Pixel 10 Phones
(blog.google)435 points by gotmedium 5 days ago
435 points by gotmedium 5 days ago
Same for me, although I currently use an iPhone (and the rest of the Apple ecosystem). I actually don't like iOS, and barely tolerate macOS but I love the hardware on mac right now.
For me, it's Apple's privacy stance (which I know could change at anytime, but that's where we are at right now). Give me a Pixel & all the Google stuff but without Google, and with advanced data protection and Apple's tracking protection and transparency and I'm in.
As long as apps on Android can do crap like the web-to-app tracking via localhost and other shady data harvesting that Google continues to allow, I don't touch it no matter how much better it is and how much I prefer the workflows.
Also, on either platform, why is it still not possible to toggle off network access in app permissions. Its a glaring and deliberate omission.
> barely tolerate macOS
I guess it depends what you’re comparing it to but macOS is (for me) the best of a bad bunch of compromises. POSIX with app boundaries that are (mostly) respected, if not particularly granular. There’s nothing I really hate about the platform save for homebrew and being walled in to the ecosystem.
I actually love modern Linux with Gnome, and it has all the parts these days to be a great desktop operating system, but I find the freedom there undercuts a lot of the promises (Flatpaks are a good idea in theory that doesn’t work in practice as the sandboxes are overly liberal and overreach on most apps because no-one’s forced to justify why they need the permissions they do etc).
I spent so long on Windows that I really don’t miss it. The Window management was way better for so long, but the idioms drive me crazy (registry issues and programs still freely writing anywhere they like), and supporting everything forever has massive drawbacks to usability (although Winget sort of slightly helps with this but it’s not much better than homebrew).
> best of a bad bunch of compromises
That's exactly why I don't particularly care for it, but still use it.
My first choice would be Linux + a tiling WM. I used DWM for years before Apple Silicon, and have been on mac ever since the M1. These new machines are so nice that I can't go back to anything else now, whether I hate the software or not.
But macOS is just baffling. There's POSIX underneath, and it's mostly reliable, and it has a lot of little nice touches - being able to search the menu with Cmd+Shift+/, emacs keybindings in nearly every text field, etc. But then there's stuff that makes no sense. Why do I need a third party app for any sort of sane window management? (and even then, I haven't fully replicated my preferred way of working, only gotten close enough with Aerospace, and more recently Raycast). A third party app to set a keyboard shortcut to launch an application. I can't disable the animations for switching virtual desktops, and when you switch there's a lag before it's responsive again for keyboard input (I just want this to be instant).
So much of how macOS expects you to interact with it seems to be mouse/touchpad driven, and that's just not how I prefer to use my computer. At least with Raycast I now have shortcuts to launch and switch to apps (but not specific app windows because of the app/window separation in macOS). Yet even still, I can't set a keyboard shortcut to move a window to a different space. I have to click and hold the title bar and then press my shortcut for moving to that space to move the window - Apple decided that action MUST involve the mouse.
I also can't set window rules. I can't tell my terminal to always open on workspace 2, or mail.app to always open on workspace 4 at a specific size, etc. Making an app full screen also creates a new ephemeral space that can't be switched to with the usual Ctrl+NUM keyboard shortcut. I can't set a window to be always on top.
I'm more or less waiting for Asahi Linux to get support for DisplayPort ALT mode & M4 support, although I'm not holding my breath.
I do appreciate having access to the big commercial apps though on macOS, but ultimately I want my M4 macbook pro w/ Linux & hyprland.
>Give me a Pixel & all the Google stuff but without Google
As a consumer, I lament most of all about Pixel devices (or any other Android device really) that I have to wipe the OS and install a different one to get features that matter to me, particularly around privacy.
Thats why I don't use Pixel devices, or any Android devices really. I know its a precarious situation with Apple since they could reverse their stance at any point and sometimes they get it wrong, but they have yet to completely fail me when it comes to privacy.
In any event, it'd be nice if there was a 3rd mainstream vendor in the mobile race[0][1]
[0]: Both design wise and conceptually, I miss WebOS when it was strictly under Palm. It could have really been something. Why they didn't embrace multitouch screens I haven't a clue, it was the one thing that baffled me.
[1]: The one project I really wanted Mozilla to take a long term view on - Firefox OS - was another great innovation of our time that didn't get the love or support it deserved. It was a blast using web technology to build apps that ran fluidly on modern hardware. Unfortunately, it was all too often relegated to cheap manufacturer hardware that couldn't support it ideally, but even with this being true, they pulled off alot of technical excellence with that project.
I've been running GrapheneOS for a few months now, keeping my old Samsung on WiFi as a backup.
It is such a breath of fresh air. It is so quiet and functional. It feels like it prioritizes me, the user. I am so grateful to have this OS.
Of course it has flaws, but they're lesser flaws. Like the crop tool is sometimes unusable in the gallery app. I can live with that. I couldn't live with the AI onslaught and spyware infiltration.
After looking at it, there are many things that I do not like about Graphene, and many ways that it tries hard not to be likable.
Beyond the monochrome icon pack that cannot be changed in the included launcher (which is so aesthetically challenged with an appearance that only a mother could love), the browser that cannot grasp dark mode, and the lack of the accustomed pattern unlock, I find the lack of one singular thing intolerable:
I want root. At a minimum, adb rooted debugging.
I realize that I could unlock the bootloader and Magisk this thing, but with the number of correct decisions that have been made by the authors of this operating system (and they are legion), they do not recognize one fundamental need of administrators:
I want control of my systems.
That is really a shame.
Could anyone here waxing lyrically about Apple so called privacy stand explain to me what that actually is apart from a marketing point Apple keeps repeating?
Because from where I stand they do load everything into their cloud. They insist on having you pay for iCloud through obnoxious means. They have you go through their store for everything. They even have an ad platform.
What supposedly so good about it? Their track record seems awful to me.
E2EE (advanced data protection) without having to use something like Proton, so can stay in the very convenient "ecosystem." With it turned on, keys are on your device, Apple doesn't have them and can't use them and it covers all the main stuff - photos, messages, notes, etc.
It's still a compromise, sure, but it's a better compromise than what Google offers.
Plus small things. Apple's tracking protection for example is opt in instead of opt out on Android. Google's core business is ads, they won't push features that can negatively impact that. Apple also has an ad division but it's not their main focus, hardware is. They can implement better privacy without impacting their bottom line. Apple's refusal to unlock phones at the request of the FBI, etc.
It's not that Apple is the be all end all for privacy, but they are far ahead of Google and are by far the most convenient option if you are within the walled garden.
> Could anyone here waxing lyrically about Apple so called privacy stand explain to me what that actually is apart from a marketing point Apple keeps repeating?
The end-to-end encryption guarantees on this page seem pretty real to me and have little to do with marketing: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651
> Because from where I stand they do load everything into their cloud. They insist on having you pay for iCloud through obnoxious means. They have you go through their store for everything. They even have an ad platform.
It's very easy to completely disable iCloud. I've never used it and don't intend to, despite running a mac as my primary computer for ~12 years now.
Apple is much more strict on app tracking (and apps in general).
The privacy stuff and the hardware quality are my main reasons as well. Oh, and Chrome OS isn't a real OS to me so I couldn't imagine using that as my daily driver as I would macOS.
Another reason I stick with Apple is style/design. Aside from the latest Alan Dye-led stuff, Apple's design has been top-notch, they make every other company look like they lack class and design-sense.
With that said, I did like Nokia's Windows Phones and the the period of Microsoft's design revolution where Surface devices had suede or whatever. That massive Surface table thing was dope too but man, Windows just keeps getting worse...somehow!
I'm looking forward to getting a Framework laptop at some point and installing Linux.
> Apple's design has been top-notch
But only from the iPhone X to 14, after which the Dynamic Island took over.
(I'll see myself out)
> Chrome OS isn't a real OS to me so I couldn't imagine using that as my daily driver as I would macOS
Not sure I understand this? One assumes that "daily driver" involves Linux VM use in this context[1], and ChromeOS's Linux VM integration is just wildly ahead of WSL (which really isn't bad) or the mess on OS X (awful). Installed Crostini apps appear as native apps in the UI. Transparent cross-filesystem access works flawlessly. Wayland and X11 apps appear with native decorations. Clipboard/WM/IPC integration does exactly what you expect. USB devices prompt you if you want to connect to the VM on insert (and remember the setting) etc...
