but
| definitely not today.
|
| I disagree. It's still valid.
|
| > Samsung devices do still have a lot of customization, but
| most of it is actually pretty useful in my experience.
|
| Ahh, that may be why we have different experiences. You
| consider their stuff to be useful -- which is a totally fair
| opinion -- but I consider it all to be worthless bloat --
| which is another totally fair opinion.
|
| I don't mind that it's there. I do mind that I can't delete
| it.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| Indeed, Samsung is still dealing with the bloat reputation
| from the TouchWiz days, which is a shame because some of
| their features like multitasking are way better than
| stock/pixel android.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Apple is going to have so much power to push whatever agenda they
| desire.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| Yep. We really need to get the antitrust talk going inevitably.
| They're going to reach at least 65-70% in the US very soon.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Does this mean the US government can finally start treating Apple
| the way it treats Microsoft, etc when it does clearly anti-
| competitive things? They get away with murder sometimes and no
| one bats an eye. Even here on HN, it's full of people that turn a
| blind eye because they have a love for Apple. Everything as spun
| as "looking out for the user" as if not using USB-C, locking out
| RCS, the "Apple Tax" etc are anything but anti-competitive
| behavior or straight gouging. Apple to this day is treated like
| it's late 90s 5% market share self. This isn't the 90s anymore.
|
| Edit: Instantly being downvoted is ironic.
| kaba0 wrote:
| None of your examples are "murders". They have been using USB-C
| in pretty much every non-iphone device for years, switching on
| a whim to USB-C would have just left a bad taste in the users'
| mouthes (and millions of unused cables). RCS is just google's
| fake open-source proprietary protocol with terrible security, I
| really don't want any of that thank you very much.
|
| Apple Tax is as bad as any other similar app store -- they
| would be stupid to bust it deliberately, thankfully we have
| governments that will do their job here. With the EU rules it
| will become great.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Market share alone is not why MS was sued for anti-trust
| violations. It was how they got into that position, what they
| did to maintain that position, and what they did with that
| position.
| partiallypro wrote:
| This isn't in contradiction of what I just said. If anything,
| it supports it, because 55% isn't a "monopoly" but their
| behavior is anti-competitive, and they have been propelled
| into this position in part because of that behavior.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| App store and browser, I'll agree with you on. The
| arguments around RCS vs iMessage and USB-C vs Lightning are
| very weak, though, and largely based on an
| ahistorical/atemporal understanding of the world. USB-C
| wasn't even available when Lightning came about so it
| wasn't an alternative until after the fact. You can be
| annoyed with the length of the transition, but it was
| inevitable and pretty much every Apple device _but_ the
| iPhone has already transitioned as of last year (wireless
| mouse and keyboard still use it to charge, IIRC).
|
| RCS was a poor solution to a carrier problem (non-carrier
| locked messaging platforms let people move more easily
| between carriers) that Google only endorsed to make
| themselves look better after fucking up their dozen
| messaging platforms in a dozen years (not sure if a dozen
| is too many or too few, I lost track a while ago). I still
| don't get why a technical crowd wants RCS given it's
| carrier locked like MMS/SMS and has poor E2EE without any
| guarantees of E2EE (if your carrier doesn't support it, you
| don't get it).
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I don't think not using USB-C qualifies as an antitrust issue.
|
| It is appropriate to focus on the App Store commission,
| absolutely.
| partiallypro wrote:
| The "lightning port" is to block vendors from making
| universal products for its competitors while it lets Apple
| collect a licensing fee to use it, and it creates tons of
| needless e-Waste. No one cares though, at least not in the
| US.
| martin8412 wrote:
| Lightning is because it predates the USB-C connector.
| aednichols wrote:
| People forget, but Apple faced a massive backlash in 2012 when
| it replaced the 30 pin connector with Lightning. People called
| it a ploy to make money on cables. Tons of e-waste.
|
| USB C devices started shipping in 2015, so one can see why they
| didn't want to put themselves through that again.
|
| Adopting USB C in fall 2023 iPhones is smart, because by now
| everyone has USB C cables already to charge their iPads, Macs,
| and Apple TV remotes (yes, even that recently switched from
| Lightning to USB C).
| tails4e wrote:
| Was just on to apple support for an issue with my daughters
| phone, and I have to say it was a really nice experience. Good
| online chat first (may be a bot, but if so was a good one), and
| immediate call from a senior advisor when it needs to be
| escalated. Issue solved in 10 mins flat. Not sure how well it
| goes with others, but customer service counts for a lot and glad
| apple appreciate that.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Support is also great at an Apple Store. I walked in with a
| broken Apple Watch. A couple minutes later my Apple Care claim
| was taken care of, and 2 days later I had a replacement arrive
| on my doorstep.
| glitchc wrote:
| I was due for an upgrade and switched to Android this cycle.
| Acquired a unlocked Pixel 7 that was on sale in June and
| immediately reflashed it with GrapheneOS.
|
| Ultimately a very smooth experience. The difference in tracking
| is very evident as is the amount of data streaming out of the
| phone.
| nightshadetrie wrote:
| This is the exception, rather than the norm. Most users outside
| hacker news just want a phone that works.
| kaba0 wrote:
| But Google is again deliberately stupid with them, like, just
| goddamn.. sell it.. in Europe. I honestly can't even understand
| that there are like 3 Eu countries I could buy it, if I wanted
| to..
| sliken wrote:
| I have an unlocked 6, wife got the upgrade this cycle. Nice
| phone, but much nicer with GrapheneOS. Definitely feels like my
| phone, instead of the default Pixel which is more of a Google
| owned phone that they let you use.
| jftuga wrote:
| Getting Slack messages on my Apple Watch is nice when I am away
| from my phone but still in BT (wifi?) range. I know this not
| specific to iPhone, but the integration is nice.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Getting Duo pushes to my watch makes the whole MFA experience
| at work much less of a hassle.
| MBCook wrote:
| BT if in range, WiFi if not but on a known network. Done that
| way for power savings.
|
| I love my iPhone, but the ecosystem integration is also a huge
| point for me. The little ways different Apple products work
| together adds so much niceness and extra value above the
| utility of the individual products.
| sb057 wrote:
| I'm part of this statistic. I've been an Android user my entire
| adult life, but it really has been a constant downward spiral
| over these past several years. My previous three phones from LG,
| Motorola, and Xiaomi all had major software bugs that were never
| fixed, the biggest being just incredibly poor network
| connectivity (across multiple carriers, mind you) resulting in at
| least several calls just not connecting to me. I switched to an
| iPhone SE several months ago and have had zero issues whatsoever.
| I resent that my money went to a company like Apple, but there
| really is no alternative if you want a decent cell phone in 2023.
| ke88y wrote:
| Same. My last two androids literally didn't work as cell phones
| -- calls dropped all the time, SMS messages consistently failed
| to send, etc.
|
| I guess now I'm an Apple person, but I didn't choose Apple per
| se... I just needed a phone that actually worked.
|
| And switching platforms is so painful, I'm not going to switch
| back unless Apple shits the bed as badly as Android did.
| meroes wrote:
| Same. I had to make around 300 phone calls for a recent
| health ordeal by my rough estimates^. I went through 3
| androids and settled on used iPhone after learning my lesson.
| I can't tell you how frustrating it was to drop calls/not be
| heard/screen freeze/no ring. A cheap 3 year old iPhone worked
| so, so much better.
|
| ^if you're on "Obamacare", which is a godsend, finding a
| specialist on your own equates to being given an excel sheet
| with extremely uncurated or simply incorrect listings. Then
| finding a specialized occupational therapist after surgery,
| etc, etc.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| "there really is no alternative if you want a decent cell phone
| in 2023" is just plain wrong.
|
| I try to avoid lumping all of the android manufacturers
| together and treat them individually when comparing them to
| apple.
|
| LG, Motorola, and Xiaomi are not as good as apple but Samsung
| is. Decent argument to be made for OnePlus, Google, and Asus
| matching apple as well.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Having switched from Android to iPhone recently, it's not
| even the quality of the phone. It's the insane fragmentation,
| incomplete features, and random breaking features.
|
| I finally gave up when a pair of Bluetooth headphones
| couldn't pair with my phone. I realized that there are simply
| too many variations of Android for device manufacturers to
| test. With an iPhone, you know that most accessories are
| going to be tested against your specific model.
|
| Now that I'm on an iPhone, the integration between various
| device is insane. Answer a call in your watch, transfer it to
| your phone, then move it to your laptop. Seamlessly, cast
| music to speakers/tv/bluetooth and it just works, every
| single time.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > but Samsung is
|
| My current phone is a Samsung and I find it disappointing.
| Perhaps their good ones are limited to specific models?
| Xeamek wrote:
| >Perhaps their good ones are limited to specific models?
|
| I mean, that's kinda a given when samsung has offers
| ranging from the verry budget to the verry top (not to
| mention gimmicky ones like the folds)
| BossingAround wrote:
| The Galaxy models compete with iPhones. I've got an old
| Galaxy S10 that I got like 4 years ago and it still works
| great, even the battery is holding up so far.
| JohnFen wrote:
| My last two phones have been Galaxies. The first one was
| pretty great. The one I have now is not.
|
| It's not about longevity, though. They all easily last 5+
| years.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I also remember Samsung being bad in the past but I got a
| Fold 4 and the software is fantastic. Very little bloatware
| and many convenience/productivity features added over stock
| Android.
| meroes wrote:
| Yep I get way better service on iPhones. Even with wifi
| calling. I get 0-2 bars where I live. With my iPhone I don't
| even have a tenth of the same reception problems.
| mgh2 wrote:
| Curious, why do you "resent" your money going to Apple?
| sb057 wrote:
| https://stallman.org/apple.html
| ok123456 wrote:
| Because they're hostile to general purpose computing.
| lockhouse wrote:
| My UNIX workstation that I bought from them running a bunch
| of open source software installed with Home brew disagrees.
| Angostura wrote:
| Well, they certainly view phones as appliances, rather than
| general purpose computers. Personally, I'm fine with that
| MildRant wrote:
| They absolutely view phones as general purpose computers.
| It's why iOS is slowly turning into OS X.
| abenga wrote:
| Isn't it going the other way?
| Tagbert wrote:
| Not really. They are bringing features out on all of
| their platforms at the same time, now, so where is more
| feature constancy. Some iOS UI treatments have been
| brought to MacOS and some MacOS UI elements have been
| brought to iPadOS. But MacOS is not getting locked down
| the way that a phone is.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| They view all of their products as appliances rather than
| general purpose computers.
| kube-system wrote:
| General purpose computing is a concept that computer
| scientists appreciate. The vast majority of consumers buy
| products based on their cost/benefit of their features and
| overall experience, not ideology of their technical
| construction.
|
| You won't see too many people who decide to hand wash their
| dishes because they can't find a dishwasher with an
| unlocked bootloader. It either satisfactorily washes the
| dishes or it doesn't. Most people buy phones the same way.
| echelon wrote:
| General purpose computing was the default from 1990 -
| 2010.
|
| Apple killed it by turning computers into "devices" and
| "platforms". And now Google is killing the web.
|
| Fuck these two companies. They're too big, too
| unilaterally powerful, and their greed to control knows
| no bounds.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Yeah, it's true, you can't buy a general purpose
| computing device from Apple anymore. Apart from the Mac.
| Tagbert wrote:
| What could you buy before, apart from the Mac?
|
| Perhaps we need a definition of GPC?
| SllX wrote:
| You have to go back a long time, but just the Apple II[1]
| technically, and maybe the Newton, but both would be less
| general than a pre-App Store 2007 iPhone because Safari
| is such a difference maker.
|
| [1]: I, III, Lisa, too, but I mean you get the gist,
| kube-system wrote:
| The disconnect is that you're thinking about computers
| for their ability to do computing. Most people don't care
| about whether their computers are good at computing, but
| are instead trying to accomplish some _other_ task. In
| fact, the more that the 'computer' disappears, the
| _better_ in their mind.
| cglong wrote:
| The part that worries me is that Apple is stifling young
| people's imagination for what computers _can_ do.
| Aerroon wrote:
| They don't care until they need to do something that they
| can't do because their platform doesn't allow them to do
| it. There's no reason why compilers couldn't run on
| phones. Modern phones are more powerful than computers
| were even 15 years ago. And yet you can't do the things
| on a modern phone that you could on that computer from 15
| years ago. At least you can't do it nearly as easily
| because of artificial limitations.
| kube-system wrote:
| > And yet you can't do the things on a modern phone that
| you could on that computer from 15 years ago. At least
| you can't do it nearly as easily because of artificial
| limitations.
|
| This may be a con for enthusiasts, but these artificial
| 'limitations' are exactly _why_ Apple has been successful
| with the mass market. 15 years ago, computers were
| plagued by drive-by downloads, malvertising, and other
| crap. People in the early 00s spent millions of dollars
| paying repair technicians to uninstall toolbars, adware,
| and other junk software they were duped into installing.
| Aerroon wrote:
| But Apple, Google and co do the same thing themselves.
| Here's an example from Android:
|
| Mom gets a new Android phone.
|
| The phone asks if she wants to back up pictures she takes
| (it even used a weird word in my native language that I
| had never heard before).
|
| She selects yes.
|
| A few months later Google tells her to upgrade her
| subscription plan for Google Drive, because her Drive
| space is full. If she doesn't upgrade then scary things
| will happen!! (They said she wouldn't receive emails
| anymore.)
|
| So she comes to me with it. It's an annoying process to
| delete the photos, especially when you're trying to make
| sure it only deletes it on Drive and not locally.
|
| A week later she comes to me and says her drive space is
| full again, because the phone will keep pestering her to
| turn on cloud backups.
|
| I have no faith that Apple doesn't pull some similar
| types of tricks. People who don't handle computing
| devices well will fall for all of these prompts about
| this and that. The alternative is that they never update
| their phone and don't understand why things don't work
| anymore.
| eduction wrote:
| Your comment has nothing to do with what you're replying
| to. He's explaining (at someone else's request) his own
| consumer choices. He can make his choices and the people
| you're talking about can make their choices.
| kube-system wrote:
| And I can point out that I think that opinion is just as
| silly as resenting my dishwasher for lacking a JTAG port
| on the front panel. iPhone's aren't Stallman's college
| mainframe. They _are_ consumer products.
| [deleted]
| lazide wrote:
| For me it's things like iCloud Photos having no API to access
| them and no reasonable way to pull them out or back them up.
| So very much a trap. Among other things.
| Tagbert wrote:
| I back them up on my Mac to BackBlaze and TimeMachine .
| They are just local files at that point.
| lazide wrote:
| Do you see all the photos in the photos app (and hence
| iCloud Photos) in iCloud Drive? Near as I can tell,
| they're separate and this is by design.
|
| This impacts pictures or videos taken on phones, iPad's
| etc by default; as they go into iCloud Photos, not iCloud
| Drive.
| meroes wrote:
| I will fully admit this is a big problem with Apple. God
| forbid you have two iCloud accounts and want to merge (not
| just the photos) My sister has two from living in another
| country for a decade and me, our dad, her husband, and her
| gave up after hours and hours and multiple trips to the
| Apple Store. I see there are some software out there but it
| shouldn't require it to merge what are essentially files,
| and who knows if they will merge everything. I think we'd
| have to download individual documents, maybe in batches of
| 10, from what I remember.
| filoleg wrote:
| There was a thread on HN in the past few days linking
| this[0] post about a tool that seems to solve just that
| problem.
|
| 0. https://eclecticlight.co/2023/07/17/how-does-icloud-
| work-plu...
| lazide wrote:
| Thanks! I looked into it when that article got posted
| actually, and near as I can tell that isn't a solution to
| this problem - and that is fully intentional on Apple's
| part - because:
|
| 1) That article is for things in iCloud Drive, which is
| everything EXCEPT iCloud Photos. Though you can put
| photos in iCloud Drive (as files), they just won't be
| seen as photos, visible in iCloud Photos (or the Photos
| app), etc. without importing them on an Apple device
| manually into the Photos app. Where they'll then be
| synced into iCloud Photos.
|
| The photos that are imported/stored in the Photos App on
| Apple devices also are not visible in iCloud Drive after
| being imported into iCloud Photos.
|
| 2) It only works on Mac/Apple devices. And only locally.
| So you'd need to sync to a Mac device, then backup the
| mac device, then hope it all works. No direct backup is
| available. So even if it did allow syncing iCloud Photos,
| it is a really awkward and brittle way to back them up.
|
| 3) There ARE APIs for iCloud Drive. But not iCloud
| Photos.
|
| The web iCloud Photos interfaces also only does manual
| per-album level downloads (no Takeout or global download
| equivalent) of photos using the web interface), which
| stops working at scale VERY quickly.
|
| Notably, Google Photos stopped providing the Google Drive
| interface to Google Photos shortly after Apple made this
| their standard operating procedure. So it's a common
| theme.
|
| Though Google Photos does have APIs and Takeout, so it's
| lockin is less 'firm', and they're definitely less
| obnoxious about it. The Takeout data requires some
| significant massaging to get equivalent from what is
| visible in Google Photos though.
