Also worth considering that a 3-4yr old iPhone is quite usable without much noticeable lag (maybe just need to replace battery for $50).
3-4yr old androids have been, in my very anecdotal experience, completely unusable (software bugs that’ll never be fixed, battery drain from OS updates released after manufacture year).
If I were to give a 13yr old a phone, I’d probably give them my used one, and then survival bias would mean they probably get an iPhone since more of them survive in a very usable state.
My dad actually likes Touch ID so much he uses a 5yr old iPhone 7 daily. Just replaced the battery for the 3rd time out of pocket.
I've been an Android fanboy, but I'm starting to hit a point that I'll probably switch to iPhone. Like clockwork, my Android phone becomes unstable after about 2 years. Everything slows down, lock ups happen more frequently.
On top of that you have constant tweaks and changes - often on useless things. This year, an update "improved" the clock app. It's now harder to set alarms - and about once per week I get an alarm going off without any UI to disable it. I just have to reset my phone.
Why in the world does a stable, reliable feature like the clock app suddenly introduce a major change.
What do you attribute that to? Is it software updates that slow it down or some kind of pile up of junk that somehow slows it down like Windows 95 used to get?
> On top of that you have constant tweaks and changes…
Yeah, that exists on the iPhone too. Can’t think of anything off the top of my head but I promise you they make things worse sometimes with redesigns and take a few point releases (or even entire releases) to fix them.
> What do you attribute that to? Is it software updates that slow it down or some kind of pile up of junk that somehow slows it down like Windows 95 used to get?
I'll add that in addition to software, Android hardware typically experience more NAND degradation, which can slow the phone down. A possible explanation being that iPhones use NVMe storage vs the cheaper eMMC/UFS type found on Android.
The difference is that iOS bugs get fixed pretty quickly, which makes me believe that people inside Apple actually use their own products, so they spot the problems and address them very fast.
Compare that to Android 12 on Pixel phones. Users can't make phone calls due to some bug, and Google is going to provide a fix by the end of January! Do you think they'd delay it that long if they used their own products?
I just did that when the iPhone 13 released. My social circle couldn't believe that I got an iPhone after me being extremely critical of them. After a few months, it's a bad experience, Android is clearly more user friendly, customisable, powerful, but it doesn't work.
iOS may be locked down like crazy and have UX from 10 years ago, and the keyboard is atrocious (even swiftkey is way worse than the android version), but it works reliably.
My partner has an iPhone 8 that still works perfectly fine, and much faster than my 3 year old flagship Android. Why the performance degrades after 2 years, I have no clue, plus it happens across brands (seen it with Samsung, LG, Sony)...
I tend to think that if you want an Android, you must use it with a third party ROM (Android distribution) to mitigate this, additionally to some privacy concerns.
However this is a hit and miss affair. You need to buy your phone with this in mind (always do this, even if you don't intend to use it yet) and many are quite unstable (LineageOS and /e/ are quite good).
I'm back on Android for now (it has some apps and freedoms I prefer), but I have been at a point recently at which I have said holy shit, fuck this and bought an iPhone. And it was nice. No constant worrying whether my battery would suddenly drain to 0. Much, much, much fewer random delays, frame drops and stutters. And that's on an iPhone X.
I'd guess the problem is with Firefox. I have a (very simple) Home Assistant instance on my local network. Chrome takes a second or two to load and render it, Firefox takes 10-15 seconds.
Ye, I always disable non-security related updates on pretty much all my hardware, then do a update once a year for new features on some stuff.
Recently got access to Windows 10 LTSC from a company I worked with and installed it on my workstation, super fast compared to the modern version I was using (LTSC build is 3 years old IIRC) and didn't find any downside compared to 10 Pro, so can recommend that for any dev that feels like their machine is too slow.
The main draw of LTSC IMO is the 10 year support period. You can continue installing the monthly updates, and not have to worry about a feature update. Those are the ones that come twice a year, and ruins your day by taking 1 hour to install, resets random settings in the process (eg. default apps or telemetry settings), randomly changes the layout/color scheme, and randomly replaces your built in apps with worse ones (https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2021/12/07/redesig...). A debloating script doesn't protect you against those.
Every Android phone that I've owned (about 7-8 of them?) died with hardware problems within 2-3 years. Except for my current one.
It's a 5 year-old Moto G5 Plus that I bought for ~$200. It got one OS upgrade to Android 8.1.0. I run Firefox, Signal, Google Authenticator, and the usual set of Google apps (GMail, Maps, Keep, Drive, Contacts, Calendar). It's a great phone. The only problem is that it stopped receiving security updates 3 freaking years ago. But I'm not going to throw away a perfectly usable phone.
Weirdly all my android phones are still working. I upgrade on average every 2 to 3 years, current phone bought a flagship 3 years ago and other than battery degradation it's performing as it was when I first purchased it. I am actually using my older models for various automation tasks and one as a webcam for video calls from desktop. Maybe the problem is when buying cheaper models?
none of my Android phones died in last 11 years of using them
though i used to upgrade after 1.5-2 years, current phone holds record, soon 4 years of use without any lag or anything probably attributed to not updating system, which would bring me no benefits and using clean lineage ROM, also not fan of crap apps
> Every Android phone that I've owned (about 7-8 of them?) died with hardware problems within 2-3 years. Except for my current one.