And yes, I'm biased because I work there. But really it's a great development environment.
[1] I mean, if you're doing iOS development or need an M4 Max for performance reasons, or need some legacy Mac tooling like Adobe stuff, you're probably not looking at alternative platforms at all. Someone making the choice you posit is like 99% likely to be a web or embedded person working at a Linux shell as their native environment.
>Give me a Pixel & all the Google stuff but without Google, and with advanced data protection and Apple's tracking protection and transparency and I'm in.
GrapheneOS may interest you.
>Also, on either platform, why is it still not possible to toggle off network access in app permissions. Its a glaring and deliberate omission.
GrapheneOS specifically supports this for all installed apps.
All of my banking apps that are required for 2FA would probably not work.
Same stance, iOS isn’t the best but the least bad. Google is an anchor to Android, supposedly Android is open source and everyone can contribute but at the end no device can be sold without Google play services and Google decides what is accepted in the aosp project.
If aosp was actually open, like managed by all biggest phone seller in a consortium, i bet we would actually have feature that people want to get. Instead of a thousand « material you » redesign, that honestly looked ugly from the get go and isn’t much better years later.
Many people want to be able to invert the recent and back button, most in fact, yet Google stubbornly refuse to add that setting. That’s just an example, but this repeat a thousand time over the whole Android project.
I would love to have Android software on an Apple device. Their hardware is incredible!
Ultimately, I tolerate Android from a privacy standpoint because we're still able to fully modify our devices and use open-source app sources. The minute that goes away (and it feels like Google isn't as tolerant of it anymore), I go.
> Give me a Pixel & all the Google stuff but without Google, and with advanced data protection and Apple's tracking protection and transparency and I'm in.
This is literally GrapheneOS or LineageOS+microg x) which ironically is fully available on Pixel phones and and a slowly vanishing number of others...
> I actually don't like iOS, and barely tolerate macOS but I love the hardware on mac right now.
I just got my first MacBook Pro this month and feel this exactly. I prefer Windows as an OS hands down. It works with all my peripherals and has better configuration options.
But the hardware makes up for it. My MacBook Pro is about twice as fast as my new x86 desktop from work. Its battery is nearly 15x longer than my Razer laptop and four times as fast.
I’ll take gaps in the software quality for all of the progress in hardware quality.
Linux performs quite well on M1/M2 Macs (I'd even argue they are the best laptops to run Linux), almost counter-intuitively to some people's expectations. The worst Macs to run Linux on are actually the last Intel models with T1/T2 stuff. It takes some time for folks to port to new M chips as they come out but once they do, due to the popularity and similar peripherals they work well.
Hasn't porting of newer models completely stalled since the departure of the 2 motivated and skilled individuals that made it originally possible?
I genuinely do not understand this claim and propaganda about Apple privacy.
1) it's known they scan all your content and pics on iCloud
2) the phone's always listening, always
3) once that I forgot my password to the MacBook, all one needed to do to access my data was to enter recovery mode and reset the password. Sure it logged me off from browser sessions, but all my files where there available to anybody
To me apple is overly invasive with their icloud accounts and things, and password resets taking weeks, yet I see no evidence it is any harder to get my data than on other devices, if anything, it's easier.
So what is the claim here? Some tracking less by advertisers? That's privacy? An ad less about computers and one slightly less correct about idk wine?
The fact is that anybody with physical access to my devices has an easier time logging through the apple ones than the windows/androids i own and that I care more than advertising
Apple is the only one that offers actual E2EE with advanced data protection for all iCloud services. Without it, yes, Apple can see your data. With it on, they can't. The key is stored on device, encrypted with your device pin/passcode and covers iCloud backup, including messages, drive, photos, notes, reminders, bookmarks, shortcuts, voice memos, wallet, passwords, health data, journal, home, maps, etc. The only thing not covered under ADP is iCloud mail, contacts, and calendars because it uses CalDAV and CardDAV.
> once that I forgot my password to the MacBook, all one needed to do to access my data was to enter recovery mode and reset the password. Sure it logged me off from browser sessions, but all my files where there available to anybody
Sounds like you didn't have FileVault (FDE) turned on. If you did, that wouldn't work you'd have needed your recovery key.
> it's known they scan all your content and pics on iCloud
They can't if you have ADP.
> Some tracking less by advertisers? That's privacy?
Yes, it is privacy. Let's not understate the massive surveillance that ad networks do, Google included.
Google is an advertising company, they have zero incentive to offer the same level of privacy that Apple does and probably never will, it would be directly detrimental to their core business.
> 3) once that I forgot my password to the MacBook, all one needed to do to access my data was to enter recovery mode and reset the password. Sure it logged me off from browser sessions, but all my files where there available to anybody
Do you not know how computers work? That how it works on every computer without encryption.
You wouldn't have been able to access to the data passwordless if you had enabled Filevault encryption
Apple's privacy policy is like everything else Apple: it best compares to things outside of it's walled garden. But inside the walls Apple operates just like every other company. It gathers information on all it's users for it's own advertising business. They can claim they don't have third parties involved and that makes them more private, but they do all the same things to their users but just do it themselves. They're as much an advertising company as Google or Facebook (and would love to be as big as those advertisers), but their ads are all within the Apple walls, so they can claim they are much more private. When they really aren't.
> They’re as much an advertising company as Google or Facebook
They are? By what metric? This sounds made up to support the assertion that a company which doesn’t do broad data sharing with third parties, but keeps it to themselves, is somehow less (or no less) private than those who do.
Apple imposes "Artificial Incompetence" on their users. It treats them like children, gives them no agency, and limits their freedom, all while praising them for their taste and superior sense of... something.
This current iteration of Apple lacks the geniuses and visionaries that might have possibly justified their behavior at some point in the past, so you have a soulless corporate churn reinforcing the biggest walled garden in the history of humanity, with no apparent purpose except self perpetuation.
Doing things weirdly and badly, and not allowing any other way, prevents skill transfer between operating systems and environments. It prevents easy transfer of software - it forces software to treat the weird and bad things as canonical.
Apple users, with their imposed muscle memory, not realizing how good things could and should be, insist on their high taste and discrimination, and point to things "just working" and other inanities as vehement cover for one of the darkest of dark patterns.
Interoperability, protocol, and freedom should be mandatory. Google is hardly better, but at least you can own the device you purchase.
If you cannot understand what made Apple successful then or today what makes you think you're not failing to grasp something? You head right on to making an argument when nakedly revealing that you can't comprehend the other side.
Not surprising, this site is made for the Woz's of the world (and that's fine!).
> This current iteration of Apple lacks the geniuses and visionaries that might have possibly justified their behavior at some point in the past, so you have a soulless corporate churn reinforcing the biggest walled garden in the history of humanity, with no apparent purpose except self perpetuation.
My read was that this addressed your point.
Those are some very minor complaints, all of which would not affect my buying choice, given the larger differences. That said, I’ll tell you that I don’t notice (1), for (2) I would never sit there organizing my photos, I have other (mostly less productive) things to do with my time, and (3) seems like something I specifically _dont_ want.
No, two of those are some pretty fundamental complaints about how GP wants to use their device. Just because you don't have those complaints doesn't make them any less fundamental.
Ultimately the disagreement is primarily on the fact that Apple goes very far out of their way to hide the concept of a file and filesystem from the user.
The wobbling one is minor, in all fairness.
Absolutely. The camera bump is a complete non-issue, and probably easily solvable with a case if it's really the thing pushing you away from an entire smartphone platform.
I shudder at notion of feeling compelled to group every photo I take into exactly one folder. A directory tree makes very little sense for organizing everyday photos. If I for some reason had a natural temptation to do this, I'd be grateful to Apple for discouraging it in their Photos app.
> solvable with a case
The iphone 16's camera bump is 3.5mm. Short of making your own case that makes the bump a Pixel like bar, that wont be solved by just sticking a case.
On photos, it is indeed a very personal topic to many. In particular someone taking dozens of random pictures everyday won't have the same use case as someone being a lot more deliberate for each picture for instance. A one size fjts all approach isn't helpful IMHO.
3) reminds me of the web USB thing, totally do not want
> Is this a "left brain vs right brain" type of thing? Do most HNers prefer Androids?
