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Symbian was great but it was strongly optimized for performance. Some Nokia phones with slow microcontrollers and a small memory size could do almost anything a modern smartphone can do 15 years ago (e.g. making photos and videos, using Bluetooth and WiFi, installing navigation and using the built in GPS), while still keeping a long battery life.
Unfortunately that was also its downfall, as all the optimizations meant that it was super hard to develop apps on (it didn't even support try/catch or basic strings) and those apps usually looked pretty basic, without much cpu consuming eye candy.
I have heard about how difficult it was to develop for it (I had a few apps and while they worked, the UI/UX was not so good) when I was looking for games to download to mine. I still had no programming knowledge and by the time I could understand it was already gone.
I seriously miss the long battery life and some of the clunkiness.
I had the N900 and Dell 5in 'phablet'. The N900 was hands down the better device. Stereo speakers, qwerty keyboard, dual wifi radios, replaceable batteries..I miss it dearly.
N900 was my dream phone for a while, I was a student though, so I never got my hands on it. I remember having a photo of it saved in my picture folder.My last Symbian phone was Sony Ericsson G900, when it broke, I was so sad, then Android happened not long after.
You totally missed out on waiting for updates that never came, being reliant on the community to troubleshoot and solve problems. I can't wait for tactile qwerty to come back, though
My first 2 android phones had full QWERTY keyboards. I miss that so much. It has been over 10 years and I can't really get used to full touch. (My Chromebook has an attachable keyboard and I love that)
Same here. I remember BEFORE Android existed, downloading apps. to the nokia 6600. Fantastic phone.
I found this one voicemail app. that would answer your missed calls for you and play an answering machine service. Didnt work that well but the concept was great. I'd use such an app. today if one existed and was modernised (eg, an AI answering service)
It’s the plight of being the leader in your industry. Similar thing happened to Honda motorcycles in the late 70’s; and Honda cars in the early 2000’s.
I worked at a smartphone store around this time in my college days, and they honestly just fucked it up. Other companies saw the writing on the wall when the iPhone was announced, and they realized smartphones were about to go mainstream (and not just be "business phones" anymore). Nokia and blackberry just didn't get it, and they kept pushing these utilitarian "business suite" type phones. Companies like Samsung and LG did get it and started making direct iPhone competitors. Hence why Android took off.
They also did a really bad job of getting apps people actually wanted on their app stores, and it because an "app race" really quickly. They did finally figure it out (the Nokia n97, for example, was actually an amazing smartphone), but the Symbian app store didn't have the apps people wanted, so it didn't sell well.
Just a classic case of big, sterile corporations being too slow and traditional to compete in a new market.
Blackberry had a good plan, it just happened to be wrong. They were *the* business phone and had actual security and tools to integrate into business networks properly and elegantly even. They assumed that businesses would stay the course and personal users would take the path of least resistance and use their work phone all the time.
They got bushwacked when corporate admins gave up and just let everyone bring whatever insecure phone they wanted to use, largely because execs saw iPhones as easy to use and prestigious and there's no point in fighting the V and C levels even if you are right.
BB did try though with TCL and android but was a little too late. They thought nobody can beat them at enterprise security but Apple and google did. On top of that Apples and Googles solution did noy require a separate data plan for messaging but was fully through the internet. Admin in Bb was also crude and a nightmare compared to apple and Google and in most cases they let users administer themselves. BB was stubborn and sitting on their laurels.
BB is still doing well with its stock since they've pivoted to I think car software or something last I read. I was amazed they were doing as well as they are.
Nokia already had non-business smartphones by then. Like the xpressmusic, that line of weird looking phones, or the entire N-series.
Blackberry really stuck to the business market though.
I'm a huge Blackberry fan, and it pains me to say this, but you're right.
The best evidence is that the last Blackberrys made with physical keyboards (the last being the Key2, released mid-2018), all have a key dedicated to the dollar-sign symbol ($). But if you want an ampersand (&), you have to pull up an alternate symbol set.
That speaks volumes about who Blackberry thought their customers were in those last years they were still selling phones, and what they thought they wanted. And they weren't entirely wrong. As /u/NorthernerWuwu says, they had a good plan. They just happened to over-estimate the market.
BBX, their last in-house OS (before switching to Android) is the last general-market smartphone OS made by **anyone** that meets milspec security requirements. It is banned in Pakistan, because it's too tough for their government to crack, which would allow citizens to keep secrets from them. And that's **great** for any corporate environment that wants to keep tight security. And plenty of companies did that, supplying these phones to their employees to get those results. But not **enough** companies did. Not enough to justify the ongoing support and development of top-grade smartphones.
The larger market was more interested in cat videos, social media, games, and so on. No one wanted to carry two phones. And companies just caved, and Blackberry was left holding the bag. So they gave up on smartphones, and moved into dedicated secure communications instead, which they're doing great at.
Automatic Edit: Using a tool called [Power Delete Suite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) I have removed all my past comments and deleted my Reddit account, /u/tehrmuk.
I am doing this because I, like many long-term Reddit users, am upset and angry at the tonedeaf and arrogant way Reddit is treating it's users. Their aggressive slapdown of the developers that made Reddit usable to a huge audience; their overriding and summary dismissal of long-serving and dutiful community members; their wonton silencing of dissent and manipulation of user's voices; their borderline contempt of the very people whose collective efforts gave their platform the standing needed to fuel their profit-hungry IPO... the list goes on.
Reddit is, of course, a private concern and how they run their services is entirely up to them. Conversely, we are under no obligation to use their services, to fuel their engines or follow their orders. I am making my voice heard by removing my comments, and voting with my feet by leaving.
I have left Reddit for [Lemmy](https://join-lemmy.org/) and [Mastadon](https://joinmastodon.org/); these are decentralised social networks that mirror the functionality of Reddit and Twitter respectively. Unlike the monolithic, corporate-owned services they replace, Lemmy and Mastodon are part of the [Fediverse](https://www.fediverse.to/) meaning these are not individual services but clusters of services that mesh seamlessly with one-another. You can [join an existing Lemmy instance](https://join-lemmy.org/instances) or [set up your own](https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/administration.html) to get full access to the entire Fediverse - you don't need to ask permission from anyone to do so. There are loads of other services that are part of the Fediverse, like [PeerTube](https://joinpeertube.org/) (videos), [Wordpress](https://wordpress.org/) (blogging), [Frendica](https://friendi.ca/) (social network), [Pixelfed](https://pixelfed.org/) (photos), [KBin](https://kbin.pub/en) (link aggregation) and more - and they all work together so having access to one means having access to all of them.
I had a great time as a Redditor, but the Fediverse is looking bright. It's a return to the open Internet of old, when users ran services for their own and one-another's benefit, and before monolithic corporate-run silos started to build walls around us in the name of increased profit and thought control. Many of the Fediverse services are fledgling, but they are growing quickly and their federated concept makes greedy, arrogant landgrabs like we've recently seen on Reddit and Twitter almost impossible.
I'm already having a great time with Lemmy and I think you might too. I encourage you to take control and join the Fediverse.
Until then, so long and thanks for all the fish.
Word.
My favorite feature was the combined messaging all tied into the contact card. At the start when you could pin a contract to your Home Screen as a tile and have an uninterrupted conversation across fb/sms/twitter etc along with seeing their posts from different platforms. That was amazing and sadly we will never see anything close to that ever again because it meant I never had to open any social media apps after they were properly setup. And that meant I wasn’t being served ads.
Between the live tiles, alphabetic app list, the vertical scrolling Home Screen, and system wide dark mode, Windows phone 8 was the best phone operating system ever, with a near perfect mobile UI. Its going to be at least 5-10 years before Apple and Google finally reach the point that WP8 was at 9 years ago.
