iPhone VS Android: What You Need to Know

iPhone or Android? The age-old debate, legends say it is the question that must not be answered, and we won’t. I am not going to tell you which is better. Both options have their advantages and disadvantages — even the most Apple obsessed fanboys and fangirls know that.

ToiPhone VS Android: What You Need to Know

I am here to tell you about some simple differences that matter the most to the average smartphone user. Before we do, let’s get something out of the way. iPhone is a phone while Android is an operating system. What I am going to be comparing here are iOS and Android. That is important because Android is not just one phone. It is thousands and thousands of different phones, and most of them have their version of Android. Meanwhile, iOS is only run on Apple devices. Okay, let’s roll.

 

First and Foremost, the Price

This one is quite obvious as everyone knows that Apple products are not the best choice for when it comes to affordability. The cheapest of their recently announced iPhones starts at $750 and the iPhone SE — arguably their best budget phone which cost around $400 —  has now been discontinued. In contrast, some Android phones cost as little as $100, and if you do not want to compromise the quality, there are still some brilliant options that cost half the price of an iPhone and are just as good.

 

Updates

The number of phones that run on Android is not always a good thing. Usually, only the more prominent brands that manufacture Android smartphones keep the OS up-to-date. The majority of Android devices are running on older versions. It poses potential security risks. Even if you do get the latest Android version, you might get it late. In contrast, since Apple needs to keep an eye only on a handful of devices, iPhone users get their updates right away.  The only exception is older models that are not compatible with the new iOS.

 

Customization

When it comes to customization, Android hits this one out of the park. From Wallpapers to Icons to Widgets, you can customize almost everything on your home screen and lock screen. You can download Icon packs from Google Play and apply them using a Launcher. You can even create your own Icons with Icon Pack Studio, and the same goes for Widgets. Of course, that might make you realize that graphic design is not actually that easy and you are very untalented; or maybe that’s just me.
Unfortunately, Apple is not nearly as customizable.  You can’t do much unless you are willing to jailbreak and if you do decide to jailbreak that will just make your iPhone open to any and all malware; so maybe those free Candy Crush lives aren’t worth it? (they are, they absolutely are)

 

Downloading Media

If you have an iOS phone and want to download a song or an episode of a show online and maybe it is not on iTunes or Spotify or you don’t have Netflix,  good luck with that. Maybe you want to download a song or some other audio and set it as your ringtone. Yeah, you can’t. Now, of course, it is always better to pay artists and not pirate and we are definitely not endorsing pirating. But if you were to hypothetically want to download a song from a random website online, you would not be able to do that on iOS, unlike Android. Same with movies and shows, maybe you do not particularly want to pay four bucks to rent the Bee movie on iTunes so that you can watch it later offline, well you’ll have to. Unless you have an Android phone of course.

 

Apps

The App Store has over 2 million apps while Google Play has almost 4 million. It might sound like an advantage for Android at first, but only at first. Apple is much more strict with what goes on the App Store than Google is with Google Play. This might sometimes lead to security risks. Besides that, developing apps for Android can be quite a hassle. You have to account for many different devices that have their own versions of Android. Developing apps for Android is also more difficult and expensive than for iOS. For that reason, some iOS developers might not even be interested in developing Android versions of their apps.

 

Once again, both have their benefits, and this article only scratched the surface. I can only wish you good luck with choosing a smartphone in today’s ocean of options. My last advice is — do more research before you make the final decision.

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