That seems suspiciously high. I "manage" approximately that many phones and only one has stopped working without obvious cause of failure (eg. smashed screen).
How is everybody having Apple replace batteries on their old devices?
Walked in and tried to get the battery on my first gen iPad Air replaced. The guy said the model is flagged as 'vintage' in the system and he can't replace it.
Oh no. Apple won't do shit (or at an unreasonable price, if you're lucky). That's one reason everyone's so mad about them making it so hard for everyone else.
This isn't true of flagship android phones which are more comparable to the iPhone. For example, my Galaxy S9 continues to work excellently besides the aging battery.
they largely still only get two major version updates. I've stopped buying Samsung phones and started using a $300 Pixel. A third of the cost compared to a $1000 samsung phone. I can junk it after 2 years and just get another one.
Funny you say that, because I just had to replace my Galaxy S9 at slightly under two years of age. It became unusable due to a defect called the "Samsung green screen of death", which I learned is widespread, age-related, and unfixable.
My Mom has a 7 with the latest version of iOS. Never had to replace the battery for some reason (she’s very easy on it).
I often use it when I’m around her for some reason or another. Works fantastically. My only complaint is that between the smaller screen (compared to a FaceID phone) and her having it in zoom mode (easier for her to read) the screen feels cramped.
But performance wise it’s not an issue at all. Nice and smooth. She’s not playing high end 3D games or editing video so it works for her.
Only reason she’s thinking of upgrading? The cameras have come a LONG way in 5 years.
I have a 1st generation SE bought in 2017 and still haven't replaced my battery. It's life isn't great, but I can generally get through the day without charging.
I've thought of upgrading for the same reason as your mom though.
I bought my 2015 6S Plus in 2018 and it still works fine and gets updates in 2022. This was after a string of Androids, none much cheaper than the iPhone, that were out of support almost as soon as they launched. I got tired of the ever-growing list of patched vulnerabilities and missing features in newer Androids.
I got an iPhone 7 2 years ago (then-new), precisely because I was fed up with Android. But mostly I'm quite disappointed.
Better privacy settings are great, it is so much easier to lock down permissions (though I hear Android has gone a long way). Everything else is worse.
Performance was OK, but now is so-so, phone definitely feels very slow from time to time, or Safari randomly crashing. Some websites will reload a bunch of times then crash completely. Typing is so much worse, autocorrect is more like auto-typo, compared to what I'm used to (which surely mined text data from my and everyone's phone but so be it). App availability for general stuff seems worse.
I wanted to like my iPhone, but don't, and I'm likely to go back to Android when this one finally dies.
The Safari crashes can sometimes be fixed by rebooting the phone. Otherwise they happen much less frequently on an iPhone with at least 3GB RAM (7 has 2GB).
The autocorrect can be fixed by using Gboard instead. I don't know why Apple can't make their iPhone keyboard work right.
I'm the Android user myself since 10 years already, was using Google Nexus phones, some mid-range OnePlus.
Recently got the OnePlus 8, which got quite a few updates since beginning of this year, and I'm already tired of it. Applications won't start that fast anymore. Camera application is starting with a huge delay when triggered from the lock screen.
If I buy and Android phone again, I think I will never install any system updates. Or will switch to iPhone. This is sad.
> 3-4yr old androids have been, in my very anecdotal experience, completely unusable (software bugs that’ll never be fixed, battery drain from OS updates released after manufacture year).
What sort of Android device? Flagships usually have a much longer life than cheap ones.
I had a Mi Mix 2S for 3 years (2.5 of it with literally a hole in the bottom left corner with a circuit bord visible after i dropped a heavy and sharp object on it) and it was as snappy and fast when it died due to water damage, and was still getting updates. I know people with OnePlus 6 or Samsung Galaxy S7 which work just fine ( there are no updates though). The updates part sucks but is getting better across providers, so hopefully will be better in the future.
Exactly this - my youngest is still using an iPhone 6s which is running the latest (iOS 15) version just fine, after only one battery update. We bought it in 2015.
I’m dying at how wrong this take is. One because it implies a world view where new is somehow better (with vague insinuations that “not poor” wouldn’t buy used) and because you’re ignoring how hugely successful Depop and the like along with upscale secondhand shops are to well to do young people.
I have a lot of the same motivations — I have plenty of money, could buy anything I want brand new within reason. Yet almost everything I own is secondhand — my phone, laptop, tv, clothes, car, cookware, records, guitar, furniture, picture frames, headphones, camera. I’m not even particularly environmentally conscientious or frugal compared to my peers. For me it’s bit of sustainability, a lot of being frustrated at how much waste comes from new things, a good bit of “good god why are new literally cut every corner”, and a lot of fuck capitalism and this consumerist bullshit.
> I have plenty of money, could buy anything I want brand new within reason.
Most people can't and that's exactly why they buy second hand. Turning this into a decision driven by concerns about sustainability seems very optimistic to me. Your concerns are admirable but I wager most people have more immediate aspects to consider - like being able to afford these things at all.