I don't think so. The stuff you mentioned is objectively better as there's no reason for Apple not to let you do it. It's more of a "I've been in the Apple walled garden for so long and so are all my friends" or the so-called network effects. Examples: you can't "Facetime" and "Airdrop" on Android, your text confirmation marks are green instead of blue, you don't have access to the same apps as your friends (sometimes), you don't have integration with iPad. If you grew up in certain circles you may be bullied for not having an iPhone, too.
Also there is a prevailing sentiment that Android doesn't "just work" as much as iOS, which is true tbh but not for Pixels which are basically the Android equivalent of an iPhone, where the device is pretty much tailor-made for the OS.
There’s still an element of subjective preference, as much as many like to say otherwise. To me, Android animations and gestures have always felt less polished and natural and more rough “forever prototype” and mechanistic, for example.
In terms of “just working,” a big weak point of Android that stands out to me is just how clunky it is if you’re not neck-deep in the Google ecosystem and use more standardized service providers like FastMail. iOS stock apps work great with IMAP, CardDAV, CalDAV, etc but on Android you have to hunt down third party service agnostic apps for everything, few of which are designed to work with each other. To be fair though, Windows also suffers this issue.
You can just add IMAP accounts to the Gmail app but generally you're right.
For me, it's how can I get the slick and super convenient integrations between my phone, tablet, and laptop outside of Apple?
I am talking about Handoff, Continuity, iPhone mirroring (can use my iPhone and its apps while it remains locked somewhere), AirDrop, Continuity Camera, universal clipboard, iMessage, etc.
The left/right brain thing is pseudo-science and even worse - a false dichotomy. It's much more about cultural snobbery and cultural tribalism around which pursuits are regarded as "more worthy".
Look up C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures" - it was incredibly influential at the time but also described a prejudice we still labour under. It's pervasive in the English speaking world. I suspect less so in the non-anglosphere West and possibly even less so in Asia.
I've been using Android for years but for reasons recently switched to an iPhone.
I gotta say Android is superior in a number of things like call and SMS spam.
Also typing on iOS is a frustrating experience. I type "Im" and the iOS keyboard won't offer "I'm" as a correction option. I've even tried using the Google Keyboard on iOS and the multilingual predictions are just not as good as on Android.
I would have preferred to get a Pixel but Google doesn't distribute their physical products where I live.
The keyboard is completely nonsensical. I really don't understand how iPhone keyboard is so bad. Even if you install the Google Keyboard, iPhone keyboard is still bad.
I can't fathom what is going on here, but I really dislike typing on an iPhone. It drives me bananas. Completely obvious suggestions are never made. Android--you can just faceroll on the keyboard a bit and it'll have everything perfect. I thought I was really good at fast text input on mobile devices until I switched to an iPhone and then realized that Google's ML and autocorrect integration is just way better in this area.
I've been using iPhones since the original, somewhere around the iPhone 6 they screwed up the keyboard and never fixed it. Not just the recommendations but even the typing itself.
I prefer Pixel phones, for slightly different reasons.
One, it takes really good photos. Better than phones with supposedly better specs. This is big for me, I have a 3 year old, being able to snap photos that look great with no effort is huge.
Two, the Google integration is just really a gamechanger. My laptop is my "computing" device. So my phone is mostly for calling, navigating (I travel a lot), searching for businesses, that sort of thing. It's really effortless with Pixel devices, takes a tad more work with other brands.
All browsers are equal citizens. I use Vivaldi, it's nice it can be the default and work just as well with the phone as Chrome.
And finally, in all my dealings with big tech over my lifetime, Google has been the only one that I feel doesn't try to abuse users. With MS it's endless nagging and annoyances, plus their security sucks, with Apple they're very anti-consumer unless you do exactly what they want, all the time. Even Samsung annoyed me with bloatware and trying to make their apps default over and over. If I change something on a Pixel phone, it stays changed. I pay for some Google products so no ads for the most part. Their security is great. They prefer open formats and protocols and have done a ton for the open web. Just the best ecosystem I've bought into.
> 2: When I sort my photos on a Pixel, I sort them in folders. The "camera" folder is where the unsorted photos are. When I sit in a bus or in a cafe, I go through it and sort the new photos into folders. This seems impossible on iPhones. Everything stays in the main folder forever. You can add photos to albums, but that does not remove them from the main folder. So there is no way to know which photos I have already sorted.
This along with iOS dumping pictures from WhatsApp, etc. into your main pictures folder is such a huge deal breaker for me. If I am backing up my pictures to a hard drive, there is no easy way to select just the pictures taken on my phone. Seems like such an oversight but I suspect it's a way to drive people to sign up for iCloud storage.
iOS 26 fixes this with an option to only show photos not in an album.
Additionally, if you are backing up photos to a hard drive you will be much better off using an app like PhotoSync. It has a one time payment and transfers direct to whatever you want with far less errors and more control than Apple’s terrible buggy disaster that is transferring photos by wire.
It’s actually already available in iOS 18! On the main Photos page, click the little filtering icon and select something like “Not in any album”
The inability to sync albums as folders onto my Mac is my #1 complaint about iPhones. It's probably to sell iCloud.
I use an iphone and have for many years. I was a phone geek who would always use custom ROMs and have everything dialed in just so. I'm sure this has changed over the years but back in the day it seemed like there was always some weird issue with my Android phone. Admittedly, a lot of that could have been my fault for constantly messing with the device. Eventually I got busy and just needed my phone to do the simple stuff and get out of the way.
iOS has a number of really annoying behaviors and general flaws that are never going to be addressed. I don't recall having the same frustrations with Android, but maybe I did.
I'm constantly annoyed that my iPhone can't do simple stuff my Android phone could do 15 years ago. I am also aware that if it could do all those things, I probably wouldn't spend the time to get everything set up, dialed in, and maintained anyway.
The things that keep me on iPhone are unrelated to all of that, though.
1. I like the small form factor. I have a 13 Mini and there's no decent equivalent that I've found in any ecosystem (sadly, even Apple now).
2. I use Facetime with both sets of parents a fair bit. Trying to train them to use whatever app Google currently uses for video calls, and then retraining every time Google kills it off for another almost identical app, sounds like a lot of work and frustration.
3. Real or not, my perception is that privacy in the Apple ecosystem has historically been, and currently is, far better than Google. I don't like the idea of the device I'm constantly relying on to be the product of an ad company, it just feels gross.
4. Proper unlock with FaceID is so damn convenient. I don't know for sure, but suspect going back to a fingerprint would really bug me.
> Trying to train them to use whatever app Google currently uses for video calls, and then retraining every time Google kills it off for another almost identical app
This seems like an argument for picking something third-party, perhaps Signal. It's probably not going away any time soon, and it supports both major mobile operating systems.
12 to 15 years ago, when I was teaching the elders in the family how to video call, there were only two reliable options, Google and Apple.
Google kept changing their solution, so we ended up with Facetime.
Whatsapp did end up coming out with video calls, and Whatsapp would have been an alternative had it been available on iPads sooner (is it even available today?). Signal also came out too late.
But once everyone was trained on Facetime, I, nor any of my cousins was going to put in the time to re-train on any other solution. Plus, if anyone has a problem with Facetime, or their Apple device, they can pop into an Apple store to get it fixed themselves. Or they can chat with an Apple tech support rep who can remote into their phone.
both iOS and Facetime are super slick and baked into the device. The end user doesn't even have to really know how to the app to use the feature as it were. It shows up on a contact as a button click.
Signal does not, even on Android. You have to deliberately use it.
That small friction isn't great when you're likely one of few people using it in day to day life of others.
FaceTime on the other hand, just works
>Proper unlock with FaceID is so damn convenient. I don't know for sure, but suspect going back to a fingerprint would really bug me.
Being able to unlock my password manager with the fingerprint, rather than putting in the vault password every time was great, but my iPhone got too old for the other apps I needed and now I'm stuck typing in a gibberish 30-char password every time I need to use it on my phone. When are we going to get under-the-screen fingerprint sensors?
You can buy a mini on secondary markets. Some are even new in box, though you might need to replace the battery.