|
| This is the kind of sneaky trap I've learned to be wary
| of, as Apple does this a lot for lock-in purposes with
| their hardware too.
| jerrygenser wrote:
| Funny, my last android was samsung which I had many of the
| issues you describe above, and in particular it felt very
| bloated. I've been getting older generation Pixel S and they
| are very good for the price. usually 1/4 the price of a
| comparable flagship iOS and I never have any issues.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Samsung is the Apple of android.
|
| Big marketing budget, mid performance at best.
| Xeamek wrote:
| what's above mid performance in android world then?
| lockhouse wrote:
| What's mid performance about an iPhone?
| s3p wrote:
| Nothing. The iPhone SoC blows every android out of the
| water. Apple has been dominating mobile performance ever
| since they went to 64-bit in 2013. That's a decade of
| leadership in silicon. No android comes close. Not sure
| what OP is thinking.
| lazide wrote:
| Per dollar? Everything. If cost is not considered,
| nothing much really.
| lockhouse wrote:
| The Samsung Galaxy S23 and iPhone 14 both start at $799.
| lazide wrote:
| Which versions, exactly?
|
| Because each one of those has 3 (Samsung) or 4 (iPhone)
| major models with wildly different specs, and each of
| those specs has often times major differences in quality
| between the two lines.
|
| [https://www.pcmag.com/news/samsung-galaxy-s23-vs-apple-
| iphon...]
|
| Samsungs adware and weird modifications being a major
| negative IMO too. Though that's a taste thing I guess.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Unlocked direct from the manufacturer:
|
| https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-14
|
| https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-s23/buy/gal
| axy...
| lazide wrote:
| I meant, which versions are you explicitly comparing and
| saying are equivalent.
| lockhouse wrote:
| The ones I linked. $799 for the unlocked versions direct
| from the manufacturer with 128GB of storage. The regular
| ones not the plus or max ones.
| sportslife wrote:
| The cameras: once you take a 10x zoom on a trip, it's
| hard to imagine not having.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I've been using Google Fi as a wireless provider for years and
| have been using their phones as a result. I've only once ever
| had an issue with one of the phones from a software standpoint
| and it took me a while to figure out how to port over my
| contacts (I had to export them to an Apple format and then
| import them). I've stayed away from Apple products because (1)
| the Google products don't have a ton of corporate fluff like
| Samsung products, (2) Apple phones tend to do "magic" things
| that just annoy the hell out of me, and (3) Android Auto just
| works.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>really is no alternative if you want a decent cell phone in
| 2023.
|
| False, Pixel phone. Same deal as the manufacturer of the OS is
| making the hardware so you get tighter integration
| lynndotpy wrote:
| I'm part of this statistic too, in a different way. Android
| worked perfectly for me, but the OS was increasingly dumbed
| down and Androids consistently threw out features I loved.
| (Headphone jack, expandable storage, full rectangular screens).
|
| Androids threw away their market differentiation just to become
| bad iPhone clones. When I found myself needing a new phone, I
| had little reason not to consider an iPhone.
|
| I bought an SE, then bought a Pixel 4a because of iOS issues,
| but I am here again considering an iPhone as my 4a nears EOL. I
| share your resentment of giving money to Apple.
| catiopatio wrote:
| When the choice is between Apple and Google, why do you
| resent giving money to Apple?
| nashashmi wrote:
| I am also part of this statistic. I feel like android dumbed
| down the google assistant. Sometimes I am no longer sure what
| app is called on hey google. In comparison to Bixby, the tech
| became worse.
|
| I would have switched to SE if my wife did not get me a pro
| for my birthday (to communicate in iMessage). And now I am on
| this boring phone no longer passionate about phones anymore.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _And now I am on this boring phone no longer passionate
| about phones anymore._
|
| Oh man, I could not relate more to this. With how hard it
| has become to run rooted, for the first time in well over a
| decade I'm running stock Android with no root. It used to
| be so exciting! A computer in my pocket! But more and more
| Apple's (awful IMHO) vision of the phone as an "appliance"
| rather than a general purpose computer is becoming true,
| and it's depressing. I don't even really care about specs
| anymore, cause I can't do much with that horsepower anyway.
|
| I haven't gotten to the point of giving Apple any money
| yet, and probably won't as the Pixel A is affordable and
| does everything I need, but I miss the good old days so
| much. I've been hearing people say I should try GrapheneOS,
| maybe it's time to finally try it.
| stavros wrote:
| I've been thinking about switching to an iPhone because I'm
| tired of never upgrading my phone to avoid it breaking, but the
| fact that I can't install ReVanced or an adblocker stops me. I
| don't know if I'll ever change my mind on this, lack of good ad
| blocking really is a dealbreaker for me.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Interesting you didn't name the two brands that are true, non-
| Chinese flagship Android: Pixel and Samsung.
|
| If you want true software freedom on a phone, there is
| GrapheneOS on Pixel. I think Samsung is the better UI of the
| two, but if my Samsung breaks I think I'll go pixel and go
| graphene.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > My previous three phones from LG, Motorola, and Xiaomi all
| had major software bugs
|
| I see this pattern with a lot of IPhone users. They tried the
| cheapest worst quality android phones and came away with a bad
| taste in the mouth. So iPhone is the only "decent cellphone in
| 2023". My dude you never tried the good android phones. Get a
| Samsung galaxy flagship. These are at par, if not better than
| the similarly priced iPhone model in all respects.
| zvmaz wrote:
| I mainly used Samsung phones with KISS launcher and very few
| apps (not even Google Play); it has been more or less stable
| throughout the years.
| tyfon wrote:
| I kind of went the other way, I have had androids since
| 2010ish, then tried an iphone at the beginning of corona since
| my old sony phone couldn't run teams properly. Had it for 2
| years and hated it so much I went back to android.
|
| I couldn't even install a separate browser like firefox that
| was not just a skin and the ad-block on safari drove me crazy.
| It only prevented items from being displayed but not the
| network requests etc.
|
| Also, it was nagging me a lot, constantly asking for me to sign
| up to icloud and other things.
|
| Back on a pixel phone now and couldn't be more happy really.
| OO000oo wrote:
| Yeah, I don't see how Apple can claim to prioritize privacy
| when they won't even allow real ad blocking.
| tbihl wrote:
| I think Apple's strong claim is security, not privacy.
| 121789 wrote:
| they claim privacy very strongly. you can see billboards
| or commercials where privacy is their only selling point
| howinteresting wrote:
| ???
|
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/03/14/privacy-thats-
| iph...
| OO000oo wrote:
| The 3 story "Privacy. That's iPhone." billboard down the
| street from me suggests otherwise.
| s3p wrote:
| Except they do? You can get a VPN app that blocks network
| requests, like 1Blocker. Also AFAIK android doesn't support
| adblockers?
| KGy wrote:
| Firefox on Android does allow you to run an adblocker.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Is that a sincere argument? Guy was talking about and
| blocking in the browser
| redgreenshoe wrote:
| It's been possible to install ad blockers for the browser
| on iPhones for years, without resorting to a VPN. I don't
| bother anymore because I'm usually at home and have a
| pihole anyway, but I used to use Firefox Focus--not as my
| browser, but to provide ad-blocking for Safari. Worked
| fine. Open it once to set it up (at least IIRC that was
| necessary--I don't remember, but there was some very-
| simple setup step I'm pretty sure) then never open it
| again. Ads blocked in Safari. Tons of other options, free
| and paid.
|
| You do need a VPN (or otherwise something network-level)
| to block ads in apps, I think. That's a fair point.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| Thanks for the FFF app, just downloaded and enabled
| safari integration, ads no more
| alibert wrote:
| Ads blocking on Safari browser is complete since iOS 15
| when Apple allowed custom extensions to be added to the
| browser.
|
| Nowadays, ads blocker use a mix of Content blockers rules
| (1) and an Safari extension (2) to block ads.
|
| [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservice
| s/cre...
|
| [2] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservice
| s/saf...
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| I remember a friend telling me why use iPhone instead of
| Android:
|
| "I already deal with problems at work, I don't want to deal
| with problems with my phone"
|
| Truer words never said, I also had several androids over the
| years which went crazy after some time, switched to iPhone,
| never an issue again.
| [deleted]
| willio58 wrote:
| > I resent that my money went to a company like Apple
|
| When comparing Apple to a companies like LG, Motorola, and
| Xiaomi, what do you find to be worse about Apple? Genuine
| question.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| As long as we are comparing anecdotes I've used a cheap one
| note Android for years and it's amazing
| mydriasis wrote:
| > Despite inflation numbers falling through the quarter and
| ongoing strength in the job market, consumers hesitated to
| upgrade their devices amid market uncertainty."
|
| > Apple's resilience was driven by strong promotions across
| postpaid and prepaid. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile continued to
| offer $800+ promo credits for the iPhone 14 while old-generation
| iPhones were also steeply discounted across prepaid. We are
| seeing no weakness in the overall promotional activity.
|
| Perfect storm, especially for a broke-ass like me. When it stops
| being about features and starts being about "cheap"...
|
| Then again, I'm going dumb phone next month, which is _even
| cheaper_. Take that, smartphone market!
| salad-tycoon wrote:
| What did you settle on? I'm starting to fantasize this reality
| too. I have an iPhone now.
| mydriasis wrote:
| I'm going to be getting a Nokia 6300 4G. Smart enough to have
| google maps, dumb enough to stay out of my head.
|
| I've been recommended to "just get a GPS" -- they're like
| $300, and I'm cheap :) so my dumpy little phone will have to
| do the job. That's like, the #1 thing I _really need_ out of
| a phone; the rest is distracting trash.
|
| The best part is that you can pay _ridiculously low_ prices
| month to month through various carriers. Like $15 / month in
| the US, on top of the phone being $70. Good stuff in my
| opinion. I thought I was getting off good with ~$45 a month
| for Google Fi.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > I've been recommended to "just get a GPS" -- they're like
| $300, and I'm cheap :)
|
| Get a second-hand Android device for those tasks, install
| LineageOS and F-Droid/Aurora Droid, don't put in a SIM card
| and you're set for much less than $300. You'll be running
| free software - e.g. OsmAnd for mapping using off-line
| maps, no connectivity necessary - and you won't be feeding
| Google (et al) your data as you will using that Nokia. The
| battery will last a long time with connectivity disabled as
| well, longer than that on those $300 GPS receivers.
| mydriasis wrote:
| ...
|
| This is a _fascinating_ idea. I have a Pixel 4a right
| now, can I install this stuff on there and just switch to
| a dumb phone entirely for... phone purposes?
|
| It looks [0] like this shouldn't be too tough...
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgNWaORMM9I
| 6581 wrote:
| >I have a Pixel 4a right now, can I install this stuff on
| there
|
| GrapheneOS is available for the 4a.
| saltcured wrote:
| To be clear, there is no need to replace the stock
| firmware unless you are taking a hard ideological stance.
| You can install F-Droid on most any Android phone, then
| install OSMAnd+ from F-Droid over WiFi, download some
| maps, and then turn off the networks to use it offline as
| a GPS-only device.
|
| Replacing the firmware with something de-googled would
| make it more certain that don't login with a Google
| account during initial phone setup nor send any telemetry
| during that period before you go offline, or if you go
| back online eventually for map updates etc.
|
| Also, if you're going to use it offline as just a "GPS
| tool", you might not care about other issues like getting
| firmware updates. It won't be subject to attack if you're
| offline and not browsing the internet...
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| That's just an exercise though really. You NEED a smartphone
| nowadays for everyday life: banking, gym access, maps, etc.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> gym access_
|
| Where do you live that gyms don't work without a
| smartphone? Must be some hipster SV place with Juiceros and
| Keurigs I imagine.
|
| All the gyms I've been to in Europe give you either a
| physical RFID card or armband for access when you sign up,
| no smartphone required. Then again I've only been to the
| most budget gyms, not the uber-fancy ones of tech-bros,
| lawyers and corporate elites, so maybe those gyms have
| "smarter" access systems too but I couldn't care less.
| kube-system wrote:
| The epitome of cheap gyms in the US, Planet Fitness, uses
| QR code check in. They used to give out keychain barcode
| tags, but stopped during COVID.
| didntcheck wrote:
| I know at least Puregym in the UK eschews physical
| passes, and while 80% of people check in by scanning the
| QR code on the app, they also just give you a number
| which you can put in the keypad on the door instead
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| > You NEED a smartphone nowadays for everyday life:
| banking, gym access, maps
|
| It is bizarre to me that anyone would state the few minutes
| saved per month on these as NEEDS.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Fwiw, I have smartphone (iPhone 12 work mandated /
| provided, and a samsung note for myself), but I don't use
| it for banking, gym, shopping, payments, etc. Guess I'm old
| school but Financial stuff I like to do on computer, for
| access I like physical tokens. Yes I print my air tickets!
| :-) I like to reduce my failure modes and I view my phone
| as disposable, even though tech companies want to equate it
| with my life / identity.
| mydriasis wrote:
| I really don't. I exercise at home. I can just go to the
| bank, or if I have a balance inquiry, call them. They also
| have a desktop web application that I can use. The only one
| I really need on that list is maps, which my dumpy trash-
| heap will have.
| FourHand451 wrote:
| Perhaps I'm out of the loop, but why do you need a
| smartphone for gym access?
| lrvick wrote:
| Not had a smartphone or even a cell phone plan in years. I
| live in silicon valley and run a b2b company.
|
| I manage bank accounts, travel a lot, keep up with friends,
| clients, and peers, etc etc, and get by fine with looking
| up directions before I leave with a paper map as a backup.
|
| Turns out you actually do not NEED a phone. I have a very
| digitally connected lifestyle which makes it that much more
| important I be -disconnected- whenever a workstation screen
| is not in front of me so I can be -present- in whatever I
| am doing or with whomever I am doing it with.
| davidf18 wrote:
| [dead]
| trashface wrote:
| This must be a generational thing as I'm older and don't
| need apps for banking or gym, but yeah maps is definitely a
| requirement.
| eimrine wrote:
| You can have a non-ios non-android device for maps, visit a
| non-requiring a smartphone gym, use a plastic card instead
| of NFC and a website instead of bank app. Also use
| phone/email for voice/text conversations instead of 14 apps
| every one of which are full of ads.
| pmontra wrote:
| Yes to all of that except for banking. I have to confirm
| login and every operation with either an OTP generated by
| the app of the bank or with a fingerprint in the app of
| the bank. In the best case they could run on am emulator
| on my laptop but I never checked if it works.
| ars wrote:
| > going dumb phone next month, which is _even cheaper_
|
| You sure it's cheaper? I've been unable to find a dump phone
| for a good price - a used smartphone on eBay is far far
| cheaper. Also a Chinese android phone, and just don't use the
| "smart" parts.
| mydriasis wrote:
| Yeah, $70 for a new Nokia! Not bad if you ask me.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have a love/hate relationship with Verizon. Okay, more often
| hate/hate, but still. They have the best network in this area
| when we're out in the sticks. But their pricing is pretty high.
| They'll offer $800 on a new iPhone, and then the credit comes
| one month at a time over 36 months. Meanwhile, you're paying
| $70-80 per phone. You might as well take the upgrade when
| available, if you're going to stick with them, because
| otherwise you're just paying for other people's upgrades.
|
| I'd switch to Visible (the Verizon prepaid) and pay half the
| price, except they don't yet support standalone Apple watches.
| So we continue to pay almost $200/mo for a family of four (with
| only two real smartphones), because of those watches. Some day
| the kids will be old enough that my wife will let them have
| smartphones, and we'll switch to some plan that costs half as
| much.
| clairity wrote:
| visible is a good deal as long as your area isn't
| oversubscribed for verizon (luckily mine isn't).
|
| any reason why the watches have to be completely standalone?
| does the family setup not work for having multiple watches
| managed by one phone?
| orangepurple wrote:
| Check if your phone supports Band 71 and even better if there
| is a tower which broadcasts on it near you:
| https://www.cellmapper.net/
|
| If there is, you can probably find success with T-Mobile or
| their MVNOs
|
| Example: https://www.cellmapper.net/map?MCC=310&MNC=260&type=
| LTE&lati...
| dopamean wrote:
| I use visible. It has been trash basically everywhere I go. I
| live in austin and it's almost completely useless there. I
| haven't traveled to a single area yet where I've been happy
| with the service.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I switched to prepaid MVNO because I didn't want to do
| research everytime I made a billing decision with Verizon /
| ATT.
|
| Give me a monthly price. Give me a monthly data number. Then
| stop talking.
| mydriasis wrote:
| This is exactly the route I plan to take :)
| selykg wrote:
| Yup, there are plenty of MVNOs out there that operate on
| your choice of network. I use US Mobile, which I'm
| generally happy with. I haven't even had to think about it
| really for the past 2 years. Better yet, there was a recent
| price reduction, instead of a price increase as I was
| almost always dealing with on Verizon or AT&T. I think I
| went from $25/mo to $21/mo.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Att prepaid 16gigs at 300 a year is a deal.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Who else has cheap data sims? Is this still a killer feature
| of GoogleFi alone (one time $5 fee for a data sim)?
