US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone
counterpointresearch.com
counterpointresearch.com
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...
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.
Appearing high status is more important than many other expenses.
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).
$429, actually.
I don't think it's that interesting a model either because it ignores the last 5 years of innovations like bezelless phones. For €349 you can get a nice midrange Android which does have a bezelless screen, fingerprint in display, oled display and often even a 3.5mm jack.
Sure it's not as fast but that's one one thing I care less about, if I need fast I'll use my computers. The phone is just for on the road.
"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.
Personally, I think they’re a heck of a bargain for what they do.
Whether or not it's worth it is a purely subjective thing.
Only? That's an inordinate amount of money for what's just a phone.
“Just” a phone would make and receive phone calls and that’s it.
i would argue the phone app on an iPhone is the least used function of the phone. It's certainly not "just a phone".
A $600 laptop is not a prestige device.
That doesn't even begin to make any sense. Can you run CAD software or serious photo processing on a phone (like DxO)? Nothing I run on a mac can run on a phone.
Do you also question why people buy quality shoes or mattresses?
I do. I am 99% convinced that the majority of first world people waste way too much money on shoes that aren't any better or worse than cheaper options. Shoes don't really get all that much better than they were previously, but somehow they always change and the cost always goes up.
As someone with a multitude of foot issues, my options have exploded in the last couple decades.
Are there some kind of objective metrics on how modern shoes are better than shoes from 10 years ago? Are they objectively more durable? Is the shape somehow better for your feet? Because I haven't felt any of it. For me it's just like other clothing: change for the sake of change.
It used to be there was a couple pairs of shoes I could buy, now it seems as if most manufacturers have a few models that help. My last pair cost a LOT of money (Brooks), but I can tell you I've never felt a shoe as good as this one. They get better every time I buy shoes which is every 2-3 years.
It's pretty frustraing, because even stuff that used to be dependable quality seems to get outcompeted by people buying stuff they replace (or would like to, if they could afford the monthly payments) as soon as the next model comes out. And so, the reliable, dependable company slumps (i.e. company making shoes that last for years), is bought-out by a hedge fund, quality goes to hell as they feed off its reputation.
So many people people say they want to buy quality, actually they want to buy is status (Rolex, Apple, Burberry, ...).
I don't know about other people, but I went iPhone specifically for the value/$. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But the phones don't suddenly stop working without updates. They're still perfectly fine.
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.
For anyone who has done any serious threat modeling exercises would never ever do that from a 2023 phone (I'm fully aware many people do it regardless).w
The trick with GrapheneOS, or any privacy setup, is that it requires attention to stay reasonably secure. The OS won't matter if you enable Google services and install apps that track and sell all your data.
Or you could just use the brand that gives 6-7 years of OS updates and 10+ years of security updates out of the box…
I just don't need that in a phone and am totally fine with the limitations of a degoogled device.
I don't recommend that for most people. I was simply responding to a question of what device to consider with regards to privacy/security. I even tried to include caveats that it isn't right for everyone and had real tradeoffs.
Now you say you don't recommend that for most people?
Which is it?
> The trick with GrapheneOS, or any privacy setup, is that it requires attention to stay reasonably secure. The OS won't matter if you enable Google services and install apps that track and sell all your data.
Not sure how I could have been more clear here, I literally started by saying "if security is a concern". I stand by that, if security is a concern I would not use an iPhone or stock Android. I also stand by the assumption that for most people security isn't a concern.
So yes, I wouldn't recommend graphene for most people but I would recommend it to anyone both concerned about security and willing to sacrifice some functionality and convenience (both caveats in my original post).
You make it sound as though I changed my recommendation or story half way through. If that's your opinion, please do me a favor and point out specifically where I walked it back or contradicted myself.
My problem is, as a user, whose expertise is not 100% security, how can a layman decide which device to trust? Trust the neighbor, trust the expert who thinks is an expert, but doesn't see his own limitations, trust the newspapers parroting whatever they find (or their security advisor), trust the marmots or trust the looks, because you don't know what the silicon does. You might know one domain, but not multiple ones, like you might know the IT domain, but doesn't know the underlying physics domain, so you might think the phone is secure in the IT domain, but since you don't know jackshit about the physics, you have to again rely on someone's advice.
The iPhone is locked down tight, even security experts have complained in the past because analysing the core internals is cumbersome. But that's a double edged sword, when you can't even get basic info about phone's status without resorting to some hacking shenanigans.
Any way to know your firmware has not changed? How come there are zero tools for the layman to verify the status of his device? You don't know whether your usb's firmware is intact, whether your motherboard is a-ok and the list goes on.
According to newspapers, it is/was the panacea of security (iPhone), yet sec bugs after sec bugs are coming out all the time. You don't even have complete control over the phone, since the software switches (like wifi) are not actually disabling the wifi circuitry.
How come banks are sitting on ancient systems and are seemingly fine?
Should you trust zerodium's bounty prices, should you trust exploit brokers? (they ought to see what's an emmentaler right?)