Until about a year ago, Apple had 13 minis in their refurb store.[1] That's where I managed to get one. I'm going to hang on to it as long as possible. Previously I had an iPhone SE (the one that looks like an iPhone 5), and I still slightly regret upgrading to the mini. The mini's camera and display are significantly better, but it's a little wide for my hands.
> Trying to train them to use whatever app Google currently uses for video calls
Everyone I know uses Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp these days. Both of which are cross platform, even web (so can use on a desktop browser).
Also, the current Google thing, Meet, doesn't need the person you're calling to have the app. You invite them, they get a link, it opens in their browser, mobile or desktop.
How’s your 13 mini holding up? I have a recently refurbished one (6 months old) and I can’t make it to 2pm without recharging.
Additional my mail search and photo search broke with Apple Intelligence/iOS18 integration.
Debating jumping ship to a epaper phone or holding out for the rumored iPhone Air.
My 13 mini is also not great on battery. I've been debating ordering an iFixit battery and doing the swap, but in the past I've felt it was kind of mixed results from that. I don't think those batteries are newly manufactured units, but rather leftovers from the original production line that have been sitting on the shelf for 2-3 years. So although they'll be an improvement over one that's been through 1-2k cycles, they won't be like it was when it was brand new.
For now I'm just making do with having a power bank in my bag when I'm out and about.
I don't think the iPhone Air will actually be smaller in the dimensions I care about, just thinner which I assume will compromise battery life.
My mini is holding up ok. Battery needs replacing but I haven't done it. Like mikepurvis, I carry power banks around if I'm doing anything where I'm not going to be able to recharge easily. I use one like this https://www.amazon.com/Anker-PowerCore-Magnetic-Slim-B2C/dp/...
I prefer this form factor, but yeah
I was able to get a new battery and screen for my 13 mini via AppleCare, but even the new battery won't get me through the day. Recent OS updates also make my camera shooting experience really slow for some reason.
Even with all that, I'm keeping the mini as long as possible because every year brings bigger and heavier iPhones.
> Recent OS updates also make my camera shooting experience really slow for some reason.
I’m on a 16 pro and it’s bad. It’s worse if I use the side button or do it from lock Screen, quicker from actual camera app. However it’s by far the slowest camera I’ve had on an iPhone, and I find the speed and quality a disappointing.
I have a 13 mini for about 3 years now - still holding up for most of the working day (about 15 hours). The trick is to reduce the number of apps you have on the phone, reduce the number of apps which like running on the background, and not watch a lot of videos.
I figured it out that treating it as a communication device + payments device + maps + very occasional content viewer, ie mostly as a utility will make the phone last much longer.
I’m on a 12 mini and it lasts all day easily.
I generally like the phone except it’s a little too big.
FaceID is terrible, not even reliable. It scans your face all the time, even when you are not unlocking it. Every 20-30 seconds or so, let's just scan your face.
I would love it if iPhones stayed with fingerprint unlock. Sometimes I put the phone on the desk and not pointing it to my face and I want to unlock it. I have to wait for the stupid FaceID timeout to be able to input my code.
Face ID is not terrible. Especially on newer phones which support landscape rotation etc. They check to see if you’re looking at the screen and your eyes are open, so they can keep the screen on regardless of the auto lock setting. It’s a smart and useful feature which you can turn off if you don’t like it.
turn off "attention aware features" under accessibility -> Face ID & Attention if you don't like it checking whether you're looking at it
I'm also holding tight on an iPhone 13 Mini (5.18 in x 2.53 in) and I'm honestly not thrilled that even that is a size up from the 5s (4.87 in x 2.31 in).
Pixel 10 is yet another step up, at 6.02 in x 2.83 in, and I just wish it didn't have to be that way.
I prefer Android. Unlike iPhone, the Android notifications system actually makes sense, and I can use real Firefox on Android. But, I prefer phones sized to fit in a human hand even more, so I'm stuck on an iPhone 13 Mini. Please make a ~4.5" screen Pixel phone, Google :(
It isn't nearly as big of an issue as the phone size, but it is still a nuisance. I know there's no chance of it ever coming back, but I'd like it to.
I still have a small amount of hope that someone will make a modern, well supported ~5" Android phone. But that's also feeling less likely.
+1 SO MUCH After two years I couldn't understand them. Sometime one notification appear, then it disappear, is it in the bottom stack? No, it just disappear. Also when there's many of them grouped, will tapping expand them? open the app? It's random.
But mostly, on Android, having quick actions on notifications. Receiving a useless email? The "Delete" action is right there. Boom, done. Move on.
In retrospect, I think it's why I find Android so functional. Just from the notifications you can do everything. No need to unlock your phone and end up distracted.
I just switched from an iPhone 13 mini to a Pixel 9 Pro, and it's tough to admit but I can do so much more with my thumb on a big Android than a tiny iPhone. Mostly due to the back gesture always works (never need to tap the top left corner in some cases, and also being able to return to the 3 button navigation) and being able to pull down the notifications by sliding down on the main screen.
So true. I switched from a lineage of several pixels ending in 7 to an iPhone for various reasons. The only thing I really miss outside of niche apps after finding a better calendar is a sane notification system! iOs lock screen notifications provide so little useful information and sometimes get buried.
My iPhone 13 Mini is just a touch too big for my taste. For phones I've owned, I'd probably give the nod to the HTC Incredible 4G LTE[1]. Relatively stock Android, 4" screen, headphone jack, soft touch plastic back. It was perfect.
I’d prefer the photo organization behavior you describe, but I don’t want websites to ever be dipping into the local filesystem outside of heavily siloed areas reserved for web apps exclusively. I don’t want the browser to even be capable of it, because regardless of what permissions and security measures are put in place, someone is going to find a way around them.
The only exception I can see making for filesystem access is for PWAs explicitly installed by the user, and even then there should be restrictions in place like limiting access to scripts loaded from the installed PWA’s domain. The open web in a generalized browser like Chrome on the other hand is too untrustworthy.
As for camera bumps, they’re all equally awful and I’d rather they just disappear entirely, even if that means thicker devices.
> I don’t want the browser to even be capable of it, because regardless of what permissions and security measures are put in place, someone is going to find a way around them.
You surely trust the permissions and security measures your phone provides to apps so what makes browsers worse in this area? Especially if you're using iOS where you only have Apple's web browser available to use.
Intent. Apps can only ever be installed by me, barring complicated exploit chains, while browsers can navigate without any input from me whatsoever. That serves as an extremely narrow funnel that vastly reduces surface area.
This is also why I’m more receptive to installed PWAs being more capable. They’re both on the other side of my intent funnel and assuming a good implementation can’t ever navigate to domains that aren’t that PWA.
Besides that, it’s just annoying for apps to be dressed in browser chrome. On macOS ever since Safari added the ability to install sites as PWAs, I’ve been making heavy use of those just to remove extraneous browser toolbar items and such. I don’t know how people can live with all their web apps in regular browser tabs, I’d go nuts.
I switched to Android when Google gave me an HTC EVO at that year's Google I/O.
The deciding factors were:
- The large, high-res screen was way prettier.
- It had access to the whole internet, including Flash.
- The kickstand was handy. (minor, but still a nudge)
Android also had 3rd party keyboards with swipe-typing years before Apple did. I think Android has always been the preferred platform for tinkerers.
Wobble or no wobble, I really want the camera tumours to disappear. Make the phones thicker or make the cameras more slender. Don't make these ugly protrusions. Those phones are 2cm thick anyway you're not fooling anyone with "thinness" when they still have those massive hunchbacks.
Optics say you’re not getting thinner cameras. Otherwise they’d do that, and all those foot-long lenses you see at sports events would just be phones.
Given thickness constraints at the lens,‘I don’t see any reason to make the rest of the phone that thick. Why? Extra battery and nearly double the weight of the phone? Empty space? Cord storage?
Sell a version of the phone that's 3 generations behind on camera tech, make it a little cheaper or make it the same price. I promise you I would buy it over your flagship if it means no camera tumor.
I am okay capturing daily moments I use my phone camera for at a lower fidelity than the bleeding edge optics and sensors offer. I have mirrorless cameras and DSLRs for photos I care to take at a good quality anyway.
Not to even mention with all the latest generation post processing done on photos automatically by phone cameras, I don't like how they turn out most of the time at this point.
As someone who prefers iphones…
- iPhone wobble is real. Mostly mitigated by a proper case. Does the iPhone get a better camera in return? Usually in my experience.
