I recently changed from Android to iOS, and I have a number of thoughts on what the different carriers do differently. Neither is inherently better than the other, and come with some massive tradeoffs. If one of these companies chose to learn from the other, there would be millions of people migrating from one platform to the other.
Android Advantages:
- USB-C is vastly superior to Lightning
- Has far more options in terms of phones, allowing them to control the lower spec market
- You can easily fix your phone and it won’t break itself.
Apple advantages:
- They support their operating system for a longer time than Google.
- Their processor is the best on the market.
Right now I wanted to have a phone which would last a long time without the OS breaking, so I switched back to Apple after using Android for 8 years. I switched to Android because Apple was being overly controlling with their app store, and were limiting consumer choice.
What we really need is a phone which has the following:
- Hardware support with their operating system akin to how Linux works. It needs to be mostly hardware agnostic, and never stop providing updates just because your device is old. It should always offer updates to the operating system, and be light weight enough so that it won’t break (though the same cannot be said about apps which are built on top of the operating system).
- Use standard open USB connectors
- Someone should be able to take apart their phone, fix a piece of it, put it back together, and assuming they didn’t make a mistake in reassembly, the phone should still work.
- High spec processor
That’s what I want. Any company which does this will gain a lot of users.