Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What do you do on an Android phone that cannot be done on an iPhone?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 233 posts

Re: Ask HN: What do you do on an Android phone that cannot be done on an iPhone?

#21

Post by Nextgrid »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #17
zubair_io wrote: post #9

Real Firefox and Real Chrome. The iOS versions is just a wrapper around the painfully bad mobile Safari.

I thought Safari had the best power to battery consumption ratio of all the browsers. I certainly notice it on desktop where I switched to Safari last year, but that's pretty massive on mobile. Safari seems to take this seriously instead of the race to the bottom on performance and resource consumption. I also like features like how Safari extensions are now 1st class apps and its declarative content blocker (1Blocke…

It does indeed win in terms of performance, however the situation in terms of add-ons is depressing. There’s basically no add-on API other than a very limited content blocking API (which doesn’t allow you to do powerful things like uBlock Origin can).

(full disclosure: I am a happy Safari user, and the content blocking API is good enough that I tolerate it but I do miss uBlock for sure)

Re: Ask HN: What do you do on an Android phone that cannot be done on an iPhone?

#22

Post by davnicwil »

One probably very niche thing is availability of a terminal along with full linux-y environment (including package manager for all the usual tools) on Android via the termux app. Pretty useful if you want to, for instance, make minor code changes (in vim or similar) or deployments on the go.

I googled around out of curiosity if such a thing exists on iOS and turned up nothing, which seems reasonable considering the more open nature of Android vs iOS - could be wrong about this though, happy to be corrected.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do on an Android phone that cannot be done on an iPhone?

#23

Post by blissofbeing »

I am not affiliated with these apps, I just use them all the time and are apps you probably won't be able to find apps like these on the app store.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.clownface....

- map the sides of your phone to actions like slide volume and brightness.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.synapse.al...

- batch your notifications to specific times of the day.

All in all I find android apps just offer more functionality for the power user.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do on an Android phone that cannot be done on an iPhone?

#26

Post by hombre_fatal »

Nextgrid wrote: post #21
hombre_fatal wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Safari had the best power to battery consumption ratio of all the browsers. I certainly notice it on desktop where I switched to Safari last year, but that's pretty massive on mobile. Safari seems to take this seriously instead of the race to the bottom on performance and resource consumption. I also like features like how Safari extensions are now 1st class apps and its declarative content blocker (1Blocke…

It does indeed win in terms of performance, however the situation in terms of add-ons is depressing. There’s basically no add-on API other than a very limited content blocking API (which doesn’t allow you to do powerful things like uBlock Origin can). (full disclosure: I am a happy Safari user, and the content blocking API is good enough that I tolerate it but I do miss uBlock for sure)

I added to my comment just as you responded but I ended up looking at the declarative content blocker as an upside after developing my own. Have you tried 1Blocker X? I haven't missed uBlock Origin when using Safari. Though I can certainly appreciate the power of an onRequest(req) at-runtime API that you definitely lose with declarative rules.

But for example I have a script that can convert Adblock format rules (like Easylist) into content blocker rules.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do on an Android phone that cannot be done on an iPhone?

#27

Post by redhale »

1) Notifications are much better. Taking direct action to read and archive/delete emails directly from the notification is great. Not sure if iOS has this yet, but last time I checked iOS Notifications were primitive by comparison.

2) Direct sharing to/from ANY app. iOS is frustratingly limited. On a similar note, being able to assign default apps for specific types of content.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do on an Android phone that cannot be done on an iPhone?

#28

Post by jmhyer123 »

I too noticed and was very annoyed with the UI sluggishness of my Android phones (LG something or other and Samsung S7) but decided to give it one last chance. I picked up the Pixel 3 with stock Android and I've never looked back. It's smooth and fast and hasn't seemed to slow as time goes by which was a huge problem with my last two devices. There's such a huge difference between stock Android on decent hardware and "custom" Android (LG and Samsung both apply themes, among other things, to their Android flavors to make it unique) on any hardware, even the best.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do on an Android phone that cannot be done on an iPhone?

#29

Post by taneq »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #5

I can buy Android phones that do nothing to stop me from rooting them or unlocking the boot loader (OnePlus). I have to fight Apple for root access, and frequently I will lose. You can do anything on an Android phone that requires root access. None of that is possible on iPhone unless it's been out for quite awhile.

"Install a ROM that respects my privacy" is right up there at the top.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do on an Android phone that cannot be done on an iPhone?

#30

Post by Arubis »

davnicwil wrote: post #22

One probably very niche thing is availability of a terminal along with full linux-y environment (including package manager for all the usual tools) on Android via the termux app. Pretty useful if you want to, for instance, make minor code changes (in vim or similar) or deployments on the go. I googled around out of curiosity if such a thing exists on iOS and turned up nothing, which seems reasonable considering the m…

iSH (https://ish.app/) works well for this, though it's in a public TestFlight beta currently.
Post reply on HN