- I don’t sort my photos. The semantic search has been sufficient, and I back everything up to my NAS via an iCloud docker shim.
- Chrome/chromium is adware garbage now. FireFox is the only browser I use. The FS API does sound great though. Enviable given how annoying it is to do work on an iPhone sometimes.
> - Chrome/chromium is adware garbage now. FireFox is the only browser I use
This is actually one of the stronger arguments in favour of Android's though, you can install (real) firefox and (fully functional) ublock origin, while Apple prevents you from doing so on their non-macos products.
Safari on iOS worldwide supports extensions. There is UBlock origin lite and i.e vinagre for youtube background videos. I am still amazed google does not allow extensions on their default browser.
Microsoft Edge on Android now also supports some extensions, one being uBlock Origin. Seems just as powerful as the real thing. And has the benefit of using the Chrome engine.
Firefox on Android isn't just a reskin of chrome? When did that change?
Pixel phones have won blind camera tests last few years without Apple coming close though.
This is tricky. Most Android phones apply heavy color saturation and contrast adjustments, by default, to the images and the display itself, where iPhone tends to keep things more "raw". But, "pop" is what the average person usually prefers. It's post processing step that can heavily influence favor, unrelated to the camera. The Samsung cameras are still objectively better though, in many metrics.
My work involves showing images accurately on screens, and I always have dig through all the settings to make the Android phones just to show an image without heavy modification (for Samsung, it's 3 separate settings!). There is no such setting for iPhone, where the default experience is a (literally) color calibrated screen.
In my view Pixels have been dominating in still photos for years but their video has never been on par with iPhone. I'd put my old Pixel 3's still camera up against my iPhone 13 any day (if my Pixel hadn't bricked itself a little out of warranty like all of mine seemed to).
This is because iPhone photos are ubiquitous which causes photos from less common phones to stand out. And the less common phones likely optimize for this A/B test scenario by e.g. increasing contrast and saturation. Meanwhile Apple likely has little to no interest in optimizing for A/B tests with minor smartphone players, and instead optimizes merely for delivering satisfying photos in the widest range of scenarios.
Pixel photos are very good too, for the record. I just think the "blind camera test" is worthless.
> I back everything up to my NAS via an iCloud docker shim
As someone who refuses to pay extra for iCloud storage, can you tell me how to do this? I haven't figured out a good (read: easy) way to backup photos from my iPhone to computer/external storage (I don't want to use iTunes software cause I don't need everything syncing both ways).
Image Capture used to be the simple way, but they removed the "delete imported items from phone" option and made it default instead now, which is quite the landmine.
I can sort my photos in folders (or albums) in iOS, not sure what you mean? I can have personal and shared albums, unless you mean the fact you don’t have that in the filesystem, in which case I completely agree.
I’m a Firefox guy myself and web apps are not something I care about for privacy reasons, but I agree that not having the option is a bummer.
The camera bump never really bothered me on the iPhone or the Pixel Fold I had before this iPhone. I just don’t notice it, but then again, I also didn’t notice the crease in the fold.
I miss Tachiyomi though. Panels is nice, but I had to built a whole OPDS-proxy to a manga website to have something close to Tachiyomi. Oh, and the ability to turn off network access on a per-application basis that came with GrapheneOS (plus the security of GrapheneOS itself).
While I prefer Android and Pixels (using GrapheneOS), I have switched my family to the Apple ecosystem to have a middle ground between privacy and features, so I’m not coming from an “I love Apple and everything else sucks” background, mind you.
I just went into trades and I do a picture every other hour of my work. It really makes me mad, that I can’t properly separate this photo-documentation from my personal private pictures. It’s a complete mess now in the main folder… Next phone will be one with GrapheneOS.
Ah, yeah, that makes sense. I simply ignore the main view and go straight to the albums. In iOS 26 it defaults to your last view, so that works for me.
I use an iPhone.
1. I’m always going to have a case on my phone, so I don’t care about the camera bump.
2. You’re correct here. I mostly don’t care, but I want to have different hidden folders, which iOS doesn’t natively have. Otherwise I don’t care much.
3. Safari’s locked-down-ness is precisely why I use it.
But TBH, at this point, there’s minimal differences between iOS and Android.
I can understand point #1
- 99% of people put a case on their phone
- the more thickness you have for the camera (sensor+lens), the better you can make the optical design. (bigger sensor, more range of focus, etc)
- the camera - especially wide angle lens - must be even with surface of case, not below it (otherwise the case occludes the edges of the photo)
Uh. I used Android for 15 years and I still keep guessing wrong what the back button will do. Feels like 75% of the time it does not lead me back to what I expect and all apps have different ideas what they think it should do. I agree though that not having a back button at all is also not good.
>3: On Android I can use Chrome. Which means web apps can use the File System Access API. This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files. Impossible on iPhones.
Working as intended. Apple wants their 30% cut by all possible means. Web apps would bypass their cut.
I have to admit, my experience with #1 was quite different.
1. Put pixel on a flat surface. 2. Half an hour later, discover that the the surface wasn't actually flat, as phone the phone crashes to the ground, having been slowly inching its way off the 'flat' surface by virtue of the magically friction free back case of the phone...
No joke, by far the slipperyest phone I have ever had, and the one I slapped a case on the fastest, but not fast enough to avoid many dents.
No! They still do that? Reading this thread had me thinking back to an early Nexus phone I had back in my Android days, maybe around 2012, and here’s this post! I had no idea that wasn’t some odd one-off problem.
You could place the phone back-down on a surface a marble wouldn’t roll on, and 20 minutes later it’d magically be on the floor. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. I can’t believe they’re still doing that (how, though?! And why?!!)
It is a combination of many things.
Number 1 being moving between two system is difficult. The biggest obstacle is WhatsApp. And Meta / Facebook / Zuck is making it hard for people to switch. While it is not yet a thing in US, WhatsApp has 2B user world wide. And their life lives on WhatsApp. Less of an issue if you are on Line, KaKaoTalk and WeChat.
Number 2 is choice of phones. Android is basically Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy and Chinese Brands. I don't even think Pixel has double digit market share and Google Pixel isn't available everywhere. Their distribution channel is still appalling 10 years later. Making it pretty much the choice of Samsung or Chinese Brands.
These two obstacles are there before user could even make a choice and compare.
At one point I really thought Microsoft could get back into the game of Mobile. But after many years of waiting it doesn't seems that is a direction they want to go to.
I think the iPhone 17 coming later next month won' wobble. So that is one problem solved.
In the long game it seems we can better count on "Apple can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”
I can download an APK and install it on android. Why can't I use my iphone like I use my macbook?
An underrated question. The answer of course is twofold:
* Paternalism (Apple believes users are too stupid to be trusted to control their devices, and no amount of "I really know what I'm doing" confirmations could change that)
* Apple's biggest fear is being disintermediated by Google or Meta, the way WeChat did to phone manufacturers in China. An ability to side-load an app could allow a foothold for a powerful competitor who could wean you off of all their lock-in features in favor of an experience that would tie into a competing ecosystem.
I prefer iPhone for a miriad of little things. Can't name one particular thing, but it's just constant annoyance, when I have to use Android. I probably could write a list of 100 items, if I'd care to document it all.
That said, after Apple started drinking AI juice, I don't want to deal with it anymore. Another major annoyance with iPhones is that they ditched touch ID. Face ID just doesn't work with me at all, it's like 30% of success rate, absolutely terrible. My last phone was iPhone SE, but new models switched to this Face ID, and that's a real deal breaker for me. I even considered buying few iPhone SE phones, while they're still selling at the stores and keep them for later use, but that seems weird and they'll get obsolete with software updates anyway.
I switched to Arch on desktop and I'm going to switch to GrapheneOS on my Pixel (native Pixel Android is absolutely terrible experience, GrapheneOS is bad, but everything else is just worse).
The single thing that solidifys it for me is that every Android device I have ever used has suffered from noticeable micro stuttering.
Their current top of the line TV device drops an entire video frame every couple of seconds while watching 60fps content, cause very noticeable jerking.
Could you remind me which brand still sell a 60Hz screen on their 1000$ phone?
With an iPhone, when you click on an input field, the on-screen keyboard pops up, and you can type right away.
