What makes Android better than iOS?
The biggest advantage Android has over iOS and the reason why people choose the platform can be boiled down to one word ‘FREEDOM’.
And that sense of having limitless options and freedom of choice is clear from the very beginning.
When shopping for an Android device, customers have literally thousands of products to choose from.
That allows each person to decide for themselves which hardware features are the most important.
Whether you want an SD Card slot for expandable storage, a headphone jack to charge and listen to music at the same time, a fingerprint reader, no display notch, a larger battery, almost every Android customer can find the device with just the right combination of hardware features that best suit their own needs.
Compare that to shopping for an iOS device where you have just four choices of smartphones leaving customers to live with the dramatic choices Apple tends to make with their hardware by removing the headphone jack before people wanted to use the proprietary connector or being the last company to include more storage space on their base model smartphone.
But the freedom Android users enjoy goes much further than hardware. In fact, the Android operating system itself is open-source; that means developers have the freedom to do things like using third-party tools for app development which allows for unique features and functionality that isn’t allowed on closed source platforms like iOS.
Now when it comes to the operating system, Android users love its customizability and one of the most common things to customise is the launcher or what iOS users call the Homescreen.
Whether you want a launcher with a focus on widgets or quick launcher with a focus on gesture controls or a more productive launcher with an emphasis on enterprise integration, there’s a suitable custom launcher out there for you.
But there’s, even more, you can change about Android like the appearance of your icons, keyboard, the lock screen or even setting default apps and that’s a level of customisation most iOS users could never imagine.
It was a big deal when iOS began allowing custom wallpapers in 2010, something users have been waiting on for 3 years and that’s a very common trend with Apple.
They’re typically very conservative when it comes to customisation or more advanced features since they don’t want to overwhelm or confuse users who may not be familiar with the technology.
For example, the iPhone didn’t have cut copy and paste until iOS 3 was introduced 2 years after the original iPhone which many Android users at the time find to be quite amusing since they have the features they want and that only continued throughout history of iOS.
And it’s the reason why jailbreaking iPhones became so popular. Android was receiving features like group notifications, settings, shortcuts, multitasking, quick replies, widgets and many more features that took Apple years to implement in iOS so users took matters into their own hands by jailbreaking their iPhones which removed Apple’s restrictions and allowed unauthorised software to be installed on the device.
In that way, iOS users could enjoy many of the advanced features Android already had.
Now, something that iOS and Android devices have in common is a growing size.
Over the years, Apple has taken many of the most popular tweaks from the jailbreak community and implemented them into iOS like the ability to install third-party keyboards or track battery health which is led to jailbreaking becoming much less popular than in the past.
But it is worth pointing out how long it’s taken Apple to bring these features to iOS. For example, they recently introduced iOS 15 which finally gave users the ability to set default apps, a capability Android has had for over a decade.
But it even gets more ridiculous than that because even though Apple is allowing third party default apps, they are limiting it to Mail and Browser instead of implementing it across the entire operating system to include other apps like Maps and Music.
That’s something Android users really dislike; they don’t like the feeling of being shackled to one company that decides what they can and can’t do with their own hardware and software.
In their opinion, they should have the power to decide what their own smartphone does rather than leaving those important decisions to a faceless corporation that doesn’t quite understand their unique needs.
That’s why Android users typically have a variety of devices from a variety of companies. Maybe they’ll have a Samsung smartphone, a DELL notebook and an Apple tablet because for them that setup is the most suitable for various circumstances.
Another benefit of Android been completely open is that users have total access to the operating system’s source code; this allows for something called rooting which is usually compared to jailbreaking on an iPhone but actually gives Android users much deeper access to the operating system.
Rooting can actually help overcome some of the shortcomings of Android like receiving updates much faster, removing manufacturer’s bulky software skins, deleting carrier bloatware and optimising the battery life of their device.
The last advantage of an Android device is the price. It’s much easier to find a low-cost Android smartphone than a low-cost iPhone; that’s the big reason why Apple introduced the $400 iPhone SE which Tim Cook at the time said he hopes will attract more Android users to iOS.
And it likely works to some degree, many Android users simply view iOS as too restricted and will still refuse to switch to the platform even if iPhone did become cheaper than Android phones.
In conclusion, both iOS and Android have their own strength and weaknesses and the decision regarding which one is best for you is your decision to make.