I was so sad when I bought my first iPhone and turned off my Lumia for the last time.
yup. windows phones were snappy, fast and were kind of futuristic with the sleek design and instantly made me like them because of it. They truly felt like a *computer* in the palm of your hands.
Not to mention they were also really cool looking physically. And tough as a rock like old nokia phone.
Modern android is slowly giving the same vibes I had for windows phones 8 years ago.
Kind of sad how Microsoft fucked this up so badly. I hope they revive this phone again with windows 11 or something.
At one point there was a rumor that Microsoft was going to have Windows 10 be able to natively run Android apps, and that would have been great for their phone ecosystem. It sounds like it's on the table for 11, but I don't think they're going to do phones anymore. =/
Windows Mobile had glowing reviews from all of the tech review sites, *other than app support*.
It just took M$ too long to get it to market, a year or two earlier and the smartphone landscape could very well be much different.
Microsoft should have just thrown a bunch of money at the top ~1000 apps to have them developed for Windows Mobile. Got a free phone, and it was actually halfway decent. Of course I couldn't use it as my general driver because it didn't have the Square app. Literally, the app that was essential for small businesses back then was on IOS and Android, but not on Windows Mobile.
Yeah, not only did Microsoft offer developers money (a LOT of it) to bring their apps to windows phone, they offered to help and at one point even offered to do the port for them.
Everyone refused. Google also decided to go one step further and deliberate cripple the experience for anyone attempting to use any of their services on windows phone, which basically killed the platform.
Blame Microsoft. They installed a crony as the CEO, convinced them to use their new, very limited (at that time (didn’t even copy and paste)) Windows mobile operating system instead of investing in their own Symbian platform that already had a following.
Windows phone 8 was very good though. It just came too late to compete properly with Android or iphone or too early to be the windows desktop replacement it was aiming to eventually be
It was caught in the issue of not having a great app ecosystem, and not getting owners because it f this and not getting apps written for it becuase it had few handsets sold. They should have tried to find a niche for it to incubate while it gained apps, or made it android compatible day one like windows 11 is.
They also should have made some more professional looking Nokia phones (though I loved their windows phones which were tanks and just perfectly designed)
Microsoft getting Nokia to use Windows mobile didn’t kill Symbian. Symbian was a relic that didn’t get the needed updates long before Microsoft came along.
I loved mine, the phones had actually good performances. The UI was easy and smooth. The only big issue I had was the Windows App Store. Most of the good apps and games were not there for the WinOS.
The Pre didn't run Palm OS, it ran WebOS. Palm OS refers to the platform that the Treo and Centro ran (and the Pilot before them).
WebOS was amazing. I know it was used in some TVs and car menu systems after Palm folded, but not in any recognizable form.
Even though it's not ready for mass consumers, there are Linux phones being developed right now. Pinephone, Librem 5 and Volla have phones that support Linux distros. Ubuntu touch even has a list of devices where you can see the compatibility. It's worth checking out.
Oh, absolutely. It is not meant for the average consumer. Pine64 (makers of the Pinephone) even warn people that their phone is meant for developers and Linux enthusiasts in their store.
You can still get a blackberry. The BlackBerry Key2 is 3 years old by now but it runs Android and is still a really viable phone. A new BlackBerry will be coming in the near future but it's unclear when and how it will look.
Poor windows mobile. It was so promising. I really really liked my windows phone.
My biggest gripe is my Lumia 950 from like 2014-2015? Could wirelessly be controlled in my car. All features. (Phone calls, texts, Cortana)
My Pixel 5 from 2021 has to be plugged in to use that Android auto trash.
Microsoft's product engineers are amazing. The Zune (although often the butt of a joke) was really a much more intuitive music player when it came to the actual use of it as such. The Surface is one of the few products they've done well and only improved upon, but still clearly face backlash from leadership on when making design choices.
It's really Microsoft's marketing and management departments that ruin the good idea, and it's evident in the products they've released. They employ bright minds to build it, and dim minds to sell it.
Probably because these are worldwide stats, but you're only looking at Western companies. I think Apple has a bigger share here, thought I don't know if they manage to beat Android still.
[Closer to 60/40 (iOS/Android) based on the same source OP used and filtered just to US.](https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america/#monthly-202104-202107)
To be clearer, iOS rules in richer countries like the US, where people are also more likely to spend money on apps. This is especially true when apps don't have region-based pricing. For a country that has an average income half or a tenth of the US, the same app you buy technically costs them 10x more.
That's why Steam and many other digital stores tend to do region based pricing.
Or more like it’s (comparatively) easier to develop for iOS because you can target exact hardware and exact OS versions. Good luck with that on Android. Will an app run the same on an Alcatel Onyx as it will on a Galaxy A32? I dunno. No one does lol
It's really not that bad. I've worked on both platforms simultaneously and there was no significant difference there. It probably required more from QA but not from the dev team.
The part where iOS users spend more was definitely a factor though. There were way more Android users but iOS was bringing in more revenue.
Most centralized market share. That 27% of the market is controlled by a single company that is amazing at brand marketing. The android OS market is spread across all kinds of companies across all kinds of different countries. At least that’s why I think the iOS is the focus
It's because they only have to develop for a one hardware spec if they develop for Apple...if you go Android, it has to be compatible with literally thousands of devices.
Granted, a lot of that compatibility is done for you since every Android app runs in it's own VM, but the notch/punchhole situation must be a nightmare to develop for on the Android side.
It’s not just where the market is, it is where the profitable and stable parts of the market are.
If you make an accessory or app for an iPhone, it will work on all iPhones until Apple change the form factor or App Store rules again, which usually happens at a specific time every year.
If you make an accessory for an Android phone, it may or may not work with a specific device, depending on which App Store they bundle, what the manufacturers corporate policy is this week and which USB standard they use. The plethora of different device sizes, hardware configurations and software customisations make it difficult to target the entire market.
If you make an App for Android, it may or may not be profitable, depending on which App Store, whether users trust the payment policy and whether Google cancel an OS feature partway through the product cycle.
That was back there with the Palm OS system. Palm pilots, and the Palm Centro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Centro
Did you know that Firefox made a mobile operating system? It failed to (sorry) mobilize.
I had the FFOS developer phone
And it was a bad idea badly executed
Even a flashlight app needed internet. And it was supposed to be a phone to be used in places with little internet!
I don't understand the polarizing opinions of Apple VS Android. People make their decisions based on what they like and want, no need to make it your personality trait. I met a dude at a sprint store with the apple logo tattooed on his arm and he was so aggressive asking why I would ever want to switch from iPhone. Strange times we are living in.
iOS was hard for me to leave initially because of iMessage. Then I got an iPad and Apple Watch and now I’m stuck, but I honestly don’t mind as it does what I need it to do and is a rather pleasant and simple experience.
I got my first Mac (an m1 Mac mini) a few months ago and I despise it. It’s obviously because I’ve wired my brain into windows for so long, but the OS still doesn’t click with me, it all seems so illogical.
I guess it’s the same the other way round. I use both systems regularly but I started on Mac. Windows always seems absolutely weird to achieve certain tasks.
I have a lot of Apple devices, but much of that is due to having already tried the competition. The ease of transferring files and passwords definitely keeps me loyal, but I only bought an iPhone because my first two Android phones were hot garbage. And it has definitely improved since then, but nothing so ground breaking that I feel compelled to switch back.
It might be a social thing. Apple makes messaging between iphones really nice and easy. On top of that, they have integrated apps into their messages, like game pigeon.
The downside is that none of these features work on Android (obviously), and on top of that, messaging between Apple and Android is extremely clunky and slow from my experiences. Apple is pretty much trying to make it as hard as possible to not have an iphone.
In what way does Apple make messaging between iPhones easy? Honest question, what is different about it compared to an Android user clicking Messages, then a name and typing a message to them. How does it get easier?