|
| I really wish companies would be happy to sell data. Making a
| bunch of addon charges to get me to he point where I can
| consume data is such a defiance of what these companies best
| utility should be: carrying data.
|
| The one other thing that almost wholly shapes who I'd go with
| for an MVNO is what speed I get after soft cap. Everyone has
| unlimited & everyone will eventually slow you down to much
| slower speeds: what life is like after that threshold is why
| I cling to my absurdly expensive very grandfathered Verizon
| Unlimited, which they won't even let me bump my SMS allowance
| on.
| mighmi wrote:
| Mint Mobile is $15/month for unlimited.
| flyingcircus3 wrote:
| That's $10 more than I pay for Mint Mobile.
| kbenson wrote:
| Yeah, if the constant youtube ads with Ryan Reynolds I
| see are anything to go by, they've dropped their price
| once or twice.
| josefresco wrote:
| Unlimited = 40 GB then "480p speeds"
| mydriasis wrote:
| What a wreck. Then, I'm never surprised. It's always been a
| rip-off built on having the "next best thing" at all times.
| Well, a price is paid for that, as you demonstrate. Blech!
| trashface wrote:
| I also don't want to spend a lot of money on phones and when my
| last android phone broke (dropped it one too many times and the
| glass shattered) I got an iPhone SE. But I kind of hate it.
| When the better goes (which will only be a few years, I'm
| amazed at how poor the capacity is, you really don't get a lot
| of value with low end apple phones) I'm going to switch back to
| cheap android with a big battery. I'm a low-usage phone user so
| android was fine for me.
| simonh wrote:
| For me the sweet spot is an SE with a battery case. A 'full
| size' phone still wouldn't cut it with my usage, so this way
| it's heavy, but still fairly compact and gets the job done.
| codyb wrote:
| Ha, what a world! I've known that Apple's actually been fairly
| competitive from a cost benefit analysis wise for a long time
| at the hardware level but it's very funny to see a comment
| associating Apple with being the cheaper option.
|
| Edit: I see you answered below ;-)
|
| Which dumbphone are you getting? (Nokia) That's awesome. I've
| been doing a PHONEVORCE lately... it's been several years in
| the making as I've shed all social media, and deleted and
| blocked nearly everything that I can waste time on with my
| phone.
|
| Now my phone use is for looking at maps, checking which
| aircraft are nearby, email, and direct messaging.
|
| It's pretty calm! I'm reading more, mental health seems very
| good, I learn neighborhoods really well cause I don't use GPS.
|
| It's really nice not staring at that fucking box all the time.
| mydriasis wrote:
| Omg I've been describing it as a phone divorce as well.
|
| For all the same reasons.
|
| With all of the same external requirements like maps.
|
| ...
|
| Are you me?
| codyb wrote:
| haha! Oddly enough... my middle name is Sam no less!
| prox wrote:
| iPhone has always been a superior experience to me. While it may
| not have that tinkering ability like an Android, on the whole
| Apps are much higher quality, more paying customers as a dev,
| lots of things that just work between devices.
|
| I think it's deserved in that sense.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| > lots of things that just work between devices
|
| Only if those are apple devices. Between an idevice and a
| windows or linux laptop the "just works" factor has been quite
| unimpressive.
| MBCook wrote:
| The quality of indie apps on iOS has always been a huge draw
| for me.
|
| Unfortunately that's mostly been replaced by the swamp of
| garbage from IAP and ad driven filth that only cares about
| money.
|
| But the gems are still there.
| tungah wrote:
| No doubt iOS has great exclusive apps, however, Android has
| some gems as well. Newpipe, Buzzkill, the ability to have any
| browser engine you want, 3rd party app stores, 3rd party
| launchers, I'm sure I'm forgetting some other perks. Both
| platforms have their strengths.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I have both types of phones, an Android one privately and an
| iPhone for work, and in direct comparison I honestly prefer the
| Android user experience. It's not that I love Android, but the
| iPhone feels so often clunky to me.
|
| - There's a greater reliance on gesture-based tricks, which I
| find unintuitive and undiscoverable
|
| - I often feel stressed when using the iPhone because I can't
| figure out how to do basic things while under time duress. This
| is as simple as hanging up on a call I had on speaker and left
| to navigate to other apps: There's the green bar at the top
| indicating I'm still in the call, but I cannot figure out how
| to get back to it. If I swiped it out it's gone from the multi-
| tasking overview (without ending it), and unlike in Android you
| can't drag down the notification tray and access the call via a
| notification bubble
|
| - There's reproducable little bugs that annoy me. For example
| when I initially boot up the phone, I can't tap the password
| field to open the on-screen keyboard. It doesn't work. I have
| to turn the screen off and turn it back on, and then I can open
| the keyboard
|
| - There's flows that admittedly are used rarely but that are
| enormously clunky. If you open a certificate file to import,
| you get a frigging dialog box telling you to manually go to the
| Settings app and approve it in some well hidden sub-section.
| Why doesn't the dialog offer you a jump straight into there?
| These kinds of flows of composing screen pages from different
| apps into sequences is something Android does extremely well
| with the Activities concept
|
| - The Share flows feel underdeveloped vs. Android
|
| etc.
| alexdbird wrote:
| > There's the green bar at the top indicating I'm still in
| the call, but I cannot figure out how to get back to it.
|
| For future reference, you tap the green bar.
|
| > approve it in some well hidden sub-section
|
| I have a feeling this might be deliberate friction to make
| social engineering harder.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > There's the green bar at the top indicating I'm still in
| the call, but I cannot figure out how to get back to it.
|
| You may be overthinking things. Just tap the bar. :)
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| If I were in the situation the guy described I definitely
| would have tried swiping down and then got confused when
| that didn't work. I guess I'd eventually try tapping it.
|
| I haven't used iOS in years though, maybe if I was used to
| it then tapping would have been my first impulse. Do you
| often have to tap on the top/bottom of the screen to do
| things?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| You aren't really tapping on the top/bottom of the screen
| in an arbitrary way. There's a green oval indicator that
| you're on a call (or a blue oval if you have map
| navigation as I mentioned in my sibling post to yours).
| You tap on that indicator. It's been that way for years
| now. Perhaps it's not the _most_ intuitive, but it 's not
| totally unintuitive and it makes a lot more sense to tap
| an indicator object than to try swiping randomly.
| duskwuff wrote:
| On some older phones it's just a horizontal bar at the
| top of the screen. But it also says "touch to return to
| call" on it, so that should be fairly self-explanatory.
| :)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Also works for maps which also adds an indicator in the
| status bar. Very handy.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Or any other "thing" that uses your camera/mic. You will
| get a clear indicator that it is being used, and touching
| it brings you to the app in question.
| flutas wrote:
| I just swapped to a Pixel Fold from an iPhone 14 myself. Some
| of the issues you talk about are present on both, but are
| issues in different ways imo.
|
| > - There's reproducable little bugs that annoy me. For
| example when I initially boot up the phone, I can't tap the
| password field to open the on-screen keyboard. It doesn't
| work. I have to turn the screen off and turn it back on, and
| then I can open the keyboard
|
| I've also noticed bugs with the PIN input, where it just
| won't register touches at first when the screen turns on,
| leading to a missed digit at the start.
|
| > If you open a certificate file to import, you get a
| frigging dialog box telling you to manually go to the
| Settings app and approve it in some well hidden sub-section.
| Why doesn't the dialog offer you a jump straight into there?
|
| This is 100% an issue on Android now too. Not sure when they
| made the change, but certs result in a dialog essentially
| saying "go to settings."
| [deleted]
| salad-tycoon wrote:
| I finally convinced some in-laws to get an se2 after telling them
| it wasn't really cheaper to keep buying terrible no name Samsung
| phones every other year. They have also both become photographers
| now and can FaceTime easily to see grandkids. So mark me down for
| contributing 2. Your welcome Apple.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Samsung also makes quite a few phones with decent cameras.
|
| Are you saying the SE2 specifically fills a hole in their line-
| up?
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| Long support (5+ years), physical first-party stores for
| support every 100ish miles in the USA, compatibility with
| Apple's proprietary iMessage and FaceTime protocols. An OS
| that's generally considered easier to use, with more walls in
| place to protect users from malware. A simple $400ish price
| point.
|
| Not a huge difference from Samsung's cheaper offerings on
| paper, but a lot of little things that add up to a better
| experience for many older users.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| My limited experience with the Apple store seem a reason to
| stay AWAY from Apple.
|
| They wouldn't look at the phone. They made me stand in line
| _to make an appointment to come back_ , all the while their
| team of "experts" stood around chatting. It came across to
| me as horribly elitist, and one of the worst retail
| experiences I can recall.
| Klonoar wrote:
| To you, that's elitist.
|
| To the average person, that's just... how things work.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Low end iPhones are in the 100-300 range for 11s and 12s
| and generally work well for non tech users.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Also, entry level iPhones and iPads don't have anemic SoCs.
| They're just a generation or so behind what gets put in the
| flagship Pro models, which are still more powerful than
| what you'll find in many less-than-flagship Android phones.
|
| I have an upper-entry-level Android tablet I bought for
| development/testing which has a price that's within
| spitting distance of that of a refurbished iPad, and it's
| stunning that something as weak as the SoC it's built with
| is on store shelves in 2023. It lags and stutters all over
| the place, and even an entry level iPad from 4 years ago
| carrying around the extra weight of the latest version of
| iPadOS would destroy it in terms of performance.
| kaba0 wrote:
| It's honestly not even funny how much ahead iphone CPUs
| are to the at the time flagship android offerings. There
| is like 2, sometimes _3_ years of difference.
| Knee_Pain wrote:
| The SE 2020 being extra cheap (and even the 2022 model if you
| look well enough) is only a product of the used market and the
| fact that that line of iPhones is often overlooked, so people
| selling them really lowball the price more often than not.
| Apple doesn't actually have a lot to do with it.
| martin_drapeau wrote:
| FaceTime and iMessage always work very well and out of the box.
| No installation/configuration required.
|
| This, in my mind, is the biggest selling feature for iPhones to
| baby boomers. Locks them in forever as well.
| didntcheck wrote:
| WhatsApp takes about two clicks to setup. My 60 year old and
| generally technophobic mum and all her friends have managed
| to set it up and use it themselves (including group chats and
| profile pictures)
| runako wrote:
| > mum
|
| This is perhaps a giveaway that you're not in the US, where
| WhatsApp is generally not something people use to
| communicate. (Anecdotally, I have seen it primarily used
| among people who have families outside the US.) FaceTime,
| on the other hand, is widely used here.
| realusername wrote:
| Yeah, iMessage just lost in Europe and pretty much
| everywhere outside the US.
|
| Part of the issue is the Apple only lock-in, part of the
| issue is the branding, being branded as an SMS app when
| SMS are dead certainly doesn't help.
| gcbirzan wrote:
| But he was talking about how hard it is to set up, not
| whether people use it.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| What matters is what your friends use. If grandmas friends
| already got setup on iPhones she is better off with one as
| well
| throw9away6 wrote:
| 11s we're running less than 100$ per phone. By far the best low
| end phones
| matchbok wrote:
| Years and years of terrible decisions from Google (15 messaging
| apps, Android SDK glitches that still exist from 2010, copying
| Apple's features instead of leading) will only continue to let
| Apple dominate. There's simply no reason to choose Android -
| iPhone does everything better, for the same price.
| wvenable wrote:
| My wife is totally in the iOS ecosystem and I'm fully in the
| Samsung ecosystem and they both have their pros and cons. Pros
| on Android: My work profile is isolated from my personal
| profile, I can just copy movies onto the device and play them
| with VLC, automatic routines are better, audio controls are
| much better, the back button, ad blockers, real alternative
| browsers, etc.
|
| The problem with long term iPhone users is that they don't know
| what they don't know. Superficially, it's very easy to see an
| Android phone and an inferior iPhone if you only look at what
| iPhones can do.
|
| That being said, I always recommend iPhones over Android for
| family/friends/etc. For someone like myself, who is a little
| bit technical I actually prefer the control, customization, and
| advanced features of Android. I actually find iPhones to be
| frustratingly simplistic.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Yeah pixel line phones are the only decent android devices but
| they aren't as good as iPhones and they cost the same. 6 or so
| years ago they were competing at the 400-500$ range and were
| actually a good trade off
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| I'm sorry, but - "for the same price"? You must live in a very
| different place than I do.
| matchbok wrote:
| Low-end iPhones outperform and outlast high-end Android
| phones. Nobody keeps an Android longer than 3 years because
| it slows down and doesn't get updates. Not the case for
| iPhone.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| > I'm sorry, but - "for the same price"? You must live in a
| very different place than I do.
|
| iPhone 14 Plus MSRP: $899.
|
| Google Pixel 7 Pro MSRP: $899.
|
| Guess which one will last longer and have higher resale?
| flutas wrote:
| Why compare the lower end iPhone to the higher end Android?
|
| iPhone 14 Pro: $999
|
| Pixel 7 Pro: $899
|
| iPhone 14: $799
|
| Pixel 7: $599
|
| Pixel 7a: $499
| macintosh-hd wrote:
| Why did you exclude the iPhone SE?
| flutas wrote:
| Because I'm lazy and honestly forgot it existed. It's
| also over a year old at this point and is considered to
| be "last gen" along side the iPhone 13).
|
| Can't edit to add it.
| drcongo wrote:
| The lower end iPhone still outperforms the higher end
| Android.
| flutas wrote:
| Except they aren't comparing straight price.
|
| Here's the quote again.
|
| > There's simply no reason to choose Android - iPhone
| does everything better, for the same price.
|
| The person you replied to, then replied
|
| > I'm sorry, but - "for the same price"? You must live in
| a very different place than I do.
|
| They are saying that android phones don't have to cost
| the same as iPhones for the same functionality. A point
| you made for them by having to compare a pro of one to a
| bigger screen normal version to get the same price.
| drcongo wrote:
| You're struggling a little here aren't you. 1) it wasn't
| me that compared them, 2) " _There 's simply no reason to
| choose Android - iPhone does everything better, for the
| same price._" - which it does, even for the same price,
| and 3) " _They are saying that android phones don 't have
| to cost the same as iPhones for the same functionality._"
| - it's not the same functionality if we've already
| established that the iPhone does it better, even if you
| spend the same amount of money.
| bitsandboots wrote:
| In what? What are you doing that hasn't become so fast
| it's imperceptibly different on all modern phones? They
| all seem to text, browse, email, and play media at the
| required FPS and load time to me.
|
| Yes I have seen synthetic benchmarks. But, they haven't
| had any relevance to what I do on my phone since like
| 2012, so I'm wondering what other people are doing?
| alexdbird wrote:
| The performance becomes more relevant when it's running
| the latest OS update over 5 years later. Software only
| ever gets heavier, as a rule.
| [deleted]
| throw9away6 wrote:
| I'm locked into the blue bubble... also hate Google with a
| passion for being so damn evil
| djhworld wrote:
| I'm thinking of making the switch to iPhone this year once the
| USB-C model comes out
|
| Whether I regret it, not sure, I mean Android isn't _that_ bad
| really and the Samsung phones are good, but I think Apple have
| nailed the ecosystem thing a lot better than what google have.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > Android isn't _that_ bad
|
| I recently sold a bicycle to a guy, over Craigslist. He sent me
| the funds with Venmo from his Pixel 7. Not only did it take
| tens of seconds for Venmo to initially draw itself, after that
| the platform offered, in a pop-up dialog, to kill the process
| every few seconds. The entire experience was pure jank. I don't
| know what that person had done to their phone but it should
| have been up to Android to have prevented it. That's Google's
| flagship phone!
| thefourthchime wrote:
| Every couple of years, I'd pick up an Android to see what I
| might be missing. My history includes the HTC1, Samsung 7, and
| Pixel 3.
|
| But last time, I realized that while both types of phones were
| fine, the ecosystem between Apple and Android was like night
| and day. Even if the iPhone was a way worse phone, there'd be
| so much in the Apple ecosystem I'd also have to ditch. That's
| just a no-go.
|
| Here's what I found from my last Android adventure:
|
| 1. The iPhone gets the basics right. It might not have the
| flashy AI stuff of Pixels or the folding thing from Samsungs,
| but it doesn't drop the ball on the basics like some others I
| mentioned.
|
| 2. Apple usually doesn't rush out half-done features to get
| people talking. New stuff is generally thought out and
| polished.
|
| Adding a bit more to this, here are some things about iPhones
| not talked about much:
|
| 3. Attention to detail. There are loads of tiny things that on
| their own don't seem like a big deal, but when you put them
| together they make a huge difference in the experience. A lot
| of other phone makers overlook this in their race to jam more
| features in.
|
| 4. Consistency across phone generations. You usually don't see
| features on iPhones popping up one year only to vanish the
| next. Even 3D Touch hung around for 3-4 years.
|
| 5. Easy data migration between generations. I've got texts
| going back to 2012 when I first got an iPhone. That might not
| matter to some, but I don't want to lose my stuff just because
| I swapped phones. This is becoming more common on Android, but
| it's not consistent across all phone makers - unless you plug
| in a wire to transfer your data when you upgrade. Really,
| needing a wire in 2021? It's nice to have the option, but it
| shouldn't be the only way.
