Android vs. iPhone / iOS

[db]

so, as mentioned in a previous thread, i'm a pissed off with android - it's horribly fragmented (i.e. no 2 android phones are the same, different versions all over the place), and phone manufacturers/carriers keep pushing updates to handsets that can't necessarily handle it, etc.. as a result, i have recently started thinking the unthinkable - dumping android for an iphone..

i already have an ipad, so am reasonably familiar with iOS, but i've never really used an iphone beyond pressing a few buttons on a mate's.. the only thing i can think of that i would miss is swiftkey - the stock iOS keyboard & prediction is crap, whereas swiftkey is manna from keyboard-heaven.. however, given all the other problems with android, the thought of a nice, unified, closed system which is the same for all developers (resulting in more consistent, stable, compatible apps) makes this a price i'm considering paying..

that being said, as i say i haven't really used an iphone, so is there anything else i'm missing?

people bang on about "but you can't change the battery, or SD card " - well, i consider myself an "intermediate" user (i.e. i'm far from a beginner, but i'm not a hardcore nerd who puts a new ROM on every week) and i can honestly say i've never wanted/needed to change either in my current phone, so this doesn't bother me in the slightest.. i don't use my phone as a music/media player, and even when i do everything is stored on the cloud these days - and i have both icloud and dropbox accounts, which i use extensively, thus negating the need for massive local storage..

so yeah, has anyone else made the transition from android to iphone, and found anything they've missed/hated/loved/etc?

 

[db]

Every time I use an ipad keyboard I die a little inside, why can't they show letters in lower case FFS? On android its obvious, the keys change to show you what you are typing, but not on an ipad. Want a a? Then press A. Want an A? Well you have to press uppercase and then A. Retarded.

indeed.. and why is it so hard to type a #? it's about 3 keypresses just to get to the keyboard with the symbol on - a right faff, given how much it is used on twitter/social media platforms..

and i hate the way it defaults to "space will autocorrect what i deem to be a spelling mistake", which more often than not results in me having to back-space to delete the correction then put in what i wanted to type again..

still, i'd rather that than my phone constantly turning itself off, re-syncing with facebook, bluetooth breaking, being really sluggish in general, etc..

 

[My Name is URL]

I love Android (who knew?) but sounds like iPhone would be the way forward for you...

A female friend is an iPhone lover but 6 months ago came up with the idea of switching to Android to cut costs... 5 of us in the room at the time asked for feedback all concluded that Android was the best option, but all said she should stick with iPhone as that was what she knew and for her it just worked, whereas Android is potentially shit, can be great with a little or a lot of work, or none at all if you get the right phone...

She ended up getting a Galaxy S2 and although she hated it first, I don't think she would go back now.

Most people I know fit into three categories...

1. iPhone, always have been and always will be
2. was iPhone but switched to Android
3. always been Android and never would switch to Apple

Don't think i know anyone who has gone the other way.

 

[Jonah]

To type a capital letter in iOS just press the shift key and slide over to the required letter without lifting your finger off the keyboard.

And auto correct is pants on iOS and Android!

 

[tek-monkey]

To type a capital letter in iOS just press the shift key and slide over to the required letter without lifting your finger off the keyboard.

Why can't the keyboard just display capitals when shift is down/locked and lower case the rest of the time? Heaven forbid it actually reflects what will happen when you press the key!

 

[Jonah]

I don't know but to be honest I'd never even noticed or indeed given any thought to it until I read your post.

All the letters on a normal keyboard are in capitals so Apple are only doing what is the accepted norm. Even Microsoft's Surface has capitals on it's add-on keyboard.

 

[PeterD]

I used to have an iPhone 3GS, then had a galaxy s2 (due to inebriation, I broke it) and now I have a HTC Sensation. The Sensation is amongst the worst phones I have ever had. The Galaxy was pretty good but talking about the OS, not really happy with Android, seemingly people forgive its foibles because it isn’t iOS, but for me its a bit crap. My next phone is due in December and I will be returning to an iPhone.

 

[wildwood]

Spoke too soon. My S II is on 4.04 - ever since it keeps dropping the wireless - even though it shows its on - no networks are found. As soon as I turn it off and on again - it connects straight away.

 

[db]

To type a capital letter in iOS just press the shift key and slide over to the required letter without lifting your finger off the keyboard.

why on earth would you do this, i would have thought sliding is more effort than just tapping? i don't have a problem typing capital letters, personally - pressing shift then pressing the letter i want capitalised seems intuitive and works - but i agree with tek that the letters should reflect the case that you are about to type in..

