Best One: Android and iOS?

[Zahid Iqbal]

Which one is the best mobile OS? Android or iOS?

 

[Crono]

Sailfish

"Best" is subjective, and iOS and Android both have strengths and weaknesses. On the whole they are similar in capabilities (speaking broadly, in terms of the kinds of apps and usefulness for things like directions, browsing, media playing, etc) but Android covers much broader hardware with less restrictions (and all the pluses and minuses that come with that) while iOS is exclusively on Apple hardware.

Google has Wear and Chromecast, Apple has the Apple Watch and Apple TV. Both have burgeoning solutions in home and auto. Google has Google Now, Apple has Siri. OS choice nowadays can come down to those ancillary products and services because they work better in conjunction with other products and services within their respective ecosystems (and with Apple, almost none of their stuff works with Google hardware, save for maybe Beats music). There isn't a clear best for a lot of these things, it really can come down to design, budget, or what kind of features you need.

Some people prefer the Apple ecosystem, and others prefer Google's. It's your use case and needs which determine "best". I don't limit myself to using one. I am using Windows Phone, iOS, Android, Firefox OS, and going back a while I have used BB OS, Maemo, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. "Best" always needs to be qualified and narrowed... and even then there are areas where one could argue iOS and Android are equal. Apple and Google approach privacy and security in different ways, but both ways are valid depending on your own take on those issues.

Personally, I currently prefer Windows Phone's simplicity and elegance for phone. I prefer Android on phone when I need power user features (running root-only apps, for instance) and apps that aren't available for WP. I prefer iOS for media and gaming on tablet. I prefer Windows 10 for tablets with pen/stylus and for a real desktop environment and legacy/desktop applications.

Most people who can give you a "best one" for all of mobile aren't likely doing a lot with their mobile devices, or don't have much experience with different OS'. Their opinions are still valid, of course, but they aren't worth arguing with.

I also keep my eyes open for new mobile OS'. As established as iOS and Android are, innovation often comes from new players less burdened by legacy and more open to change and trying new ways of doing things. Nokia, Microsoft, and RIM learned this the hard way when they didn't change quickly enough to respond to Apple and the iPhone.

All of the established OS' have "borrowed" from each other in multiple ways. There is some convergence because of that, and it's made the platforms more feature-rich and complete as a result.

 

[rumpleforeskin]

If we are completely ignoring hardware: Android


PS: can't wait to see how this thread ends :/

 

[Artdeco]

LOL, definitely a subjective call, for most here, Android, it's flexible as hell, and you can tweak the heck out of it.

If you like Apple's ecosystem and don't want to or have the time to tweak your phone, iOS.

I use Apple stuff, and Android, just set up 7 lines of service on a T Mobile family plan, and realized I've paid for each phone, LOL. It's a mix of OS's.

My personal preference is tending towards iOS, I find the apps are a little better, and I seem to get deeper into Apple's ecosystem every year. I have mixed feelings about that, but it's a happy place, LOL

 

[Kaido]

Definitely subjective.

You can pry my iPhone from my cold, dead hands. But I don't see Apple with a 17" tablet, like the jumbo $249 HP Slate 17 I use in my kitchen for recipes, so Android makes more sense there. And for $20, you can get your kids Motorola G phones to use for games & other apps, which is a pricepoint Apple can't dream of touching. So...it depends! I like Apple's walled garden because, like my Roku, it's just another thing I don't have to think about, it's an appliance. But for the tablets, I like Android because I can customize them more for different purposes.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Personally I like Android more as a phone OS. It is more flexible and I much prefer Mobile Chrome over Mobile Safari. But the ecosystem is more difficult to live in, unlike iOS it is much easier to make a bad choice when picking your actual Android device. Very very few get updates for example, or they ruin Android with their disgusting lowest common denominator OS skin.

I like iOS more as a tablet OS, simply because Android wastes a lot of tablet screen real estate and has too few tablet designed apps. Even though iOS limitations on my iPad (like not being able to download and open a zip file) do frustrate me sometimes.

 

[mrochester]

Definitely iOS. Feels more like a properly designed smartphone OS rather than trying to be a desktop OS shoved onto a mobile device, which is the feeling I always get when using Android.

 

[Artdeco]

Definitely iOS. Feels more like a properly designed smartphone OS rather than trying to be a desktop OS shoved onto a mobile device, which is the feeling I always get when using Android.

What I find as a daily platform jumper is that Android apps are a version or two behind iOS, when I'm used to smooth scrolling in an app on iOS, and it turns into a lagfest on a quad core Android device, or I get pissed because of extra keystrokes in an Android app versus iOS.

Am also finding the fingerprint ID being integrated into iOS apps is really nice, spoiling me...

 

[Crono]

Definitely iOS. Feels more like a properly designed smartphone OS rather than trying to be a desktop OS shoved onto a mobile device, which is the feeling I always get when using Android.

This is actually why I prefer Windows Phone to both iOS and Android in many ways. iOS and Android aren't that differen't. iOS' blinding-white menu system still looks like Mac OS' shrunk down, it's home screen is just as conventional a icon-grid as Android's (but no widgets), and it had to borrow features like a notification shade/center (which they didn't do very well, in my opinion) from Android. Android just looks more Linux-ish and iOS looks more Mac OS-like. Not surprisingly, given they are both really rooted in those OS'.