On an android (latest samsung flagship), the keyboard shows up but is frozen for a second before you can type.
I feel this and I’m guessing iOS is a lot more closer to the hardware, while android runs on top of Java, so there is more to process. Maybe its just me.
This must be a glitch particular to Samsung phones. I use flagship Google Pixel phones and have NEVER witnessed such a lag. I tap on an input field with my left thumb, immediately the keyboard shows up, and I immediately smash any letter with my right thumb and it does register it. So, blame Samsung, not Android.
I am not too surprised though. Samsung has a reputation for bloating their Android stack with junk.
The keyboard pops up, but is not responsive right away. This very thing happened today on my work phone (which has a bunch of MS defender/enterprise policies and apps managed by the company, forced background app updates etc, which could explain this) but I recall it also being a regular thing with all Samsung flagships I've had over the years. It's the feeling of a very slight delay (it could be a matter of as low as 200 ms) for important components which are operating-system controlled, such as the on-screen keyboard. It feels laggy, as if an app or a background process impacts the responsiveness of low level OS features.
On iOS, this was never something I had to experience. Slow apps are killed, iOS is brutal in this regard, but it protects the core OS-level components such as the keyboard. Try it out, load a few apps and try switching between them, where one of them had the keyboard uplled up. This is something regular users will likely never feel, but if you've been around since amiga 500, you'll definitelly feel it.
can you elaborate a bit on this please?
> "When I sit in a bus or in a cafe, I go through it and sort the new photos into folders."
Are you using the native application called "Files"? I tried to add photos to album via the GooglePhotos application but it will not create a new folder, right?
also this: > "web apps can use the File System Access API. This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files."
Can you share which web apps are you using? Or do you create your own web apps to work on your local files?
Thanks in advance, I'm trying to improve the photo management on the pixel because I want to create a simple way to back them up on my NAS but I'm still struggling.
> Is this a "left brain vs right brain" type of thing? Do most HNers prefer Androids?
I can also just plug my Pixel into my Linux machine (I think I needed some other program to do this on Mac, bit it's still easy enough; can't comment on windows) and drag and drop photos, videos, ebooks whatever onto the device.
This is huge for me as I work at a location with no BYOD WiFi and poor (very low bandwidth) connection speeds so I often download YT videos for offline listening later. Also worth mentioning VLC is really good on Android and merely OK on iOS.
Also very important when you're low on storage from photos, you can unload them with no hassle.
I can't do the same with my iPhone; even when I can mount it successfully, its always an arcane directory structure in DCIM sorted by date or something.
This is HUGE for me. I cannot understate how much utility I get from this alone.
1. If the phone is bare. If you have a case (or a magnetic wallet like mine) it is stable. Rumors are they are moving to a camera bar in the next release.
2. There is a filter 'not in an album' which would do what you want. The library view is the equivalent of "All Mail" in Gmail. In newer versions, this is a distinct view - they are moving albums, automatically generated collections and search to be a primary interface.
3. Both WebKit and Mozilla have said they consider the local access variant of that API to be harmful, since they do not have an adequately prominent way to surface and manage that you've given a web application permanent access to sensitive directories and files, potentially in the background via service workers. Both do support the origin private filesystem variant. Are there productivity apps direct filesystem access would be useful for other than IDEs?
> Rumors are they are moving to a camera bar in the next release.
If the renders out there are correct, it seems the camera modules will still stick out beyond the camera bar for some reason, so I'm not sure it won't wobble-- though it does look like the issue will be reduced
I used Android for many years. I got to the point where I didn’t care about or want to customize my phone anymore.
I was tired of my Android phone feeling like it was falling apart after a year.
I have enough things to think about, troubleshoot, and tinker with…I don’t need my phone to add to that list.
Which phone brand did you use where it was falling apart after a year? The rest of your comment sounds like you're saying you preferred the iPhone because it takes the option of customizability away from you entirely, instead of simply sticking to the level of customization on Android that worked for you.
Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC EVO 4g, Motorola Droid.
I used to do all kinds of things…tether to my laptop without it being supported in my data plan, torrent, etc.
I also got tired of the platform skins depending on the manufacturer.
If I’m not going to utilize the customization of Android, then I might as well go with the more consistent and refined experience out of the box.
Also iMessage! Hate to say it but my social group is primarily iOS so the experience is superior.
for my case, my S21U's back literally fall apart, not the battery issue, the glue just simply gave up
> When I put a Pixel on a table, it sits there stable
My experience with the Pixel 7 Pro is due to the very pronounced camera bump and the rounded edges, the phone would slide off tables with problematic frequency, to the point that mine just lives in its bike mount case full time now.
I have an iPhone 15 Pro. I am a semi regular Pixel user as well. I prefer the iPhone by a mile.
1. Mine sits flat too. It's in a rugged case.
2. You don't know how to use Photos properly. You create collections from the pool and name them. You can create folders as well. In fact it actually does that automatically now.
3. There's literally a files app and filesystem abstraction on iOS. I use it for moving stuff around all the time.
Add one gain:
1. All my photos are in real files in Photos.app on my desktop within seconds of me taking them. I do not have my files held ransom behind a web interface. Edits and folders are transparently replicated between both devices. When I back up my mac I have a copy of everything.
And a total loss:
Post processing on both devices for images is terrible so I use a dedicated camera.
A counterpoint: google intentionally broke the ability to backup photos in Google Photos.
Yes, takeout sort of exists, but it doesn't work. If you sort pictures into albums, you get duplicates of each photo for every album. So one copy in the automatic year album; one copy for each album you have put a photo into. My 80gb of photos triples in size, and oh, sometimes downloads fail on the zips they put them into. And since I use a mac, who has 600gb of free disk to download and extract the zips for my dedup script to run.
Additionally, they intentionally broke their api (well, just disabled it... but only for most users; it seems to still be available for Microsoft) to do incremental backup. tada!
It's the most Apple thing.
I like Apple photos in this regard on the mac. If you have the storage, you can just set it to download full copies automatically, now all my photos are stored locally on my mac almost as soon as I take the photo on my phone.
All google needs to do is make a desktop app and allow automatic download.
1 - Not deprecate the api that allowed people to run incremental backups. They took positive action to intentionally break this. If they feel the need to break the api for ginned-up security excuses, provide a working solution for incremental backup.
2 - Fix takeout not to be entirely broken and hostile to users on 2 axes: usability and reliability. Usability: emit photos once only with a separate json specifying group memberships. Like, you know, competent engineers. Because that's how they store it internally.
2a - Either (i) fix whatever brokenness in their system regularly causes zip downloads to fail; or (ii) figure out or build a reliable alternate solution. Forcing users to wait hours to a day or two to access zips that they can't download is nothing more than a symptom of total disdain for their users while checking a compliance checkbox.
I switched from Android to iOS a few years ago. I used to be deep into Android customization - custom ROMs, custom icon packs, etc. But today, I feel that iOS and Android offer pretty all the features that I could ever want. My deciding factors when I switched:
- iOS UI animations are significantly better
- access to iMessage
- Apple got around to adding their version of "always on display"
- I turn the vast majority of notifications off, so Android's better notification management stopped mattering to me
- It felt like Google kept bending Android towards iOS anyway (camera app, moving away from the 3 button navigation)
I have an iPhone because at the time I bought it I liked the size (Mini 13) and it's fine. Before that I had some Android phone and it was fine too.
I've never understood the strong emotions people have attached to these things.
About the only thing I'm looking forward to when I upgrade my phone in a couple of years is getting a better camera. Phones were pretty exciting for a while, but now? It feels like a mature segment and not much is changing anymore.
> I think for most people its just whatever you are used to.
Or in the US, it's whatever your family and/or circle of friends use, RCS or not. iMessage lock in is real (along with Facetime, Airdrop, Apple Pay, etc.)
As a, mostly, happy Android user since the HTC Magic in 2010 or 2009, the one thing I really wish they could fix (but I suspect it would never be possible) is the extremely confusing thing with intents and apps opening as views in other apps. Like when my mail app opens a PDF it looks like I am now in the PDF app and after reading for a while I completely forget that I am actually still in the mail app, and then I go BACK and instead of ending up in my PDF library view as I expected I am suddenly in my mail app. Or when I look at the running apps list there can sometimes look like I have two PDF viewers or two browsers running since some other apps used intents to open views from those apps that now exist in parallel with the real apps.