Encrypted secure phones? Look how many criminals got caught, by putting their trust blindly into something, that someone parroted about how secure that is.
GrapheneOS says they are secure, but where are tools that show you that yes we do this and that and that solves these kinds of attacks, thwarted these attacks in the past, demonstrated?
Or should I go with an old blackberry? What about this article? https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/14/11434926/blackberry-encry...
Should you consider Mikko's advice. Use a phone that is made by a country, whose intelligence agency is not a threat to you? But how do you know that a phone, which is made in X country is actually controlled by that country's IA? And how do you know which IA is not a threat to you? :DDDDD Do you even have to fear against a nation state's capabilities or since they have unimited budget you are fucked when somehow get in their crosshairs?
It's like flipping a coin, putting your trust into someone's solution blindly.
This advice to not use a 2023 phone is just plain silly. I'm not saying it's 100% locked down, but neither is going to a bank branch and talking to someone in person.
As soon as phones got Bluetooth, you got Nokia Bluetooth viruses that would spread via public transit, and you had to go to a service center to fix it since it wasn't designed to be updated.
Even in the days of "software was complete on launch", security was absolutely abysmal and we just relied on most people being honest.
Only if "perfectly fine" means filled with security vulnerabilities and open to dozens of working exploits.
I agree if you are happy non flagship Android phones. Those are a bargain.
The pixel 6a will get 3 years of updates and 5 years of security updates. On a phone that was released 12 months ago.
So it hasn’t been tested yet. Plenty of time for google to renege on that.
The Pixel 6a is at least a cheaper phone. But the Pixel 7 are flagship prices for the same support.
iPhones have been getting this level of updates since almost day one. The last iPhone I ran into the ground was a 6 and that had 5 years of OS updates. iOS 8 through 12.
My current XR has been getting updates for almost 5 years and will get iOS 17. So at least 6 years of updates?
I installed some ROM and kept it alive (not by far as secure as using an iPhone, of course).
Google and Samsung appear to be on the same page; I think the front runners in the Android world are a lot better than some would like to give them credit for.
It's risky, especially in todays world where financial information is stored endlessly on a cell phone. 5 years+ for iphones make a very nice deprecation curve / alongside a viable resell market. It's nice to sell a 2yr old iphone for 70-80% of it's purchase price and then buy a new one and not have to worry about anything for another 5 years.
With LineageOS you get OS updates (great!) but are still vulnerable to exploits that target binary-only firmware.
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.
To note, iOS doesn't allow alternative browsers so Safari will also be stuck in time and there will be no option to get any modern engine on the device (I'm not even sure you could get one through jailbreaking, that would be a lot of porting efforts for virtually no one on the market)
I resurrected a third gen iPad a few weeks ago for no reason, and the most interesting part was it couldn't get past Cloudflare's browser check, so couldn't even see some of simpler and primitive sites on the web.
The SE 2020 is in no danger of falling off OS updates anytime soon let alone security.
https://security.samsungmobile.com/workScope.smsb
My son uses my old S10-5G (the world's first premier 5G phone, released in mid 2019 - ages ahead of Apple), and it's still regularly receiving security updates.
Both iOS and Android stopped innovating like 5 years ago, but at least the Apple ecosystem doesn’t feel dead like Android.
That isn't just working. It looks like iPhone users have an extra configuration step when using this particular sim card.
I think it depends on the carrier whether APNs are required. Can be automatically set nowadays with iOS 16 according to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201699
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.
My wife got a Dell first its NVM gave out a year in (never seen that happen) then - you guessed it - she updated Windows and it stopped booting.
they just remove more and more stuff
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
At $35k/yr, you have $2500/month post tax, so at $1000 you're spending almost half your post-tax income on rent (and that's not including utilities, taxes, etc).
That math doesn't work, even in cheap places.
I've seen cheaper housing in Birmingham as well, but I don't know some of those areas nearly as well and couldn't vouch for how nice or safe they actually are outside of listing photos online
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.
For you, maybe a better analogy would be buying cheaper food at the grocery store.
(I see a lot of restaurants serving outstanding food so it does feel like a sacrifice when we don't eat there, plus we do shop carefully and buy in bulk. I also have an iPhone.)
Americans love to consume. They think their consumption brings them happiness. One of their most delightful purchases is a new phone.
If you replaced "Americans" with "Most people in capitalist countries who are subject to constant advertising" I'd probably agree.
That being said I agree with you about advertising getting people to buy things they don’t want or don’t need (strong need) in capitalist economies but that’s a failure of regulation and this a failure by the people.
Another experiment you can do though is look at highly capitalist countries like Norway or Denmark and look at the consumption patterns and then compare that with other capitalist countries like China (effectively capitalist) or the U.S. or Brazil and see whether or not it’s a cultural phenomenon or perhaps an economic one. As I’m sure you could guess I think it’s cultural.
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
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.
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.