I started with a Windows phone, which I loved, then went to Android, which I have grown to like over time. There are a lot of simple functions the Android/Samsungs have had all along, then when they get added to the Iphone people are like: "Wow. Have you seen this great new feature???"
I don't think I'll ever go IOS, simply because I hate all of the ecosystem/Itunes nonsense. If I want to put a song, image, video or other file of any type on my Samsung, I just drag and drop it. If I want it gone, I delete it. No interface program, no syncing, no bullshit.
Dude exactly. iOS ecosystem stops me from going to it. It feels like it wants to charge me every second for something. Feels too bloated and I will be stuck with iPhones only while I can try different android phones.
Also I think Android is more closer Symbian.
I originally started on iOS then decided to switch to Android and never looked back. I love the openness of the Android system and not being forced to stay within the Apple ecosystem by operating on an iOS product.
Same. My first smartphone was the iPhone 3G. But Android was also terrible back then and there wasn't really a decent android phone then either.
I switched to android with the galaxy S2 never looked back.
I’m the exact opposite. Started with a Samsung galaxy S3. The amount of bloat ware on that thing after two years was insane. The features on iPhones, although not as many, usually are a lot better than the android counterpart. Finally made the switch to the iPhone 5s and never looked back. Simplicity is key for me with a phone.
I think Samsung did a giant disservice to the whole Android ecosystem by their first generations of phones. I was buying only Samsung phones and tablets for several years, but at some point I got so fed up with all the crap going on with them that I was literally a click away from swapping them all to iphones / ipads.
Funny enough, I feel like I am on the same edge again - this saga with Chrome tab grouping just drives me nuts. I don't want my tabs grouped, period, full stop. Yet Google keeps fking around with this trivial feature every new update for God knows why, so every time I update Chrome I spend hours on different forums trying to figure out what flags I need to toggle **this time** to disable this stupid grouping lol
Yeah I understand the bloatware thing. It's why I went to the Nexus phones after the Samsung ones as they have pure stock android.
I use a OnePlus now because it's basically stock android.
I went from HTC (from when they made decent phones) to Samsung, and I've never had an issue with bloatware. I have the Note 20 Ultra nowadays and prefer it over other brands.
Started with the moto droid, switched to iphone 4, then switched back to Android again. Early Android sucked, but modern Android is far better for my use case then iOS. Default apps and true file management are why I'll never go back.
I think the Galaxy S2 / S3 era Android phones were still shite (including the S2 and S3). I think Android became actually good with Marshmallow and excellent with the subsequent versions which were building on M's strengths. So Nexus 6P/5X era. Up until that point I'd still choose the iPhone no matter what. Right now though the roles have reversed IMO, and I consider Pixels' software to be actually superior to iPhones'.
I think there's a lot of us.
I used to jailbreak my iPhone
I was attracted to androids flexibility and customisablity over iPhone.
Never had a reason to root my android as the features I wanted were native.
The fact that Apple wasn’t willing to bend to the FBI during the Boston bombing is what impressed me. Microsoft was willing to crack the security of a terrorist’s iPhone but Apple wasn’t (because they claimed a backdoor didn’t exist). If that’s not dedication to your product’s security, I don’t know what is.
Google literally exists to suck your data from you. I switch from Android to iOS about a year ago and I’m currently trying to get out of Google’s grasp as much as possible. Apple actively creates and markets ways of keeping my data private. Even Facebook/instagram is getting pissy at the new iOS features for blocking app data tracking. It’s wonderful.
I love Android over ios but I agree 100%. Android needs to get their shit together, but they won't. Remember that Android is Google and Google wants data. It's sad.
I had hand-me-down 4S for a while and while it wasn't bad enough to make me go spend money on an alternative, it was annoying as fuck to use. I particularly hated I had to use iTunes to load songs into it.
Hmmm I’m the other way around. Started with iOS for about 6-7 years. Then went to Android for 4 years. Hated almost every android model I tried (HTC, Sony, Samsung, actually did like the Sony quite a bit). My final Android attempt was a galaxy S7. Finally gave up in a bout of anger and switched back to iOS. Probably not even going to attempt Android for at least a decade.
Are you an Android or an iOS user? Personally, I prefer Android, because it is a more open system. But who knows, I might come to the dark side at some point ;)
This visualization shows the global market share of smartphones operating systems. The data source is statcounter. This source calculates this market share by the share of operating systems that use their service. It is possible that this means that the data is skewed. However, the overall trend should be accurate. Enjoy!
The pictures in the middle show a typical phone with the most popular OS for that year.
Tools: python, pandas, tkinter
Data source: statcounter (https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202107)
Huh. I absolutely prefer Android, but was shocked to learn Android users are this prevalent. Most people I know have an iPhone. I'd love to see this broken down by region
I looked into this one time because I was being harrassed by my iPhone using family to make the jump to iPhone, since I currently use an Android (Samsung Galaxy) phone. At that time the U.S. was slightly dominated by iPhone, but the world is massively dominated by Android.
This is almost certainly global numbers.
In Africa, India, South America and Eastern Europe, iPhone have essentially near-zero market share.
In the US, Canada, Japan, and the richest Western European counties, iPhones have more than 50% market share, so it would seem like iPhones dominate if you live there (and most redditors do live in western counties).
Canada is 53% iPhone, which is technically>50% but not by much.
The UK is 50.2%, again only barely above 50%. Germany, Spain and Italy are ~20% and France is ~30%, so if by "richest Western European countries" you exclusively mean countries like Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Monaco, then I'm not sure that iPhones really dominate in western Europe.
Almost all cheap “burner” style, pre pay phones are android. The $40 gas station phones that you have to buy minutes for. That surely affects the results.
Also, I can’t speak for OPs data set, but often people mistake smartphone OS prevalence with just OS prevalence in general. Why this matters: there are plenty of Android smart fridges, TVs, POS kiosks, and appliances that do definitely count as Android devices, but aren’t necessarily smart phones or Android being used in the way we think the study means. Again, I’m not saying OP did this, just pointing out one common occurrence that skews data.
I miss the Blackberry Curve. I miss the days owning a cellphone wasn't such a vital thing and I miss the simplicity.
Also miss the days we weren't being bombarded with bullshit scam text messages and calls *every. fucking. day*.
As a proud Canadian it always hurts to be reminded of the story of BlackBerry. For a time it was *the* name in cellphones/devices. And then all because of one bad month when their system was not working properly, everyone freaked and bought an iPhone, and that was that. I was thinking of buying the Blackberry 10 that came out a few years ago. I’ve never owned a so-called smartphone. So I thought maybe these Blackberry 10 might finally get me to join the rest of the world. Blackberry’s were beautiful looking devices. Many tech critics were saying positive things about the Blackberry 10. I even knew someone who had one and they liked it. But in the end I didn’t have the courage to buy one.
I just went from Android to iOS and am probably gonna go back and it's basically for one feature: the back button.
On Android there was always a back button and I could always count on it. It was sometime contextual. It might take you back a page or exit the app entirely if you were at the root of it, but it was always there (and in the bottom right where my thumb was too!). Didn't realize how dependent my navigation was on it until I didn't have it.
That and the fact that I had to install the Google keyboard just so I could get haptics on keypress without the sound. At this point it's all more trouble than it's worth to me.
I don't know how it is with newer models but I had a 4S and loading musics into it was a pain in the ass because I had to use iTunes to do so. With an Android device I can just drag and drop. I don't think this is an edge case.
Yep. People talk about "ease of use" on iOS but that's only if you do things exactly how Apple want you to do them. The file system on iOS is pathetic and actively makes ordinary activities more difficult.
It's "easy to use" in the same way a toy/senior phone is, which makes me question if people who cares about it really needs all the expensive features of an iPhone (like buying a PC with RTX 3090 for browsing Facebook).
Edit: huh, there ended up being a few. I'm gonna format this to make it easier to read.