Somehow that manages to surprise and confuse me almost every day. In desktop operating systems, and, I belive, in iOS, there is no need for such thing? Opening a PDF from a mail application usually just opens the PDF viewer as its own application, or it is embedded in some nice way that does not make the entire mail app suddenly look like a PDF viewer app instead.
Unfortunately they can probably never fix that because app lifecycle and intents are connected to everything and a good fix for this would probably break everything.
It's interesting that this feels awkward to you, because when apps don't function this way it feels broken and odd to me. When I tap a PDF attachment in an email I expect the back button to go back to the email I was just viewing, not the list of PDFs on my phone. If I wanted to view all the PDFs on my device, I would start at the PDF viewer and tap into PDFs from there.
I wonder what experience made this feel more awkward for you (and conversely, why it feels more natural for me). What a weird/complex world we live in!
I kind of agree and see what you mean, but what I described happen often that I forget where I came from and have no idea that the PDF I read was opened from some other app.
It's part of what I mentioned in another comment, that BACK button can feel random. "Did I open this PDF from within the PDF viewer or from some other app? What app?" Instead of the BACK button having a predictable, known, function, it depends on some hidden state.
My pixel 8 does not stay where I put it. Without a case, it will slide right off of any slightly tilted surface.
It should be illegal to put glass on the back of a phone.
I agree so much. I get why: "Designers" consider plastic to be low-class, metal is radio-opaque, so that leaves glass as the only option even though it has zero functional advantages over plastic (glass is heavier and more fragile).
Imagine if it was a panel of plastic, and that you could easily replace it if it got too scuffed up.
A mystery about Apple is that some of its software are ridiculously bad. iTunes sync was one of them. Another example is removing iCloud sync used to wipe out the content on the disconnected devices. Screen Time is pretty much unusable. It's really hard to batch update photos in iphone. Heck, it's even hard to batch move app icons on iphone screen.
What good is optimizing for the open web when the Pixels lack a sufficiently fast processor for bloated web pages. Haven't tried the 10 yet, but Pixel 9 is sufficiently slow that you can see tearing artifacts when you scroll. This is at least two or three years behind the modern Qualcomm in Samsungs let alone Apple.
I think photos on the pixel are messed up (long-time iphone user who switched for the pixel 9 folding pro), you have all these folders that by default don't get backed up, it took me ages to understand I had to go in settings and manually check all new apps that I install for photos to back them up (and display them in my gallery). It's never clear what's the "offline" vs "online" view of google photos (and why there are other google photos apps).
With a bit of fiddling I can finally backup my whatsapp photos, but oh boy why aren't the default saner?
For Chrome, it's inconsistancies after inconsistancies. First, I couldn't read PDFs from there, now I can but I can't edit the URL when I edit a PDF, also no built-in app to read PDF, it's crazy.
As someone who started on Android but switched to Apple many many many years ago, I still find things like this that are quibbles for me, but in general my preference for Apple is because of security/privacy, battery life management, performance, update longevity, and hardware quality.
That said, I think it's worth noting that #1 hardly bothers anyone because most people put their phone in a case, and that can quickly resolve this. #2 isn't a real problem, because you can absolutely sort your photos into folders, they're call albums though, and this is a first-class workflow in the Photos app since they switched from iPhoto to Photos about 6-7 years ago. For #3, I don't want my web browser having file system access via an API and I don't use Chrome.
> This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files. Impossible on iPhones.
The thing is that web apps are always a worse experience if you have native apps. Linux and Android (and now also Windows) depend on web apps because they don't have good quality native apps. For Apple devices you can always find a top quality native app to use, so web apps aren't any concern. The only people I have met who want to use apps in their browser on MacOS are Linux refugees who were attracted by the "specs" of Apple devices. It's a bit like buying an electric car and lamenting the lack of a gearbox. You don't need it anymore.
> Linux and Android (and now also Windows) depend on web apps because they don't have good quality native apps.
I fail to see any iOS without an equivalent native application on Android when the Android application is not actually significantly better.
iOS really is a minority os here and it shows.
I had a really hard time finding a good email client for my Android tablet.
kmail has always worked great for me.
I am using mostly web apps. Not because web apps are inherently better or more convenient, but because ublock origin on firefox allow me to disable any third party tracking.
File System Access API has some serious issues. To quote Mozilla's position on the topic
> There's a subset of this API we're quite enthusiastic about (in particular providing a read/write API for files and directories as alternative storage endpoint), but it is wrapped together with aspects for which we do not think meaningful end user consent is possible to obtain (in particular cross-site access to the end user's local file system). Overall we consider this harmful therefore, but Mozilla could be supportive of parts, provided this were segmented better.
I think most users would probably be better off without this proposal.
It sounds like this would prevent users from backing up their own data, which is hard with localStorage and sessionStorage, and instead having to rely on the site owner.
However this doesn't go into any detail, so maybe they have some convenient way of being able to access these files in mind, but we'll never know. It reminds me of another shallow dismissal by Mozilla: https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/36294 https://webreflection.medium.com/mdn-doesnt-trust-you-should...
2: you can organize photos into folders but nobody does
3: I actively don’t want this nor would I want anybody I care about to have to deal with this.
But props to you for having an argument for Android aside from the usual “I have more control”
I think a lot of developers think like you, but most users of phones don't.
I don't think most people care enough to put time into organizing their photos, but would rather the phone or backend AI just find the photo they want by searching for it.
I'm not sure if most users even have a strong conception of "file" or really understand what data is physically on their phone vs "the cloud".
(The symmetry thing though probably does bother a lot of people regardless of their level of technical expertise.)
Well I’m a very technical person, and sorting photos into folders seems like a colossal waste of time to me, when I can also just search for a thing on the image, the place or time when or where it was taken, a person or animal on it; I could add it to an album, star it, add tags to it; that should be more than enough sorting facilities, I think.
Same. In fact, I don't organize much of anything that's digital, photos or files. I just use search, it's pretty good these days, and with OCR even better.
Just give me a big flag structure with robust search and I'm happy. Heck I don't even bother to organize or layout the apps on my home screen. quicker for me to search with spotlight than scroll around and find what I want.
None of those things matter to me. What does matter to me is that to get stuff off my iPhone I have to do a weird sync process and/or use iCloud. Infact, a lot of my issues with the iPhone stem from refusing to use iCloud. Can’t use Apple Pay or FindMy.
For now I use Airdrop to move photos from my iPhone to the computer but it’s very error prone and fails 1/5 times and way more often if you try to do it with more than 30 images/videos. Is this situation better in the Pixel?
Regarding the second point, while I gladly agree the current iOS Photos app is a mess, doesn't it make sense to have photos in multiple albums? If I went on holiday to Brazil and made a nice photo of my son there, I'd like that photo to be in both the "Brazil holiday" and "Beautiful photos of my children" albums, not just in one folder.
My first smartphone was a cheap Android and then I switched to iPhone about eight years ago and mostly haven't looked back.
That said, Apple's behaviour around locking out wearables from key system APIs does have me reconsidering. I found the inconsistent sync and notifications on my Fitbit to be a pretty big source of annoyance and if that continues on the new Pebble I would consider switching back to Android just for that.
I think the EU or the US (one of them) is trying to force Apple to give third parties access to the things Apple Watch has access to, so there might be relief coming for one of those continents (one assumes that the petulant child that is Apple's leadership will, after appealing to the maximum, region-gate any remedy, exactly as they did for third-party app stores in EU).
> sort them in folders.
They had that in iPhotos and dropped it in Photos. I missed it for about a month and then I got over it. I'd never sort my photos now, I can just search them or find them on the map.
If you want to sort photos by folder, no one stops you from using other apps. Google Photos itself is available.
Very, very few people want to spend time sorting all their photos, it's a fool's errand.
2/3 of your complaints seem to be down to Apple's insistence that filesystems are silly and should be hidden from users. Unless it's iCloud, then show the user 2 identical filesystems and scatter everything at random between the two. Really, it's a write-only filesystem. Apps will constantly save things there, but god help you if you ever want to find something.
> 1: When I put a Pixel on a table, it sits there stable.
That was the first thing I noticed. I assume the extra protuberance is to enable the insane zoom level but it goes full width for stability.