My daughter is in this demographic and that's exactly why she buys things secondhand - her generation has really bought into the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle messaging. It allows for a guilt-free consumption culture.
* iMessage. Teenagers are pretty social and try hard to fit in. Teens may feel more "cool" and "in" to use the same type of device, and iMessage also cements that.
* Affordable. iPhone SE is $400 which is still expensive, many parents may see that as affordable for their teen
* Parental controls. Apple has a staggering number of parental controls, does Android match this in terms of features and ease of use?
>iMessage. Teenagers are pretty social and try hard to fit in. Teens may feel more "cool" and "in" to use the same type of device, and iMessage also cements that.
My girlfriend is 21 and often
doesn't add me to groupchats when we're organizing stuff with friends solely because the messages will be green instead of blue.
Ignoring some things I would consider flaws (lack of end-to-end encryption right now), from what I’ve read it sounds like the rollout of RCS has been something between a mess and a disaster if your friends are on another carrier.
It sounded like it got to the point where phone companies were delaying so long (at least in the US) that Google is basically forcing their hand by doing everything themselves if the carriers don’t.
Meanwhile iMessage has been running for 10 years.
That said I agree with you that I see basically no reason for Apple to add it. That’s up there with iMessage for Android in probability.
This right here. Additionally If you’re serious about making a life with someone it’s much easier when you have things like shared calendars, shopping lists, etc. There are many ways to do this but iCloud is easy and the aforementioned features are free.
Just in case OP is susceptible to peer pressure, I want to offer that if you really love her, it’s OK if you have different operating systems on your phones.
Haha yeah I couldn't care less, I just thought it was a funny anecdote and it's probably not entirely just because of the color, that's just what she said when I asked her about it a couple years ago. And excluding me from the group chats and having her relay everything to/from me is probably for the best anyways, I'm terrible at checking my texts and my friend/family know the fastest way to get a hold of me if Im not replying is to text her instead :p.
It's really absurd that this has to be stated in writing! If a "friend" would cut you out of a portion of their life because of something as trivial as what smartphone messaging platform you use, well, I have some bad news for you...
Buying an iPhone sounds easier. But agree not exactly a good sign if they care about messages being green.
That being said, I've had multiple tinder dates mention they don't go out with guys that have green messages since it's an indication that they are poor.
I think the status thing with IPhone is a big thing. The extend and embrace with IPhone and iMessage and SMS is almost like Microsoft did it. Wonder why Android not did the same thing?
Google made Hangouts the default SMS client for several years and there were obvious benefits to sending Hangouts rather than SMS messages with it. Few people did.
I don't think she cares about the messages being green or any status implications that are attached to this color. However from what I understand iMessage groups basically break when there's a non-iOS device involved and suddenly everything reverts back to SMS/MMS, which sounds awful.
In other countries we use cross platform messengers like Whatsapp to avoid that. Of course that brings a whole other problem set with it but that's a different discussion.
SMS is indeed trash. Unfortunately nobody seems willing to go out of their way to accommodate the minority of android users in their friend group. My techy friends use Signal, but efforts to get people to join me there have been quite fruitless.
My sister joined matrix, but she didn't remember her password the next time I tried to reach her there.
I don’t know what things are like in Android land, but if 95% of your messaging is in one app it feels like a real hassle to adopt another app for just one person/group.
Would you start using a second podcast app just to listen to one individual podcast? Or would you just go without?
I’ve always assumed Android users are used to multiple messaging apps already. Is that the case?
> I don’t know what things are like in Android land, but if 95% of your messaging is in one app it feels like a real hassle to adopt another app for just one person/group.
I'm experiencing that with WhatsApp (in Israel it's pretty much 95%+ WhatsApp). I moved from Android to iOS, and WA have yet to add cross-platform migration ("in the coming months"), and I don't trust any of the 3-4 sketchy apps that offer this. So I end up using WhatsApp Web and switched to texting for family members.
This led to more than a couple "oops I forgot I need to text you" because iOS Safari doesn't allow web notifications, and I didn't check WhatsApp Web yet.
That’s it. I don’t have work stuff on my phone. I suppose if I did I’d have Google Chat.
For some reason I don’t see Messages and Slack as competitors in my mind. They fit in different “categories” (for whatever reason). Messages is for everything but one long running group chat that used to be on-prem at my last job as a sort of social room. I think of it more like IRC and not personal messages. Messages is 95% one-on-one for me.
How so? Signal supports Android and has a cross-platform desktop app (that supports not only macOS, but also Linux and Windows), while iMessage does neither. Signal also has perfect forward secrecy, while iMessage does not.[1] Signal even allows everyone to create and publish sticker packs free of charge,[2] while iMessage requires a $99/year Apple Developer subscription to do the same.[3] I suppose Signal doesn't let you create Animoji or Memoji, but that's not essential to me.
I have been using multiple Signal groups with different sides of the family for a few years now. Honestly, I have yet to run into any problems and few of the groups have roughly 25-100 new messages per day.