And auto correct is pants on iOS and Android!

get swiftkey on any android devices you own - it really is amazing.. it learns how you type to different people, and its predictions are spot on.. when it worked properly for me, before my HTC sensation threw a fit, i could rinse off a text to my missus in seconds because it knew the way i spoke to her and would predict about 60% of the words (so if i typed "see", for example, it would suggest "you", then "later", then "love", then "you", etc. - so i could literally send her about 20 words without actually typing any of them)! it's hard to describe in words, you have to see it in action to realise how effective it is..

as i say, it really is so impressive it's the one thing preventing me from jumping to iphone atm!

not really happy with Android, seemingly people forgive its foibles because it isn’t iOS, but for me its a bit crap. My next phone is due in December and I will be returning to an iPhone.

indeed - ironically, the sort of people who vehemently oppose apple tend to do so with just as much (if not more) vigour as the apple zealots that they deride! i have always been a proponent of android, having owned a Hero, Desire, and now Sensation, but despite my desire[sup]*[/sup] to stick with it, i have come to accept that it's just too unstable and fragmented an OS to rely on.. and that's not just my opinion, it's a sentiment echoed by many developers (there's a reason there are so many more apps for iOS than for android)..

as much as i'd like to stick with an android phone, one has to accept that The Proles love apple for whatever reason, which translates into sales, which translates into a large userbase, which means more apps, better support, wider compatibility, etc.. whether anti-apple people like it or not, you can't deny that apple drives technology shift - just look at the way they are forcing Flash off the internet.. everyone was up in arms when they refused to support it, but did everyone defect to android? no - the iphone shifted more units than ever, and anyone with any sense moved to HTML5 for content delivery..

it's a shame, because the HTX One X looks really rather tasty..


[sup]* pun not intended[/sup]

 

[hop]

it's a sentiment echoed by many developers (there's a reason there are so many more apps for iOS than for android)..

There is also the fact that on iOS you program in C/Objective C/C++ mixing freely between the three different languages.
If you stick to using C and C++ for everything apart from the UI than you can create an application which is trivial to port to other platforms.
Objective C and Cocoa are also very nice frameworks and you are can be really productive in them. I created a socket based client server system in Objective c and Cocoa with DNS discovery (mDNS) and uPNP (firewall port mapping) in a fraction of the time it would have taken in C# with the .NET framework.

It took a long time for Android to even offer the Native Development Kit (NDK) and from a progammers perspective writing the code in C/C++ makes it the most portable. Since you write you back end logic once and compile for each platform, then you just have to write the front using the vendor APIs for the particular handset.

 

[My Name is URL]

Before I start, not trying to convince you Android is better than Apple, as I already stated above I think iPhone is the way forward for you, but picking up a few points you mentioned:

it's a sentiment echoed by many developers (there's a reason there are so many more apps for iOS than for android)..]

Slightly unfair and untrue comment in my opinion... Apple had a lot more apps because they had a whole year head start on Google... Also notice I said HAD because in February this year Android was up to 450,000 and Apple on just over 500,000.... I suspect by now that Google Play has surpassed the Apple App Store

This is slightly less up to date, but look at the huge growth of apps in Google Play:

as much as i'd like to stick with an android phone, one has to accept that The Proles love apple for whatever reason, which translates into sales, which translates into a large userbase, which means more apps, better support, wider compatibility, etc.. whether anti-apple people like it or not

Who are The Proles?!?!?

Anyway, once again the stats show that from Q1 2011 to 2012, Android grew its userbase 145% compared to Apple 88.7% meaning their market shares are now 59% and 35% respectively (Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/24/idc-q1-2012-world-smartphone-share/)

you can't deny that apple drives technology shift - just look at the way they are forcing Flash off the internet.. everyone was up in arms when they refused to support it, but did everyone defect to android? no - the iphone shifted more units than ever, and anyone with any sense moved to HTML5 for content delivery.

Granted Apple does drive tech shift, without them we might still be all using Symbian based Nokias etc... however their speciality is not innovation IMHO, they didn't invent the touch screen, the app store, the form factor of the iPhone, video calling and much more... all they do is bring things together in a nice form factor and make it simple to use

I wouldn't say they have forced Flash off the internet though, advances in technology (i.e. better ways of doing things, i.e. HTML5) forced Flash off the internet. Flash was horrible and was too labour intensive on a phone so you could do one of two things, embrace it and make the best of it (Android) or ignore it and hope something better came along (Apple). Both are valid ways of working, but Apple pissed so many people off in the meantime by choosing to ignore it that they contributed to the success of Android.

None of the above however detracts from the fact that Android IS too fragmented and too many phone manufacturers screw up good software with shoddy implementations and customisations, hence the popularity of custom roms... Thats not the way it should be though and I can see Google doing something about it... as previously stated, they are a year behind Apple but closing fast, and even Apple had to learn and evolve (cut and paste anyone?)...