|
| 6. Generally better quality apps. There are a few Android apps
| that are better than their iOS counterparts, but in my
| experience, the scales are usually tipped in iOS's favor.
|
| 7. Apps that are only on iOS or get there first. Lots of high-
| quality (Apollo RIP) are still only on iOS and the developers
| don't seem to be in any rush to move them to other platforms.
| Can't say the same for many top Android apps. Also, lots of
| apps launch first on iOS, while the Android version drags its
| feet for months.
|
| 8. The iOS API. It's not perfect - it has its problems, but
| compared to the hot mess that the Android API can be, it's not
| half bad. How does this impact me as a user? Well, good APIs
| mean more developers can make better apps.
|
| 9. The camera. No, not the camera hardware or the fancy
| photography stuff. I mean how the camera works with the rest of
| the system and the camera APIs. Did you know that a lot of
| Android apps that use the camera just open it up and take a
| screenshot?
|
| 10. A consistent story. Apple is trying to tell a consistent
| story, slowly replacing many single-purpose items in your life
| like your wallet, keys, and ID, and even eventually your
| passport, with your iPhone. This is done consistently, not just
| stuffing whatever's new and hot into this year's phones only to
| toss it next year.
|
| I could keep going, but this post is already pretty long. Maybe
| I'll add more another time.
|
| There are a few other things people mention, but they aren't
| unique to Apple, like the hardware mute switch and Apple Pay.
|
| Don't get me wrong - there are things about iPhones that really
| bug me, but this isn't the post for that. :-)
| jemmyw wrote:
| Pixel 3 was awhile ago. I quite like the hot mess of features
| that Android used to have. I want to try that new idea even
| if it doesn't work out. However, I think that's in the past
| now except for maybe foldable design which I'm not that
| interested in. It does feel like there's still some cool
| camera stuff coming from the Android side.
|
| I just upgraded my Android phone, different manufacturer, the
| migration was done via my Google account I didn't have to
| plug in a cable.
|
| > Did you know that a lot of Android apps that use the camera
| just open it up and take a screenshot?
|
| I don't think I've ever seen that. I switched from iOS to
| Android quite some time back, I found iOS annoying because it
| felt like apps couldn't easily share with each other and a
| lot of tasks took too many steps. That was from an iPhone 5
| so I imagine it's very different now, but I tried out a 14
| and thought it still wasn't for me.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| >>Really, needing a wire in 2021? It's nice to have the
| option, but it shouldn't be the only way.
|
| Nice copypasta. Edit it better next time?
| booleandilemma wrote:
| nailed the ecosystem == perfected vendor lock-in?
| NovaDudely wrote:
| Really depends on your use case if you are constantly piping
| various files from one app into another - android still has
| that down fairly well. Browser > NewPipe > VLC for instance.
|
| If you are more focused on the curated ecosystem Apple does it
| much better.
|
| I mostly use Android because of my work flow but I do not think
| many people in the grand scheme work like this.
|
| Give iOS a try you could be plesantly surprised with it.
| dopamean wrote:
| I made the switch at the end of 2021 after only having an
| android phone since the very first one. I wouldn't say I regret
| the change but I would say I'm not impressed. The way so many
| of my friends mocked me for having an android phone and talked
| up their iphones made me think I _must_ be missing something.
| Alas, I don't feel that I was. Every once in a while I boot up
| my old android phone (oneplus 6) and use it and it's snappier
| than I remember and feels way better in my hand than my iphone
| does.
|
| I kinda want to go back but we'll see.
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| I made the switch to iphone as well in 2021 after androids
| for 10 years and I echo this sentiment. It's not
| transformational, it's more or less the same, especially
| compared to a pixel flagship phone.
|
| I still use google photos because I find it better and it
| works fine. My next phone will be a pixel again though.
| disiplus wrote:
| I had a pixel 7 pro, that after a half a year developed a
| battery problem. I got my money back and could get another
| pixel but was afraid of battery problems again, and picked
| a one plus 10 pro. I regret it. Pixel has the best Android
| expirence on the market. I'm not buying iPhones probably
| ever. I tried iphone 14 pro max a little bit and it's not
| worth 400 EUR over the Pixel for me. I also had Samsungs,
| they are ok, but pixel is better.
| tom_ wrote:
| Text entry on my android phone was much more reliably good
| than on the iPhone, and the ux was better. I've had to
| disable a bunch of stuff to make it work reasonably on iOS,
| and it still gets stuff wrong far more often than I'd like.
|
| One of the things i unticked removed the words list you get
| for editing its errors, so i have to edit the mistakes by
| hand. Very annoying. (And the suggestions were crap
| anyway.)
| bgirard wrote:
| FWIW When I switched from Android->iPhone, I didn't think
| much of it. Some stuff was better, some stuff was worse. I
| didn't 'feel' that much better.
|
| Then when I switched back from iPhone->Android (Pixel 4) the
| change was a lot more jarring. I noticed a lot of polish and
| batteries issues and I missed my iPhone until I finally
| switched back.
|
| My theory is it's similar to lifestyle creep. You wont
| appreciate improvements as much as you'll notice regressions.
|
| > Every once in a while I boot up my old android phone
| (oneplus 6) and use it and it's snappier than I remember and
| feels way better in my hand than my iphone does.
|
| I wonder if you'd use it as a daily driver for a longer time
| if you'd have the same experience as me.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Apple's real genius is in their marketing.
|
| This was clear as day over 10 years ago, and is just as clear
| today.
|
| Back in the early days of iPhone vs Android, there was a huge
| meme of iPhone users praising Apple for "inventing" features
| that Android had years ago [0]. I remember (but can't find
| right now) a screenshot of a conversation of an iPhone user
| all happy about iPhone getting SwiftKey and then saying "When
| is Android getting this? XD" and the other person responding
| with "About 4 years ago".
|
| While the meme of "iPhone is better than Android because
| iPhone can do X" while Android has been able to do X for over
| 2 years no longer applies, there's still the meme that iPhone
| is somehow still a superior device. Apple has somehow
| convinced people that the iPhone is a luxury device, and
| there are some iPhone users that look down on Android users
| and think that Android is for people that can't afford
| iPhone, even though flagship Androids cost just as much.
|
| It's just personal preference these days. I can't stand
| Apple's walled garden approach, but people that have multiple
| devices (laptop, tablet, phone, watch, etc) love it since it
| guarantees compatibility and functionality.
|
| [0] https://imgur.com/gallery/9V2Vr
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I've launched Android based hardware products, I should be
| as Android deep as anyone can be and I use an iPhone.
|
| "iPhone is better than Android because iPhone can do X" was
| never why anyone used iPhones. iPhones generally did things
| years later than Android but did them significantly better.
|
| And Apple didn't need to convince people, they straight up
| were luxury devices compared to decay prone Android
| devices. Android lagged in locking down background services
| so battery would worsen over time as random apps did random
| garbage in the background. Lots of devices had weird eMMC
| and virtual FS bugs that'd also slow them down over time.
| And for a truly embarrassing length of history, top apps
| for things like flashlights would install lock screen ads
| on your device.
|
| I agree it's more personal preference these days, but
| that's mostly because Google went and copied Apple's walled
| garden approach. Things power users loved got gutted, more
| and more core functionality became part of Google Play
| Services that vendors aren't allowed to modify. Because of
| Project Mainline even the Android runtime is about to start
| getting updated via Google Play.
| sofixa wrote:
| > While the meme of "iPhone is better than Android because
| iPhone can do X" while Android has been able to do X for
| over 2 years no longer applies
|
| It applied as recently as 2020 with iOS 14 releasing
| picture in picture video, which Android has had since 8 in
| 2017.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Don't have to go back that far. iPhone 14 Pro is the
| first iPhone with always on display. Although I guess
| Android wasn't first with that either.
| sofixa wrote:
| Ah true, I remember colleagues being in awe of it, me
| checking what the hell they're talking about, and being
| surprised this is a new feature.
| rappr wrote:
| [dead]
| martimarkov wrote:
| To me it's the fact that it just works and I use it as a
| smart phone and not as a General Purpose Computer. There is
| a lot of ecosystem stuff on iOS that are just missing from
| Android. Plus the skinning of each manufacturer is/was
| terrible. Samsung's early TouchWiz was incredibly
| terrible...
|
| I also use Android when I need more access to different
| things e.g. portable pocket pc that runs Linux.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The dichotomy to me is in the hardware vs software divide.
|
| Apple mobile devices are absolutely luxury _hardware_.
|
| Apple mobile OS/software is... functional to a most
| generous description.
| s3p wrote:
| AirDrop? Handoff? Fully encrypted iCloud storage, a
| first-of-its-kind offering that no other mass market OEM
| has been able to match? Apple pay leading the market and
| getting mobile vendors to literally adopt contactless
| payments for the first time? Mobile video chat that took
| Google years to replicate? The list goes on. I don't know
| how one could say their software isn't powerful. It is.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I remember tapping to pay with my Nexus 4 in 2013.
| arkitaip wrote:
| Interesting, this is what I'm considering too after exclusively
| using Android+Windows since forever. The enshittification of
| Windows is mainly what has changed my mind - worse privacy, UX,
| forcing users to use online accounts - but also life seems more
| simple when you only have Apple to consider instead of whatever
| shenanigans that Microsoft and Google throws at you.
| Furthermore, the UX of the Apple eco system seems better than
| anything I've encountered on Android+Windows.
| karaterobot wrote:
| One thing to note is that Apple also tries very hard to get
| you to log in to their online services when you use your
| phone or laptop. They're not as overt as MS about requiring
| it yet, but I would not be surprised if it was coming.
|
| As for UX, I feel like it's hit and miss for me. With the
| huge caveat that I haven't used Windows 11, Windows beats
| MacOS in a lot of areas. For example, I prefer older versions
| of Windows to MacOS for window management, and Explorer is a
| lot better than Finder in my opinion. Those are two major
| pieces of the user experience!
| avgDev wrote:
| iPhone is not what it is cracked up to be. A lot of lock in.
| Some things are absolutely annoying. When I went to Poland, I
| had to change my region to download apps from appstore, it
| messed up all my purchase history and subscriptions.
|
| One thing I like is that I have an iPhone 12 and have no need
| to upgrade, the phones have a much longer life imo.
|
| The statement "apple stuff is just so easy and it works" is
| EXTREMELY misleading. When it works it works but when it
| doesn't you generally won't find much good advice.
| davidf18 wrote:
| If you live in urban areas such as NYC, upgrades are
| important because of signal interference from skyscrapers,
| subways, below-ground parking garages, basements,and tower
| congestion etc. The improvement in modems (eg, now X65 going
| to X70 Qualcomm) and transceiver electronics are improved as
| well as battery life. I yearly upgrade primarily but not only
| for that reason. The newer modems are particularly good at
| weak signals, eg, < 120 dBm.
|
| I use Verizon and use iPad Pro and Apple Watch also on
| cellular. Works really well together.
| WWLink wrote:
| > The statement "apple stuff is just so easy and it works" is
| EXTREMELY misleading. When it works it works but when it
| doesn't you generally won't find much good advice.
|
| I've been a Mac fan since OS X came out in 2000/2001, and had
| iPhones and android phones for years. Just a general "I like
| all the OSes... and I hate all the OSes" kinda person....
|
| The worst thing about being caught in a situation where
| something doesn't work right, or is just outright broken? If
| you go to an iphone/mac themed discussion place to discuss
| it, you'll probably just get called an idiot and insulted. A
| lot.
|
| I also hate how iOS kinda has dark patterns to keep you
| locked into Apple's iCloud services. Lately, MacOS has been
| getting worse about that too. I think the only Apple service
| I can log into without causing an Apple device to freak out
| and have iCloud take everything over is Apple Music.
|
| My biggest beefs are trying to export a tens-of-thousands
| picture library out of icloud - there's no good reliable way
| to do it except to tell the Photos app on a Mac to download
| everything locally and then wait an eternity (like literally
| weeks) to do so. Then you can use a python script to read the
| sqlite db and dump everything with correct EXIF data... (if
| you don't, it's a complicated mess)
|
| My favorite is how bad the ECG app on the Apple Watch is.
| Especially if your older parent who has the watch on the
| largest text size uses it. Basically, it becomes almost
| impossible to dismiss the legal warning screen that pops up
| if you touch the grey "sine wave, 65bpm" summary thing. If
| you do, you have to hit a teeny tiny target at the top left
| of the screen to go back to that summary screen, scroll down
| without touching the grey box, and then hit 'done' at the
| bottom.
|
| THEN you reach for your iphone and open the health app you
| had open before. But it doesn't show the ECG you just
| recorded - unless you tap the notification from the home
| screen. When you do, it'll exit the health app and reopen it,
| so that the latest ECG loads.
|
| It is the most hilarious and fucked interaction I've seen.
| Like, the Apple Health App is LITERALLY BROKEN and their
| workaround is to make the notification force-restart the app.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| That echoes my general experience everytime I try the Apple
| ecosystem again: it's fine until it's not fine.
|
| I suppose it's equal parts {stricter locks} + {smaller
| number of devices} + {fewer dev resources?}
|
| Last time for me, it was MacOS never having implemented
| USB-C DisplayPort MST (daisy chaining monitors).
| kube-system wrote:
| What lock-in do iPhones have that isn't a thing on Android?
| Honestly curious.
| [deleted]
| avgDev wrote:
| You have a single back up option which is the iCloud.(EDIT:
| SINGLE CLOUD OPTION)
|
| Can't install any app I want.
|
| Locked into OS.
| lockhouse wrote:
| One Drive is working for me just fine on my iPhone, and
| there are other options available like DropBox and Google
| Drive as well.
| avgDev wrote:
| iPhone doesn't not allow phone backups using another
| cloud provider? Are you talking about backing up images?
| lockhouse wrote:
| Yeah sorry, thought that's what you meant.
|
| For whole phone backup it's either iCloud or hook it up
| to a computer.
|
| Does Android allow whole phone backups to third parties
| without rooting?
| kube-system wrote:
| I back up data on my iPhone to my NAS using a third-party
| app.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > You have a single back up option which is the iCloud.
|
| That's false. You can backup to a computer, including to
| Windows. https://support.apple.com/en-
| au/guide/iphone/iph3ecf67d29/io...
| avgDev wrote:
| Using Itunes........with android you can literally select
| another CLOUD provider.
| s3p wrote:
| Yes because with iOS you can also RESTORE your entire
| operating system from that same backup. And if you really
| want to, you can change the file location so that iTunes
| backup file sits in a cloud folder.
| moonchrome wrote:
| WebKit - major PITA, highlighting text and googling in
| chrome opens safari ?
|
| Appstore - can't install Gameboy emulator for games I've
| paid 20+ years ago because daddy Apple said so...
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| > can't install Gameboy emulator
|
| That sounds like more of an example of lock-out, than
| lock-in.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| You can install an emulator with an extra $8.33 a month
| for a developer account.
| meepmorp wrote:
| You've been able to build and install iOS apps on your
| own device without a paid developer account for years
| now.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| iMessage and FaceTime are the biggest ones, leaving the
| ecosystem will make the experience of talking to you worse
| for anyone using an iPhone still.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Thankfully only the US is afflicted with this stupidity.
| kube-system wrote:
| The rest of the world chose a different stupidity,
| locking in their messaging to Meta's platform.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Is it really worse though? I can use WhatsApp on any
| device I want, I'm not locked to iPhone.
|
| Japan uses LINE. Network effect implies a convergence to
| one app (pick your poison) and I am certain WhatsApp is
| better than the US situation.
| kube-system wrote:
| And when I was on an Android phone, Apple users weren't
| too happy about me trying to use talk/hangouts/meet/duo
| or whatever Google's messaging app of the week was.
|
| For interoperability, nothing beats SMS/MMS/POTS/SMTP.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Android isn't _that_ bad
|
| From a support after the sale perspective? Yes it is.
|
| The $399 2016 iPhone SE is still getting security updates
| today.
|
| The original Google Pixel is also from 2016 but stopped getting
| any sort of updates at the end of 2019.
|
| If you want a basic phone that will be supported as long as
| possible after the sale, the support length per dollar spent
| proposition of the SE models is pretty unbeatable.
|
| I think this is a major factor that is driving market share
| towards iPhone.
| LexiMax wrote:
| I am still using an iPad Air 2 from 2014. In that same time
| span, I've had at least 4 different Android phones.
|
| I'm considering an iPhone for my next phone, although I'm a
| Google Voice user which makes me a little nervous about that
| prospect, plus I've been less than impressed with Safari's
| extension ecosystem.
| ImprovedSilence wrote:
| This is 100% the reason I have an iPhone. I can usually eek
| out 5 yrs on an iphone before it's taken one too many falls.
| Which has also been why any iPhone of mine has died, no other
| reason than I fumbled it around with no case on it.... Also
| much to my pleasure, the 13 mini was still available for my
| most recent upgrade, so now I don't have a gigantic phone
| anymore either.
|
| I have looked to get out of apples grasp, but nothing else
| comes close in terms of long term support, which is
| absolutely necessary for a device that touches all of my
| digital life.
| cjsplat wrote:
| That 2016 phone couldn't be protected from Spectre family
| attacks without a ridiculous performance penalty.
|
| What is the point in "security updates" for a CPU that can't
| be made secure?
| Etheryte wrote:
| This misses the point completely. Regular security issues
| happen often, in 2023 alone we've already had 809 CVEs in
| Android [0]. Saying we should overlook addressing those
| because sometimes a CPU level security issue comes along is
| absurd. Spectre and other similar families of attacks are
| comparatively rare enough that they have names not numbers,
| that should say enough.
|
| [0] https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-
| list/vendor_id-1224...