Signal isn't that great, but it has cross platform which isn't insignificant (even for you, don't you want to be able to switch computing platforms without losing everything?). However Telegram just blows them all out of the water with the UX, DX, search, stickers, polls, etc.
I think the point is that people either consciously or subconsciously know that green bubble conversations are genuinely worse, not that people literally like the color blue better.
Yeah, exactly. When I see a green bubble from someone I almost have an aversion to texting them because I know there will be a bunch of papercuts making the experience shittier.
Never used an Iphone, but am impressed with parental control features on Android via Family Link. Very configurable - can do the basics like block apps and request permission for app installs, time limits, etc. But really like how you can both have time limits but exempt apps(for more time or forever). So I can let the kid listen to music before bed, but not say, open YouTube.
Sorry if that all sounds basic to you, I'm new to this and just speaking from the Android front.
If I remember from my time in school, the secret is to do it while pretending to be different than everyone else. Jokes aside, being cool is not about being different than everyone else - that's what an outcast is.
Right--being cool is being different from people outside of your particular clique. It's a group of people all being different in the same ways. Goths, punks, jocks, etc.
While that's certainly an aspect, "cool" people can be identified by others even in the in-group. Usually it's related to them having genuine authenticity vs a "poser" who is distinctly uncool.
Sure, there is social hierarchy within the tribe. But the tribe members all share a common culture. The phone isn't necessarily about being cool, it's about conforming to the rest of the tribe. A tribe that all uses Android is possible, but the interlocking nature of social networks combined with a teen's heightened sensitivity to being an outsider creates a stronger "winner-take-all" mechanism in teen social networks compared to adults.
The group isn't defined by the phone, it's defined by the relationships. The phone is just along for the ride. Think of it as an aggressive virus that displaces weaker ones in the social network.
perhaps it is just mental block... but i can't see how you can be "out" of 87%. it is approximately everybody. If anything, if you are not part of it, you are actually "in" in much smaller group and that's where cool badge (should be?) applied.
Not really, that’s the main reason why iPhones aren’t very popular outside the US.
I can get 2 good Xiaomi phones for the price of an (outdated) iPhone SE. I’d love to get my parents and grand-parents on iPhones to simplify their life but at that price that’s not happening.
In the US, iPhone SE is not $400, there are numerous carrier selling refurbished iPhone SE for about $120 and brand new for $180 with 3 months of service. Thus iPhone even brand new is not as expensive as it appears on Apple website.
>Teenagers are pretty social and try hard to fit in.
This factor alone probably explains why teenagers amplify Apple's market advantage. They have a stronger impulse for conformity with their peers: ie, they tend to all use the same phone as their friends. Coupled with the fact that most of them have more than one social group they identify with, it makes it unlikely that a social subnetwork of teens all using Android could survive the competing peer pressure from neighboring connected social iPhone subnetworks.
> iMessage. Teenagers are pretty social and try hard to fit in. Teens may feel more "cool" and "in" to use the same type of device, and iMessage also cements that.
It was the same thing with MSN Messenger (when Millennials were teenagers) and with BBM was well.
In certain locales the same thing is true with WhatsApp.
It won't work for much long. I have a 4s on iOS 6, and I literally can't install any apps on it. Worse yet, almost all web apps don't work on its stock safari.
I feel like there was an inflection point a few years ago where smartphones were fast enough that even half a decade of OS updates couldn't cripple it. I distinctively remember all the iphone 3GS/4/4S out there that were unusable after 3-4 years of updates. Whereas iPhone 6s/SE (they use the same chipset) after 5 years of updates is very usable. The difference is day and night.
You likely are using a version of the App Store which doesn't support pinning older OS releases on older app releases either -as soon as they released a build for iOS 7, the iOS 6 version would no longer be accessible.
You are also missing about seven years of security updates, including several browser-accessible remote exploits. Not using Safari would be a good idea.
My daughter just got an iPhone for Christmas--it was my wife's old iPhone 6s. Over 6 years old and other than shorter battery life, it works fine. Every Android device (tablet or phone) I've had has ended up in a junk drawer much sooner than the Apple devices I've purchased.
I agree that Apple's durability as a hand-me-down goes further in explaining this number than "convinced parent to spend $400 because green bubbles would make me an outcast"
My response to them (I was evacuated from Ida at the moment and getting my phone battery replaced with FEMA money) was "Oh, you know, we in New Orleans are so grateful to have any technology at all...."
>Piper Sandler does and seeks to do business with companies covered in its research reports. As a result, investors should be aware that the firm may have a conflict of interest that could affect the objectivity of this repo
so a PR and sales document
>Survey is executed in partnership with DECA
and nothing on the survey methods or details beyond this ambiguous statement
When I was a teenager I worked at a phone survey company. I quickly realized that many of my colleagues were making up answers to hit their targets.
I somehow did well for my first day, getting through 3 50-question surveys. It was not enough. I was sent home halfway through the day. I was supposed to tell them it was my first day so they would be lenient but I wanted to go drink beer instead.
funny enough, I too worked for a phone survey company back in the day and saw the same behavior. The hardest part was convincing people that we were weren't telemarketers. The company also had a small squad doing surveys in high traffic locations like malls and my friends who worked there made a lot of money inflating unverifiable survey responses.