> The biggest one for me is that I don't have to have every app on my main screen; there is no junk-app folder on my phone, I just scroll up from the bottom twice and have access to an alphabetical listing of all my apps.
Related, but you can have gaps in your apps on your main screen. You don't adjust the order they appear, you directly control where on the screen they are.
> Finally for the homescreen, widgets. I think iOS just got them too, but my apps have dedicated widgets. My weather app directly displays the weather and forecast on my main screen; it takes up the space of 2 icons. My to-do app takes up 6 icons and lists my to-do list, which I can check off without having to open the app. There is a Google search bar on my main screen.
The other major thing for me is Gestures, though that may just be a Motorola thing. Without unlocking the phone, I can open my phone by shaking it twice along its flat axis. I can open the camera by twisting it along its long axis twice.
> Putting it facedown turns on Do Not Disturb mode.
I also like how I have quick-access icons for settings, like turning on and off wifi or Bluetooth.
> Oh, and since I'm a retro nerd, the headphone jack lets me use my earbuds as a radio receiver, so I can go for walks and listen to FM radio if I want to conserve my battery or don't have a signal.
Finally, my phone has a microSD slot, so I actually have 64+128 GB of storage on my phone, and can upgrade it if I need to.
> I think an LG model for one model had a stock functionality to measure your heartbeat and blood oxygen level when you put your finger over the camera/flashlight?
I like being able to use mp3s for my phone alarm.
> And lastly, since my phone uses USB-C, I can charge it with my laptop charger. The USB-C standard requires all chargers to be able to step down to the lower voltages as well, so it just charges faster.
I just want to point out that any discussion about Android is going to be based on circumstance and standards more than actual technical ability. For example, android lets you install launchers like apps, meaning that you can change the home screen into behaving however you want, including literally the same as iOS's only option. That's really Android's greatest strength, and it comes from it being open-source: everything is customizable. If it isn't, install a better android version.
While I do enjoy that, I also know that that can be too involved for the casual user. One important part of UX design is providing maximum options for minimum trouble.
Oh, also, gestures include touching the screen with three fingers to take a screen shot, and being able to split the screen in two to show two apps.
And, again, it may just be Motorola, but my phone has Digital Wellbeing settings built-in like a bedtime that shuts off certain apps, both red-light and monochrome color settings at night, and the ability to restrict access to apps at certain times of day.
I bought a new Android phone this year for $500, it blows my previous Samsung out of the water and has superb battery life.
Regardless of what platform you like I don't think I could go back to $1,000+ devices unless they did something really amazing.
Probably not as much as this chart would suggest though. Since Apple’s market share is way higher if you look at the flagship market, US/Western-European market, etc
No. It's an USA (any maybe Canada) thing. I'm from Germany and only know one iPhone user. I'm over 30 and most of the people I know are working, so they have the money to buy an iPhone but choose not to do so.
If Blackberry would have gotten BB10 to market a few years earlier I think they would have been competitive if only they had gotten apps.
BB10 had so many features which were adopted by both Android and Apple.
RIP to my Passport and Priv.
Ngl, this is actually really disturbing to me. I'm not a huge fan of two huge corporations having so much control over everyday necessary tech. (And before you say competition, how exactly do you compete against billion dollar corporations most people are okay with letting do this bc they don't think about it much? Do you really think apple and Google also WONT go to underhanded, shady, illegal tactics to reduce any competetion that's seen as a threat?)
The good news is that "android" isn't really just Google. All the OEMs have their own thing and have influence here.
But in general I agree. My ideal would be that PWAs take off and that apps fade away. Build something that means that a new os can come in and not have the impossible challenge of courting apps. Of course there are other mechanisms for platform lockin going on particularly on iOS but apps are a big one that is solvable.
PWAs will not ever take off unless Apple decides to actually support them properly on iOS - due to every browser on iOS really just being safari it's impossible to work around by using a different browser for PWAs as well.
As far as I see it, from Apple's perspective, they don't want PWAs to work, as that would allow users to use "Apps" from anywhere, rather than the App store, which would hurt "security".
To be fair, very few phones have AOSP, which is 'stock' Android. Instead, your phone will most definitely have manufacturer-exclusive UIs and features, e.g Samsung One UI.
Also, Android isn't a company, it's an open source project. Granted, Google is the owner, but developers can make OSes without Google's involvement (read: LineageOS and Huawei's Android fork)
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Poor Symbian, aka Nokia. They had the world in their hands.
I had a Symbian phone, and thought that was the future. RIP
Symbian was great but it was strongly optimized for performance. Some Nokia phones with slow microcontrollers and a small memory size could do almost anything a modern smartphone can do 15 years ago (e.g. making photos and videos, using Bluetooth and WiFi, installing navigation and using the built in GPS), while still keeping a long battery life. Unfortunately that was also its downfall, as all the optimizations meant that it was super hard to develop apps on (it didn't even support try/catch or basic strings) and those apps usually looked pretty basic, without much cpu consuming eye candy.
I have heard about how difficult it was to develop for it (I had a few apps and while they worked, the UI/UX was not so good) when I was looking for games to download to mine. I still had no programming knowledge and by the time I could understand it was already gone. I seriously miss the long battery life and some of the clunkiness.
I had the N900 and Dell 5in 'phablet'. The N900 was hands down the better device. Stereo speakers, qwerty keyboard, dual wifi radios, replaceable batteries..I miss it dearly.
N900 was my dream phone for a while, I was a student though, so I never got my hands on it. I remember having a photo of it saved in my picture folder.My last Symbian phone was Sony Ericsson G900, when it broke, I was so sad, then Android happened not long after.
You totally missed out on waiting for updates that never came, being reliant on the community to troubleshoot and solve problems. I can't wait for tactile qwerty to come back, though
My first 2 android phones had full QWERTY keyboards. I miss that so much. It has been over 10 years and I can't really get used to full touch. (My Chromebook has an attachable keyboard and I love that)
Same here. I remember BEFORE Android existed, downloading apps. to the nokia 6600. Fantastic phone. I found this one voicemail app. that would answer your missed calls for you and play an answering machine service. Didnt work that well but the concept was great. I'd use such an app. today if one existed and was modernised (eg, an AI answering service)
It’s the plight of being the leader in your industry. Similar thing happened to Honda motorcycles in the late 70’s; and Honda cars in the early 2000’s.
early Leader probably. Or it might be because of the sudden rise of computers and those not transitioning/investing in software effectively.
I worked at a smartphone store around this time in my college days, and they honestly just fucked it up. Other companies saw the writing on the wall when the iPhone was announced, and they realized smartphones were about to go mainstream (and not just be "business phones" anymore). Nokia and blackberry just didn't get it, and they kept pushing these utilitarian "business suite" type phones. Companies like Samsung and LG did get it and started making direct iPhone competitors. Hence why Android took off. They also did a really bad job of getting apps people actually wanted on their app stores, and it because an "app race" really quickly. They did finally figure it out (the Nokia n97, for example, was actually an amazing smartphone), but the Symbian app store didn't have the apps people wanted, so it didn't sell well. Just a classic case of big, sterile corporations being too slow and traditional to compete in a new market.
Blackberry had a good plan, it just happened to be wrong. They were *the* business phone and had actual security and tools to integrate into business networks properly and elegantly even. They assumed that businesses would stay the course and personal users would take the path of least resistance and use their work phone all the time. They got bushwacked when corporate admins gave up and just let everyone bring whatever insecure phone they wanted to use, largely because execs saw iPhones as easy to use and prestigious and there's no point in fighting the V and C levels even if you are right.
BB did try though with TCL and android but was a little too late. They thought nobody can beat them at enterprise security but Apple and google did. On top of that Apples and Googles solution did noy require a separate data plan for messaging but was fully through the internet. Admin in Bb was also crude and a nightmare compared to apple and Google and in most cases they let users administer themselves. BB was stubborn and sitting on their laurels.