But okay, that's cool and all, but you WILL need to refresh it 1.5x as often or more.. The Pixel 7a goes EoL on security patches in under 5 years. Meanwhile, Apple is still providing patches on iPhone 5 series products released 9 years ago, and latest iOS is available on iPhone models released almost 6 years ago.
Anyway, let's say none of that matters and that tech conservative people only hold their phones for 4 years anyway. An iPhone will hold its value better for that period of time, when you go to sell it on Craigslist. A 4 year old Google Pixel 3a XL can be bought for $72 on Swappa. An almost 5 year old iPhone XR is for sale for $195.
And that's not even to point out the iPhone SE as the other user did, which is cheaper than the Pixel 7a, though I think it would be a fair retort that the iPhone SE is more a competitor to the Pixel 6 generation. 6a being just a tad cheaper than the iPhone SE.
Thinking of tech as a multi-year investment makes the price differences negligible. It's really all about which garden you prefer to be in. Even if your credit sucks and you just need to pay cash for a phone, Swappa makes being in either garden so cheap that you hardly need to worry. And phones are so fast these days that exact tech specs hardly matter anymore unless you're big on mobile gaming.
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 -
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.
And as a professional developer that uses a mac (that is by far the best bang for the buck if you're not into gaming) it just makes sense to pick an iphone instead of an android due to the ecosystem value. I doubt many people in developed countries care that much about the fact that you use an apple device or not, that's the kind of shit you'd expect from developing nations like Brazil (where I'm from), where they do remain a status symbol mostly because the population in general is still pretty poor.
It is true about phones though, especially when you consider how badly all the big brands except apple and Google add unremovable money making spam apps to their phones.
Literally no other laptop provides a competitive battery life, screen or build even compared to the surface. I literally just bought a new laptop 3 months ago, and almost zero windows laptops were reasonably competitive with the MacBook for a dev.
Could just be because I have a powerful gaming PC, but I definitely found that windows laptops did not meet up to a decent standard.
If you as a consumer buy a nice HP Spectre, it will be more than an equivalent MacBook barring a sale or clearance. I buy 10,000 at a time, and get about 30% off.
A 15" MBA with the max 24GB RAM and a 1TB drive would cost $2100. Note the Zenbook is not on sale, has a 120Hz HiDPI OLED display and aluminum chassis.
In any case, I think the switch from Intel to ARM makes any such comparisons meaningless until we start seeing more ARM-based laptops in the same niche.
ARM and Intel laptops are directly comparable because you can compare what people can do them.
Not all ARM processors are created equal, Apple's are superior in iPhones and laptops, there's no reason to expect that to change in the near future.
Hence the words "in the same niche" in the comment to which you replied.
Plenty of people don't care about how long you can run off the battery or processing per Watt in general, just performance. For those people, there are x86 laptops that can outperform Apple's ARM-based laptops (not to mention having discrete GPI options).
Almost all the benchmarks out there of similarly sized laptops have the M2s (and previously had the M1s) topping the charts in single and multi threaded workloads.
Okay, well
1. Not every Macbook user is a developer
2. Not every developer has no use for a GPU
If we're going to make comparisons about performance requirements for a specific subset of a specific subset of users, then let's be explicit about that. Otherwise, arbitrarily ignoring a rather substantial contributor to overall performance is indeed arbitrary.
I didn't mention size and don't know how they compare. Size comparisons are largely related to processing per Watt because others need bigger heat pipes and fans than the Macs.
I'm basically an Apple guy and don't pay tons of attention to all the alternatives, I just recognize the Apple products are not the right choice for everyone.
Definitely wins on GPU though.
That article also compares models with more expensive add-ons, a lot of that higher Razer price is probably from the 4090. The Blade 16 price starts at $2,699 (i9-13950HX, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, GeForce RTX 4060, 16" 240Hz QHD+). For an MBP with an M2 Max, the 14-inch starts at $3,099 and the 16-inch at $3,499. Those Macs have 32GB RAM and Razer charges +$600 for that much but the Blade has RAM slots, you can buy another 16GB for ~$50. Razer also charges a lot for an upgraded SSD (and absurd +$1,600 for 2TB instead of 1TB) but that is also replaceable at a much more affordable price. There's also a second M2 slot available so you can add storage without replacing the original drive.
Edit: the SSD upgrade cost is so high because they make you get other upgrades with it (a 4090 and 32GB RAM).
[0] https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/search?utf8=&q=Razer+Blade+16+...
You clearly do know what niche I'm referring to, since you just described it. Like you say: Apple's laptops are the sole occupants of their niche, so what would you even compare against? I'm sure there are other ARM chips out there with comparable or better "performance" per Watt, but Apple Silicon's pretty unique right now in maximizing the "performance" half of that equation instead of minimizing the "per Watt" half.
> When shopping for a laptop, there's nothing unfair about comparing ones with different processor architectures when they all can run the software needed.
I never said it was "unfair". I said it was meaningless - because it is. There are myriad metrics by which one could evaluate "performance" (per Watt or otherwise), and Apple Silicon doesn't necessarily win at all of them.
