[nvllsvm]

As much as I - a Pixel 7 (GrapheneOS) user - would hate that, doing so would essentially put Android on equal footing as iOS and would give me a serious reason to consider switching to an iPhone. Apple's hardware is just so much sleeker, faster, and better than Google's mediocre Pixel line.

[cbdumas]

Maybe I'm just a tech philistine but I find my Pixel 8a and my wife's iPhone <N> to be basically indistinguishable in any meaningful way.

[CobrastanJorji]

They are completely different. One of them lets you have the sexy blue text boxes in iPhone group chats, and the other makes everyone see you with the green box of shame.

[yurishimo]

Unless you live outside of the US in which nobody gives a damn and they all use WhatsApp. After moving, I only get sms messages from the doctors office and my friends back in America.

[colonial]

True, but God does WhatsApp suck.

They've got a billion-strong userbase and yet the Android app still dumped literally every attachment I received into my camera roll until I manually added '.nomedia' files in the right places.

And, oh man, the API for businesses is a Kafkaesque nightmare. Maybe it was good before it got Zucked, but I had to fight with their support for over a week to get an automated ban-hammer overturned... only for it to get auto-banned again two days later. We hadn't even deployed the damn thing yet!

[hu3]

> literally every attachment I received into my camera roll

There's a global setting for this: media visibility: off.

Then you can enable that per chat.

I have all chat images contained to only Whatsapp by default. Then I only enable some chats (family, friends) to expose images/videos to the phone.

Google Photos scoops those and backsup all family pictures shared to whatsapp to my Google Photos.

I'm the family's reliable source of truth when it comes to family photos.

[viraptor]

What's "camera roll"? WA images go into the "WhatsApp Images" folder. They're separate from "Camera".

[colonial]

Every Android "gallery"-type app I've ever used defaults to a view that mixes together every known album/folder on the device.

That works fine (and is in fact easier than remembering the exact album) when I get to pick and choose exactly what I photograph/save, but it became borderline unusable once WhatsApp started vomiting hundreds of stupid GIFs and throwaway screenshots into it.

[ksec]

Dont know about Andriod but iOS you can select not to save images into camera roll.

[joseda-hg]

That's a feature, not a bug Users are conditioned to look there for any kind of image on their device

[oska]

> Unless you live outside of the US [...] and they all use WhatsApp

This is such a ridiculously incorrect over-generalisation. China, Japan & Russia are obvious counter-examples, plus many others.

[needlesslygrim]

In China WeChat is the dominant messaging platform, SMS is only used for delivery notifications, spam, etc.

[oska]

I understand that. My point was that the original comment was grossly overstating the supposed 'dominance' of WhatsApp.

[Macha]

My understanding is Line is on top in Japan.

[homarp]

i don't think China uses SMS though.

[omnimus]

Not true at all. This effect is pretty common in countries outside of US. It makes sense. WhatsApp is just another messaging app thats popular depending on a local whim. Where as iMessages get sent automatically between iOS users.

[NBJack]

Outside the US, and a handful of other countries, Android is far more dominant than iOS (75% vs 25%). [1]

WhatsApp has an estimated active userbase of approximately 3 billion. [2] The number of iMessage users is estimated to be about 1 billion. [3]

[1] https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-users#iphone...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1306022/whatsapp-global-...

[3] https://usesignhouse.com/blog/imessage-stats/#:~:text=iMessa...

[ksec]

On [1], If you only look at countries with decent GDP per Capita. iOS will have anywhere from 40 to 65% market share. Even in China iOS is well over 30%.

When you consider Africa + ASEAN + India has 3.5B population and has very low iPhone market share that sort of Skew the figures.

[omnimus]

Sorry but how that invalidates that in my country nobody uses WhatsApp? It doesn't matter at all if they are on Android or iOS.

And since iMessages are seamless they are used very often between iOS users.

[dividedbyzero]

I'm sure there are dozens of people in Germany who actively prefer iMessage but I haven't met one yet. Whatsapp achieved pretty much total market capture here back when SMS still were costly and the network effects that arose from that are among the strongest I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure if someone was to do a survey, almost everyone would say Messages is for SMS only and I think most of them wouldn't know it can do more than that.

[virtualritz]

In Berlin everyone seems to be on Telegram these days. People leaning more left and/or are privacy-aware and/or hate FB/Meta/big tech use Signal.

