[pibaker]

I am an iPhone user myself, but the number of "this is an android problem" and "just use iPhone" in response to the author's complaints surprises me. I thought HN was more anti apple in the past? Maybe we are all old now and tinkering with our devices is out of fashion, but this doesn't make the author's complaints illegitimate.

And if we zoom out a bit, iPhones are only 20% of the global phone market. The overwhelming majority of the world uses android because, well, iPhones are expensive. There are plenty of places where an iPhone is still a status symbol. Even you think the author should have bought his parents iPhones instead, there is still a whole world of people out there who would benefit from improvements in the android ecosystem.

[kwanbix]

I don't use Android because iPhones are more expensive. In fact you can get Android phones that are as expensive and sometimes more expensive than iPhones. I use Android phones because it is a much more flexible ecosystem, where I can choose my browser, for example.

[pibaker]

I don't mean to dismiss your opinion but I doubt this is the reason android has such a huge market share. I doubt the average person even knows that apple forces every app to use apple's own browser. The countries where android dominate are also the ones where you can get phone plans with free data for WhatsApp and Facebook. There is an entire world outside our techie circles where price and UX trumps having principles about user control and freedom.

[ilvez]

lol I even didn't know that I couldn't use Firefox in iPhone. Does this really fly in EU as well? How?

[halapro]

By law third party engines are allowed since like 2024, geoblocked to the EU, but I haven't seen any news of browsers actually doing that. I think a number of other countries are starting to enforce that, like South Korea or Japan.

[ilvez]

Oh yeah, now I recall.. Fx in ios is just a shell

[dhosek]

I’m very much the inverse of you. I don’t use Android because I don’t want to have to worry about all the fiddly stuff that is involved with Android. I like that it’s not a big deal to migrate to a new phone, that I don’t have to worry about whether I’ll be able to get security updates in a year, or have to spend time disabling telemetry.

If I did want to do a lot of fiddling with the phone then sure, Android would be a better choice, but like I had said back in 2004, what I wanted more than anything else was a phone that would sync its contacts with my Mac.

[eloisant]

The idea that Android needs tinkering of fiddling needs to die.

80% of users in the world use Android, and most of them don't do any tinkering or fiddling.

[71bw]

...and then you look into what devices they are using and what they are ignoring that could have been resolved by tinkering.

My father-in-law has just had an issue where Xiaomi's camera app took up 95GB of space on his phone. Not the photos - just the camera app. Uninstalling updates for the app resolved the issue, all the space was magically back.

[SoftTalker]

For me a new phone is a forced cleanup. I don't migrate anything automatically.

[crazygringo]

Obviously that's a ton more work, and not something most people have any desire to do. They just want to upgrade their phone and have all their data and apps migrate seamlessly.

[ghaff]

Especially if someone needs to get and setup a new phone in a hurry for whatever reason.

Yes, it's sometimes good to do a spring cleaning but I'm not always in a position to do so (or have the desire to).

[badc0ffee]

Speaking for myself, I've been auto migrating since I got an iPhone 3GS in 2009. The only thing that needs serious cleanup is my music library.

[krick]

Exactly what I was going to say. I don't use iPhone because, well, it's iPhone. And until, like, this year, it was strictly more prohibitive than Android. Also, it was honestly just worse of a device than some Android flagships, and the tradeoff is only worth it if you are a lazy USA-ian, who doesn't use any "sketchier" non-mainstream apps, has an Apple account and owns a bunch of Apple devices anyway. Oh, and all your friends use iPhone Messages app. Then iPhone is the default. But outside of USA it was always more of a gimmick than a natural choice.

That being said, even if you wouldn't have said it before me, I probably shouldn't have said it too anyway, because I suspect that globally speaking the GP is right. Most people don't buy flagships, yet everybody has a phone. And Apple doesn't even try to compete in "non-premium" market, it's strictly impossible to buy a new iPhone for the price of some Redmi or whatever, which isn't even noticeably worse than an iPhone, practically speaking.

[daliusd]

I have 5 years old iPhone SE2020 that is relatively cheap having in mind that is 5 years old. None of Androids served me that long. Only Motorola tried, but water killed it. Water has not killed iPhone when my son threw it into pond. Which Android is that good, practically speaking?

[socalgal2]

> relatively cheap

relative to an iPhone Pro, yes. Relative to many other phones, No. It shipped at $399. You can buy 4 to 12 android phones for that price. I'm an iPhone user but my sister and her family are Android.

[daliusd]

I doubt I would get the same quality and reliability. Good Android phones are equally expensive and it is very hard to know which are actually good without doing research. As well I had bad experience with some Google Pixel model.

[socalgal2]

That is always the excuse people bring up to ignore the point. You can spend $1000 on a fancy chefs knife, or you can spend $30 on an Ikea chefs knife. Sure, the $1000 knife is higher quality. Yet, millions of people are still doing just find with the Ikea knife.

A cheap car will still get you to/from work over an expensive "higher quality" car.

Lots of families don't have money to buy an iPhone for every member of the family but do have enough to buy an Android for every member of the family.

[beagle3]

I am typing this on a 9 year old iPhone 8 Plus. Battery was replaced once after 6 years, replacement battery is still lasting more than a day. Apps are slowly losing support for it, but other than that it mostly does what I want, and still gets security updates for really bad stuff.

Is there a comparably usable 9 year old android?

[malnourish]

My wife uses a OnePlus 8t (about as old as your phone) daily. It's survived drops, tubs, etc.

[koyote]

I still have one of those lying around in the draw. It's the backup phone and every time I or my partner needs to use it I am surprised at how well it still works.

[daliusd]

Sad that it is Chinese one.

[jack_pp]

I have a S21 which was released in early 2022. Bought it new in late 2023 for 430€. I don't see any reason to get a new one currently. Had to service it twice for water damage to be honest but service was free

[daliusd]

OK I had Samsung that was OK. Later after upgrades it became unusable, but that's it.

[dotancohen]

Or sync your contacts to a CardDav server. Or record a phone call. Or develop your own software (for the time being).

[eloisant]

HN is mostly US and apparently in US even geeks have given up on Android.

Anyway, here is my experience when I upgraded from a Pixel 8 to Pixel 10 Pro: login to my Google account, let the backup restore happen then my new phone was identical to the old one.

I only had to do the login process to a few messaging apps like Signal or WhatsApp, and my home settings on Smart Launcher had to be manually imported but that's pretty much it.

Basically, a lot of what OP lists as "bare minimum requirements" are just preferences. If he used his Android phone like an iPhone, and like most people use it (with minimal tinkering) then the migration would have been just as smooth.

[roryirvine]

Yeah, and it's been like that for years - the past decade, at least.

I've had a couple of Nexuses, a few of the Pixels, with a Nokia in the mix too. Never any problem - just log in, wait a few mins for the apps to automatically install and the data to backup/restore (which, iirc, happens over local wifi rather than going through the cloud). The last upgrade included a separate work profile managed by MS Intune, and that was also smoothly handled by the upgrade process.

Yes, Whatsapp chat history has to be handled separately (as others have mentioned) because of the e2e encryption. The only other thing that needs doing is confirming that I want Firefox as my default browser when I first run it. Otherwise, it's all completely hands-off.

[LtWorf]

iPhones are only 20% but in USA they are much popular, and most people here will be from USA and will have disposable income working as software developers.