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > I think this is a major factor that is driving market share
| towards iPhone.
|
| Few people outside of the tech nerd bubble care about this.
| prepend wrote:
| I disagree. I know a bunch of people who buy cheap iPhones
| and use them forever because of this. And I know even more
| that buy old iPhones off Craigslist for $100-200 and use
| them for years.
| massysett wrote:
| You're right, few people care about how long the phone will
| be supported.
|
| What they do want is an inexpensive phone that still runs
| the latest software. Because Apple models are supported so
| long, people can buy used, old iPhones that still run the
| latest software.
|
| Others trade in their phones often because they always want
| the new shiny. Because Apple models are supported so long,
| the used phone they trade in has more value, allowing them
| to fork over less cash for the latest Pro phone.
|
| These are the sort of factors that drive Apple's market
| share up.
| inversetelecine wrote:
| Yes. I'd argue most people hate or are annoyed by updates.
| "Ugh, another update??" I hear this all the time. Or "X
| company updated my phone and everything is different, I
| hate updates!"
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I'd argue that Google wouldn't keep gaslighting users
| about how it's fixed the update issue "for sure this
| year" if they didn't know that users care about updates.
| [deleted]
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I think this is a major factor that is driving market share
| towards iPhone.
|
| I personally couldn't care less about this. I just want a
| phone that works well for me.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Maybe I'm just old, but the idea of have a device on the
| internet that no longer gets security updates just seems
| wrong. Learned too many lessons back in the 90s and the
| oughts.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Didn't some recent Google Pixels have a baseband issue
| that allowed a remote takeover of an unpatched device by
| hackers knowing nothing more than the device phone
| number?
|
| Security updates are not optional.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I'm a graybeard too (with a security background), and I
| got over this. The problem started when companies
| combined forced updating with no longer issuing security
| updates separately from other updates.
|
| If it were just security updates, I wouldn't mind
| automatic installations. But feature updates are too
| disruptive. So I avoid automatic updates where I possibly
| can.
|
| I accept that there's a security risk associated with
| doing this, but for me, it's a risk that's worth taking.
| canuckintime wrote:
| I have an iPhone SE. It might still be getting security
| updates but the actual user experience is quite bad now; new
| features and apps are just not designed for it. Meanwhile the
| original Google Pixel doesn't have the newest security
| updates but Play store apps and features still work properly
| on it.
|
| If you read the OP linked report, contrary to the popular
| sentiment here and on Apple sites, that more people hold on
| to their Android phones longer than iPhones despite the lack
| of security updates
| milkytron wrote:
| I had an iPhone SE 2016 model for about 5 years, really the
| only thing that caused me to get rid of it was apps no longer
| supporting the screen size. I wasn't able to use my banking
| app properly because things would be cut off, amongst various
| other apps.
| [deleted]
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Careful its a prison.
| carvking wrote:
| [flagged]
| tempodox wrote:
| But the cake is a lie.
| tungah wrote:
| [flagged]
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Honestly I don't know how iPhone users live without the back
| button (or more accurately now, the back gesture). I used an
| iPhone for a year (work phone) and just could not get over how
| much harder it was to work a large iphone. I felt like I had to
| reach every corner of the screen much more often than on Android.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I don't understand how anyone is satisfied with ANY "gesture"
| based navigation, I still have the classic android 3 button
| setup from the good old days. I have a dedicated back button
| that is ONLY a back button, so no issue with it changing the
| "activity" you are working in like the modern android back
| gesture, a dedicated home button that always goes home, and a
| dedicated "bring up all alive activities" button that functions
| exactly like alt-tab does.
|
| Why did any of this ever need to change? Why did dedicated
| buttons with defined roles and useful, predictable
| functionality that are always available, always work, are never
| misinterpreted as a drag instead of a "gesture", that you don't
| have to know ahead of time how to interact with the OS to
| discover how to interact with the OS.
|
| Why the fuck are phone OS's navigated completely by a scheme
| that is impossible to discover without someone teaching you?
| bitsandboots wrote:
| Honestly I don't know how I live without the back button,
| either. The back button on Android 5+ stopped being "back",
| it's now some weird system I don't quite understand where it
| tracks, I think, "activities" and goes back from those, but the
| end result is the modern android back button is sometimes back,
| and sometimes close your app, which is really frustrating.
| jwells89 wrote:
| That's because what the back button on Android does is
| partially determined by the developers of the apps you use.
| If an app is written using Android Framework there's some
| things that will automatically add an entry to the back-
| stack, but many actions won't unless the developer explicitly
| adds them. So naturally, the back button ends up as something
| of a "I'm feeling lucky" button.
| matchbok wrote:
| ... there is a back swipe gesture. And it works much more
| consistently than Android's "Where the heck is this gonna take
| me" back button. Every app you can swipe back, and it's a much
| nicer animation than Android.
|
| The back button is a cudgel: a sign of a poorly designed UX.
| Apps aren't websites, the concept of "back" is not universal,
| so a universal button doesn't make sense. It only exists on
| Android because it started off as a non-touch OS.
| afavour wrote:
| > It only exists on Android because it started off as a non-
| touch OS.
|
| That doesn't really make sense, it has very little to do with
| the actual interaction. It seems Android apps were originally
| envisaged as a collection of islands rather than one solid
| block. In that context the back button does make sense, you'd
| be jumping from "activity" to "activity" rather than app to
| app, and the back button would provide a logical thread
| through all of that.
|
| But it didn't work out that way at all, apps became just as
| centralised as iOS ones and the back button's original
| functionality became kind of vestigial.
| pretext-1 wrote:
| It works better because iOS had this for many years and apps
| implement it natively. Android's implementation is basically
| a workaround. The back gesture is recognized by the system
| and forwarded as back button event to the app. On iOS the
| gesture is handled by the app, which can provide proper
| animation, giving users the ability to "preview" what's
| behind (and pull back to the left to stop going back).
| Android is trying to copy that right now (as they should
| because it works really well), but it will take many years
| for apps to adopt it.
| alexdbird wrote:
| > it will take many years for apps to adopt it
|
| This is the flaw with the Apple back gesture, sadly, as
| although it's generally _really easy_ to support this in
| native app -- essentially it comes for free and you just
| don 't break it -- plenty of developers just don't care
| about invisible quality of life things.
|
| The gesture is properly called 'Interactive Pop'.
| macintosh-hd wrote:
| Proton Mail's app broke the gesture and it annoys me at
| least 5 times per week.
| kaba0 wrote:
| How is it different to android developers breaking shit?
| It's not hard to break the "atomic" back gesture either,
| hell, websites are getting really good at breaking my
| back button!
|
| Shitty apps/developers are everywhere, we should not
| limit ourselves over them.
| alexdbird wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand you. If an Android developer
| breaks the back gesture, surely they also break the back
| button, so they've completely broken the back function?
| An iOS app can have fully functional back buttons, but
| break the back gesture only.
| jwells89 wrote:
| It's not a perfect rule but most fully native (as in
| written with Obj-C or Swift) tend to leave this
| functionality intact. For React Native and other
| alternative UI stacks all bets are off.
| flutas wrote:
| > there is a back swipe gesture
|
| > Every app you can swipe back
|
| > the concept of "back" is not universal, so a universal
| button doesn't make sense.
|
| > It only exists on Android because it started off as a non-
| touch OS.
|
| ... so android has the exact same gesture and it's a bad
| thing only there because it started as a non touch OS, iOS
| has it but it's totally not the same concept at all and
| perfect.
|
| Hmmm.
| drcongo wrote:
| You misread. Parent said the back "button" is a cudgel, not
| the gesture. Though unfortunately someone at Google decided
| to give the gesture the same behaviour as the button, so
| yeah, it _is_ a bit silly on Android.
| matchbok wrote:
| The back swipe on iOS is per-app, not a global function. I
| should have clarified. It is different, and a better
| implementation.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Android had the back button since the beginnings. They
| added an option a few years back to hide the usual three
| buttons at the bottom of the screen and to enable an ios-
| like navigation with a swipe up for home, etc. That made a
| swipe _from the left or right edge_ recognized by the OS
| trigger a back button. That is quite different from the app
| itself recognizing an in-process swipe left, showing the
| underlying screen you would be brought to. Though some
| android apps do support this as well.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I don't know how iPhone users live without the back button
| (or more accurately now, the back gesture).
|
| I swipe right all the time from the left edge of the screen, in
| most apps that goes back.
| kaba0 wrote:
| In the rare case it doesn't, you can swipe down. But the
| animations help a lot, it is pretty idiomatic after a while.
| Something came in from the left? It goes out there as well. I
| converted like 2 years ago and it didn't take a lot to get
| used to it.
| SyrupThinker wrote:
| Am I misunderstanding something, I think that gesture exists on
| iOS?
|
| Swiping from the left screen edge to the right navigates back
| in any properly designed app.
|
| Alternatively sheets are usually dismissed by swiping down.
|
| Do you have particular apps or contexts in mind where this did
| not work?
| realusername wrote:
| On iOS it's app dependant, it might work or not. On Android,
| swiping left guarantees a going back event sent from the OS,
| it'll always 100% work.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| Except if the gesture recognition is bad, which it has
| always been on the phones I've used it with. But maybe it
| improved recently.
| entropy273 wrote:
| 90% of apps (that don't override the default
| UINavigationController behavior or use some custom cross-
| platform framework) support the back swipe gesture.
| williamdclt wrote:
| That's not so bad, swiping right works well.
|
| The _real_ pain is how bad ios autocompletion is, compared to
| Android's
| mholm wrote:
| Thankfully this is getting fixed in iOS 17. Users trying the
| beta are saying it's a dramatic improvement.
| square_usual wrote:
| It is. I have the beta on my daily driver iPad and I prefer
| texting on it.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Luckily gboard autocomplete gets worse with every single
| update of the keyboard app so just wait a few more months and
| it will be comparable.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Android phones stopped being attractive to me a few years back.
| They've become overpriced and it's much harder to make them work
| acceptably well.
|
| iPhones don't appeal to me at all, though.
|
| The decline of Android phones is one of the reasons that I've
| decided go without a smartphone entirely when my current one
| dies.
| silon42 wrote:
| yeah... IMO Android 5 I think was more or less the optimum
| (Nexus 5)
| [deleted]
| FredPret wrote:
| Phones are so good now that even a 2-3 year old iPhone can do
| pretty much anything you want.
|
| Battery life degrades and it slows down a tad, but there isn't
| the same pressing need to upgrade of yore.
| lolinder wrote:
| The link should really be to the original report [0].
|
| This 55% is iPhone's share of phone shipments in Q2, not the
| number of _users_ of the respective phones at any given time. In
| other words, fewer people are buying smartphones than were
| before, but Apple saw less of a hit to their numbers than
| everyone else did.
|
| Contrary to existing comments here, this stat doesn't appear to
| indicate that people are _switching_ from Android to iPhone. It
| looks like Android users are more likely to avoid upgrading their
| phone in an uncertain economy, while Apple users are more likely
| to upgrade regardless.
|
| [0] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-smartphone-
| shipments...
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've switched to that URL from
| https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/28/us-iphone-market-share-2/.
| Thanks!
|
| I've also attempted to make the title less misleading.
| 121789 wrote:
| i worked a little in this space in the past. what we learned
| was that most people don't switch, but if they do, it's
| overwhelmingly in the android->ios direction and not the other
| way around (this is in the US). you may see some anecdotal
| evidence otherwise but on aggregate that was true
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I know a couple of people who did that, but they switched
| from a $200 android to a ~$1000 iphone, and were amused at
| how much better it is. Users who had flaghship androids
| rarely switched, because their phones were good too.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Yes, I've seen something similar, it's easy to switch from
| Android and get into Apple's ecosystem, but once in it's
| difficult to get out.
|
| My brother-in-law would love to switch out, but he feels
| stuck in Apple's ecosystem because switching now would mean
| either causing a lot of friction for his family or he'd have
| to change many devices at once.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Anecdotal support for you claim: gave my dad and his wife two
| of my older iPhones to replace their Android phones. They'll
| never look back now.
|
| He told me he assumed the fawning over iPhones was "hype",
| now says he believes it is not.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| You don't, however, mention _which_ Android phones they
| switched from.
|
| Android obviously has a huge variety of different phone
| manufacturers, and many of them really suck, and many more
| are just mediocre. I think it would be harder to argue that
| iPhones are now (or in the past 5 years or so)
| significantly better than a Samsung or Pixel flagship.
|
| I personally own a Pixel and my spouse owns an iPhone, and
| besides the familiarity there are many features I love more
| about my phone (particularly the call screening and other
| call automation features). The biggest downside, which may
| unfortunately actually cause me to have to switch to an
| iPhone at some point, is Apple's monopolistic behavior with
| iMessage: I'm often the "odd man out" in group chats and
| the presence of my Android breaks the experience for me and
| all the other iPhone users in the group (video quality is
| in the toilet, messages can randomly get dropped, emoji
| reactions suck, etc.)
| skrowl wrote:
| [dead]
| ghaff wrote:
| Re iMessage.
|
| I'm on quite a few ongoing group chats with a mix of
| iPhone and Android. No one has any real issues but it's
| admittedly just text and photos.
| wolpoli wrote:
| > You don't, however, mention which Android phones they
| switched from.
|
| This is very important since any iPhones have a top-of-
| the-line CPU for that era. On the other hand, the
| Samsung's mid-end series (A5x) have very weak CPU and
| they lag.
| tbihl wrote:
| The Android market is way way harder to pin down than the
| iPhone market. Manufacturers have been walking out software
| support horizons in the Android world, which should have an
| impact. To the extent that Android users have shifted toward
| Samsung and Pixels, that would also tend to walk out the
| software support window of the Android cohort. And finally,
| last year there were crazy sales that I don't think have been
| as good this year, from what I've seen. I upgraded from S21 to
| S22 ultra last year for $18, no contract term.
|
| OTOH, Qualcomm seems to have closed the gap in SOC performance
| and efficiency with 8gen2.
| sib wrote:
| >> This 55% is iPhone's share of phone shipments in Q2, not the
| number of users of the respective phones at any given time.
|
| That's generally what a "market share" number measures: the
| share of sales during a period of times.
|
| The number of users of devices would be the "installed base."
| abathur wrote:
| > Android users are more likely to avoid upgrading their phone
| in an uncertain economy,
|
| I would probably be typing this on a recent Pixel if it had a
| damn headphone jack.
|
| (Or even an external ~magsafe-for-headphone.)
|
| Instead I'm still wringing value out of a 3a.
| zh3 wrote:
| I'm constantly amazed by how people spend so much of their
| income on Apple products; it's almost like their lives are
| ruled by the status they feel an iPhone brings (and the
| consequential sacrificial purchasing).
|
| It likely varies by area and average income, here it's almost
| an inverse correlation - the less-well off kids at school tend
| to have parents on iPhones and the comfortable parents are on
| whatever works for them.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I have a ton of Apple products and I could not care less
| about the status they confer. They just genuinely have a
| better end to end user experience most of the time. They do,
| for the most part, live up to the "just works" mantra.
| nerdbert wrote:
| I bought an iPhone because Android vendors kept leaving me
| high and dry after a few years. I'm now on year 6 with the
| iPhone and it's still working great. As I understand it, I
| have another year or two before Apple stops supporting it
| with updates.
|
| That makes the iPhone far cheaper than any comparable Android
| phone I could have bought back then.
|
| Maybe today Android vendors are offering longer support
| horizons but I've been burned multiple times and won't trust
| that ecosystem again.
|
| To me this feels more like the situation where someone with
| money in the bank can buy $200 shoes which will last 10
| years, while someone living paycheck to paycheck has to keep
| buying $40 shoes that fall apart after a year.
| Loveaway wrote:
| No mate, people value themselves and get the best thing they
| can have. Smartphones are so essential now and used 24/7,
| don't cheap out on it. You don't cheap out on food either.
| Nothing to do with status. Not all about Apple either, there
| are nice premium Android phones as well. What are you doing,
| saving for a golden tombstone?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > No mate, people value themselves and get the best thing
| they can have.
|
| Not everyone is this embedded in consumerism. Most of us
| have our proclivities & things we are biased towards
| (clothing, cars, travel, house, hobbies), but most people
| don't splurge on _everything._
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >You don't cheap out on food either
|
| Except many people do. Friend of mine is a chef and likes
| to quip that people will pour the most expensive oil into
| their car and the cheapest into their pan. The median
| American takes home like 35k a year, they're not saving
| anything for their tombstone, they're lucky if the house is
| paid off by that time. Yet you see a lot of people run
| around with the newest top line phone. That's just
| conspicuous consumption.