WhatsApp seems only to be used by the elderly/old in my circle of friends lately.

The transition has been gradual; started during the pandemic, I'd say.

[omnimus]

Yet i write with most of my German friends using iMessages because its automatic and i dont have Telegram or WhatsApp because nobody uses it in my european country.

[31337Logic]

Y'all bitches gotta get on Signal. ;-)

[dividedbyzero]

I hear even the US government trusts Signal

[beAbU]

What countries other than US is this so prevalent?

[jbarham]

According to https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-ma... iPhone also has > 50% market share in Canada, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Japan. FWIW I live in Australia and most group chats are via WhatsApp vs SMS/iMessage.

[omnimus]

I didnt say this is so prevalent. Just that it exists.

My experience from few european countries is that middle class - tech/business/law people have iOS. Go to tech or business conference and its all iphones.

So its really easy to be in such circles. I live in EU country and its all iMessage or Signal. Nobody uses WhatsApp if something its Facebook Messenger or Instagram messages.

[alabastervlog]

Neither of them causes anyone else to see your messages as green. Or blue.

[Krssst]

In my understanding, animations cannot be fully disabled on iOS (please tell me if I am wrong) while they can on Android. This leads to much better usability since you don't have to wait after every interaction.

[delite]

You can enable reduce motion[1] which effectively replaces all transitions with a brief fade.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/iphone/iph0b691d3ed/io...

[Yeul]

I play videogames and I can tell the difference between 60 and 120herz screen. Always amused me that a so called premium device had worse hardware than a flagship killer. Apple apparently finally caught up with their latest phone?

[sho_hn]

Almost anyone can tell the difference between 60 and 120 Hz.

Seriously, if you haven't upgraded your desktop PC to a higher refresh rate screen yet: It's the biggest "feels like a new computer!" upgrade since we swapped HDDs for SSDs and the days when your new CPU was 2.5x as fast as the old one. There is no turning back after having experienced the buttery smoothness, and the impact is IMHO higher during regular usage than during games.

[Sohcahtoa82]

I upgraded to 144 hz on my primary monitor in 2016 and it's absolutely noticeable and makes things feel so smooth.

Last week I went to 240 hz and while it's noticeably even smoother, it wasn't nearly the upgrade, so there's certainly diminishing returns. Though I did go from IPS to OLED and THAT is really nice.

This is usually the point where someone will chime in and say something dumb like "The human eye can't see more than X frames per second" which is just hogwash. It's not about individual frames, but the fluidity of motion. At 60 fps, an object moving across the screen is moving 4x as many pixels per frame as 240 fps. When you get used to 240 fps, 60 fps feels like it's strobing.

[sho_hn]

I recently bought a 240 Hz OLED monitor as well, but to my dismay the 80 Gbps data rate mode is actually optional in DisplayPort 2.1a. Even though I have a DP2.1-capable GPU (9070 XT) and monitor, it's not possible to do 4k 10bit HDR at 240 Hz with DSC off. Since I don't want compression to be on I've compromised to sticking with 180 Hz, which as you say due to the diminishing returns above 120 is still plenty.

Still quite frustrating that the display industry did it again in specifying a standard that makes most of what's interesting about it optional, so everyone can print it on their boxes without delivering the expected value.

[phonon]

Why do you need DSC off?

[brailsafe]

Meh, I turned back. While 120+hz is nice, there are more compelling attributes of a monitor that I wouldn't compromise on in the name of refresh rate. Aspect ratio, size, resolution, picture quality, and viewing angles are all things I personally value more than refresh rate. If I could get my exact monitor that quite nicely meets all of those criteria, but with 120+hz, I still wouldn't value it so highly that I'd pay more than $500 to replace it, but I would pick it over 60hz if needing a new screen and everything else was already matched or better.

It's an impactful and noticeable upgrade in addition to everything else being awesome, but for me it doesn't come close to being the the most important. If all else was equal or better, and I had to pick between 6k resolution or high refresh rate, I'd have a hard time picking refresh rate, but I'd prefer both.

[cosmic_cheese]

High refresh on its own is not enough to constitute a better screen. While Apple could certainly stand to bump the minimum refresh rate to 120hz across the board, I wouldn’t want that to come at the expense of the other more important specs as has been common outside of the Apple sphere, particularly on budget devices. If one has to choose, a color accurate screen is preferable to a fast but less accurate one in most circumstances for instance.