When other manufacturers start putting out ARM laptops targeting the same (or at least remotely similar) performance metrics as a Macbook targets, then there'd be a worthwhile discussion to be had.
Caveat. If windows matters, or you’re talking about the generation of defective MacBooks with a bad keyboard, I’d concede that a top of the line HP, Dell or Lenovo is a better choice.
Honest question: what ecosystem are you referring to? Apple watch? Additional hardware you bought? Or are you talking about software?
Because my guess would have been that Apple users are typically embedded in Google's ecosystem as well (Chrome, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, etc).
And it's not clear to me how using a MacBook would influence your phone choice.
The same reason you use Chrome and then also Google Maps and Gmail. Just swap a Mac with Chrome and an iPhone with Gmail.
There are lots of little features like being able to copy on my iPhone and then it’s saved into a shared clipboard so that I can paste into my Mac. Those kinds of things (there are many, many others and you can look them up for yourself) are why someone would be influenced to choose an iPhone if they are using a Mac.
As an aside I think most users across all platforms use Google’s ecosystem but I would expect Apple users to use it less than others since Apple provides good enough alternatives such as Safari, Apple Maps, iCloud, etc.
Yeah this is what I was thinking. Apple users will tend to use two ecosystems instead of one.
Personally, I wouldn't even think about my laptop when choosing a phone. But I would think about the fact that I use several Google services and I'd rather not duplicate them with Mac accounts/apps.
Now I'm sure all of these things are possible on other platforms using extra software but in the ecosystem it's all zero setup, instantly integrated and quite reliable.
Girls absolutely covet iphones like sacred cows. some go as far as to not date guys who use android. its weird but I've seen it myself.
"Quierro un iphone!!"
its definitely not an american only thing
For me, an iPhone is better than any Android phone. I don’t know why this is surprising to many people.
iPhone -> pragmatism
I buy iPhone for a lot of reasons, 0 of which are “status”. I had no idea there was even any status. The flagship devices are all within a couple hundred bucks of each other.
The problem is fundamentally that Android users drop this microaggression all the time about how apple users are brainless sheep, who don’t have any sense and just let status drive all their purchases, and don’t even see it as offensive.
amd fanboys do the same thing with nvidia users, insisting that “mindshare” is somehow the sole reason that AMD lost ground over the years and that nvidia customers are all dumb brainless sheep too.
It’s actually quite offensive and extremely pervasive, and if you dare call it out you get people like you tut-tutting about how offensive it is to be pointing out your offensiveness.
The problem isn’t the indignant reply, that’s just human nature, the problem is the person who dropped yet another “all apple users are status-chasing sheep” thought-terminating cliche. That’s offensive and pervasive and really should stop especially here of all places. It needs to be said and you are in the wrong for shouting down the people trying to say it.
Again, I know that it’s so absolutely normalized and pervasive that android/AMD people probably don’t see “[other brand] users are brainless sheep” as being offensive, but it is. Like that’s not even a dog whistle, you’re just saying it right out loud. You’re telling a forum full of the general public that a good number of them are brainless, and you’ve been doing it for so many years that you don’t even see why that’s wrong.
MacBooks, iPhones, and nvidia cards are all quite good products and have many many things going for them, there is absolutely no call to be insulting by suggesting that people haven’t done any research because they chose a different product for their needs.
Like how poorly socialized are people that they think calling other people “brainless” to their faces isn’t offensive, or to tut-tut at other people for being upset about such conduct? Especially when here of all places people have most definitely considered the technical merit of the alternatives.
Still working on how to get her to stop obsessing over stupid crap.
I would believe that only a small fraction of people are making their phone purchase choice on an axis other than status or price (like you).
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.
Wtaf? Just had to shake my head. Ironically, my S21 Ultra with 16GB of memory/512 of storage was way ahead of anything Apple had made at time of release, probably cost the same as their top model at the time, and is still punching hard with no need whatsoever for me to .. update.
Probably spend more on coffees or alcohol.
Apple products are less expensive the more money you make. Not just as a relative income statement, but because of resale value. You can buy a new $1000 phone every single year and end up spending $300/year net of taxes and depreciation. You just have to have the capital that you can tie up.
It’s the flipside of fanboys - there are “hateboys” who are parasocially attached to the brand but it’s a negative parasocial attachment.
Nvidia has the same thing going on.
"People don't need high-end phones" perhaps, but somehow I don't see people making this comment about Samsung phones.
iphone 14 is only $800! Meanwhile loads of high-end Android phones are at $1000+. The meme is dead
I am baffled why people keep making this asinine remark.