Meanwhile, Windows Phone with it's tile interface really does feel like a mobile-first ecosystem. Ever try using your phone on a dash mount? Well it's twice as easy to launch apps and navigate the operating system with Windows Phone than it is with iOS and it's tiny touch targets and wasted space around icons. iOS' icons are all static and don't give you any information, unlike live tiles which are heavily customizable. Microsoft's original mobile OS (Windows Mobile) pretty much was a scaled down Windows interface and it was not ideal (nor did it have multitouch), but they designed Windows Phone from the ground up to be mobile-friendly and easy to use.

Android isn't much different from iOS in usability out of the box, but it is infinitely more customizable. There are ROMs, apps, launchers and themes that can change every aspect of how it looks and feels. You can change icon size, remove icon labels, add useful widgets, heavily modify the lockscreen, change notification area icons, and a host of other things.
Of course, that can take some work, but you have the freedom to do things you can't on either iOS or Windows Phone which are more locked down.

iOS' greatest strength isn't it's UX or multitouch gesturing language. It's that it has a rich ecosystem of apps and that you don't have to live in it's home system. It also runs on very competitive hardware, right down to having core advantages over Android like audio latency which makes it better for music apps than Android.

 

[mikegg]

Definitely iOS. Feels more like a properly designed smartphone OS rather than trying to be a desktop OS shoved onto a mobile device, which is the feeling I always get when using Android.

I work for a company that produces an app that's downloaded about 3 million times per year. We pour a lot more attention and resources into our iOS app than Android. It's really simple for us. iOS users for us convert 3x better and use our app way more frequently.

For most companies, their iOS apps will make them more money simply because iOS users are more well off in general.

 

[futurefields]

Android for me.

 

[QueBert]

The iOS is for people who don't like to tinker or customize is not even close to true. I could spend 10 hours looking at apps on Cydia and probably still not even have seen a 10th of them. IMHO the Cydia community dwarfs what you find on XDA for Android by a decent chunk. Stock iOS? Sure, can't do a whole lot. Jailbroken? Can't think of anything I can't do on my iPhone that I can do on my HTC One. I like both, but iOS edges it out everywhere for me.

 

[Commodus]

I still like this one summary someone once gave to me:

Android is for people who like to do things to their phones.
iOS is for people who like to do things with their phones.

Both are very much valid. Android fans love to customize their experience and choose from a wide variety of devices, and that's great... but so is having an iPhone that's dead easy to use and almost always has the app you need. It's not a question of right-versus-wrong so much as what you value in a phone (and to some extent, life itself).

 

[openwheel]

Anyone who tries to generalize is simply lying to themselves.

 

[lyka]

Subjective. .If you like iOS then it is, but if you want customizations and stuffs then Android wins. So really, can't put them side by side.. They're unique in their own rights

 

[Red Storm]

At this point it's entirely subjective. I personally prefer Android much more over iOS, and it's not even close. I know several highly technical people who prefer iOS over Android and vice versa, so it's really up to each individual person.

I will say though, the cliche "the iPhone just works" or "you don't need to tinker with iOS" are simply not true. It took my mom a great deal of time to get comfortable with her iPhone 5S (her first smartphone), there were a lot of settings to go over and figure out how she wanted it setup. Would have been the same with Android.

 

[Commodus]

I will say though, the cliche "the iPhone just works" or "you don't need to tinker with iOS" are simply not true. It took my mom a great deal of time to get comfortable with her iPhone 5S (her first smartphone), there were a lot of settings to go over and figure out how she wanted it setup. Would have been the same with Android.

I'd say it's partly true -- it just depends on what you're doing, and how heavily invested you are in the Apple ecosystem. The grid of icons and the on-screen navigation buttons are more straightforward (no moments where you wonder "what will the back button do this time?"). Also, some of its technologies are pretty sweet. AirDrop is great for those moments where you just want to share a photo with someone in the room... and whatever you think of iTunes, there's something nice knowing that you can sync a ton of your computer's local data with your phone just by plugging in.

Apple's biggest issue is the cloud. It's getting better, but you can tell this is a hardware company struggling to understand the nuances of internet services. Google isn't really good at hardware (virtually anything good is made by other companies), but you can tell that Android is considerably more cloud-savvy out of the box.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Google isn't really good at hardware

The Chromecast is EXCELLENT for what it is.

 

[Commodus]

The Chromecast is EXCELLENT for what it is.

Oh yeah, not saying that Google is uniformly bad... just that it's clear that this is an internet company that rarely dips into hardware. Most of its hardware to date has largely been designed by someone else. The big difference is that it's intended to meet Google's expectations.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I feel like iOS is a bit easier to use and still suffers from less of what I would call "buggy" behavior, but android has largely closed that gap in recent years. I'm pretty familiar with both though, and would have absolutely use either with no hesitation whatsoever.

 

[Qbah]

Android for me - I can set the phone up the way I want and use it the way I want. Also I don't see myself living without a back button within my thumb's reach (and I started with an iPhone 3GS and then had a 4S). With Android I use the apps I want for browsing, SMS, videos, email and they all switch between each other seamlessly. That's not something I can get in iOS at all, hence my preference for Android.

 

[Midwayman]

I like iOS for my tablet. iOS just has way better tablet content than android. Also the use case for my tablet is mostly content consumption and fits well with the iOS model.

My phone on the other hand I like android. I can set it up to behave exactly how I want and I don't run into nearly as many road blocks to do what I want on android. However on my phone I like a lot more automated.

 

[sweenish]

I prefer Android over iOS.

If the apps were there, or they ever get there, I will likely switch to WP.

 

[zerogear]

popcorn + chair.

 

[RossMAN]

Symbian for life!