[TexanFeller]

Apple phones have had ~120hz screens for many years now. Only on the Pro models though, not the cut down economy models, that’s how they force people with disposable income to buy the Pro.

[jokethrowaway]

The camera - the only reason I would buy an iPhone is for the better camera.

Sure, the Pixel 8a camera is not bad for the price but it's still noticeably worse. The kind of difference you notice when someone with an iPhone shares photos with you.

Apps and the whole phone experience are a sh*tshow on both sides and I hate both with a passion. I'm still waiting for a decent linux experience on a phone - possibly with stupid banking apps support.

[gman83]

Whenever they do these blind tests for different phone cameras, the iPhone never wins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRoTOE3FqT0

[izacus]

Pixels have been beating iPhones in camera quality for years now on pretty much every blind test. Even the cheap ones.

[overfeed]

Parity will only be achieved for me when the iPhone supports FDroid, and allows the replacement of default apps with apps of my choosing.

[baby_souffle]

I'm in a similar spot. There are a few pixel exclusive features that I would certainly miss but I spent a few decades not having a personal assistant robot screen my calls and texts, I can survive without it in the future.

Tasker used to be in a class of its own but I believe shortcuts is now as powerful and it even has a user experience that isn't hostile! That might be a net benefit...

I hate the iOS keyboard and method of text selection but I could adopt.

I'll have to re buy some apps or find alternatives but that's not an impossible hill to climb.

The biggest pain points are file management and notifications. Having spent a decade plus on a blackberry before going Android full-time, neither dominant platform is even close to good with respect to notifications but Android is far less crappy than iOS.

File management is probably a deal breaker. Every time I have to download a file on my iPad and try to use it in another app or even just get it off the damn thing, I spend 5 minutes swearing before I just give up and attach the file to an email and then go to a PC to pull the file out of the draft folder...

[WorldPeas]

my chief grief with Apple is the same as yours, I solve it by using a home server w/ self hosted pwas to do everything this pocketable "computer" should be able to do. Sometimes I wonder about flying to the EU to reactivate my phone there if that's possible but knowing Apple there'll be some terrifying kafkaesque twist

[NekkoDroid]

> Sometimes I wonder about flying to the EU to reactivate my phone there if that's possible but knowing Apple there'll be some terrifying kafkaesque twist

IIRC you needed to be like in the region like every 30 days, else it updates to your current location (but don't quote me on it, I might be really misremembering the company/product)

[singpolyma3]

And fixes their garbage autocorrect and notification UI

[singularity2001]

  Apple's hardware is just so much sleeker, faster, and better than Google's 

On the other hand I was recently testing a friends pixel phone and was shocked by the speed and integration of Gemini.

[reactordev]

It’s important to compare apples to apples. Certain phone models have different CPU’s etc. I’d love to see a benchmark of iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Pixel’s top of the line model.

[parliament32]

It's not going to be possible because Apple hasn't come out with an equivalent to Gemini. It would be like if Siri also had full LLM conversation capabilities, and access to all your documents/email/etc, and direct integration to run web searches, analyze web pages, etc. And it's fast enough to have a real-time conversation[1], as if you were speaking to a human on the phone. Oh, and that's on my Pixel 7, which is two years behind.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ks21fpjH9M

[BoorishBears]

> doing so would essentially put Android on equal footing as iOS

No it wouldn't. Google as an org is bad at product and the fact AOSP exists is not why.

I've built AOSP based products multiple times over the years, and closed source Google Play Services has spent years picking off ever increasing swaths of the user-facing functionality covered by AOSP. I mean the writing was on the wall with Doze, but we don't even have a calculator anymore last I checked.

Google just can't make good products like Apple can.

Apple's worst products come from moments where they act like Google (becoming developer driven with weak top down direction), and vice versa. Fortunately for iOS users, neither org defaults to acting like the other.

[mattmaroon]

The Pixel line has never, IMO, been the best hardware in the Android ecosystem. It might be the best hardware/software combo, but Samsung's hardware has always seemed better.

[ksec]

>and better than Google's mediocre Pixel line

Pixel 7, or any android in that era would definitely be slower than iPhone. ( Google Pixel itself uses mediocre SoC ) But the recent ones are catching up fast and latest Samsung is Snapdragon Elite is actually faster than iOS.

I think that is partly because Google had to optimise the hell out of its software due to slower CPU performance. And partly just Apple's iOS has fallen a lot in quality.