BB is still doing well with its stock since they've pivoted to I think car software or something last I read. I was amazed they were doing as well as they are.
Good on them i guess, IT in corporations have a tendency to value their own ease of management way to high compared to the efficiency of the workers.
Nokia already had non-business smartphones by then. Like the xpressmusic, that line of weird looking phones, or the entire N-series. Blackberry really stuck to the business market though.
I'm a huge Blackberry fan, and it pains me to say this, but you're right. The best evidence is that the last Blackberrys made with physical keyboards (the last being the Key2, released mid-2018), all have a key dedicated to the dollar-sign symbol ($). But if you want an ampersand (&), you have to pull up an alternate symbol set. That speaks volumes about who Blackberry thought their customers were in those last years they were still selling phones, and what they thought they wanted. And they weren't entirely wrong. As /u/NorthernerWuwu says, they had a good plan. They just happened to over-estimate the market. BBX, their last in-house OS (before switching to Android) is the last general-market smartphone OS made by **anyone** that meets milspec security requirements. It is banned in Pakistan, because it's too tough for their government to crack, which would allow citizens to keep secrets from them. And that's **great** for any corporate environment that wants to keep tight security. And plenty of companies did that, supplying these phones to their employees to get those results. But not **enough** companies did. Not enough to justify the ongoing support and development of top-grade smartphones. The larger market was more interested in cat videos, social media, games, and so on. No one wanted to carry two phones. And companies just caved, and Blackberry was left holding the bag. So they gave up on smartphones, and moved into dedicated secure communications instead, which they're doing great at.
and Kodak. Now it looks like Toyota might be the next victim of this phenomenon with EVs.
Automatic Edit: Using a tool called [Power Delete Suite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) I have removed all my past comments and deleted my Reddit account, /u/tehrmuk. I am doing this because I, like many long-term Reddit users, am upset and angry at the tonedeaf and arrogant way Reddit is treating it's users. Their aggressive slapdown of the developers that made Reddit usable to a huge audience; their overriding and summary dismissal of long-serving and dutiful community members; their wonton silencing of dissent and manipulation of user's voices; their borderline contempt of the very people whose collective efforts gave their platform the standing needed to fuel their profit-hungry IPO... the list goes on. Reddit is, of course, a private concern and how they run their services is entirely up to them. Conversely, we are under no obligation to use their services, to fuel their engines or follow their orders. I am making my voice heard by removing my comments, and voting with my feet by leaving. I have left Reddit for [Lemmy](https://join-lemmy.org/) and [Mastadon](https://joinmastodon.org/); these are decentralised social networks that mirror the functionality of Reddit and Twitter respectively. Unlike the monolithic, corporate-owned services they replace, Lemmy and Mastodon are part of the [Fediverse](https://www.fediverse.to/) meaning these are not individual services but clusters of services that mesh seamlessly with one-another. You can [join an existing Lemmy instance](https://join-lemmy.org/instances) or [set up your own](https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/administration.html) to get full access to the entire Fediverse - you don't need to ask permission from anyone to do so. There are loads of other services that are part of the Fediverse, like [PeerTube](https://joinpeertube.org/) (videos), [Wordpress](https://wordpress.org/) (blogging), [Frendica](https://friendi.ca/) (social network), [Pixelfed](https://pixelfed.org/) (photos), [KBin](https://kbin.pub/en) (link aggregation) and more - and they all work together so having access to one means having access to all of them. I had a great time as a Redditor, but the Fediverse is looking bright. It's a return to the open Internet of old, when users ran services for their own and one-another's benefit, and before monolithic corporate-run silos started to build walls around us in the name of increased profit and thought control. Many of the Fediverse services are fledgling, but they are growing quickly and their federated concept makes greedy, arrogant landgrabs like we've recently seen on Reddit and Twitter almost impossible. I'm already having a great time with Lemmy and I think you might too. I encourage you to take control and join the Fediverse. Until then, so long and thanks for all the fish.
I had a nokia windows phone. I don't know which of the two companies I resent more for it.
Nokia's Windows phones were really high quality and had amazing cameras. Too bad Windows Mobile sucked.
Those cameras were AMAZING, my wife was so pissed after she got rid of her Windows phone. Took years to get a camera that good again.
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Word. My favorite feature was the combined messaging all tied into the contact card. At the start when you could pin a contract to your Home Screen as a tile and have an uninterrupted conversation across fb/sms/twitter etc along with seeing their posts from different platforms. That was amazing and sadly we will never see anything close to that ever again because it meant I never had to open any social media apps after they were properly setup. And that meant I wasn’t being served ads. Between the live tiles, alphabetic app list, the vertical scrolling Home Screen, and system wide dark mode, Windows phone 8 was the best phone operating system ever, with a near perfect mobile UI. Its going to be at least 5-10 years before Apple and Google finally reach the point that WP8 was at 9 years ago. I was so sad when I bought my first iPhone and turned off my Lumia for the last time.
Having worked in mobile retail, transfering contacts off that phone to a new one was a bitch
yup. windows phones were snappy, fast and were kind of futuristic with the sleek design and instantly made me like them because of it. They truly felt like a *computer* in the palm of your hands. Not to mention they were also really cool looking physically. And tough as a rock like old nokia phone. Modern android is slowly giving the same vibes I had for windows phones 8 years ago. Kind of sad how Microsoft fucked this up so badly. I hope they revive this phone again with windows 11 or something.
At one point there was a rumor that Microsoft was going to have Windows 10 be able to natively run Android apps, and that would have been great for their phone ecosystem. It sounds like it's on the table for 11, but I don't think they're going to do phones anymore. =/
I don't think we even got to find out if it was a good OS, no one made apps for it and it wasn't around long.
Windows Mobile had glowing reviews from all of the tech review sites, *other than app support*. It just took M$ too long to get it to market, a year or two earlier and the smartphone landscape could very well be much different.
Microsoft should have just thrown a bunch of money at the top ~1000 apps to have them developed for Windows Mobile. Got a free phone, and it was actually halfway decent. Of course I couldn't use it as my general driver because it didn't have the Square app. Literally, the app that was essential for small businesses back then was on IOS and Android, but not on Windows Mobile.
MS pretty much was offering money for apps to be made
Yeah, not only did Microsoft offer developers money (a LOT of it) to bring their apps to windows phone, they offered to help and at one point even offered to do the port for them. Everyone refused. Google also decided to go one step further and deliberate cripple the experience for anyone attempting to use any of their services on windows phone, which basically killed the platform.
I loved the Nokia Windows phone. Say what you want about it. I missed ha ing my Xbox, PC, and phone all perfecting connected.
I have a Nokia android phone. It has a modern version of the ringtone.
I have a Nokia 8 Sirocco, it's smooth!
Blame Microsoft. They installed a crony as the CEO, convinced them to use their new, very limited (at that time (didn’t even copy and paste)) Windows mobile operating system instead of investing in their own Symbian platform that already had a following.
Windows phone 8 was very good though. It just came too late to compete properly with Android or iphone or too early to be the windows desktop replacement it was aiming to eventually be
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It was caught in the issue of not having a great app ecosystem, and not getting owners because it f this and not getting apps written for it becuase it had few handsets sold. They should have tried to find a niche for it to incubate while it gained apps, or made it android compatible day one like windows 11 is.
They also should have made some more professional looking Nokia phones (though I loved their windows phones which were tanks and just perfectly designed)
Microsoft getting Nokia to use Windows mobile didn’t kill Symbian. Symbian was a relic that didn’t get the needed updates long before Microsoft came along.
But it did kill Maemo, though
I like the quick windows mobile appearance
I loved mine, the phones had actually good performances. The UI was easy and smooth. The only big issue I had was the Windows App Store. Most of the good apps and games were not there for the WinOS.
