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I install lots of apps from F-Droid, which is an alternate app repository for exclusively free software. There's nothing like it (and can be nothing like it) on iOS, and while I know there are some free software apps in iOS, they're much harder to find there.
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"Install a ROM that respects my privacy" is right up there at the top.
I'm attempting to do that, but I've bumped up against an issue in which I have no radio access from the custom rom. Need to be picky with the hardware, and the stuff most likely to be supported is the most expensive.
Try both - if you find that you like the iOS UI and experience, I’d say use an iPhone; otherwise, get an Android and customize it to your liking.
- Basic stuff works equally well on both. You can reply to notifications now on iOS (since a few versions back), you can have a global content blocker (I use 1Blocker, which works great). Sure, all browsers embed the same WebKit engine, but that’s not the same as all browsers being literally Safari. Firefox works fine and I sync most of my stuff there.
- If you’re a dev, side loading is equally easy on both platforms, but being a dev on iOS requires a Mac. (And money; IIRC apps sideloaded from free dev accounts only work for 7 days before requiring a reinstall?)
- Get an iPhone if you want something to use for a long time; iPhone 6 (2014) is still perfectly viable for most things and runs the latest iOS 12. (Custom ROMs exist for old Androids too but those can be iffy sometimes)
- For customizability, I run Pythonista on iOS, a paid (but worthwhile!) app that puts a full Python interpreter on your phone. You can install a shell environment (I use Stash) and interact with all the iOS APIs. You can sideload whatever custom code you want and run it. Heck, it even supports CoreML and NumPy, so I even used it to train and test ML models right on the phone recently.
- The hackability of Android is nice; some of my work involves replacing kernels to get at low-level hardware, and that’s absolutely impossible on iOS.
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.
The default app thing could be improved for sure.
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I'm attempting to do that, but I've bumped up against an issue in which I have no radio access from the custom rom. Need to be picky with the hardware, and the stuff most likely to be supported is the most expensive.
Sucks. :/ I assume you've installed the vendor.img and flashed the radio-[phone model].img from the stock package for your phone model?
Have a fully functional ad-blocker. Firefox + uBlock Origin is the only thing that makes mobile browsing tolerable. IPhones don't let you install add-ons in browsers, so you're stuck with rule-based content blocking, which has caps and can't do some of the things add-ons can do. I'd love to switch to an iPhone, but this feature is a deal-breaker for me.
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Sucks. :/ I assume you've installed the vendor.img and flashed the radio-[phone model].img from the stock package for your phone model?
Possibly not. I was reading somewhere that I should actually get an older stock rom image and flash that first, but no I just flashed the rom zip and that was it.
(install TWRP and custom ROM package)
> adb push vendor.img /sdcard/
(Go to 'install' in TWRP and install vendor.img)
> fastboot flash bootloader bootloader-bullhead-bhz31b.img
> fastboot flash radio radio-bullhead-m8994f-2.6.41.5.01.img
That's the quick version of how I set mine up and it works. :)
Things I do that are only possible in Android: 1) I script some behaviors using Tasker. One example is that I have a script that takes it out of vibrate mode and turns on the ringer if I'm home (GPS), the phone is plugged in, and it's between the hours of 9am and midnight. 2) This requires root, so it might not be worth the trouble for you, and it's not available on every phone. But, I've managed to make my default home screen completely blank. My primary "launcher" is an app called "Pie Control", which doesn't appear unless you touch an area of the screen, which you can set. I can also swipe up to get a screen with all of my apps - The default behavior of Nova Launcher.
It's not just customization. Really, the sky is the limit when it comes to what you want the phone to do. With an iphone, the limit is the constraints of Apple's design.
Having a hardware keyboard. I just can't get away with it so I'm still using my 3 year old BlackBerry Priv.
Blackberry KEY2 is quite good, with timely security updates from both BB and Google.