I was in DECA too and it's a shame they don't disclose details on how they conducted this survey.
Yeah, it's a weird industry. I first registered to vote when I was 16 because the canvasser that stopped me in front of a gas station wouldn't leave me alone. I told him I wasn't old enough to vote. He said, "It's all good man, no one cares."
I obviously never voted before I was 18, but I presume my registration still helped him with his stats for the day.
I, for one, was shocked to see how well iPhones (and Apple products in general) held their value on the used market.
People are still willing to pay decent money for a 3-5 year old phone or laptop...sometimes as much, or even more, than their much more recent and powerful competitors from other brands.
Apparently it's very important to not be a "green bubble bitch" in the dating sphere. I don't know why the assumption is that if you have an Android, you're broke, but I have heard women say unironically that a green bubble is a red flag for their safety. As an Android user, I'm happy to not be in the dating market.
Same thing. If she can be swayed by such a petty thing, then I'm glad she filtered herself out rather than me wasting time and money to find out later that she's easily swayed by petty things and is a bad judge of character (keeping terrible friends).
The people that are willing to filter me out are exactly the people I don't want to date.
No. In the dating sphere, people have a thousand things that go into their preference.
If someone living a 25 minute drive away can be a deal-breaker, having them sometimes not get your message asking if they want to go do something can be too.
The problem is that the choices are entirely in between proprietary systems, or a system like SMS which has a bunch of crappy behavior, or the new contender RCS which is kinda both. (missing arguably essential privacy features, still isn't really deployed as a standard since Google is running all of the infrastructure rather than carriers).
So we have no clear winner; instead we have tribes. Any time two tribes have to fall back to SMS it is going to be miserable.
I switched to iPhone recently. I like it. My phone will get security updates for more than the very few years my pixel got. Everything is very well integrated in the software, and very easy to use. I don’t need 5 chat apps. There are more cool cases. The camera is better. It’s easier to share things, like location and photos and etc, with my wife and family. They don’t seem to change the ui too much since it’s basically the same as when I had a work iPhone years ago. I trust Apple more than Google and can easily turn off any cloud stuff without issue. I’m pretty happy.
Similar here. I don't trust either company but iOS has good UX and performance. Any data on iPhone I assume is accssesible to apple. With all the effort you have to put on android to make it secure, it still has ugly UX, poor reliability/endurance and apps that always find new ways of monetizing surveillance (at best as bad as apple). You really have to get burned by that one little thing you didn't get perfectly tight which made all your effort futile.
Quality apps and products support iOS first. Apple has great UX people, most things are obvious and they just work smoothly as expected. The hardware is insanely good, I can live with being behid android with features for the durability and long term updates.
I'm switching to iPhone mainly for the higher quality of apps on iOS. For whatever reason, the same app is often of lower quality on Android than on iOS. Instagram and Facebook messenger are good examples of this.
The same reason Linux desktop apps look uglier than on macOS , apple regulates UX strictly whereas android allows developer to make their apps look like whatever. The builtin UX components are mediocre which app devs half-ass and use in some places but not others.
Yeah I switched to iOS a couple years back after getting sick of some Google/Android “quirks” and like it for the most part.
Ofc I’ve come to find plenty of things I hate about it as well. Notably text editing is the most miserable experience I have day to day. Managing to select the correct bit of text, or moving the caret to a specific position in some text I want to select feels impossible sometimes.
You may know this already, but holding your finger on the keyboard space bar turns the entire keyboard into a trackpad you can use to slide your finger around and position the caret where you want a lot more easily. Not very discoverable, I agree.
How did you discover this? I’ve been an iPhone user since maybe the early 2010s and never knew about this. It makes me wonder if there’s some tutorial I should go through that has a bunch of tricks like this.
Yea the keyboard and text editing is really annoying, that’s one of the things I hate about this phone. Putting special symbols is a chore to say the least!
I think it would be interesting to compare with Europe. It seems that iPhone is unashamedly dominant in US and Japan mostly. In Europe, android is very popular and I see a lot of kids using Huawei or Samsung.
Anyone staggered by that info doesn't spend much time around teens. My children's first phones were androids (I'm a horrible parent). They got their iPhones as their second phones.
While I didn't know the actual percentage, this has been obvious for years. And this fact should scare Google, Samsung, LG, anyone that's not Apple to death. Maybe Google less-so, since hardware sales are barely a drop in the bucket for them compared to their other revenue, and these kids are still using many google apps even on iphones, but the other hardware companies have good reason to be worried.
Mobile is everything, and no one can make any headway against Apple. Apple and iPhones are just too "cool" - and the iMessage and facetime lock in is very, very real.
Android software and hardware UX is typically subpar, with very little attention to detail, and things just feel out-of-touch and made by engineers and marketing bots. My hypothesis is all these things contribute to a lack of "coolness" (for lack of better word), which has a tremendous impact on the market.
> Android software and hardware UX is typically subpar, with very little attention to detail, and things just feel out-of-touch and made by engineers and marketing bots. My hypothesis all these things contribute to a lack of "coolness" (for lack of better word), which has a tremendous impact on the market.
