| > Android phones have better cameras and match apple in most other hardware metrics I am sure there is an Android phone out there which has got a better camera, another one that has got better speakers, yet another one with better display and yet another which had got a better build than iPhone. The thing that most people forget is that almost all Android phones have some USPs and in exchange they compromise a lot on something else. Why do you thing the entire Android ecosystem should be treated as a single entity against the iPhone? Show me an Android that does every single thing better (or on par) with iPhone. My experience has been that iPhones are usually not the absolute best at pretty much anything, but they are usually right up there at the top. Maybe it doesn’t have the absolute best camera, but it certainly has one of the best, and so on. And let’s not even compare the longevity of devices. And before someone talks about prices, Androids that compete in the same arena as the iPhone cost about the same. Then there is the app ecosystem. Sure, you have all the big names available on Android. But there are lot of smaller developers with great apps which are missing from Android — simply because of the crappy ecosystem which takes a village to build and support apps for. There are no apps which come close to the likes of OmniFocus, Things etc. And while Google does come up with cutting edge tech like AR, a lot of it is not adopted immediately — if ever — by the third party developers who have to wait for the shiny new version of Android to gain some momentum — something that takes forever in Android land. So no, it is not just the processor that the iPhone has a clear lead on — it’s the overall experience. I couldn’t care less about the specs as long as the experience is maintained. Full disclaimer: I am someone who usually carries two phones. This means that given the lack of alternatives, I end up with an Android in addition to my iPhone. And while I like some of the features offered by the individual Android OEMs, I do not consider the ecosystem as a whole to be anywhere near comparable to that of iOS. |
Why not? My android phones last multiple years - I've only switched when moving countries and the mobile bands are incompatible. My Nexus 4, from 2012 but running an up-to-date LineageOS, is my current backup phone, and works perfectly. I daresay it works significantly better than my parents similarly aged iPhone 5 (or 5s?), which also has an up-to-date OS, and runs slow as molasses.
But really, the main benefit of Android, for me and most other people I'd guess, is price. The combined purchase price of all 4 of my androids is about equivalent to a single current iPhone flagship (150+300+250+360 Canadian dollars).
I agree with you on general specs - iPhone are pretty much guaranteed to be at (or at least near) the top, for just about every category. Comparing the "average android device" to that will not be favourable. But the android ecosystem does give you a lot more choice - if you stuck to flagship Samsung or equivalent, I think you'd find it to be similarly at-or-near-the-top in most every category. And if, like me, you don't want the best of everything, but rather a decent-at-most-things but at a lower price, Android works better.