iPhone is generally behind the curve when it comes to hardware specs, but nobody cares about that because iOS is such a strong platform.
As long as the market share of any newcomer is low enough, Google can leave them out in the cold for app support (or intentionally interfere by blocking YouTube access, similar to what they did with Windows Mobile, and now Amazon's Echo and Fire platforms), and they'll die off for that reason alone.
Whether it's an Android fork or a new OS like Tizen or some new Windows flavor, it won't beat Google unless it has the market share to force Google to support it with apps. And it's hard to get that market share without Google's support.
Nice spin there! Youtube was blocked on Windows Mobile because Microsoft blatantly blocked all the ads in violation of policy. If Microsoft was in the right here, we would have seen a lot more aggressive posturing from them instead of silent retreat.
And for Amazon, it was a reaction to Amazon's decision not to sell Chromecast (and Nest devices). Amazon's excuse is that Google changed Chromecast APIs, which smells weak when you see other supported apps on Chromecast from Netflix, HBO, ESPN etc.
Here is a link to an overly-well-sourced comment I wrote on this:
Why would anyone expect Google to handle Microsoft with kid-gloves in this bout of corporate-combat when Microsoft was playing to win? You don't bring a knife to a gunfight.
The Amazon/Google spat goes back a lot further than that, which I've talked about a bit in other comments here.
They killed the Microsoft YouTube client because it didn't play by the rules regarding showing ads or downloading videos.
I don't know if Windows Mobile was ever faster or smoother, but for certain it was not in the last few years.
In fact, I had a phone with Microsoft's Android Bridge beta, and while people were complaining how slow the Android apps were on it... I realized that it was more or less just the normal performance Android apps ran at.
I assume it was related to the inefficiency of the Windows kernel compared to Linux.
http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-w... "I Contribute to the Windows Kernel. We Are Slower Than Other ...
Seems a little disingenuous to pin performance against a half-implemented ASOP API running on an environment without all of the JVM bytecode tuning Google has put into ART/Dalvik.
I have never seen an 150 € Android devices that were as fast as they are.
And in terms of other hardware (RAM, camera, sensors) I would still say it's arguable
Really? In all the benchmarks I've seen, the latest iPhones handily beat the latest Android phones. (And old iPhones remain usable longer than old Android phones.)
Assuming the software doesn't get in the way, benchmarks are all about hardware, not software.
No, if the OS significantly slows down a benchmark, it's a bad OS. Both Android and iOS are fine in this respect. (It's a bit fuzzier for graphics tests, I admit, where driver quality comes into play.)
From what I understand iOS is pretty picky about background processes. Limit what can run in the background (and for how long) with android and you will probably get similar results.
A quick google search gives me results like this: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/galaxy-s9-benchmarks,review-519... "Galaxy S9 Is Fastest Android Ever, But iPhone X Is Faster"
It's not always true, but it's a good rule of thumb.
Java's bytecode execution speed in the JVM is good enough that it's on part with C, easily beating any language with even a slightly inefficient compiler, like Go or Haskell.
class A {
B b;
}