I have G85 Motorola - great phone (and primarily a phone/modem/camera) for the price, but it wobbles slightly.
Yes, I prefer Android, but have a M4 Air that goes everywhere with me to do actual work.
> 3: On Android I can use Chrome. Which means web apps can use the File System Access API. This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files. Impossible on iPhones.
Safari has support File System Access API since 2022. Maybe you haven't kept up but Apple has done a 180° on PWAs in the past few years
For me, it is the ability to tether my laptop to an iPhone to use the data service on my iPhone. This alone made me give up on Windows laptops and Android phones. Sure, you can tether Windows laptops to Android phones. But, it is a slow and cumbersome process. I use this functionality frequently enough that it was worth it to switch platforms over it.
When I switched off Android >5 years ago, even then, it was as simple as turning on the hotspot and connecting to it. It was no more cumbersome than any other wifi network. This was with a Pixel device and Linux laptop, and I am sure it works on Windows too.
You have obviously not compared it to how fast a Mac connects to an iphone. There is no need to turn on the hotspot. You can leave that on on the iphone. Just open your MacBook and it quickly connects to your iphone if it does not find a standard wifi.
I am very familiar with the Android hotspot feature. I used it for years. It works OK. But, it is not as fast as the Mac/iphone combo. Not even close. I am speaking from extensive experience.
It's the same now. Turn on hotspot->Connect to it on the PC. After that one step it's in your saved networks and you're good to go.
The only difference is Apple will do this automatically for you. If you open up your mac, and don't have network, you get a little pop up that says "use iPHone's connection?" and will turn on hotspot and connect automatically. Nice, but hardly any different or time saving really.
> Apple is more focused on privacy
A more precise way to put it: Apple is focused on customer control, and will fight whoever tries to touch what they see as Apple's exclusive customers.
This has privacy benefits against tracking agents, reduces functionalities against third party services (Amazon, Spotify, Google, third party payment etc.), and forbids whole use cases (e.g. non Apple backup service).
As a customer one can be happy with the privacy windfall, but we've seen again and again that it's not Apple's focus per se.
Of course it's a matter of taste, personality, culture, etc.
That's why flame wars about anything don't make sense, whether it is about Operating Systems, browsers, gaming platforms, text editors, phones, cars, coffee, or whatever else you can come up with to arbitrarily argue about.
I like that I can run whatever software I want on it.
I do not like that it is overly locked down without rooting. But still way more open than iOS, regardless of what the mobile phone lawsuits from Epic decided.
I’d love to use the android phone, as they seem to have much better and actually useful AI integration, but they are not phones but “advertising company tracking devices with tacked-on end user functionality”. Similarly, Chrome is not User Agent, it’s Corporation Agent.
To your 3: On iOS Safari, I can use extensions. That includes adblockers (uBlock origin lite) and others like Vinegar (allows youtube videos to play in background while display is off). No ads boosts productivity more than the file API - what would I need that for?
I prefer an iPhone but only because it has generally given me the best experience where I am not having to fiddle with anything.
Maybe android has changed but I made the swap, maybe a decade ago, because android had very weak boundaries on apps running in the background.
The older I get the more I value screen real state. And that foldable phone is really calling me.
Aside from that the fact that I can sideload apps. Run a VM. Work. All this with 16Gb of Ram.
And the list goes on and on.
Honestly having an iPhone these days feels more a punishment than something else.
I knew apple wasn't for me when I tried to sync and backup my stuff on something that wasn't iCloud. Its just plain unusable if you don't want to be fully entrenched in their cloud services.
Isn't that photo specific backup rather than general backups? Last I tried, Dropbox on iPhone cannot backup any files owned by other apps automatically. You'd have to export it manually to Dropbox.
Edit; It looks like this is possible on iOS for apps to access other app's file sandboxes with a somewhat recent iOS update. MobiusSync (Syncthing client for iOS) has beta support for it. But I see no mention of Dropbox adding support for anything similar
Decision 3 is a no brainer.
Apple want you to use the apps they've curated , not web apps, not apps or games from 3rd party stores etc.
I’m a former Android user (bought a Nexus One on release!) that switched to iOS many years ago and I don’t miss Android as much as I thought I might.
To me the biggest thing to reflect on is how depressing it is that we must all fit ourselves into one of two boxes. My kingdom for a flourishing mobile OS ecosystem where we can all find the exact combination that scratches our itches.
Well, we have 3 main boxes and 1 got mostly rejected (windows).
One is a worse version of OSX and the other is basically what would have happened if Linux was initially created by a huge corp.
My dream is for a top-notch Ubuntu for mobile. I'm still waiting for Desktop to catch up, so won't hold my breath.
I do t think I’ve ever met anyone who doesn’t use a phone case, all of which fix #1
I've never used a phone case. I don't understand why they make these things so small and then everyone just slaps on an extra couple mm. What's the point? If we're making them bigger anyway, at least use that space for more battery.
Anyway, the wobble is real, and sucks.
Similar, but I did use a phone case once because it came with the phone and included a pretty big feature. The LG V60 with dual screen case.
It made the phone entirely way too thick. But it was still thinner than the 2 phones I was carrying around previously.
I run caseless too and would be willing to sacrifice a few mm for better durability and no bump. Plastic is fine too. Bring back designs like the iPhone 3GS which were curved to fit your palm and if dropped would just bounce and tank it!
> When I sit in a bus or in a cafe, I go through it and sort the new photos into folders.
This is exactly the sort of thing a lot of smartphone users (including Android users) won’t do.
The point of post-PC devices is to actually be post-PC. For many, futzing around with files isn’t the answer.
For instance I gave up doing this to my email years ago. It was very liberating. If I want something, I search. I can save searches I frequently perform.
iOS’s Photos app isn’t perfect but it allows me to find stuff just fine. I can search for places (“Seattle”), for things (“bicycle”) or even combinations (“plants Vancouver”). It’s pretty neat. And you can actually add stuff to folders (‘albums’) if you really want to.
> local files
iOS has them too. There are apps which allow you to access and manage local files — including the built in file manager. It’s not as laissez-faire as Android, though. Even the file manager has come a long way, and it’s improving further in iOS 26.
tl;dr — iOS isn’t for everyone, but it’s not like it’s not well-designed with a certain audience in mind.
I recently switched to an iPhone.
I legitimately struggle to find anything better.
(Battery, perhaps?)
They also screw up the hardware.
When I use a fingerprint scanner on other phones, it works.
When I used it on my last Pixel (6 or 7, I cant remember) it failed over half the time.
How does one screw up biometrics this badly? Lack of care/QA on a $1k device.
GL with your Pixel.
Note: I'm not an Apple fan boi. I swap every couple of years so I maintain skills in both OSes.
If it was the Pixel 6, I can attest that the 6 (at least the 6 Pro XL) had issues with the fingerprint scanner. I had no issues with my 5 series (when the fingerprint scanner was on the back) but the 6 series always gave me trouble. I'd wager a guess the reason why was because it was the first generation with an under-display fingerprint scanner and they hadn't yet worked out the quirks.
I've since upgraded to a 9 series and it works flawlessly so I can assume they've figured it out some time since then.
These are all extremely minor issues. 2 and 3 are not even relevant to 99% of normal users. Very few people want to spend time manually organizing photos like that, and albums do essentially the same thing. The wobbling thing is a non-issue. It doesn't even wobble unless you're pounding down on the phone on a table.
The people at Google seem to think much more like me than the people at Apple.
There are 3 primary decisions Google made that click with me, while Apple's choices are a mystery to me:
1: When I put a Pixel on a table, it sits there stable. Because the backside is symmetrical. When I put an iPhone on a table, it wobbles.
2: When I sort my photos on a Pixel, I sort them in folders. The "camera" folder is where the unsorted photos are. When I sit in a bus or in a cafe, I go through it and sort the new photos into folders. This seems impossible on iPhones. Everything stays in the main folder forever. You can add photos to albums, but that does not remove them from the main folder. So there is no way to know which photos I have already sorted.
3: On Android I can use Chrome. Which means web apps can use the File System Access API. This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files. Impossible on iPhones.
I'm sure people who prefer iPhones have their own set of "this clicks with me on iPhones and puzzles me on Pixels" aspects?
Is this a "left brain vs right brain" type of thing? Do most HNers prefer Androids?