[rdl]

It would be interesting to repeat the "Android vs. iOS" (device specific, I guess) experiment with device-naive users (kids or maybe old/poor/foreign people?) every few months.

Clearly the iOS/iPad/etc. was far superior at one point (especially when it was the only device!); it's likely it changes over time, but that for anyone familiar with one or the other, switching costs predominate.

[nicholassmith]

Oddly enough personal experience within my family is they try Android to get their feet wet, find it overly frustrating and end up getting an iOS device. At least 3-4 family members I can think of, one being my girlfriend who hated everything but the ability to customise it. Different strokes for different folks.

[Nicole060]

Did they try stock Android, or devices with crap custom interfaces made by HTC and Samsung ? frankly, I wouldn't buy anything unless it has stock android, or let me root it and install stock android. I don't want TouchWiz or Sense. Having a bad experience with Android does not necessarily mean that someone hates android, it just means they hate that particular flavor of Android. Hardware manufacturers (Apple is the exception) tend to suck a LOT when it comes to writing software and it's a real pity that Google didn't chose to do the same thing as Microsoft and enforce their stock UI. Thank god for the Nexus line. Google has a really good OS but the worst strategy.

Android used to be inferior to iOS, but I feel that it has not only reached feature parity now, it has actually gotten much better. I used to feel the wow-factor a lot the first few times I handled my iPad, and none of the iOS update ever made me feel that again, on the other hand, Android Jelly Bean on the Nexus 7 has quite a few things that really surprised me, in a good way.

An example : when browsing places like Slashdot, I often had to zoom in to click comments and show those that are hidden because the links are often close together and too tiny to hit with the finger (which means that without zooming in I often hit the wrong one), and then zoom out to read the page at the correct size. It felt like a chore. But when I got my Nexus 7 and browsed places like Slashdot and Reddit (I don't use custom apps for websites), and tried to hit a link without zooming in, I had the pleasant surprise of seeing a zoom popping up with the cluster of links that were on the place where my finger hit, I tap the link I want in the pop up and it automatically disappear and I don't have to manually adjust the zoom of the page. It was the "Link Preview" feature of Google Chrome. Amazing. I will never be able to use another device again, if only because of that one feature, unless someone else copies it (the irony).

I haven't found a single thing I missed from iOS on the Nexus 7 - Jelly Bean, on the other hand, I discovered things I will miss if I were to leave Android (something that will probably never happen).

Feature wise, Android has left iOS in the dust. You may have a subjective preference to iOS's UI but there is no denying that iOS has less features than Android.

[nicholassmith]

So here's how this goes: people buy an iPhone and get a clean experience out of the box, people buy a HTC or Samsung and deal with a crappy UX whilst respectable geeks tell them to root and flash it.

That's fine for you but not a non-geek no matter how easy it is. It doesn't matter if it's stock Android or not, their experience is tainted in a heartbeat. Having a bad experience with any form of Android will put someone off unless they know the difference, which most don't and don't care about.