Android vs iPhone - Read the differences before Switch or Stay.
Android vs iPhone - Read the differences before Switch or Stay.
Today we're going to be talking about iPhone versus android hopefully with a fresh perspective usually here on my article. When you hear somebody talking about this subject you hear statements like “android is more customizable than iOS”, “apple is more privacy focused”, “android split screen support is really useful”, “phone’s continuity features are super useful”, “a variety of devices”, “always-on displays”, “more customizable looks”, “cameras with more megapixels and the ability to side load apps”, “iPhone get updates for half a decade”, “have better more premium support”, “have better resale value”, “have more accessories to choose from and generally”, “just benefit from tighter integration of hardware and software” and the list goes on but in this article I actually want to either dig a little deeper or maybe just zoom out a little further and cover some ground that's maybe more interesting or in some ways maybe even more important. Now whether you're considering an android device or an iOS device for your next phone, there's always more than one reason to prefer one over the other. So one thing's for sure there's no reason to trash somebody else's treasure use what makes you happy and let other people do the same.
So let me start then by mapping out some of the top level strengths and weaknesses for each side. A top level strength and weakness on the iPhone side of things is that the iphone isn't a solitary product. It's deeply interconnected with other complementary apple products and services. In fact I would go so far as to argue that the iPhone itself isn't the real product that apple's trying to sell here. Instead it's almost like it's more of a feature of apple's actual product the famed apple ecosystem. A deep ecosystem can feel like a really great feature to somebody because the more apple devices a person buys the more powerful and useful that ecosystem actually becomes. The flip side though is that the costs associated with building out the apple ecosystem makes switching away expensive. Now a top level strength and weakness on the android side of things is its reliance on Google’s surveillance capitalism machine because at its heart google is not in fact in the business of selling phones as much as it's in the business of selling ads. So the more private information and experiences google has access to the more personalized targeted and effective their operating system apps services and yes ads can be. Now a more personalized experience can feel like a really great feature to people because the more company knows about you the more efficiently they can serve you. The flip side though is that that efficiency might come at the expense of true autonomy. If your information is productized and potentially exploited on this platform can you ever truly be certain that the products you're buying and the information you're consuming is of your own free will. So pick your poison, because there really is no such thing as the perfect phone or the perfect company. I guess at the end of the day a lot of your decision is going to come down to which company you trust more.
I actually have to say that I feel like comparing model versus model and feature versus feature year after year is actually not quite as important as people maybe assume. Obviously when we're talking about phones features do matter but the really good features the ones that aren't just gimmicks are fairly likely to eventually get copied by the other side. We saw this when widgets arrived on the phone’s home screen and we saw this when swipe controls came to android devices and honestly there are countless other examples. With new iPhone I think you generally know what to expect year to year probably a more iterative approach to improving what's already a highly polished phone that basically just works each year. I think it's pretty clear that apple's mostly concerned with competing against itself and only itself instead of trying to outdo the latest and greatest android devices out there even though oftentimes that is exactly what ends up happening similarly.
Now over the next decade or so a new platform is probably going to emerge that will eventually replace smartphones. Probably some kind of AR or VR platform. In either case instead of just focusing on which new phone has the coolest new feature every year it might be good to take things on balance and also consider what the future looks like and how happy you're likely to be in three to five years. Because when you buy a new phone you're not just buying a phone you're actually heading in a direction. So if you buy an iPhone the direction that you're taking is heading straight into apple's ecosystem and over the next three to five years you could really spend a decent amount of money investing there. But yeah you can get an apple watch and a mac and unlock your mac with your apple watch and you can start an email on your iPad and finish it on your iPhone. You can send an intercom voice message using your air pods that broadcast to the HomePod mini around your house and you can scan items from your iPhone directly to apple notes. On your mac you can get AppleCare for premium support, you can use iMessage, you can set reminders on Siri on your apple watch that go off when you get out of your CarPlay-enabled car. Your iphone is going to last you for more years if you wanted to because you'll get updates for longer and then you'll be able to sell it for a decent amount.
Because apple products retain their value longer and you can
do it all while feeling more secure and private mostly maybe yes the apple
ecosystem is great. Unless or until apple does something that you don't like. Like,
what if someday apple decided to not scan for illegal images but to scan for
people who might belong to a certain religious
group or any other group because
I would hate to see tools that were developed with a good purpose at heart
turned into weapons of intolerance.
Now if you choose to buy an android device you're buying into a future with more device options and with more opportunities for customization. That’s right you're going to be able to change your launcher to put app icons wherever you want, you can root your phone and install custom firmware, you can bypass Google’s app store and side load apps, you can use a phone without a notch that has expandable storage and includes a headphone jack or you can buy a phone for even less than 100$, you can split your screen to read an article and watch a twitch stream at the same time, you can use one usb-c charger to charge your laptop and your android phone, you can ask more complicated questions of google assistant and expect smarter answers, you can get a phone with a stylus and yes you can easily theme your devices. Yes all the options and customization are great until or unless well, let's just say I shudder to think about everything that google not to mention Facebook while we're at it knows not just about android users but honestly about the entire population.
Does google know you better than you know yourself? Do advertisers? In the words of a retired Harvard business school professor “surveillance capitalism is the unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. These data are then computed and packaged as prediction products and sold into behavioral futures markets. She wrote a book a while back and it caused a big stir because she goes on to say that these smart and personalized devices and experiences that so many people enjoy might actually in some way even be putting democracy at risk. Wow it's like you might think you're really informed but maybe you're only as informed as x y or z has allowed you to be and you wouldn't know the difference here's the way I see it when you buy an iPhone. You’re buying a puzzle piece and it's a real nice puzzle piece all on its own but you're not going to realize the full picture until you assemble the rest of the puzzle. For example, until you buy other apple products which all become so much better together. Likewise when you buy an android phone you're still buying a puzzle piece but it's just the overall puzzle that these pieces fit into is just much smaller Google’s puzzle-ecosystem is growing. Samsung's puzzle-ecosystem is growing. But neither one comes anywhere close to matching the actual magnificence, the gravity of apple's massive puzzle-ecosystem and smaller android manufacturers for the most part really are just selling individual puzzle pieces mostly.
For me personally, I can just say I have chosen to go down the iPhone and apple route at least for the time being. It served me really well in the past and I feel it very satisfactory for me. Some people like one Linus Sebastian (a Canadian youtuber) might think of iPhone as incremental expensive and boring but to me iPhone are reliable premium and ready to go right out of the box. If you're looking to get into the apple ecosystem, you can do customize it too and you could even install all your favorite google apps if you really wanted to and even create a shortcut to use google assistant in place of Siri. You can essentially turn your iPhone into a kind of an android in a way while still being able to take advantage of all the benefits of being in the apple ecosystem. Now if you're looking to switch over to android you really can't pull all your apple apps over with you. The only apple app that's really available over on the android side is apple music. But there are all kinds of phones at all kinds of price points with all sorts of form factors with all sorts of manufacturer takes on what the best version of android might look like and you get to choose from all of those. You do have people out there saying things like android phones are categorically cheap or complicated but honestly those are just stereotypes. There are plenty of expensive android devices out there made out of really nice and premium materials and I found that the android experience can be as complicated or as straightforward as you make it alright. Well that's it for this article. I hope that you found this article to be different than you expected and different from other article on the subject that you've seen both in content and tone. I really tried hard to make this useful so hopefully you feel more empowered as you go to pick out your next phone.
Good Bye.
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