|
| Almost nobody except for mobile gaming enthusiasts or VR
| users gets meaningful premium value out of a new phone at
| this point. People drop serious money on new hardware every
| two years that they use for Whatsapp and TikTok.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >people value themselves and get the best thing they can
| have.
|
| The problem is that what someone considers "best" is highly
| influential by their social environment, of which status is
| a part of. If the majority of your friends use Apple, and
| there is the whole app interactivity that you get with
| things like iMessage over SMS, if you value the social
| experience you are going to think that Apple is best.
| thegreenswede wrote:
| Cheaping out in food is not uncommon and honestly a great
| way to save a lot. It's also super easy to decide to do. My
| wife and I literally don't eat out anymore. Haven't been to
| sit down place in many months. The value of the experience
| has degraded so much and the price is so absurd, that every
| time we used to go out in the past 2 years we questioned
| why we even bother anymore. And the money we save is used
| for travelling or the things we choose not to cheap out on
| (our hobbies).
| pwb25 wrote:
| but they aren't the best, thats why it's weird.
| manzanarama wrote:
| I push back super hard on the "status" thing for Apple
| products. I don't understand what status it brings you and
| who gives you that status.
| _jal wrote:
| I'm guessing this sort of thing would be much more visible
| to a member of a young cohort in a median-income suburb
| than, say, a middle-aged professional in a major metro.
|
| Status symbols in the latter cohort it costs a lot more
| than a cell phone.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| Are you really constantly amazed? iPhone user here. I don't
| see my phone as a status symbol. I just like it much better.
| If you like Android better, that's cool too.
| starttoaster wrote:
| > and the comfortable parents are on whatever works for them
|
| So, not necessarily Androids, but whatever they happen to
| choose? I'm not sure what we're observing, that people just
| use whatever phone they prefer? Honestly, iPhones aren't a
| heck of a lot more expensive than a flagship Pixel phone,
| especially not for a multi-year tech investment. The "iPhones
| are expensive" propaganda is underinformed. Apple computers
| on the other hand are way more expensive than the equivalent
| hardware in the PC ecosystem, however they also hold their
| value quite well for resale whereas I've found it quite
| difficult to offload old gaming PCs in the past. Usually
| people just want the CPU and GPU, if they're not older than
| about 4 years. The rest of the carcass just gets piled into
| an ever-growing closet stash of old PC components. If you
| have a Macbook on the other hand, you'll have a dozen people
| asking if it's still available every day until you sell it.
| Even if it's a relic, just with a working battery and hard
| drive.
|
| My bias in this conversation is that I've owned an iPhone 12
| since late 2020 with no signs of needing an upgrade anytime
| soon. I don't know anybody living in poverty but shoveling
| all of their money into Apple tech.
| petsfed wrote:
| >The "iPhones are expensive" propaganda is underinformed.
| Apple computers on the other hand are way more expensive
| than the equivalent hardware in the PC ecosystem, however
| they also hold their value quite well for resale whereas
| I've found it quite difficult to offload old gaming PCs in
| the past.
|
| I think you're perceiving the same thing in both cases, but
| interpreting the data wrong re: PC hardware.
|
| I just looked, the cheapest unlocked smart phone that Best
| Buy carries is $60. Yes, its pretty much garbage. But if
| you need to have a smart phone, and not much else, compare
| $60 to the cheapest iPhone ($430). So it goes with
| computers too. The floor on _not Apple_ is quite a ways
| lower than the floor on Apple, even as the ceilings are
| pretty comparable. And what Apple is optimizing for is very
| different from what the average high-end PC manufacturer is
| optimizing for. When you do an oranges-to-oranges
| comparison of Macbooks and equivalent laptops, their prices
| end up pretty comparable.
|
| Saying "iPhones are expensive" is very much akin to saying
| "the Mercedes G-Class is expensive". Its under-informed (as
| you say) only because a lot of people get iPhones (and
| Mercedes G-Classes) as status symbols, not for the innate
| capabilities.
| MAGZine wrote:
| the iphone 14 costs $800. the pixel 7a costs $500. I can
| refresh my pixel 1.5x as often for the same cost.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And the iPhone SE is cheaper, faster and will get
| security updates longer...
| acchow wrote:
| It is not the status.
|
| Americans love to consume. They think their consumption
| brings them _happiness_. One of their most delightful
| purchases is a new phone.
| kube-system wrote:
| Time is valuable, and the ecosystem of Android phones is
| filled with time-wasting BS: bloatware, OEM specific UIs,
| varying device quality, lack of OEM support, confusing
| accessory compatibility, a marketplace full of malware, etc.
|
| For the type of people here that like to tinker with tech
| this might be a non-issue, but some other people just want to
| use the device to accomplish tasks with as little friction as
| possible.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>lack of OEM support
|
| what does this even mean in this context?
|
| >bloatware, OEM specific UIs
|
| The problem here is calling in "ecosystem of Android", it
| is mainly Andriod vs Samsung. You are either in the Samsung
| Ecosystem (i.e Samsung UI) or in the Andriod world, Most of
| the other vendors, the few there are, run close to stock
| Andriod these days.
|
| Then of-course there is Pixel's Pure Android.
|
| Not really all that confusing, if you can not figure it out
| then I trust your better served by iPhone.... you likely
| have also given up on computers completely as windows or
| linux is far too complicated for you.
|
| >> confusing accessory compatibility
|
| what?
|
| >>a marketplace full of malware
|
| Yes, user freedom bad, must only have applications that Mr
| Tim approves.
| kube-system wrote:
| > >>lack of OEM support
|
| > what does this even mean in this context?
|
| The OEM doesn't have a store in the mall that will help
| an elderly family member with it. The OEM stops
| publishing updates after the phone leaves the shelf. etc.
|
| > Most of the other vendors, the few there are, run close
| to stock Andriod these days.
|
| Which is a gigantic pain in the butt when you're trying
| to talk your mother through the settings menu over the
| phone to change one setting, and the OEM decided _that_
| was the one feature they wanted to move
| /rename/omit/customize.
|
| > if you can not figure it out then I trust your better
| served by iPhone.... you likely have also given up on
| computers completely as windows or linux is far too
| complicated for you.
|
| > Yes, user freedom bad, must only have applications that
| Mr Tim approves.
|
| That's the thing, it shouldn't take _someone like me_ to
| use a phone. Phones are mass market devices that
| children, elderly, disabled, and uneducated people use.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>Phones are mass market devices that children, elderly,
| disabled, and uneducated people use.
|
| I really really despise this narrative in modern society
| where by everyone must lower their standards,
| expectations, or limit themselves so we can cater to the
| lowest common denominator of society.
|
| This is like saying we need to limit the speed on
| highways to 20 because some people can not figure out how
| to drive at 70...
| ghaff wrote:
| So buy your PinePhone or whatever and let the vast
| majority of users have something that's simple and
| reasonably standardized. I can certainly use a general
| purpose computer but I don't want my phone to be
| complicated.
| criddell wrote:
| Lower our standards? I look at it in the opposite way.
| Apple's accessibility features are the amazing and other
| manufacturers should raise their standards.
| TheCleric wrote:
| By and large the Android phones cost the same as iPhones, so
| I don't understand this criticism.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Thinly veiled classism
| rootsudo wrote:
| It may just be that people who have lower income, and are
| guided by "status" may make worser choices or are can't/don't
| understand financial implications or maybe they are just
| doing their best to "peacock" and fit in with what they think
| is the right tool to achieve their goals?
|
| It's nothing new, you could've said the same thing in the
| 90's about Sega, Nintendo and Playstation and with Shoes,
| Clothes, anything -
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Yes 60% of Americans are guided by "status". My 80 year old
| mom was just talking to me yesterday about how she feels
| superior to everyone else because she has Blue bubbles like
| the Instagram influencers she followx
| tmpX7dMeXU wrote:
| I'm astounded by the pervasiveness of this meme, given its
| origins are really from a Mac vs PC internet flame war era
| that I would like to think we've moved past.
|
| I'm astounded by the fact that one can imply with a straight
| face no less that over half the market are status-driven
| dorks that have no legitimate reason to use an iPhone over an
| Android phone, the obviously superior for all people in all
| circumstances choice used by the enlightened few that aren't
| concerned with such banal things as social status.
|
| Occam's razor would imply that this view is perhaps wrong and
| that you're just missing something.
|
| I use an iPhone for a lot of reasons. One of these is that
| I'm legally blind. For my purposes, accessibility features on
| iOS easily run rings around those on Android. Full stop.
| Arguing against that is ridiculous. Sectioning me out and
| saying "I wasn't talking about you@ because disability is a
| sacred cow is ridiculous.
|
| Just please don't make these conversations so charged with
| this tired old rhetoric that simultaneously chastises such a
| wide group for imagined status-seeking in a way that
| simultaneously ties your own (non-iPhone) choice in to an
| imagined desirable personality trait.
| Tagbert wrote:
| You make a big assumption that it is all about status or that
| status is a simple equation.
|
| From what I have seen, Android phones appeal to people who
| want or must spend as little as possible on their phones. It
| also appeals to people who want to tweak and customize their
| phones. There is a brand appeal among some of those people to
| be the anti-Apple.
|
| Apple does appeal to some for brand identity. It also seems
| to appeal to people who are buying a phone that they can just
| take out of the box and use without spending much time in
| setup and configuration.
| Swizec wrote:
| > just take out of the box and use without spending much
| time in setup and configuration
|
| That's me. I buy Apple because there's already enough
| hobbies in my life and I don't need my daily driver devices
| to also be playful area to tinker with. Give me good enough
| defaults and the least amount of customizability possible
| please thanks.
|
| Also, anecdotally, my mom who doesn't do English stopped
| asking me support questions about her devices almost
| immediately when we switched her from Android to Apple. On
| Android it was like nothing ever quite worked right and she
| couldn't at all figure out how to do things.
| jnwatson wrote:
| It isn't any different than buying Nike, Gucci, or Michael
| Kors. Many folks are extremely brand and status conscious.
|
| Appearing high status is more important than many other
| expenses.
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| Nike is high status?
| ghaff wrote:
| Probably to at least some degree among kids. No one else
| cares. Just like no one else cares about green bubbles
| vs. blue bubbles. But some people feel a need to convince
| themselves that no one would buy an Apple product for any
| reason but status.
| delecti wrote:
| Certainly not every Apple user cares about the status of
| it, but certainly far more users that care about the
| status of their devices are Apple users.
| ghaff wrote:
| I guess but probably no more than the number of Samsung
| users who think they're making some sort of anti-Apple
| statement.
| ghaff wrote:
| You honestly equate buying an at least arguably better
| electronic device and ecosystem that you may interact with
| for hours a day with what's mostly a logo on an I assume is
| an admittedly well-made bag?
| kernal wrote:
| You lost me at Nike and Kors.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Brand status is a continuum. Nike and Kors may not be
| "high status" but they are much higher than something
| like a Walmart house brand.
| bee_rider wrote:
| My phone is in my pocket 99% of the time, why would I care
| what people think about it? Anyway, a base model iPhone is
| only in the $600 range, that is like a week of minimum wage
| work in my state. Where's the status?
|
| No, it is just a basic functional smartphone for people who
| don't like to configure these things (I'll happily tinker
| all day with my Linux laptop, but smartphones are just like
| the worst form-factor, I want it to just work and then go
| away).
| jjav wrote:
| > base model iPhone is only in the $600 range
|
| Only? That's an inordinate amount of money for what's
| just a phone.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > only in the $600 range
|
| "Only"? $600 is pretty steep. That it's not on the high
| end of modern phone prices is indicative of how crazy
| modern phone prices are.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Consider that they're selling a pocket supercomputer. A
| 386 PC in the early 90's (already second tier to the
| first 486's) would sell for over $3000, which is $7000
| today. Our contemporary expectation that consumer
| electronics must be rock bottom cheap is a little warped
| by globalism. This from someone who won't pay more than
| $300 for something that is easily lost or damaged.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Not when you consider that modern phones are also our
| cameras, satellite navigation systems, calendars, mobile
| hotspots, mobile browsers, handheld gaming devices, music
| players, video players, and more.
|
| Personally, I think they're a heck of a bargain for what
| they do.
| JohnFen wrote:
| You're arguing that the value they provide is worth the
| high price. That's a valid argument, but it doesn't mean
| that the price isn't high.
|
| Whether or not it's worth it is a purely subjective
| thing.
| kube-system wrote:
| > a base model iPhone is only in the $600 range
|
| $429, actually.
|
| > https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-se
| [deleted]
| TylerE wrote:
| You're amazed that people pay a premium price for very
| premium products that they interact with constantly?
|
| Do you also question why people buy quality shoes or
| mattresses?
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _Do you also question why people buy quality shoes or
| mattresses?_
|
| I do. I am 99% convinced that the majority of first world
| people waste way too much money on shoes that aren't any
| better or worse than cheaper options. Shoes don't really
| get all that much better than they were previously, but
| somehow they always change and the cost always goes up.
| zh3 wrote:
| Agreed - a lot of so-called quality shoes aren't and as
| for the mattress wars...
|
| It's pretty frustraing, because even stuff that used to
| be dependable quality seems to get outcompeted by people
| buying stuff they replace (or would like to, if they
| could afford the monthly payments) as soon as the next
| model comes out. And so, the reliable, dependable company
| slumps (i.e. company making shoes that last for years),
| is bought-out by a hedge fund, quality goes to hell as
| they feed off its reputation.
|
| So many people people say they want to buy quality,
| actually they want to buy is status (Rolex, Apple,
| Burberry, ...).
| TylerE wrote:
| Shoes haven't changed? Do you wear nothing but Chuck
| Taylors?
|
| As someone with a multitude of foot issues, my options
| have exploded in the last couple decades.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I haven't found any shoes that address my foot issues.
| Even if I did I'm sure they would cost 5x the price of
| regular shoes and would provide almost no improvement.
|
| Are there some kind of objective metrics on how modern
| shoes are better than shoes from 10 years ago? Are they
| objectively more durable? Is the shape somehow better for
| your feet? Because I haven't felt any of it. For me it's
| just like other clothing: change for the sake of change.
| TheCleric wrote:
| As someone with severe over pronation (due to completely
| flat feet) I know most of the developments have been in
| materials and shapes.
|
| It used to be there was a couple pairs of shoes I could
| buy, now it seems as if most manufacturers have a few
| models that help. My last pair cost a LOT of money
| (Brooks), but I can tell you I've never felt a shoe as
| good as this one. They get better every time I buy shoes
| which is every 2-3 years.
| TylerE wrote:
| Get some diabetic shoes with custom made orthotics. Will
| probably cost about $200. Will be life changing. Like
| walking on a pillow. It's about 3x the thickness of a
| normal insole, amd will be custom modeled to get weight
| off of whatever you need releived.
| meroes wrote:
| I've switched back and forth. Just had worse experience
| overall on android. Maybe I'll try them in another few years.
| For a low budget I went through 3 androids and settled on a
| used iPhone which was waaay more stable.
| TheCleric wrote:
| Yeah I tend to switch back and forth just about every
| cycle. Currently on Pixel 6. May swap to iPhone after
| September.
|
| When I'm on iPhone I miss the customizability of Android.
| When I'm on Android I miss the ease of use of the iPhone.
| Which is probably oxymoronic. Lol
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I'm constantly amazed by how people spend so much of their
| income on Apple products
|
| I don't know about other people, but I went iPhone
| specifically for the value/$. Got a used iPhone SE 2020 for
| $150 in late 2021, and expect to use it for 5+ years. I
| seriously doubt that there are any Androids out there that
| could get even close to that.
|
| It really helps that Apple's CPU/SoC is substantially
| superior to what everyone else uses, so older iPhones tend to
| feel snappier. Between that and Apple's clearly superior OS
| support, I don't know why value shoppers who don't want to
| install their own firmware would go with Android.
| tssva wrote:
| A month ago I paid $299 for a Pixel 7 and then got a $149
| back in trade-in for my Pixel 4. Pretty good value.
| kernal wrote:
| >I seriously doubt that there are any Androids out there
| that could get even close to that.
|
| It's probably because you didn't really do any research
| into it. A $100 or less Pixel 4a released in 2020 will
| easily last 5+ years if you take care of it.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > It's probably because you didn't really do any research
| into it. A $100 or less Pixel 4a released in 2020 will
| easily last 5+ years if you take care of it.
|
| I'm not optimizing for years alive in retirement;
| instead, it's years of active, healthy life.
|
| Similarly, I don't just care about years of software
| support in a phone - it's important how long the phone
| feels like it's still a snappy, responsive phone. I just
| don't have a lot of confidence that I'd feel that way
| about the Pixel 4a in 2027.
| kernal wrote:
| In addition to the Pixel 4a I also have an iPhone X and
| in 2023 you can really tell how sluggish the phone feels
| with iOS 16. I can only imagine how much worse it will
| feel with iOS 20.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| 2nd data point, I'm using Galaxy s8+ from 2017. I haven't
| taken great care of it so the back glass has many cracks
| in it. However the front glass has no cracks, minor
| scratches but is otherwise in great shape. I don't notice
| the scratches when I'm using it, but they're easily
| visible when the phone is off and held at an angle in the
| light. I'm still very pleased with the performance and
| the battery life. I did not expect it to last more than 5
| years.
| kube-system wrote:
| Depends on how someone values their time, I suppose.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Im using the same SE2020 Iphone and am getting a lot of
| value out of it. Paid close to $100.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > I seriously doubt that there are any Androids out there
| that could get even close to that.
|
| I don't see the 2020 SE getting software upgrades for much
| longer, it's already the bottom of the barrel for iOS17, so
| I guess you're OK to forgo those for a while ?
|
| If your phone needs are low enough you can get by with the
| SE in 2026, buying a Gakaxy A series today would totally
| fit the bill, and you probably could get one new at the
| same price and way cheaper used.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The iPhone 5s from 2013 got a security update earlier
| this year..
