Asklemmy

Reliability, battery life, OS optimization, long term support.

These things may be normal for today’s android handsets, but back when I switched from the Samsung Galaxy S6 to the iPhone, they definitely weren’t the norm. I went through about 6 different android phones, got into custom roms and bootloaders, did all that fancy stuff. I got real comfortable with it and I got used to the idea that my phone app might just lock up randomly for no reason. Or my GPS app would freeze when I’m miles and miles away from civilization. I got tired of troubleshooting and stuff and I just wanted something reliable.

I am on android rn but at least in europe, apple is forced to allow 3rd party appstores soon which was the main dealbreaker for me. Their ui + cross device integration is very nice. Hopefully they are going to release a foldable soon! Handwriting apps are much more polished on iPads than on Android.

Every android phone I've owned has crapped out by the 2 year mark, and that's even when not using custom ROMs or rooting. IMO iPhones are more reliable and provide a more consistent UX. They also offer a better baseline level of privacy. (Granted, you can't beat GrapheneOS and the like on android)

My employer (a mid-sized tech company) had a policy that employees could access corporate Slack, email, etc. from personal iPhones but not personal Android phones. I think it was for security reasons.

I was using Android, but I needed mobile phone access for on-call shifts. The company gave me a choice of either replacing my Android with an iPhone (and they would partially reimburse the cost); or, they would issue me a corporate iPhone, and I'd have to carry both phones when I was on-call. I picked the first option and switched to iPhone.

I'm a dedicated Android user, and really none of my friends or family use iPhone. What is a blue or green bubble??

Here in Japan iPhones are massively popular, more than in most other markets. I just Googled it: iPhones are 67%, Android 33%. That's crazy.

The reasons are: people think they're stylish/cool (in Japan this is SUPER important), they think they must be good because they're expensive, and they think Android is 'scary' because they've never used it before. They literally don't know that Android does everything iOS does, usually better/with more customisation, and that it offers way more control (you can make Android even more simple and basic than iOS if you tinker a bit).

To be honest, even talking about places other than Japan, 98% of people probably have never even stopped to think why they're on either Android/iOS - it's only the 2% of people like us who talk about it.

It is funny though that iPhone users here in Japan have so little idea about why their phones aren't working properly, and have to make actual reservations to have a 'genius' look at their phone and fix it for them. Usually it's just clearing cache or something. They also pay literal hundreds of dollars to have their data transferred over when they get a new iPhone, unaware that cloud storage is capable of doing all of this for you for free.

I got frustrated by buggy behavior from Android in general. Even with Google software (Android Auto), it wasn’t uncommon for functionality to break after updates.

I’ll take consistency over more (but buggier) features. Quality over quantity.

Oh, and the cinematic mode was a game changer for this Vidiot.

For me, a big one is integration with email / calendar / contacts services that aren't Google. I don't know where Google dropped the ball here - Android was originally amazing for this kind of thing - but at some point they started bolting a lot of features specifically on top of Google accounts, and out of the box Android doesn't even understand how to sync with CalDAV / CardDAV. So if I want my Nextcloud stuff to work at all I need to go and install a third party app. The third party app works great (I happily used DAVx5 for many years), but it's ridiculous when iOS has all that integration officially supported and available straight out of the box. And it even does clever things, like suggesting contact details it learns from my (Fastmail) email. Android has that stuff, but it is completely on the cloud, and it only works if you give everything to Google.

I think it’s easier and more reliable

I personally wouldn't voluntarily use Apple products myself, but I have people close to me that buy iPhone because they think that's the best smartphone they can buy. There are some truths to it from the standpoints of warranty policies, technologies, privacy policies, update policies, securities, and reputations.

More reliability, more polished OS and longer support cycle.

These types of discussions are funny to me. People get really wound up in defending their decisions when it's basically a Chevy vs Ford brand loyalty fetish.