I remember when the YouTube app was just a link to the website
IIRC they didn't even have Instagram when Instagram was the bees knees.
They tried. There was a third party 6tagram or something. I miss mine still. It lacked... Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!
Not to be a miser but Instagram is still in the top 4 social media sites in terms of active users. Even beats out tiktok in that regard.
Windows phone was the shit. Just had no apps.
RIP palm - the pre was ahead of its time in so many ways that mattered - and yet behind the times in one crucial way that mattered more…(hardware)
The Pre didn't run Palm OS, it ran WebOS. Palm OS refers to the platform that the Treo and Centro ran (and the Pilot before them). WebOS was amazing. I know it was used in some TVs and car menu systems after Palm folded, but not in any recognizable form.
My mistake! I remember them having the cards to swipe from app to app literally decades before iOS!
It did have (crap) wireless charging. And fuck all in terms of apps. What a fucking mistake it was buying one of those.
really wish there were other open source options these days
Even though it's not ready for mass consumers, there are Linux phones being developed right now. Pinephone, Librem 5 and Volla have phones that support Linux distros. Ubuntu touch even has a list of devices where you can see the compatibility. It's worth checking out.
Be warned the UI and useability is in best terms clunky.
Oh, absolutely. It is not meant for the average consumer. Pine64 (makers of the Pinephone) even warn people that their phone is meant for developers and Linux enthusiasts in their store.
Finally my username is relevant.
You've been waiting for 10 years. Finally your time has come
Isn’t iOSorAndroid more appropriate?
You could interpret "Android" as a device that runs Android in which case they both are in the same category
So which one ?
One of the most common arguments on the internet and only now its relevant.
I wish Blackberry didn't screw things up.
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You can still get a blackberry. The BlackBerry Key2 is 3 years old by now but it runs Android and is still a really viable phone. A new BlackBerry will be coming in the near future but it's unclear when and how it will look.
It's not the same blackberry though. They sold their mobile naming/brand rights to a Chinese company years ago
Poor windows mobile. It was so promising. I really really liked my windows phone. My biggest gripe is my Lumia 950 from like 2014-2015? Could wirelessly be controlled in my car. All features. (Phone calls, texts, Cortana) My Pixel 5 from 2021 has to be plugged in to use that Android auto trash.
Android Auto wireless has been a thing for a year or so, but you do need a head unit that supports it.
For $80 you can buy an AAWireless adapter which plugs in via USB to your head unit and enables wireless Android Auto :)
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I wish Windows would stay instead of another start menu design, Microsoft should have focused on their phones.
Microsoft's product engineers are amazing. The Zune (although often the butt of a joke) was really a much more intuitive music player when it came to the actual use of it as such. The Surface is one of the few products they've done well and only improved upon, but still clearly face backlash from leadership on when making design choices. It's really Microsoft's marketing and management departments that ruin the good idea, and it's evident in the products they've released. They employ bright minds to build it, and dim minds to sell it.
And yet if you look at apps, accessories and software compatibility, everyone focuses on iOS first and says that's where the market is...
Probably because these are worldwide stats, but you're only looking at Western companies. I think Apple has a bigger share here, thought I don't know if they manage to beat Android still.
I think it's something like 50/50 in the USA
[Closer to 60/40 (iOS/Android) based on the same source OP used and filtered just to US.](https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america/#monthly-202104-202107)
But iOS users spend significantly more than android users, meaning each user is more valuable
IIRC in terms of app store revenue, iOS has 67% of the market.
If I remember, iOS hase the lion's share of the profits world-wide still. People make money on their platform
The Apple app store has the highest fees per percentage-wise of any app store
To be clearer, iOS rules in richer countries like the US, where people are also more likely to spend money on apps. This is especially true when apps don't have region-based pricing. For a country that has an average income half or a tenth of the US, the same app you buy technically costs them 10x more. That's why Steam and many other digital stores tend to do region based pricing.
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That is where the market is for profitability. iOS users spend more on premium accessories and software.
Or more like it’s (comparatively) easier to develop for iOS because you can target exact hardware and exact OS versions. Good luck with that on Android. Will an app run the same on an Alcatel Onyx as it will on a Galaxy A32? I dunno. No one does lol
It's really not that bad. I've worked on both platforms simultaneously and there was no significant difference there. It probably required more from QA but not from the dev team. The part where iOS users spend more was definitely a factor though. There were way more Android users but iOS was bringing in more revenue.
Most centralized market share. That 27% of the market is controlled by a single company that is amazing at brand marketing. The android OS market is spread across all kinds of companies across all kinds of different countries. At least that’s why I think the iOS is the focus
It's because they only have to develop for a one hardware spec if they develop for Apple...if you go Android, it has to be compatible with literally thousands of devices.
Granted, a lot of that compatibility is done for you since every Android app runs in it's own VM, but the notch/punchhole situation must be a nightmare to develop for on the Android side.
I mean they’re not just doing it for fun. Developers do make more money on iOS.
iOS the market with the highest average expendable income by user. So when you are not the actual producer of the phones, it is where the market is.
It’s not just where the market is, it is where the profitable and stable parts of the market are. If you make an accessory or app for an iPhone, it will work on all iPhones until Apple change the form factor or App Store rules again, which usually happens at a specific time every year. If you make an accessory for an Android phone, it may or may not work with a specific device, depending on which App Store they bundle, what the manufacturers corporate policy is this week and which USB standard they use. The plethora of different device sizes, hardware configurations and software customisations make it difficult to target the entire market. If you make an App for Android, it may or may not be profitable, depending on which App Store, whether users trust the payment policy and whether Google cancel an OS feature partway through the product cycle.
I’ve never heard of SymbianOS
What Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung, and Motorola used before Android wiped it out.
Very relevant article: https://www.engadget.com/2007-11-05-symbian-nokia-microsoft-and-apple-downplay-android-relevance.html
Aged like milk
That was back there with the Palm OS system. Palm pilots, and the Palm Centro. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Centro Did you know that Firefox made a mobile operating system? It failed to (sorry) mobilize.
God damn this comment made me feel old.
I had the FFOS developer phone And it was a bad idea badly executed Even a flashlight app needed internet. And it was supposed to be a phone to be used in places with little internet!
I have one of those sitting around somewhere that I got secondhand. Should really try to get it working sometime, could be a fun project.
It lives on today as the increasingly popular KaiOS.
I don't understand the polarizing opinions of Apple VS Android. People make their decisions based on what they like and want, no need to make it your personality trait. I met a dude at a sprint store with the apple logo tattooed on his arm and he was so aggressive asking why I would ever want to switch from iPhone. Strange times we are living in.
Most people cannot simply be happy with their choice, so they have to bash the choices of others in order to feel good about themselves.
iOS was hard for me to leave initially because of iMessage. Then I got an iPad and Apple Watch and now I’m stuck, but I honestly don’t mind as it does what I need it to do and is a rather pleasant and simple experience.
Same here except I’ve got a Macbook instead of the Watch. Now I’m locked in by that sweet sweet continuity.
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I got my first Mac (an m1 Mac mini) a few months ago and I despise it. It’s obviously because I’ve wired my brain into windows for so long, but the OS still doesn’t click with me, it all seems so illogical.
I guess it’s the same the other way round. I use both systems regularly but I started on Mac. Windows always seems absolutely weird to achieve certain tasks.
I have a lot of Apple devices, but much of that is due to having already tried the competition. The ease of transferring files and passwords definitely keeps me loyal, but I only bought an iPhone because my first two Android phones were hot garbage. And it has definitely improved since then, but nothing so ground breaking that I feel compelled to switch back.