Stock iPhone is not status. Vertu is status (and is an Android platform), moreso the Vertu Signature line. Aftermarket modded iPhones that are encrusted with gold and diamonds are status. The former is the Jane Birkin bag of the smartphones, the latter is pure bling. Both send the same message: I have done financially exceptionally well (or my daddy has paid for it).
iPhone is equally unobtanium to anyone pre-launch nor does Apple make bespoke or customised editions for anyone, both of which also obliterate its purported status symbol. Ironically, it actually makes iPhone more equal and less status compared the status smartphones.
iPhone might be a status symbol in low income countries, and so are Samsung Galaxy's, the top of the range Huawei's, Xiaomi's and whatever else expensive there is out there.
My wife was already using a second hand iPhone and convinced me to try it too. I got that iPhone 7 Plus for cheap, it is in really good condition and it has 256GB internal memory. I was aware it would be stuck on iOS 15, but to my surprise, Apple still sends out security updates for iOS 15. I just checked: my phone is on 15.7.7 and I noticed 15.7.8 came out just a couple of days ago. See [1].
I know that Apple is a closed eco-system and all, but for my phone I don't care that much. My phone just has to work. I still use Google products (maps, mail, calendar, keep, chat), but those run just fine on iOS. The other apps I use, are also working just fine (no performance issues).
To me, it's amazing that a phone from 2016 is still receiving security updates. That is simply non-existent in Android world. As someone who does not have the urge to always have the latest and hottest, that is very nice to see.
I was a die hard android fan boy. Owned nearly all android flagships.
I first was driven away from the Google branded phones because it was clear their priorities where something other than providing me the best hardware and software experience.
Then I was driven away from Samsung because too much bloat and advertisements within the core OS.
None is the home integration worked right. Too fractured and error prone.
I got tied of seeing people use their iPhones to get shit done and not needing to tinker heir damn phone all the time.
The iPhone is a tool. A well thought out tool that gets the fuxk out of my way so I can do the things I want. Android. IRS a toy. It’s an advertisement delivery vehicle. On Android you are the customer not the user.
I've also attempted to make the title less misleading.
He told me he assumed the fawning over iPhones was "hype", now says he believes it is not.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
OTOH, Qualcomm seems to have closed the gap in SOC performance and efficiency with 8gen2.
https://www.phonearena.com/news/pixel-7-pro-6a-google-best-s...
Apple is estimated to sell twice that many in a quarter
https://www.statista.com/statistics/299153/apple-smartphone-...
I never wanted "Google compatible" phone like an IBM compatible PC. Just like the Wintel ecosystem, Android fragmented into chaos. Pixels are the only way to get a Google phone now without all the third party bloat and crapware.
And three years of platform updates with very low resale value. At the time when I got my last pixel it was also three years of security updates. Add to that that the average consumer won't buy at release date. Quite pathetic (compared to Apple).
At this point though, I'm mostly still on Pixels because I dislike Apple more than Google.
It's the only android phone recommended by GrapheneOS.
This year I switched to a iphone because I need something I can rely on working wherever I travel. they will only fix your pixel while you're in the united states. I'd say they are effectively disposable.
None of them broke. I only stopped using them because they run out of security updates. The only things I bought for them were the light Spigen phone cases.
Maybe the issue is the operator not the phone here.
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."
We don't measure Browser Market Share as number of downloads during a period of times. Nor do we measure OS market share as number of license sold during a quarter.
The reason why Market Share, or share of sales during a period of times were used for commodity, repeatable sales. Because knowing you have 50% of Ketchup sales meaning you own 50% of the Ketchup market.
And when you talk to average people, no one would think Market Share of Browser, OS, Photoshop, as Sales over period of time. The same goes with Apple and Android, when you talk about market share, people will think usage. Not shipment.
Unfortunately even on HN the two is 99% mixed up. As a matter of fact this is the first time someone mention this difference that even gets enough attentions to be the top voted comment.
Ask any mobile phone industry analyst, or a product manager (or product marketing manager) at a mobile phone OEM, or a sales manager at a telco, for the definition of mobile phone market share and they will tell you "the share of sales during a period of time."
>> The same goes with Apple and Android, when you talk about market share
This is 100% not true. Ask anyone in the industry and they will agree that it represents sales, not installed base.
As a point of reference, I used to work at Google, in Android specifically. Previous to that, I spent 10 years in the mobile industry, much of it briefing industry analysts & journalists.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
· My dad made a custom boot script that gave me instant access to my favorite games.
· I sent a computer to the repair shop for weeks after figuring out how to change the computer to use an unsupported screen resolution.
· My Palm Pilot had several video game emulators.
· Our Windows 95 computer got the Ripper virus from my friend's 3.1 machine. It replicates if you boot the machine with an infected floppy disk connected, but it doesn't affect 3.1, so he had no idea his was infected.
Perhaps we need a definition of GPC?
[1]: I, III, Lisa, too, but I mean you get the gist,
It has a real UNIX terminal. I can write code in nearly any programming language. There are thousands of packages that I can install easily with Homebrew. It feels general purpose to me.
This is a list of general purpose computer platforms Apple has made in the past in addition to the Mac. The Mac may be the last one they’ll ever make as open and general purpose as it is, which is a damn shame considering what they showed off with their Vision Pro announcement and press demos.