It goes the other way around as well. If you are used to Android you will be very disappointed by the lack of customization available on iOS. I know I can't stand to use an iphone because of that.
As a decade long Android user that switched to iPhone when the 13 came out, I was expecting that but I've actually been pleasantly surprised. The new shortcuts app in iOS offers a surprising amount of customizability and scripting. True, you can't replace the entire launcher like with Android, but I've found it to be much less of a difference than I thought.
I thought I'd be disappointed after moving to iOS but it turned out I didn't need as many customizations as I'd thought. The defaults are mostly pretty good.
Apple has slowly been improving that over the years. You’re right, it’s not to Android levels, but it’s not what it was five years ago when it was totally locked down.
I hate to break it to you but it probably has nothing to do with that. We’re talking about a demographic that wants to fit in more than any sycophant humble bragger on LinkedIn. The most likely reason is certain crowds in school have iPhones.
Maybe the broke ass kids have that shoddy cheap Android. That’s like wearing Payless or knock-off sneakers. No, not me, everyone’s got Jordans mom, and the new iPhone dad. It’s almost like you don’t care about me and want me to be seen as a loser in school. Gosh.
And how did this existing network of iPhone users come to be if it was just about fitting in? This is obviously flawed logic.
Why even talk about other markets unless you can control for all of the other variables? The other markets are completely different, there is no market like the US market just like there is no market like the market seen in China or India...or maybe if you think as you do, you should ask the question why teenagers in the US market are more likely to try to "fit in" than other teenagers in other markets...
I mean it's probably a combination of two: iPhones are generally considered better (and I concur with this sentiment) which leads to initial adoption and then everyone else has to have one too.
I mean he'll I'm an adult supposedly and am as susceptible to trends/fashions/being cool as anyone else.
Also when the poor kids has cheap androids then kids will associate those with low status. It isn't like kids ask for items from their parents based on very rational reasons, they want the items that the popular kids in school has and avoid the items the poor kids in school has.
You don't need critical mass, as long as one side is oppressive towards the other like this the percentages will shift until it becomes a critical mass.
Lets say one group had iphones and the other group had androids. The iphone group starts to talk badly about the android group due to issues like this, and slowly the other groups will switch to using iphones.
If iphones were that much better value then adults would be using them at similar rates, but they aren't.
Also the other effect is similar. The android ecosystem is affordable so poor people can get it. That creates the same problem as poor neighbourhoods, you don't pay to live in an expensive neighborhood due to the neighborhood itself, but to ensure that poor people can't afford tolive near you. Iphone creates the same effect, you can get an android for super cheap so it is worth a lot of money for kids to create a group where they can ensure that the poor kids can't easily take part of.
>If iphones were that much better value then adults would be using them at similar rates, but they aren't.
This assumes adults, including all the old people who grew up without computers and phones or even smartphones, would be using the devices in the same capacities as a teenager, which seems like a very poor assumption.
iMessage and parental controls are the glue holding them to iPhones. Sure there are other very good reasons but I bet 90% of the iPhone pull is iMessage.
I think a lot of the allure is brand recognition, along with better UI. When I have to use an android I’m always taken back by how clunky it feels. Android phones also have the (potentially overblown) stigma of being cheap, or owned by tight-arse people. It partly deserves this association. The lack of final polish on a lot of the software and hardware over the years has gradually pushed people over to iPhones. The experience on an iPhone is consistent, the hardware is always good, the ‘prestige’ is there too.
I find it hard to believe it is better UI. Whenever I have to use an iPhone I am tempted to throw it against the closest wall due to frustration with the horrible UI.
When you "need" to get your whole family phones, Iphones (even the SE) are too $$. We just get a new Moto G phone every other year. They're $150 each and are great for what they do. Someone breaks it or whatever, you're not out a fortune.
The apparent difference is security update only vs newer Android OS version.
Most non flagship Samsung shipping today with Android 11 will only get Android 12 then security updates only. So technically Samsung only provide 1 year, if security update counts then Apple is still supporting iPhone 5s, a phone released in 2013.
> Sailfish X is currently available in the countries of the European Union, UK, Norway and Switzerland ("Authorized Countries") and the use of our website and services to purchase Sailfish X outside of the Authorized Countries is prohibited.
That is only for a few proprietary bits (Android App Support, Predictive text input, MS Exchange support). Now, those features are very useful, but most of the OS is open source and the open source version is usable (without those features).
They also don't stop people from outside of those countries from ordering it.
There's the old saying, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." If you have the same stuff that everybody else is using, and something goes wrong, it's the fault of that thing, and it's OK. But if you get your own weird stuff and something goes wrong, it's your fault, and is especially shameful if it looks like you were trying to be cheap.
I'm curious what the percentage of Journalists use iPhones primarily... because in my experience it's high, and I believe that affects dev decisions to target which platform first.
If you launch an android-only app, how much of your press-audience are you excluding?
The parental controls on iPhone actually work, unlike on Android. I found it very easy to setup my daughter's iPhone so it just can't be unlocked during school on school days. The only way I could figure out how to do this on Android was using apps that wanted high privilege levels, which I just wasn't going to do. Plus, my kids already know how to use an iPad, so iOS was a no-brainer.