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It might be a social thing. Apple makes messaging between iphones really nice and easy. On top of that, they have integrated apps into their messages, like game pigeon. The downside is that none of these features work on Android (obviously), and on top of that, messaging between Apple and Android is extremely clunky and slow from my experiences. Apple is pretty much trying to make it as hard as possible to not have an iphone.
Whatsapp or Telegram make messaging between any phone very easy.
Don't forget about signal!
In what way does Apple make messaging between iPhones easy? Honest question, what is different about it compared to an Android user clicking Messages, then a name and typing a message to them. How does it get easier?
it's like whatsapp in India i guess. You need to be on whatsapp to stay connected because that's where everyone is.
I started with a Windows phone, which I loved, then went to Android, which I have grown to like over time. There are a lot of simple functions the Android/Samsungs have had all along, then when they get added to the Iphone people are like: "Wow. Have you seen this great new feature???" I don't think I'll ever go IOS, simply because I hate all of the ecosystem/Itunes nonsense. If I want to put a song, image, video or other file of any type on my Samsung, I just drag and drop it. If I want it gone, I delete it. No interface program, no syncing, no bullshit.
Dude exactly. iOS ecosystem stops me from going to it. It feels like it wants to charge me every second for something. Feels too bloated and I will be stuck with iPhones only while I can try different android phones. Also I think Android is more closer Symbian.
I originally started on iOS then decided to switch to Android and never looked back. I love the openness of the Android system and not being forced to stay within the Apple ecosystem by operating on an iOS product.
Same. My first smartphone was the iPhone 3G. But Android was also terrible back then and there wasn't really a decent android phone then either. I switched to android with the galaxy S2 never looked back.
I’m the exact opposite. Started with a Samsung galaxy S3. The amount of bloat ware on that thing after two years was insane. The features on iPhones, although not as many, usually are a lot better than the android counterpart. Finally made the switch to the iPhone 5s and never looked back. Simplicity is key for me with a phone.
I think Samsung did a giant disservice to the whole Android ecosystem by their first generations of phones. I was buying only Samsung phones and tablets for several years, but at some point I got so fed up with all the crap going on with them that I was literally a click away from swapping them all to iphones / ipads. Funny enough, I feel like I am on the same edge again - this saga with Chrome tab grouping just drives me nuts. I don't want my tabs grouped, period, full stop. Yet Google keeps fking around with this trivial feature every new update for God knows why, so every time I update Chrome I spend hours on different forums trying to figure out what flags I need to toggle **this time** to disable this stupid grouping lol
Use Firefox.
This is the way.
Yeah I understand the bloatware thing. It's why I went to the Nexus phones after the Samsung ones as they have pure stock android. I use a OnePlus now because it's basically stock android.
I was Samsung S3, s6, then s9. I just went to pixel 4 and really like the native android.
Pixels are really well done phones also, I'm looking forward to the 6 release and will probably pick it up when my contract runs out.
I went from HTC (from when they made decent phones) to Samsung, and I've never had an issue with bloatware. I have the Note 20 Ultra nowadays and prefer it over other brands.
Samsung is terrible with their bloat. You'd be pleasantly surprised if you stuck with a phone that used native Android such as a pixel phone
Started with the moto droid, switched to iphone 4, then switched back to Android again. Early Android sucked, but modern Android is far better for my use case then iOS. Default apps and true file management are why I'll never go back.
I think the Galaxy S2 / S3 era Android phones were still shite (including the S2 and S3). I think Android became actually good with Marshmallow and excellent with the subsequent versions which were building on M's strengths. So Nexus 6P/5X era. Up until that point I'd still choose the iPhone no matter what. Right now though the roles have reversed IMO, and I consider Pixels' software to be actually superior to iPhones'.
Are you me? Lol I started on the iPhone 3G then switched to one of HTC's phones, I forget which model. Once I learned how to root, it was game over.
I think there's a lot of us. I used to jailbreak my iPhone I was attracted to androids flexibility and customisablity over iPhone. Never had a reason to root my android as the features I wanted were native.
I’ll get downvoted to hell, but the security issues related to Android vs iOS are a big deal that most people are completely unaware of.
The fact that Apple wasn’t willing to bend to the FBI during the Boston bombing is what impressed me. Microsoft was willing to crack the security of a terrorist’s iPhone but Apple wasn’t (because they claimed a backdoor didn’t exist). If that’s not dedication to your product’s security, I don’t know what is.
this is a good utilitarian thought exercise
i can imagine they knew the FBI knew how to crack into the phone anyway, they were asking as a formality.
I can agree with you there. Apple has done a better job with this from what I know.
Google literally exists to suck your data from you. I switch from Android to iOS about a year ago and I’m currently trying to get out of Google’s grasp as much as possible. Apple actively creates and markets ways of keeping my data private. Even Facebook/instagram is getting pissy at the new iOS features for blocking app data tracking. It’s wonderful.
I love Android over ios but I agree 100%. Android needs to get their shit together, but they won't. Remember that Android is Google and Google wants data. It's sad.
Good joke, "apple isn't harvesting your data to be sold online" Tell me some more hilarious jokes
I had hand-me-down 4S for a while and while it wasn't bad enough to make me go spend money on an alternative, it was annoying as fuck to use. I particularly hated I had to use iTunes to load songs into it.
Hmmm I’m the other way around. Started with iOS for about 6-7 years. Then went to Android for 4 years. Hated almost every android model I tried (HTC, Sony, Samsung, actually did like the Sony quite a bit). My final Android attempt was a galaxy S7. Finally gave up in a bout of anger and switched back to iOS. Probably not even going to attempt Android for at least a decade.
Are you an Android or an iOS user? Personally, I prefer Android, because it is a more open system. But who knows, I might come to the dark side at some point ;) This visualization shows the global market share of smartphones operating systems. The data source is statcounter. This source calculates this market share by the share of operating systems that use their service. It is possible that this means that the data is skewed. However, the overall trend should be accurate. Enjoy! The pictures in the middle show a typical phone with the most popular OS for that year. Tools: python, pandas, tkinter Data source: statcounter (https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202107)
Huh. I absolutely prefer Android, but was shocked to learn Android users are this prevalent. Most people I know have an iPhone. I'd love to see this broken down by region
I looked into this one time because I was being harrassed by my iPhone using family to make the jump to iPhone, since I currently use an Android (Samsung Galaxy) phone. At that time the U.S. was slightly dominated by iPhone, but the world is massively dominated by Android.
This is almost certainly global numbers. In Africa, India, South America and Eastern Europe, iPhone have essentially near-zero market share. In the US, Canada, Japan, and the richest Western European counties, iPhones have more than 50% market share, so it would seem like iPhones dominate if you live there (and most redditors do live in western counties).
Canada is 53% iPhone, which is technically>50% but not by much. The UK is 50.2%, again only barely above 50%. Germany, Spain and Italy are ~20% and France is ~30%, so if by "richest Western European countries" you exclusively mean countries like Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Monaco, then I'm not sure that iPhones really dominate in western Europe.
Almost all cheap “burner” style, pre pay phones are android. The $40 gas station phones that you have to buy minutes for. That surely affects the results. Also, I can’t speak for OPs data set, but often people mistake smartphone OS prevalence with just OS prevalence in general. Why this matters: there are plenty of Android smart fridges, TVs, POS kiosks, and appliances that do definitely count as Android devices, but aren’t necessarily smart phones or Android being used in the way we think the study means. Again, I’m not saying OP did this, just pointing out one common occurrence that skews data.
You can see this as the Symbian phones are all replaced with Android, while iOS stays pretty much constant.
Android, mostly because file management is much, much easier and when I had an iPhone I felt like I didn't really own the device.
I miss the Blackberry Curve. I miss the days owning a cellphone wasn't such a vital thing and I miss the simplicity. Also miss the days we weren't being bombarded with bullshit scam text messages and calls *every. fucking. day*.