They make an awful lot of their money selling what I'd assume to be general purpose computing devices.
I run mostly mostly open source software on mine. Almost everything made for the linux ecosystem is also available packaged for MacOS or can be trivially built on MacOS.
What more are we talking about here?
0. https://eclecticlight.co/2023/07/17/how-does-icloud-work-plu...
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.
This impacts pictures or videos taken on phones, iPad’s etc by default; as they go into iCloud Photos, not iCloud Drive.
You iPhone or iPad take photos and store them in a local cache that syncs to iCloud. It is separate from iCloud Drive but the storage comes from the same iCloud capacity that you have subscribed to.
On your Mac the files are stored in a library folder that can be on any local drive. Those files can be backed up like any other file. Any changes you make to those files, like in the Photos app, are synced to iCloud Photos.
The photos in the local library are accessible but they are not really meant to be accessed. The meta data about the photos is stored in a database, not the files. There are original files, modified files, and thumbnail files.
If you want to you can export some or all photos to separate files and do what you want with them.
Or only ones you manually export?
It would be trivial to restore the whole set of photos. It is more complex to restore specific individual photos as you would need to know the file name of that photo.
If you want to generate an alternate photo store you can export some or all of the photos but that is not necessary for backups.
I don’t have a Mac laptop anymore, and my library was starting to get too big to fit on any one device. That’s when I realized they had no other way of accessing/moving/transferring/backing up, so I moved it out using some special photo backup software before I got stuck.
Lesson learned!
Big marketing budget, mid performance at best.
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.
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-14
https://www.samsung.com/us/smartphones/galaxy-s23/buy/galaxy...
It might not be the best possible soc etc. But for $349 it serves me as a daily driver for 3 years without shelling out over $1000
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.
You do need a VPN (or otherwise something network-level) to block ads in apps, I think. That's a fair point.
You may be right about the video ad part.
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/safariservices/cre...
[2] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/saf...
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.
^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.
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.
My current phone is a Samsung and I find it disappointing. Perhaps their good ones are limited to specific models?
It's not about longevity, though. They all easily last 5+ years.
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)
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.
Most people just want their defaults to be good enough but there's no reason to limit those that want something that works better for them.
Obviously iOS does some things incredibly well. E.g. gesture navigation on Android is objectively worse than on iOS.
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.
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.
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.
False, Pixel phone. Same deal as the manufacturer of the OS is making the hardware so you get tighter integration
When comparing Apple to a companies like LG, Motorola, and Xiaomi, what do you find to be worse about Apple? Genuine question.
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.
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.
"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.
"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.
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.
I tend to purchase hardware based on the availability (or likely availability) of 3rd party ROM support.
We aren't. Sent from my Librem 5.
> 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!
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.
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.
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...
GrapheneOS is available for the 4a.
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...
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.
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.
It is bizarre to me that anyone would state the few minutes saved per month on these as NEEDS.
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.
Give me a monthly price. Give me a monthly data number. Then stop talking.
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.
> The one other thing that almost wholly shapes who I'd go with for an MVNO is what speed I get after soft cap.
This should have to be advertised alongside any deal in big bold print. It should be in the main paragraph outlining the plan in every review. But instead it's often buried somewhere in terms & service, or uses vague words like "lowered priority" (even though it just means you'll be soft capped). If it's available at all. And most reviews / descriptions of plans don't mention this. The awareness around this issue needs to be the focus of most of these plans, in my view.
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...
any reason why the watches have to be completely standalone? does the family setup not work for having multiple watches managed by one phone?
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.
For all the same reasons.
With all of the same external requirements like maps.
...
Are you me?
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.
It is why it is so critical to hire the right people in leadership to avoid squandering key, already successful, strategic positions.
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.
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.
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...
None of these are a good substitute for messaging like SMS or iMessage.
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.
Ftfy. It's not just iOS and Android out there.
But support for it is tepid - even Google Voice doesn't support it.
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.
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.
I've switched largely to communicating over alternative platforms since text messages can be unreliable.
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.
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.
Everyone uses Discord or Facebook Messenger. Or Slack for coworkers.
iOS users will tell you how terrible that is and effectively put pressure on people to switch to iOS "like everyone else".
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 ‘ö’s and spaces when I was a child and had stricter limits on the number of SMSs in my plan.
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.
If you actually care about e2ee you'd use Signal.
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?
I used it for a bit, but learned that RCS is not something I want even a little.
...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.
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.
1: https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-smartphone-shipments...
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.
I kinda want to go back but we'll see.
I still use google photos because I find it better and it works fine. My next phone will be a pixel again though.
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.)
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.
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.
I also use Android when I need more access to different things e.g. portable pocket pc that runs Linux.
It applied as recently as 2020 with iOS 14 releasing picture in picture video, which Android has had since 8 in 2017.
Apple mobile devices are absolutely luxury hardware.
Apple mobile OS/software is... functional to a most generous description.
Of those, only Apple Pay has a touch point with non-Apple products, no? And enabling it was more business bludgeon than software feature.