The kids use Chromebooks all day long and all the apps on their phones are Google apps, so it's not like Apple has some kind of monopoly on their virtual lives.
The "Downtime" setting. Set it to start at 7am, end at 3pm, and you're set. (We exempt the messages and phone apps in case they need them in an emergency.)
Not sure if you can have a school and bedtime as separate limits, though. That'd be handy.
Right. You can do it with school time on an Apple Watch, but I’m not aware of any way to do it on a phone with downtime, other than I suppose extending the nightly downtime through the day.
It most certainly works just fine on Android. Family Link is excellent - better than what an iPhone has because it tracks more stuff, and is more fine grained.
You can lock specific apps, with time slots and max time for each app.
Having used both systems, have to say that the iPhone parental settings are just leagues ahead of android. It is dead simple to set and view usage based on app or category, and setting overrides just seems to work.
Idk why people are downvoting you, There’s tons of social pressure for young kids to fit in and the green bubble is such a loud marker that kids will beg their parents just to get away from it
Yep. It’s also sort of an indicator that you won’t be able to read all social queues, such as being left on read. So it’s practically a social disability to not have iMessage.
Late 30's entering the dating scene for the first time was a shock. A couple 20-something's outright stating that they won't date "broke-ass" Android users.
Bitch, this flagship costs MORE than your piece of fruit.
My opinion is that the "green bubble" risk is too great for teens to take, and that alone is responsible for iPhone hedgemony. No, I am not joking. Even as someone in my mid-20s, I get asked about why I use an Android device
This is true. Accordingly, "blue bubbles" (iOS to iOS) are also a thing, and Apple pushes them hard in product placements all the time. They're subtly recognizable from a distance, too. It's all very on purpose and quite clever.
Installing an app isn't the problem. Getting everyone else to install the app is the problem (and their choice isn't "app or money", but "install app and switch everyone over or just exclude/mock the weirdo with the low-class phone"). If you're somewhere where everybody is on Whatsapp/Facebook/... it's similar struggle with people to switch to something else you prefer (e.g. for me iMessage never was topic because just not enough relevant people had iOS for them to build an expectation that everyone has it. But there was a phase where getting people to accept that not everybody has Facebook was kind of annoying)
And try as you might to get people to switch, the majority will inevitably revert back to iMessage. I really hope Apple is forced to interoperate with RCS and to make all the bubbles blue.
Yeah...facebook isn't dominant because it's the best platform, it's because moving away from it requires your entire circle to move away from it as well, otherwise you're just running two platforms side by side.
Google Plus was superior to facebook but never stood a chance.
Yeah that's like getting your entire family to switch over from facebook to something else less awful - good luck.
Oh, and then getting all of THEIR connections to also download another messaging app. And so forth.
And I think the price argument against iphones isn't valid any more. The 13 Pro Max is $100 less than the Galaxy S21 Ultra. You're paying a premium for the brand new flagship phones obviously, regardless of brand.
You are forgetting the biggest feature: You can actually leave an iMessage group chat. An SMS group chat will keep texting you as long as someone keeps it alive. To stop getting them you have to individually block every user.
That was the missing bit of info for me. It's not just that the color is different, it's that a non-iMessage user in a group chat degrades the functionality for everyone else.
When two phones with iMessage enabled text each other, the texts are blue and the experience is better-- the texts are more responsive, have read receipts, high quality videos/images, games, and more.
However, when one of the users does not have iMessage (almost always the case when one person uses android), the text messages show up as green. Since these conversations cannot make use of the above features that you have with iMessage, and along with this, the texts have a green color to them. This has come to be known as "green bubble" problem.
The problem is exacerbated in group texts. The iMessage features are available only when every single person in the group chat has iMessage. If someone doesn't, the entire group falls back to MMS which is a degraded experience from both the iPhone users' side, as well as the Android users' side.
Teens can be fickle, and I've heard you get excluded from group chats-- hurting your social life when so much of it revolves around group chats. I think you see the point by now.
I just held out again and purchased an Android Phone, but I could see myself breaking down and getting an iPhone for my next one. Most recent problem being that you can't send videos via MMS without them becoming heavily compressed, and have to switch to a third party app like Signal or WhatsApp.
I've historically been an android user and have an iPhone now. Never really bothered with iMessage and my social circles use whatsapp or signal primarily.
I guess in markets where the iphone isn't dominant (UK), this social dynamic doesn't really exist.
That’s what I’ve heard. In the US the two messaging standards are currently iMessage (Apple only) and SMS (everything).
Yes FB Messages and WhatsApp and Signal and Telegram and everything else exist. But none of them is anywhere big enough to be a default that everyone has.
If you text an iPhone user over SMS, the message appears in a green bubble in the Messages app. If you use the native Messages protocol, it's blue. So green bubbles are an obvious outlier if most of your contacts have iPhones.
Allegedly (I can't confirm, since I use Android) in imessage, non iphone users messages show up in green speech bubbles, while imessage users are blue (or grey?) [0]
Anything you send shows up with a grey bubble. Doesn’t matter how it’s sent.
