Advantages of Android
Being able to manage my home screen. After a while on iOS you basically have to give up and use Spotlight to find anything because every app is just dumped somewhere on your home screen, and moving one app moves every other app.
Being able to comfortably hold my phone. I now pick up my phone and use it more for browsing, Twitter, YouTube, books, and comics than my I do my iPad. That was never the case with iPhones after the 5S.
iPhones since then were designed to sell cases, not be comfortable to hold.
I can spend an hour browsing the Play Store and continue to find new and interesting apps. I get bored in the App Store after five minutes. I can also browse the Play Store from my MacBook or iPad and remotely install apps to my phone.
My AirPods work better on my Android than they did on my iPhone. I get better range and the constant audio breakups I experienced with my iPhone have been greatly reduced. Switching connected devices is much faster and doesn’t require digging through the Settings app.
On the other hand, Matt Birchler:
The iOS App Store has really spoiled me for all other app platforms. Nothing even comes close. Play Store is second, I guess, but it’s by a huge margin. And now that I have browsed the Microsoft Store for a while, I can now promote the Mac App Store from most useless app store.
Previously: Android Oreo Review: An iOS User’s Review, Why Apple Should Copy the Android P Notification Shade, Switching to an iPhone SE.
3 Comments RSS · Twitter
I don't really find either app store all that great. Sure, I can find a lot of cool apps either way, but it's a lot of digging to get there. Lot of crap, hard to navigate sometimes. However, scott is spot on, I can simply navigate from my computer and then push apps to my devices, Apple is a joke when it comes to simple management. My daughter asks for an app, I can push it from wherever I am. It's been that way for years.
However, I would like the option to authenticate to download free apps, scott is right the ability to just download is nice, but the option to authenticate should be there as well. That's a negative in my book, even if it's just half a negative. Giving users control of settings is great, just give me full control.
Ps I used the Apple app store before Android, so it's not like I am just latching onto first experience preferences. To be fair, I use the Ovi store (Nokia devices) before I used the Apple app store, so I have some experience here outside the big two. I've also used Amazon, Opera, F-Droid, etc.
> I don't really find either app store all that great
Yep, both are bad. At least on Android, you can sideload apps. I also think the app selection is a bit of a wash between the two apps. Apps on iOS tend to be more polished (though the advantage has diminished a lot recently), but Android just has apps that wouldn't even be possible on iOS. For example, I have an app that integrates with Google Maps, notices when I'm driving, and shows overlay alerts about dangerous situations. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that would be tricky to do on iOS.
Another thing on Android is that you can install third-party stores, like F-Droid, an app store just for open-source apps, or the Humble Bundle app, which allows you to install all of the Android games (and audiobooks, music, and other stuff) you bought on that site.
Oh, and it has widgets. And emulators. You can turn your Android phone into a freaking Newton, or into a Game Boy. And you can root your phone, and allow it to do all kinds of crazy things, like block ads across the whole OS, backup your apps, install a scripting language that allows you to automate your phone.
You can even write Android apps on Android.
And then there's the hardware side, where you just get much better phones for much less money.
At this point, I couldn't go back to iOS even if I wanted to. But I don't want to.
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