"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.
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!
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.
Can't install any app I want.
Locked into OS.
That's false. You can backup to a computer, including to Windows. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph3ecf67d29/io...
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?
Appstore - can't install Gameboy emulator for games I've paid 20+ years ago because daddy Apple said so...
“Meepmorp you’re totally right, it doesn’t cost anything at all! However, I do highly recommend paying this meager sum because the benefits are quite substantial.”
That sounds like more of an example of lock-out, than lock-in.
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.
And nobody has made fun of me for having an android phone. Videos and group chats just work.
For interoperability, nothing beats SMS/MMS/POTS/SMTP.
I use Verizon and use iPad Pro and Apple Watch also on cellular. Works really well together.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Few people outside of the tech nerd bubble care about this.
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.
You (usually) can run the latest software on an old Android nowadays - the reason is that many of the functions which were previously baked into the system are now part of Google Play Services, which are upgraded like any other software package.
The only app to tell me that it will stop updating on my 5-year-old Android phone was... Slack.
I personally couldn't care less about this. I just want a phone that works well for me.
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.
Security updates are not optional.
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.
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
What is the point in "security updates" for a CPU that can't be made secure?
[0] https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1224...
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!
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. :-)
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.
Nice copypasta. Edit it better next time?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Oh wait...
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.
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
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.
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.
That's just what I said. But most tie the android experience to the app ecosystem, which (not necessarily, but in practice (for most people)) is tied to the play store. Which requires a google account.
> Well yes, but either we give a pass to both of them or none.
WHY?! Google is honest about it. Why are they honest about it? Because they happen to be in a position where they can be honest about it. Samsung choose not to, because they rather trick people.
Google is required for the typical android experience. Samsung is only required if you like to be abused. They are not the same.
> 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.
No, you buy into the vendor that is required. Not the one that tries to bully you and sneak under the radar.
> Just as google's software isn't AOSP, it's google android.
Google makes both. Google is much close to AOSP. Doesn't matter at all huh?
Google follows the typical android UX (close than anyone else at least), samsung tries to be different just for the sake of being different.
The competition to android is not samsung, it is non-android OSes
This is like defending tracking popups. They are abusive, illegal, user hostile and doesn't offer anything. But somehow avoiding sites that has them is anti-competitive?
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.
Is it? I remember some HP specific software when I turned on my new laptop to reformat it with Linux.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, which is better than nothing, but not nearly as good as being able to uninstall that stuff.
As of late 2021 when I got my last Samsung this was not the case for the default messaging app. I thought driving mode (not Android Auto alternative) was different too but I do feel less confident about that.
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.
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.
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.
You can also remote desktop to your main workstation when mobile. Moonlight offers a low-latency self-hosted gamestream similar to geforce now, but also works great for desktop usage.
You misunderstood. DEX is not there to replace your workstation, but can be a short-term productivity workstation, in case your laptop is stolen or in for repairs.
It’s fixing something that’s not broken just to say “not Google”, in the process creating bloat.
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.
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.
This is the key point. Not giving the user the choice. Yes, they can install a different program that does the same thing, but the manufacturer-dictated programs are still there, taking up space in storage, the app list, and possibly memory if they're doing potentially user-hostile shit in the background.
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?
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.
-All the pointless OS customizations.
-Samsung-developed apps that do the same thing as extant, better Google apps.
> -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!
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.
The one thing that eats the battery alive is Instagram, which is great as it gives me one more reason to avoid it.
You should have added that this only applies if you exclued non-US products.
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.
Are you sure you're talking about the right phone? Pixel 4 doesn't have a fingerprint scanner.
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.
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'.
Shitty apps/developers are everywhere, we should not limit ourselves over them.
> 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.
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.
I swipe right all the time from the left edge of the screen, in most apps that goes back.
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?
The _real_ pain is how bad ios autocompletion is, compared to Android's
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?
- Swipe up (from anywhere) to access the app tray
- Swipe up and hold to see the app history / currently in-memory apps
- Swipe from the side of the screen to go back (can be configured to just be the bottom half of the screen and a "thinner" sensitivity area - which I needed because the defaults were stupid and made 'back' such a frequent accidental action).
They're the only gestures I've bothered to learn, and I get by. Still not sure it's better or worse than have the 10 pixel space at the bottom for the navigation buttons.
They will increase support for new phones, probably because Apple does the same. It is too little, too late for me.
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.
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.
I've been using Samsung all my life (tablets, phones, watches, TVs) since they've been providing consistent quality, but after samsungs silently leaking my keyboard input to grammarly and not providing me the features I paid for on their galexy watch, I decided to move out of the samsung echosystem for good.
The thing is that I still really like their hardware. I just want to change the software running on it to something more sane and less shady.
Ultimately a very smooth experience. The difference in tracking is very evident as is the amount of data streaming out of the phone.
> The full list of countries includes the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and India.