Anything you receive by SMS shows up in a green bubble.
Anything you receive my iMessage shows up in a blue bubble. Obviously only Apple users can send iMessages, And Apple devices default to iMessage if they detect that the other user is also an iMessage user.
iMessage is end to end encrypted, supports higher quality videos and pictures, sound clips, reactions, read status, little apps (no one uses this), reactions, effects, longer messages, and probably other things that I am forgetting.
Most crucial he, EVERYONE in a chat has to be on the same protocol. Obviously this is easy when talking one on one, but it becomes a big issue when talking in a group. In a group of 100 people it only takes a single non-iPhone user to cause EVERYONE to fall back to SMS.
Basically its a scarlet letter that means you have an android phone.
When ios users text message each other, the messages are blue and also many forms of rich media and reactions can be sent. When a user has a green bubble it mostly means they dont have an iphone and cant receive lots of metadata, its even a great risk for misunderstanding to be made as the emojis are all completely different. The actual reason is less pretentious and is just notifying the user that the message is unencrypted (due to being a normal SMS), and that alone is a good enough warning to disassociate. But thats evolved to being a 99% correlation with having a non-iphone but specifically android device since the competitors have all left the market by now.
Android users often are out of the loop on a lot of things, like many dont even know the reality of the green bubble issue. Many will learn and choose to continue missing the social cues, opting to believe that its just a small subset of pretentious people that care and that theyre better off not being around that kind of person. They don't know that many opportunities are being withheld from them.
Why is that?
Well. Think about it. Many android users looooooove to tell people about how much control they have over their phone. Everyone knows! Nobody cares! Nobody wants to hear it! If we go on a hike and take awesome photos using their high tech transdimensional phone camera from the future, they cant share the photos offline with any built in function that all the other phones already have and their own phone might explode before we get back to civilization! Iphone users can though. We’re all content just waiting for Apple to introduce the same functionality 5 years in the future. Nobody thinks its really magical when Apple tell us an old reintroduced technology is. Android wasnt in the running, so its nice to get an extra feature.
People are just tired of the missed social cues, and lack of integration into the ecosystem now. Ironically Apple could open it up, at least to get encrypted messages, but honestly the world has evolved in such a convenient way that Apple just has to wait it out. People use Whatsapp and other stuff, and their major US market keeps gravitating to iphone.
This seems a very US problem - in markets where the iPhone isn't dominant, people use whatsapp or signal and just get on with life.
Your snark seems to be rooted in that as well. In the UK AFAICT 'nobody' cares about the amount of control they have over their phone, because 'normal' people predominantly use android devices.
> but honestly the world has evolved in such a convenient way that Apple just has to wait it out. People use Whatsapp and other stuff, and their major US market keeps gravitating to iphone.
Regarding your post:
> Your snark seems to be rooted in that as well.
You either want one of the main driving the answers or not, bring it up with US teenagers who have to react to this social pressure much more consequentially than the rest of us
> You either want one of the main driving the answers or not
But you were a dick about it, your comment is not simply explanatory - "Many android users looooooove to tell people about how much control they have over their phone. Everyone knows! Nobody cares!"
This appears to be a facet of the iphone being dominant. In the UK market for instance, this characterisation wouldn't really fly as android is used by a lot of 'normal' people.
> their own phone might explode before we get back to civilization
characterising android phones this way is like me saying that you need to hold an iphone a specific way or it won't get signal - it might have been true for one model a few years ago but isn't really relevant to most.
It's an article and study about the US. Everyone has a variety of answers now. iOS users (in the US) really make unprompted quips about "the other" this way, when not in mixed company. I feel extremely comfortable letting people in on whats going on, 87%.
Not sure what your point is, but that's exactly how surveys work : take a sample of size n (10000) and do some statistical inference based on the observed statistic, i.e. either reject or accept a hypothesis based on the sample.
I mean seriously why would you buy an Android? They aren’t cheaper unless you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel, they don’t last as long, the software isn’t as pleasant to use or as privacy focused. What’s the point?
I was on the iOS side, they cost too much for what I do with my mobile phone.
Now I always buy mobile phones under $200, my current mobile phone battery last for 5 days without recharge, previous mobile lasted for 5 years (using a custom ROM).
Not surprising though. Apple's hardware and software quality are way better than anything you get with Android, the only place some Android handsets are ahead is the camera. And the Apple stuff isn't any more expensive (iPhone SE 2020 is available for $399).
Hardware yes. Software is debatable. iOS quality is not as good as it used to be. Android is actually better in some significant ways. It depends what you care about.
I'd argue it's not better in either case. It's a lot more marketing than actual value. Plus they use all kind of sick lock-in tactics to entrench their position. They are like MS from the '90s in that sense.
3-4yr old androids have been, in my very anecdotal experience, completely unusable (software bugs that’ll never be fixed, battery drain from OS updates released after manufacture year).
If I were to give a 13yr old a phone, I’d probably give them my used one, and then survival bias would mean they probably get an iPhone since more of them survive in a very usable state.
My dad actually likes Touch ID so much he uses a 5yr old iPhone 7 daily. Just replaced the battery for the 3rd time out of pocket.