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I'm still on Pixel 2. The battery is a bit short these
| days, but I have no performance issues.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| I might be one of those value shoppers; I usually buy the
| "Pixel .a" version of the oldest available generation when
| it's time for replacement (I'm currently on a Pixel 4a). I
| like it. I used to have an iPhone, but I prefer the "feel"
| of Andriod-on-Pixel, but I don't know how to describe it.
| Less heavy-handed maybe? More minimalistic?
|
| I don't need the fastest, most powerful SoC. I don't need
| the best, super fast display. The battery life on my 4a is
| enough for my needs. People get way too religious about
| this.
| delecti wrote:
| Your "usually" is doing a lot there. You bought the
| second ever "a", so you've done it once?
|
| I understand your preference though, I've used google's
| phones (Nexus then Pixel) for about a decade. They have
| the benefit of having one fewer cooks in the kitchen. Any
| other brand has to adjust to whatever dumb thing Google
| has done to copy iPhone in each new OS release, and then
| also add their own layer on top of that.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > expect to use it for 5+ years. I seriously doubt that
| there are any Androids out there that could get even close
| to that.
|
| Every Android phone I've had has lasted that long or
| longer. If I got less than 5 years out of any smartphone,
| I'd consider it faulty.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| You must have gone without security or other OS updates
| then, which I would consider a deal breaker with a phone.
| Google only recently extended the Pixel OS support
| timeline to be on par with Android.
| opan wrote:
| If you only buy devices with LineageOS support, you can
| continue to get updates for a very long time. I would not
| want to be at the mercy of the manufacturer for the
| software.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, I don't care about getting updates. If they're
| important to you, that's fair.
|
| But the phones don't suddenly stop working without
| updates. They're still perfectly fine.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Is not like flagship Android phones are cheap. They cost
| just as much as iPhones with much worse support.
|
| I agree if you are happy non flagship Android phones.
| Those are a bargain.
| lenkite wrote:
| > But the phones don't suddenly stop working without
| updates. They're still perfectly fine.
|
| Only if "perfectly fine" means filled with security
| vulnerabilities and open to dozens of working exploits.
| jjav wrote:
| > Yes, I don't care about getting updates. If they're
| important to you, that's fair.
|
| Hardware devices with embedded software couldn't get
| updates (or was a difficult job so didn't happen) until
| somewhat recently. It is unfortunate that the ability to
| do updates is used as a crutch to ship faulty software
| that then _needs_ updates. A phone shouldn 't ever _need_
| an update in its lifetime if it was properly built in the
| first place.
|
| I only recently stopped using my Motorola cellphone from
| 2005 (only because they decommissioned the towers). It
| never received any update in 17 years. It also never
| needed any.
|
| I would like to buy devices with that level of quality
| today.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Well, yeah, and I'd like a pony. The main issue is
| security updates. I'm guessing you weren't accessing
| things like a banking app with highly sensitive financial
| data on your 2005 Motorola.
| foobarbazetc wrote:
| iPhones just work. Macs just work. 99% of people don't want
| to spend time configuring anything.
|
| Both iOS and Android stopped innovating like 5 years ago, but
| at least the Apple ecosystem doesn't feel dead like Android.
| dmz73 wrote:
| That's the myth. From personal experience helping iPhone
| users, they seem to tolerate bad interface and hardware a
| lot more than other people and blame themselves when they
| can't get something to work.
| zh3 wrote:
| I've bought 2 apple products, my wife has bought 1.
|
| iPad: Failed after a year, no replacement (we can
| 'upgrade') - it technically works but shuts down 3 or 4
| minutes after boot.
|
| mac Mini: Hard disk failed. Out of warranty, so bought a
| cheap SSD and gave it to the kids (they prefer something
| that plays modern games).
|
| iPod: Old, yes, taken out of the drawer for a road trip but
| dead as a doornail.
|
| Admittedly, not tried an iPhone.
| pwb25 wrote:
| except you need a new set of cable adapters for each new
| phone
|
| they just remove more and more stuff
| SapporoChris wrote:
| From a sim card set of instructions that I was working with
| today: For iPhone customers: Please install APN after
| inserting sim card. Open the following website with Safari-
| Browser: * _.*_.com.
|
| That isn't just working. It looks like iPhone users have an
| extra configuration step when using this particular sim
| card.
| jackvalentine wrote:
| I've never seen that before and am interested. Can you
| post a link to those instructions?
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Sure thing. https://imgur.com/a/GsLYW6W The specific
| instructions for iPhone users are at the very bottom.
| jjav wrote:
| > Macs just work.
|
| Not anymore. The hardware quality has gone downhill hard.
|
| My powerbook from 2004 still works fine (kind of too slow,
| so I don't use it, but works fine).
|
| In my powerbook from 2021 the entire right side of ports
| died less than a year into it.
|
| Bought a macbook air in late 2022, one of the usbc ports
| died just a few months into its life. Which reminds me I
| need to take it to the store and see if they'll fix it or
| if I'm SOL again.
| atahanacar wrote:
| If they just work, why are there support forums full of
| questions?
| flyingcircus3 wrote:
| How are we still, 15 years later, stuck in the feigned
| incredulity stage of android vs ios?
|
| "I don't see how anyone still buys an ____. How can you not see
| the overwhelming evidence that ____ is unequivocally the better
| phone?"
|
| If either device can fit in either blank, as it has all over this
| thread, perhaps that's because there hasn't been any undeniably
| impactful feature improvements on either platform in the last
| decade.
| bhauer wrote:
| Tribalism. Just like politics and brand preferences in other
| economic sectors (cars, computers, and so on).
|
| I for one think both Android and iOS are pretty awful operating
| systems. I still look forward to a viable third option, and
| would especially enjoy a phone that functions more like an
| accessory or terminal to my computer, rather than a first-class
| computer in its own right.
| fsflover wrote:
| > How are we still, 15 years later, stuck in the feigned
| incredulity stage of android vs ios?
|
| We aren't. Sent from my Librem 5.
| PlutoIsAPlanet wrote:
| I swapped from Android after a decade to iOS at the end of last
| year, and don't regret it one single bit.
|
| Android you just get plagued with software bugs (random battery
| drain, UI freezes, weird crashes etc) constantly, additionally I
| wasn't a fan of how system apps because they come from Google
| auto-update, going in and having an app completely change at
| random when I'm not expecting it, is not a nice experience when
| you need the app in a hurry (looking at you Google Maps).
|
| Ironically for a phone, phone calls were the buggiest thing on
| nearly all Android phones I had over a decade (OnePlus, Samsung,
| Pixel etc).
|
| iOS, as much as I disagree with Apple's closed ecosystem and
| propriety behaviour, is just a far better software quality than
| Android. Google is obviously not a software company.
| bhewes wrote:
| So the real take away is Google is up 48% and everyone else is
| down with Apple down 5%.
|
| Sales have been flat in the USA since 2018
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/191985/sales-of-smartpho...
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| It doesn't exactly seem fair to say Google is up 48% when they
| went from 2% to 3% of the market. It seems to me that their
| growth is almost entirely coming from Samsung. The numbers are
| jumpy enough that I also wonder how much when different phone
| makers announce their new wares affects the numbers.
| bagacrap wrote:
| I think he means Google phones, ie Pixel.
|
| I am not surprised because they've been advertising pixel
| really hard, and they are good phones. Still, it seems a lot
| more likely to eat into Samsung than Apple market share.
| Lorin wrote:
| In Canada perhaps It's due to zero choices from service
| providers? Samsung and Google Pixel are the only Android options
| in the high-end (TCL/Motorola/ZTE low end). I would consider a
| Asus Zenfone or Sony Xperia if they were widely available here.
| jsight wrote:
| Apple messaging lockin is having the desired impact. Combine that
| with Google's mess of a strategy and it is easy to see why this
| is happening.
|
| It is why it is so critical to hire the right people in
| leadership to avoid squandering key, already successful,
| strategic positions.
| khazhoux wrote:
| What is the messaging lock-in? I have lots of text threads with
| mixed Android+iPhone users, and never have any problem.
| jsight wrote:
| Android users that interact with iphone users via the default
| messaging apps end up going over SMS. This has a lot of
| annoying limitations (can't modify groups, for example).
|
| iOS users will tell you how terrible that is and effectively
| put pressure on people to switch to iOS "like everyone else".
| notyourwork wrote:
| A simple example is the media sharing quality is horrendous
| when you transcend the iPhone/Android boundary. Can you
| communicate, yes. Is it as good as an all iMessage
| interaction, no.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Yup...my parents share videos from their iphone to my
| android and it is of a quality where you can literally
| count the pixels. Maybe there is a way to share higher
| quality, but they're not tech savvy and just do what is the
| default.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There is definitely a way to share higher quality, my
| feature phone could send better images and videos in
| 2010. EMS standards haven't gone away, apple just chooses
| not to use them because...
| pmontra wrote:
| Maybe you could use any app asking WhatsApp, Telegram,
| Skype, Signal or even Messenger (is it still a thing?)
| They work well with video. WhatsApp wouldn't be running
| Europe if its videos were bad.
| sofixa wrote:
| Telegram is by far the best one for video/photo quality
| because it doesn't do any (visible) compression,
| meanwhile WhatsApp and Messenger (yep, still exists)
| noticeably degrades the quality.
| lambdaba wrote:
| It's basically impossible to share e.g a long screenshot
| of text because WhatsApp compresses so aggressively, it's
| a joke.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Those plain SMS threads are green instead of blue. That lets
| iPhone owners judge Android owners from afar. /s
|
| Only half kidding. The real issue is just SMS vs data. And a
| little bit of feature parity - it's changed a few times, but
| until recently, if I "liked" a message in an SMS thread, we'd
| all see something like "Alistair like 'something said by
| somebody'" instead of just applying the thumb-up icon. This
| only gets worse for media sharing, link shares/snapshots,
| etc.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I've bumped into a number of iPhone users who seemingly
| randomly don't get my text messages.
|
| I've switched largely to communicating over alternative
| platforms since text messages can be unreliable.
| Fergusonb wrote:
| This has been a huge problem in my social circles.
|
| I really like my current android device, but my wife and
| our friends have iphones and we are all constantly
| inconvenienced by the messaging and other poor sharing
| options between platforms.
|
| They share things without having to think about it, and I
| have to come up with solutions that are acceptable to them.
|
| Between this issue and the differences in performance in
| the last few years, it has me thinking of moving back to
| team blue after 10+ years on green.
| cma wrote:
| Due to the distribution of cone cells of different colors
| in your retina, white on green is the hardest to read.
| Apple has probably caused car wreck deaths with the green
| bubble, even though you shouldn't read texts while driving,
| but they probably think a few deaths is worth it for the
| lock-in and stock incentives.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > The real issue is just SMS vs data.
|
| From what I understand (I am European, so never met anyone
| using iMessage) the real issue is that Apple refuses to
| distribute its application on Android, forcing instead
| communication from and to Android to travel via SMS. It's
| not a problem of SMS (which nobody really uses anymore),
| it's a deliberate choice. The genius is to allow enough
| communication between iPhone and Android as to not force
| iPhone users to switch app, while making it as
| uncomfortable as possible for both sides.
|
| If it were possible at all, the best solution would be for
| Android to just block SMS from iMessage, citing some bogus
| security reason. Then iPhone users would be forced to
| switch app to communicate and the spell would be broken.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| SMS can only handle a certain number of phone numbers. If a
| non-iPhone user receives a group message where their number
| is past the limit, they cannot reply. It has happened with my
| mother a number of times.
|
| https://www.android.com/get-the-message/
| JohnFen wrote:
| In my view, that's a feature, not a bug. Group messages are
| a plague.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| I'm not sure if I even have any regular contacts who have
| iPhones, as an iPhone user.
|
| Everyone uses Discord or Facebook Messenger. Or Slack for
| coworkers.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Yep, same boat here. All my Android friends are on Discord
| so that's where we talk. I talk to a small handful of
| friends on iMessage, my family, and then some work stuff
| for my side business but I do most my chatting in Discord
| at this point (and Slack for work).
| kaba0 wrote:
| That's just such a US. American problem that it is honestly,
| kind of funny in a dumb way from any other part of the world.
| Like SMS itself is a legacy, insecure tech, it really should
| not be used at all anymore, unless you really only know their
| phone number. Knowing that you are _not_ sending SMS when you
| see a blue bubble, but apple just conveniently put their
| internet-based message system into the same app is not a hard
| concept. Similarly, you can install Telegram, Whatsapp,
| Messenger, Signal, Element X (which I all have installed
| besides Whatsapp) and communicate with people available through
| those application at the utterly tiny inconvenience of having
| to open that app first.
|
| You can't send images/videos through a _Short Messaging_
| Service, period. That's not apple being anticompetitive, this
| is literally the technology's limitation. It is also terrible
| from an encoding point of view, and probably why the rest of
| the world had no problem ditching it for most things, as
| sending an Unicode message takes up plenty characters, making
| you have to send 2 messages even with moderately long text. (I
| remember removing 'o's and spaces when I was a child and had
| stricter limits on the number of SMSs in my plan.
| jsight wrote:
| Yes, it is a US centric view, but it also explains why iOS
| market share is nearly unstoppable in the US. It will likely
| tilt much farther in that direction if there aren't
| fundamental changes in how people use messaging.
| ggregoire wrote:
| Indeed. WhatsApp has like 99.9% of market share in
| central/south America? Nobody use SMS or iMessage over there.
| martin8412 wrote:
| People are just eating what Google says raw. Apple will just
| need to implement RCS and everything will be better.
|
| Don't worry that the only universally available RCS relay is
| operated by Google and encryption is a part of a non-standard
| Google extension. So Google wants Apple to hand all messages
| over to Google.
|
| For fun, Apple should propose to implement RCS but only if
| Google agrees to use the Apple relay. No chance it would ever
| be accepted.
| dalyons wrote:
| Amen. Plus, the whole reason RCS was built was to allow
| carriers to keep charging for messages.
| kaba0 wrote:
| And the included encryption is beyond useless if it is
| instantly dropped when sent to a device that doesn't
| understand the new protocol. That's such a huge security
| vulnerability that it is just security theater to encrypt
| in the first place. Though I'm sure it has to do something
| with all those messages going through google's servers.
| howinteresting wrote:
| That's also true for iMessage?
|
| If you actually care about e2ee you'd use Signal.
| SllX wrote:
| Actually it's not true for iMessage. Messages _switches_
| to SMS /MMS if the phone doesn't support iMessage or has
| it disabled, but if it's an iMessage it's an iMessage--
| encryption and all--and you can see in advance if that is
| the case.
|
| That said I don't know what Google's messenger actually
| does when it drops the encryption on RCS messages. Is
| there a visual distinction between encrypted RCS and
| unencrypted RCS on the sender end if it is just dropping
| the encryption on the receiving end as a fallback?
| silon42 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm on android and RCS is not enabled.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Apple will just need to implement RCS and everything will
| be better.
|
| I used it for a bit, but learned that RCS is not something
| I want even a little.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Like SMS itself is a legacy, insecure tech, it really
| should not be used at all anymore, unless you really only
| know their phone number.
|
| I use SMS mostly because the only people I know who don't are
| using Facebook stuff and I'm not going to do that. But I am
| nervous about the say when people stop using SMS so much
| because I don't look forward to having to have multiple
| messaging apps and trying to remember who is using what.
|
| > You can't send images/videos through a Short Messaging
| Service, period.
|
| I do that all the time.
| Thrymr wrote:
| > Similarly, you can install Telegram, Whatsapp, Messenger,
| Signal, Element X (which I all have installed besides
| Whatsapp) and communicate with people available through those
| application at the utterly tiny inconvenience of having to
| open that app first.
|
| ...and the not insignificant inconvenience of knowing which
| of these apps each of your contacts uses or prefers. There
| really is a network effect of most people in a particular
| circle just using one thing. For US iPhone users at least,
| that thing is iMessage.