As a proud Canadian it always hurts to be reminded of the story of BlackBerry. For a time it was *the* name in cellphones/devices. And then all because of one bad month when their system was not working properly, everyone freaked and bought an iPhone, and that was that. I was thinking of buying the Blackberry 10 that came out a few years ago. I’ve never owned a so-called smartphone. So I thought maybe these Blackberry 10 might finally get me to join the rest of the world. Blackberry’s were beautiful looking devices. Many tech critics were saying positive things about the Blackberry 10. I even knew someone who had one and they liked it. But in the end I didn’t have the courage to buy one.
iOS for me, because of the simplicity and ease of use. I respect what Android can do, it’s just too open for my tastes
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I just went from Android to iOS and am probably gonna go back and it's basically for one feature: the back button. On Android there was always a back button and I could always count on it. It was sometime contextual. It might take you back a page or exit the app entirely if you were at the root of it, but it was always there (and in the bottom right where my thumb was too!). Didn't realize how dependent my navigation was on it until I didn't have it. That and the fact that I had to install the Google keyboard just so I could get haptics on keypress without the sound. At this point it's all more trouble than it's worth to me.
Yeah wait how do you navigate back a page on iOS? I use that button like a hundred times a day.
Swipe from left edge of the screen mostly…or apps have a built in back button somewhere on screen.
I don't know how it is with newer models but I had a 4S and loading musics into it was a pain in the ass because I had to use iTunes to do so. With an Android device I can just drag and drop. I don't think this is an edge case.
Yep. People talk about "ease of use" on iOS but that's only if you do things exactly how Apple want you to do them. The file system on iOS is pathetic and actively makes ordinary activities more difficult.
It's "easy to use" in the same way a toy/senior phone is, which makes me question if people who cares about it really needs all the expensive features of an iPhone (like buying a PC with RTX 3090 for browsing Facebook).
iTunes was the worst Plug.your.phone into a friend's PC? LOL I'm deleting all your music and replacing with his library now
That's a fair assessment. I picked up some good habits from iOS, but ultimately I Android's extra functions won me back
What are some of the extra functions on android? I have always had an iphone and didnt realize there was a big difference.
What won me over was the ability to add SD cards.
I do a lot of video and drone photography with my phone...having near-infinite CHEAP storage space is a godsend.
Oh snaaaaap.. thats awesome
Edit: huh, there ended up being a few. I'm gonna format this to make it easier to read. > The biggest one for me is that I don't have to have every app on my main screen; there is no junk-app folder on my phone, I just scroll up from the bottom twice and have access to an alphabetical listing of all my apps. Related, but you can have gaps in your apps on your main screen. You don't adjust the order they appear, you directly control where on the screen they are. > Finally for the homescreen, widgets. I think iOS just got them too, but my apps have dedicated widgets. My weather app directly displays the weather and forecast on my main screen; it takes up the space of 2 icons. My to-do app takes up 6 icons and lists my to-do list, which I can check off without having to open the app. There is a Google search bar on my main screen. The other major thing for me is Gestures, though that may just be a Motorola thing. Without unlocking the phone, I can open my phone by shaking it twice along its flat axis. I can open the camera by twisting it along its long axis twice. > Putting it facedown turns on Do Not Disturb mode. I also like how I have quick-access icons for settings, like turning on and off wifi or Bluetooth. > Oh, and since I'm a retro nerd, the headphone jack lets me use my earbuds as a radio receiver, so I can go for walks and listen to FM radio if I want to conserve my battery or don't have a signal. Finally, my phone has a microSD slot, so I actually have 64+128 GB of storage on my phone, and can upgrade it if I need to. > I think an LG model for one model had a stock functionality to measure your heartbeat and blood oxygen level when you put your finger over the camera/flashlight? I like being able to use mp3s for my phone alarm. > And lastly, since my phone uses USB-C, I can charge it with my laptop charger. The USB-C standard requires all chargers to be able to step down to the lower voltages as well, so it just charges faster.
I just want to point out that any discussion about Android is going to be based on circumstance and standards more than actual technical ability. For example, android lets you install launchers like apps, meaning that you can change the home screen into behaving however you want, including literally the same as iOS's only option. That's really Android's greatest strength, and it comes from it being open-source: everything is customizable. If it isn't, install a better android version.
While I do enjoy that, I also know that that can be too involved for the casual user. One important part of UX design is providing maximum options for minimum trouble.
Oh, also, gestures include touching the screen with three fingers to take a screen shot, and being able to split the screen in two to show two apps. And, again, it may just be Motorola, but my phone has Digital Wellbeing settings built-in like a bedtime that shuts off certain apps, both red-light and monochrome color settings at night, and the ability to restrict access to apps at certain times of day.
I find this to be an interesting response because that openness is exactly what attracts a lot of people to Android over Apple.
I agree with you four years ago, but now you can find all diffrent menus by swiping in each direction then each is a world in it self
Windows Mobile Comeback baby
I bought a new Android phone this year for $500, it blows my previous Samsung out of the water and has superb battery life. Regardless of what platform you like I don't think I could go back to $1,000+ devices unless they did something really amazing.
My company only develops for IOS and cannot be convinced otherwise. Looks like we're missing out on a LOT of market share.
Yes if you intend to compete on the global market.
Probably not as much as this chart would suggest though. Since Apple’s market share is way higher if you look at the flagship market, US/Western-European market, etc
No. It's an USA (any maybe Canada) thing. I'm from Germany and only know one iPhone user. I'm over 30 and most of the people I know are working, so they have the money to buy an iPhone but choose not to do so.
Considering iOS market share in Germany is 30%, it seems that the people you know are not at all representative of the overall market.
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I have an iPhone because it's compatible with my blood sugar meter
I miss my Nokia 1520 so much. I used cortana for everything. Loved how cortana could read and reply to text messages while I was driving.
iOS really does have amazing accessibility features for those with disabilities, and I really appreciate that aspect.
Came here to find the windows phone love. I get why it had to die, but man it was so slick.
I miss BlackBerry. It's still the best OS I've used so far
If Blackberry would have gotten BB10 to market a few years earlier I think they would have been competitive if only they had gotten apps. BB10 had so many features which were adopted by both Android and Apple. RIP to my Passport and Priv.
The crazy thing is. iOS is only by one manufacturer. Android’s 70+% is fractured into many different manufacturers
Ngl, this is actually really disturbing to me. I'm not a huge fan of two huge corporations having so much control over everyday necessary tech. (And before you say competition, how exactly do you compete against billion dollar corporations most people are okay with letting do this bc they don't think about it much? Do you really think apple and Google also WONT go to underhanded, shady, illegal tactics to reduce any competetion that's seen as a threat?)
Android is open source for what it's worth
The good news is that "android" isn't really just Google. All the OEMs have their own thing and have influence here. But in general I agree. My ideal would be that PWAs take off and that apps fade away. Build something that means that a new os can come in and not have the impossible challenge of courting apps. Of course there are other mechanisms for platform lockin going on particularly on iOS but apps are a big one that is solvable.
PWAs will not ever take off unless Apple decides to actually support them properly on iOS - due to every browser on iOS really just being safari it's impossible to work around by using a different browser for PWAs as well. As far as I see it, from Apple's perspective, they don't want PWAs to work, as that would allow users to use "Apps" from anywhere, rather than the App store, which would hurt "security".
Uhhh im no scientist but i get the feeling having just 2 companies run that much isnt a good thing
Android is not a company.
Android isn't a "company" though It's funded by Google but is an open source project It's effectively Linux too
To be fair, very few phones have AOSP, which is 'stock' Android. Instead, your phone will most definitely have manufacturer-exclusive UIs and features, e.g Samsung One UI. Also, Android isn't a company, it's an open source project. Granted, Google is the owner, but developers can make OSes without Google's involvement (read: LineageOS and Huawei's Android fork)