 

[Jonah]

why on earth would you do this, i would have thought sliding is more effort than just tapping? i don't have a problem typing capital letters, personally - pressing shift then pressing the letter i want capitalised seems intuitive and works - but i agree with tek that the letters should reflect the case that you are about to type in..

Try it, it's easy but in the end it's about how you want to use your phone.

I cannot see the big deal about upper or lower case. As I said before, you press on a capital letter on a normal keyboard so why do you need to see a lower case letter to type a lower case letter. A normal keyboard always types a lower case letter unless you press the shift key or caps lock is engaged. It's the same on iOS.

get swiftkey on any android devices you own - it really is amazing.. it learns how you type to different people, and its predictions are spot on.. when it worked properly for me, before my HTC sensation threw a fit, i could rinse off a text to my missus in seconds because it knew the way i spoke to her and would predict about 60% of the words (so if i typed "see", for example, it would suggest "you", then "later", then "love", then "you", etc. - so i could literally send her about 20 words without actually typing any of them)! it's hard to describe in words, you have to see it in action to realise how effective it is..

I don't own any Android devices.... I have used Android devices though and my wife has a HTC Desire S. She thinks the autocorrect is pants and I agree! It is the same on iOS as well.

And if my wife installed swiftkey I think her most used phrases to me probably wouldn't be printable!!

 

[hop]

Slightly unfair and untrue comment in my opinion... Apple had a lot more apps because they had a whole year head start on Google...

I don't recall there being any headstart if anything Android actually had a head start in that they released their SDK to developers first. I have a copy of the android development platfrom on my laptop from when google first annouced android, I can't recall the date but it was some point in 2007.
Apple did not release the SDK for the iPhone until March 2008.

However you could not program android using Native C/C++ code until 2009 which was a bad mistake since most mobile and game developers used these languages.

Sure there might have been a few existing mobile apps using a bit of J2ME but they were few and far between.

I'm not detracting from java and the dalvik implementation used by android merely stating that it was easier at least initially for develops to port their applications to run on the iPhone since it was a case of relinking / cross compiling rather than having to rewrite everything in java. This advantage disappeared at android 1.5 when the NDK was finally released.

If anything now android might have an advantage since there are lots of enterprise developers who write java / c# / python and would find it easier to create an android application than having to learn the nuances of Objective-C.

 

[tek-monkey]

If apple didn't have a head start did apple make every app in the store? Whoever's app store came first got the head start surely? Not that it matters, all that's relevant is how many apps are useful to you.

 

[hop]

If apple didn't have a head start did apple make every app in the store? Whoever's app store came first got the head start surely? Not that it matters, all that's relevant is how many apps are useful to you.

Measures such as number of applications are useless and also misleading. There are many companies with their own internal app stores which contain in house developed applications which will never see the light of day outside their corporate sandboxes.

I know of numerous organisations who have ditched RIM and the blackberry in favour of the apple ecosystem, two examples being Standard Chartered and Credit Suisse.

Some of this is down to purchasing power and some simply due to senior executives using apple kit at home and telling IT they want it at work.

Who really cares so long as the equipment does what you want. Any debate on technology is full of ignorant people who are frequently wrong. The amount of people who rave on about Linux and claim it is unix is truly astonishing, many have never used AIX, Solaris or BSD and don't even realise the Linux is not unix but unix like.
The same is true with android and iOS debates.

 

[db]

Who are The Proles?!?!?

the great unwashed - the public at large.. just me being facetious, as per usual, basically lol

proletariat

 

[My Name is URL]

I don't recall there being any headstart if anything Android actually had a head start

The undisputable source that is Wikipedia states:

The App Store opened on July 10, 2008

and

Google announced the Android Market on 28 August 2008, and made it available to users on 22 October 2008

However:

The first iPhone was...... released on June 29, 2007.

and

The HTC Dream...... was the first phone on the market to use the Android mobile device platform....... was released in the U.S. on 22 October 2008; in the UK on 30 October 2008;

So the respective "app" repositries were opened 3 months apart but iPhones had been selling for 16 months before Android handsets had, hence built up a huge headstart, hence if you are developing for the mass market, Apple WAS the way to go...

 

[tek-monkey]

I just installed SwiftKey on my s3, and it predicted every word in my first text. I typed fin, and it correctly came up with 'finished work, gone the pub!' it even got my punctuation correct, I'm worried I possibly say that more than I realised!

 

[db]

I just installed SwiftKey on my s3, and it predicted every word in my first text. I typed fin, and it correctly came up with 'finished work, gone the pub!' it even got my punctuation correct, I'm worried I possibly say that more than I realised!

it's brilliant, innit.. i love the way it gives occasional insights into your life/vices - i was replying to my mum the other day and started to type "i am definitely up for getting...", to which it promptly suggested "massively" and "shitfaced" lol..