| kaba0 wrote:
| I have my family on Telegram as well as some close friends,
| a single friend on Element, most other people who are less
| tech-aware are using FB's Messenger so I can't ditch that
| unfortunately. That's not hard to keep in mind, it is not
| that many people I actively keep in contact with. Though I
| am no social butterfly, you may have it different.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| 90% of people I message with use WhatsApp or Signal (and most
| of them use iPhones). I keep hearing about iOS messaging lock
| in, but I've never experienced it.
| MBCook wrote:
| Are you in the US? Every time that comes up that tends to be
| a huge divide. US uses iMessage, other countries don't.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Where do to live? Zero people in the USA i know use them that
| dont talk to out of country family
| dimmke wrote:
| It's a US only thing. And only for people in the US who don't
| regularly communicate with people outside the US.
|
| I moved out of the US and most of my US friends I still have
| to use iMessage to talk to. Only a few are active on
| WhatsApp.
| jsight wrote:
| This article was about US market share.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Its annoying as hell, because iMessage isn't really useful when
| most of the people I write to don't have an iPhone.
|
| 100% I blame Google though, they need to get their ass together
| and make their own. It needs to work with everbody who already
| have a google account and they need to commit to it for 10 year
| minimum.
|
| Then it is reasonable for Apple to create a system so they can
| talk together.
| ars wrote:
| Google created RCS - it does exactly what you are requesting.
|
| But support for it is tepid - even Google Voice doesn't
| support it.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Google did not _create_ RCS. Google has _endorsed_ RCS and
| implemented it to some extent.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Also, it is just fake open-source, at the end of the day
| all your data goes through google's servers, with optional
| encryption that will be decrypted when you talk to an old
| device -- that's security theater.
| khazhoux wrote:
| I don't understand -- are Android users not able to receive
| your iPhone text messages? I've never had that problem.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Sure, but I would also like to send them pictures and I
| would like some security about it too.
| alistairSH wrote:
| SMS vs data. iPhone to iPhone uses a data connection with
| richer media sharing features. Plus SMS is in a different
| color, so you can easily/remotely judge your peer for using
| Android.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| > ... judge your peer for not using iPhone.
|
| Ftfy. It's not just iOS and Android out there.
| pmontra wrote:
| Google built more messaging apps than people have fingers in
| one hand, possibly two. They are not good at them.
|
| Even if they would, what's the incentive for Apple to become
| interoperable? They want a moat and people that buy what they
| sell inside the moat.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Incentive is to make it better for their users who have
| Android friends. They already did that with the last update
| that meant you could do Facetime group calls with them.
| wcoenen wrote:
| > _It needs to work with everbody who already have a google
| account and they need to commit to it for 10 year minimum_
|
| This already exists. 10 years ago, Google Hangouts was
| separated from Google+. It is currently accessible through
| the Gmail web interface, Gmail app, and "Chat" app.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and.
| ..
| kaba0 wrote:
| But they still have the chat app in gmail, then there was
| that allo thing as well, and whatnot.. Google honestly
| should be diagnosed with ADHD with that attention span.
| saltcured wrote:
| Crazily, they also have something that looks just like it
| inside the either the Docs or Drive app, but it doesn't
| have the same chat history as the one under GMail!
|
| I dismissed a notification with photos from my wife and
| then had a hard time figuring out where that conversation
| was, because it seemed like it would be chat but wasn't.
| runako wrote:
| > It is currently accessible through the Gmail web
| interface, Gmail app, and "Chat" app.
|
| None of these are a good substitute for messaging like SMS
| or iMessage.
| gcbirzan wrote:
| Why? I use it all the time for that.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Did that ship with Samsung phones?
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| What's wrong with RCS?
| JamesAdir wrote:
| And still no mini Android phone from the one of big
| manufacturers.
| MildRant wrote:
| My Pixel is rapidly coming out on it's drop dead date for
| security updates and I'm considering just switching to an iPhone
| SE. I want a small phone that will be supported for a long enough
| time that I don't have to constantly remind myself when the EOL
| date is.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| I think LineageOS should be well supported on Pixels, if this
| suits you.
| nightshadetrie wrote:
| The difference is that the iPhone is the bread and butter to
| Apple, where as Google's Android is treated as secondary.
| ke88y wrote:
| Which seems like a massive liability for the company. Search
| engines seem like a much lower moat than mobile platforms these
| days.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| Apple is the only manufacturer that still sells a phone today
| with an actual physical button. It is hard for me to give that
| up. Also it is very small and slim. Barely feel it in my pocket,
| not to mention the nice feeling aluminium on the back.
| aluminussoma wrote:
| I am planning to make the switch this year. As a long time Pixel
| user, Google's support of its own hardware has been subpar. My
| phone was only officially supported for 3 years.
|
| They will increase support for new phones, probably because Apple
| does the same. It is too little, too late for me.
| macintosh-hd wrote:
| I had an early pixel and the Pixel 4 coming out and being ass
| was what drove me to iPhone. I wanted a phone with clean
| software, instant updates, and face unlock. The Pixel 4 being
| bad made me realize that the iPhone had all of those things for
| a long time.
| optymizer wrote:
| Long time Android user here (since 1.5 on G1), had all the
| Nexuses and Pixels as well. Give the OnePlus phones a try. My
| family's switched to using them and I've been impressed with
| the battery life and hardware. The software is closer in spirit
| to the Nexus line.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Give the OnePlus phones a try._
|
| Don't. Older OnePlus devices (1-3) were great, but the newer
| ones are pure trash, basically e-waste phones due to how poor
| the SW support is: good up to date HW, but buggy SW and poor
| SW update cycles with late updates which often add more bugs
| and remove features and don't address older bugs leading to
| never ending frustrations (just read their forums).
|
| They even did bait-and-switch where they promised X update
| was coming in the future for your phone, and later axing that
| update completely while quietly removing all mentions of
| their promile from their webpage and forums. Stay away from
| them, there are more pleasurable ways to burn your money
| away.
| aluminussoma wrote:
| My mother asked me for a phone recommendation and I told her
| to try OnePlus. It is a beautiful phone (for an Android) but
| very buggy. It often fails, at random, at it most basic job
| of making phone calls without needing a restart. I regret
| making that recommendation.
| sliken wrote:
| I've had every htc g1/nexus/pixel. 3 years hasn't been too big
| a deal, we have 3 phones in the household and the phones
| trickle down based on preferences for camera, phone size, and
| us. Did run up against the 3 year limit a few times.
| Fortunately the pixel 6 and 7 switched to 5 years of support.
|
| I was considering switching to iPhone, but then I tried
| GrapheneOS. It's only for pixels, is easy to install, and
| focuses on privacy and security. Suddenly it feels like it's my
| phone. Zero crapware, something pixels have been pretty good
| at. I can remove any app I want, even the play store. It ships
| with a de-googled chrome. I'm impressed.
| tiahura wrote:
| I wonder if the 15 and USB-C might be a surprisingly big upgrade
| driver?
| meepmorp wrote:
| IMO, outside of the tech world, nobody really cares about USB-C
| - or at least - not enough to drive upgrades. It's just what
| one end of the power cord looks like.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| For some people its a deterrent. I talked my coworker into an
| AppleTV earlier this week and the new remote was USB-C
| charging (doesn't come with a cable) and he was upset that he
| couldn't just charge it with any of his existing lightning
| cables. I tried to explain to him that in no time at all his
| house would be inundated with usb-c cables everywhere, but he
| was not happy.
| joelfried wrote:
| For people who already have USB-C phones and are considering
| switching it means "All of the cords you have right now will
| still be useful", which is a definite improvement over "All
| of the cords you have right now are junk you will throw away
| and have to replace with new cords".
|
| I'm not trying to say that will drive massive upgrades in and
| of itself, but I can definitely see it being a nice-to-have
| at the margins and help a nontrivial set of people pull the
| trigger.
| veave wrote:
| I'm pretty pissed because I have had apple stuff for years
| and now I suppose I can throw the lightning cables in the
| trash. Thanks EU!
| TillE wrote:
| Don't you have USB-C cables for literally everything
| else? This is Apple's equivalent to finally dropping
| micro-USB, everyone is using USB-C now, thankfully.
|
| I mean my MBP has a MagSafe charging port, but I use
| USB-C for powering that too. One type of cable for
| everything.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| You know what we had to do about a decade ago? Toss out
| our 30-pin connector cables. Times change, the switch of
| the iPhone to USB-C was inevitable given that Apple has
| already moved pretty much everything else away from the
| Lightning connector already. At best the EU pushed up the
| timeline.
| meepmorp wrote:
| I'd think most potential upgrades to the next iPhone would
| be current iPhone users. If anything, I think the switch to
| USB-C would be a deterrent to people who are sensitive to
| cord changes.
|
| I don't understand the need to have a single connector vs a
| block with interchangeable cords, but I also don't care
| that much about it so I might be missing something.
| macintosh-hd wrote:
| We're about a decade out from them changing from 30 pin to
| lightning and I still occasionally hear someone complaining
| about apple "always changing the charging cable" so I imagine
| it's actually going to piss off the general public.
| drcongo wrote:
| I'd agree, but also reckon there's likely to be quite a lot
| of people holding out for the 15. I am.
| MBCook wrote:
| Much like when lightning launched, mostly I think we'll get
| whiny think pieces.
|
| "Why do I have to buy new cables? What about the stuff that
| uses the old cable still? I need two now?"
|
| I agree it's the other new feature, whatever they are, that
| would be primary drivers for most people.
| glimshe wrote:
| I'm a long time Android user but boy, Google is trying hard to
| make me switch. Android Auto is a mess, not a lot of good phone
| options with compact footprint, poor update policies and
| basically the feeling of always being 2-3 years behind Apple.
| bitsandboots wrote:
| I don't get "Android Auto" and "Android Automotive" They aren't
| open source, and when they don't work, your car is left with a
| weird system that can't be substituted. They make it less
| likely that I'll want to buy a car with them. What's so good
| about it versus just using bluetooth and a phone mount? Could
| be crazy, but figure buggy software should be something I can
| swap out, not integrated into a car many times more expensive
| than it.
| glimshe wrote:
| Android Auto is able to show your current route/map to the
| car's screen. Android can do that reasonably successfully, so
| it's worth the price of admission for this reason alone. This
| said, there are a few usability annoyances and other failures
| elsewhere in the overall experience. But this particular
| feature works pretty well.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I liked using Android Auto on the phone w/ a Bluetooth
| connection to my car until they killed it. It was perfect
| and I was furious when they removed that feature.
| bitsandboots wrote:
| I don't understand the value of this. Is it just "big
| screen=better"? Because, my phone's screen is already
| bigger than the standalone GPSs of the past, and has voice,
| so I've never thought that I needed a bigger screen for
| navigation.
|
| In fact I want less: A few new cars have very slick HUDs on
| the windshield which are very elegant in their simplicity.
| A recent BMW rental had this, all without any smartphone
| integration, and I thought that was really cool! Now,
| though, that feature has probably been replaced with an
| android equivalent - A lot of companies are going "Android
| Automotive", and it sounds like a downgrade.
| glimshe wrote:
| Yes, it's a LOT better. Charging the phone connected to
| it is automatic and the screen is positioned in a safe
| location and much more visible to not only the driver,
| but other people who can help with navigation. It's a
| game changer, I'll never have a car without a screen
| again.
|
| My Mazda has both Android Auto and its own decent mapping
| solution, but Android/iPhone is just better than what
| ships with the car. The phone also has more information
| on speed traps, detours etc.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > I don't understand the value of this. Is it just "big
| screen=better"?
|
| Yep. 8 inch touchscreen in my car is much easier to read
| and interact with, plus it is already there in a nice
| location so I don't have to put a phone mount somewhere,
| run the cables to it, etc.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Even the cheap folks in my extended family are starting to switch
| to iPhones. The TCO is better, as is longevity and use
| experience. The only way to be cheaper is to stick with awful
| budget android phones and then you give up on the experience and
| extended software support. Get burned a couple times by that, and
| pretty soon a basic iPhone SE starts to look really appealing.
| Especially for people who don't want to upgrade every couple
| years.
| linuxftw wrote:
| The original linked report is far less biased [1]. It seems the
| only reason there is demand for iphones right now is the heavy
| subsidies offered by carriers. I think few people are paying
| retail for those phones.
|
| 1: https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-smartphone-
| shipments...
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| I wonder if Apple will use their increasing profit in
| subscriptions to keep dropping the price of the iPhone
| throw9away6 wrote:
| The prices of the phone keep going up as they lock in more
| users
| hospitalJail wrote:
| To be fair, iPhones almost have caught up with Android features.
|
| Still the lack of control is poor. Maybe in 10 years they will
| give users control.
|
| However, the security is a dealbreaker. I have something quite
| important on my phone, I can't trust Apple's lack of security.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| So iPhone users typically have more money?
| collinc777 wrote:
| In the US, having an Android is one of the biggest social status
| negative signals I can think of.
|
| I used to have an android and when I'd meet people the primary
| thing they'd remember about me was that I had an android. Their
| blinders were up after they had that information.
|
| I think phones like the Galaxy line might be better than iPhones,
| but the experience of owning an iPhone far exceeds owning a
| Galaxy.
| pyrophane wrote:
| Apple really contributed to this with the non-iMessage "green
| bubble."
| mike00632 wrote:
| I think this varies by groups of people and is very similar to
| everyone in the group having Nike shoes. It's a marketing ploy
| from Apple.
| meroes wrote:
| My own extended family is literally a cult about this.
|
| But, I'm back to iPhone because I actually need my phone
| portion to work. Went through 3 androids with constant call
| issues.
|
| Who cares if there's a cult. The products are objectively worse
| if you need to make important phone calls. Couldn't care about
| anything else even a tenth as much.
| silisili wrote:
| So wait, we're basing purchases now on what others think of
| them and not our own metrics?
|
| I'm not saying you're wrong, but this is absolutely wild to me.
| We must live in very different places with a very different
| group of cohorts.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| A +1 to Android for helping us filter out all the wankers we
| don't want to hang out with.
| thedriver wrote:
| iPhones end up being cheaper in the long run. They get software
| updates much longer than almost any Android phone, and at least
| here even small cities have local shops that repair them. It's
| also just a superior user experience.
|
| I wish they kept on making the mini models though. I'm using a 13
| mini, which has been really nice. Most modern smartphones are
| uncomfortable to carry in the front pocket of slim pants.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| A lot of mobile sites break on the mini phones it's a huge
| hassle. Would not recommend. I have one and that's my biggest
| gripe with it. There are restaurants I can't checkout at for
| example because the button is stuck just below the fold and I
| can't scroll to click it due to shitty ui
| rifty wrote:
| I've found just setting the browser to always load sites at
| 75% zoom solves a lot of these issues. There is also the
| option 'Hide Toolbar' behind the 'aA' button on Safari which
| also helps as well
| TillE wrote:
| I'm still using an iPhone XS (2018) and have zero complaints
| aside from a lack of RAM. I plan to upgrade this year, so it
| will come out to $200/year. Seems like a good deal.
| fgeahfeaha wrote:
| Yup, you just can't beat standardization
|
| The support is way better because there isn't a million
| different models
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| I think it has more to do with vertical integration of the
| hardware and software than the number of models.
|
| Supporting Android phones requires collaboration between the
| chip vendors, hardware manufacturers, and Google, which is
| difficult.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Personally I don't understand the friends I have that use
| Android. They wear it as a badge of pride that they didn't give
| Apple money [0], ok... cool? None of them use a third-party app
| store, none of them use a custom rom, none of them really
| customize the phone at all past stock. I understand if you want
| to go the Android route to root/customise it but if you aren't
| going to do that then I really don't get the point. Google and
| Apple are, at worst, equal in how "evil" they are and in my
| opinion Apple comes out on top for more things that I care about.
|
| I also never say shit about their phone/computer choices but for
| some reason some of them find reasons to bring up my use of Apple
| products regularly. Makes me think of the scene in Mad Men "I
| don't think about you at all" [1].
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/z6fX6-aCZ9Y?t=52
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlOSdRMSG_k
| jansan wrote:
| Maybe they just want a descent browser on their phone. Another
| reason could be theat they don't have an abundance of financial
| resources and are fine with a $200 phone.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > Maybe they just want a descent browser on their phone.
|
| Safari is just fine on mobile.
|
| > Another reason could be theat they don't have an abundance
| of financial resources and are fine with a $200 phone.
|
| They are buying flagship Samsung or Pixel phones, finances
| isn't a factor here
| mike00632 wrote:
| What if we just want to customize our home screen? I use a
| custom launcher which doesn't require root or a custom rom.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I totally understand that, that's why I said "I understand if
| you want to go the Android route to root/customise it" but
| none of my friends are doing that, that's what puzzles me.
| kcb wrote:
| My screen folds.
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| I always found it interesting how the dynamic for 'nerds' shifted
| from Android to iOS because of data security reasons. I was one
| of those who originally got an Android because of "tinkering"
| (and honestly still miss that), but with the data privacy
| realization of iOS vs Android, I could NEVER go back.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| The turning point for was when Apple allowed users to set app
| permissions and Google didn't
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