I get that plenty of countries don't have official Google Store support, but it's a bit like saying there isn't a Samsung store? I assume you're free to buy the phone elsewhere in the EU, or even in countries that aren't directly supported by Google, and activate with your own carrier.
it’s funny that cheap noname Chinese phones have no problems with selling it directly in every EU country.
Sales have been flat in the USA since 2018 https://www.statista.com/statistics/191985/sales-of-smartpho...
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.
And yeah it is way easier to grab marketshare at the 2% range then to take Apple head on with say 40% market share in USA.
Are you saying the SE2 specifically fills a hole in their line-up?
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.
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.
To the average person, that’s just… how things work.
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.
This, in my mind, is the biggest selling feature for iPhones to baby boomers. Locks them in forever as well.
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.
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.
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.
The support is way better because there isn't a million different models
Supporting Android phones requires collaboration between the chip vendors, hardware manufacturers, and Google, which is difficult.
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.
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.
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.
What's more, Google is better at developing Android than it is as a search engine, that's why I started to pay for Kagi.
My anecdote, i loved my samsung S10 which i had to replace. Their new flagship is heavier, has no headphone jack, no FM radio, no SpO2 meter, and doesnt feel considerably faster. It also seems to heat up a bit more. What the hell is going on. I feel cheated
Apple's phone seem to make slight improvements, but really it's hard to tell anymore.
I think the sector is beyond its peak and about to see a huge slump
I think it’s deserved in that sense.
Only if those are apple devices. Between an idevice and a windows or linux laptop the "just works" factor has been quite unimpressive.
- 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.
> - 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."
You may be overthinking things. Just tap the bar. :)
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?
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.
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.
Well, lately I've been noticing more and more people carrying around phones with cracked screens, and apparently just dealing with it. This is totally anecdotal and unscientific, but it feels like there is a shift in mindset going on. For one reason or another, people are keeping those "broken" phones in service rather than replacing them.
Edit: Instantly being downvoted is ironic.
It is appropriate to focus on the App Store commission, absolutely.
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).
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).
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.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
Anyone who don't use iPhone will be bullied (in USA). But yeah, let's pretend that Apple have some moral values when exactly the opposite is true.
Yes, people with a bit more disposable income &/or early adopters (there's some overlap there) are going to be less price sensitive and therefore less put off by rising costs elsewhere in their lives. Of course it helps that there are increasingly more foldable options, and more mature designs in them, as time goes by.
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.
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.
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.
Add to that the fact that iDevices are much more recognisable due to there being only a handful of current versions compared to the thousands of current Android devices and as such more easily recognised as 'out of date' or 'old' and their - often brand- and status-conscious - users have an extra incentive to buy a new device even though the old one still worked fine just so they are not perceived to be 'poor'.
iPhone 14 Plus MSRP: $899.
Google Pixel 7 Pro MSRP: $899.
Guess which one will last longer and have higher resale?
iPhone 14 Pro: $999
Pixel 7 Pro: $899
iPhone 14: $799
Pixel 7: $599
Pixel 7a: $499
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.
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?
Can't edit to add it.
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.
And these days, I’m against the kitchen sink. I watch movies on a TV (there’s always one anywhere I’ve been) I read books on an e-reader, and I have a DAP for listening to music (except today, streaming is becoming more convenient for general listening). And most of my computing is done on my laptop. My phone is very much an appliance because I don’t need it to do much, just that it does it reliably.
One thing I did literally 2 days ago: I've been using my phone for navigation a lot more this month than ever before but having the maps audio go through the Bluetooth to the car is awful in my car. For media and calls it's fine but for navigation it's just not a good experience. So I've been manually flipping the app audio to my phone every time I use it. I finally got fed up and created a routine to automatically set the audio for maps to the phone whenever it's connected to the car and, if also plugged in, launch maps automatically. Took only seconds to setup (should have done it sooner) and now I'm less annoyed whenever I have to use my phone for navigation.
Windows: https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare...
Mac: https://imazing.com/uploads/screenshots/imazing/datasets/app...
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.
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.
Battery life degrades and it slows down a tad, but there isn't the same pressing need to upgrade of yore.
Why have phone manufacturers forsaken the likes of us?
38% vs 6% Android/Apple is a big difference.
“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.
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.
I mean my MBP has a MagSafe charging port, but I use USB-C for powering that too. One type of cable for everything.
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.
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.
For me the choice is simple. Android allows piracy out of the box and lets you do some pretty advanced power user stuff (e.g. system-wide VPN ad blocking) without rooting, iOS requires a jailbreak to do literally anything. Android will run any browser, iOS is Safari only. Android is open source, iOS is a closed proprietary black box. iOS also does other absolutely ludicrous things, like ATS blocking fetch and xhr requests over HTTP with no way to disable it. It's like it comes with always-on parental controls out of the factory. I'm the admin of my device, not fucking Tim Apple.
Android may be a buggy duct taped amalgamation of random hardware and software, but that's a direct result of it being open and no worse than the average linux machine.
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.
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].
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