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Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

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Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#131

Post by lumb63 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #75

It's been mentioned before in other articles, but I don't think it can be understated how much iMessage makes it difficult to be the "odd man out" if you're on an Android phone. And it's not just about teenagers, and it's not about "green bubbles". I recently went on a vacation with friends, 4 other folks on iPhones and me on an Android. Our group chat experience almost made me consider getting an iPhone. The inabili…

Agreed. This was a hard one for me to accept, because being in tech, I am fully aware that iMessage is a software gimmick to lock people into the ecosystem. There is no reason, technically, that things have to be like this, and I dislike Apple strongly for this. But it works, because here I am on my iPhone.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#132

Post by MBCook »

tomtheelder wrote: post #85
Workaccount2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long time Google fanboy here, and I'm honestly a hair's breadth away from buying an iphone 13. I have had nexus/pixels phones since the gnex. I have evangelized android to for almost as long. I did ground work for google by pushing people into google's services. I have a day 1 pixel 6 pro. I pay for cloud storage and yt premium. But to me google is just falling apart. I feel like they have lost their technology drive…

I switched recently, and honestly have found the experience on iPhone to broadly be worse. There are a few things that are a bit nicer, but the downgrade in the notifications system alone just tanks the experience. That said I switched for mostly privacy reasons, so won't be going back.

I don’t think I’ve ever used android for more than about 30 seconds on someone else’s phone. I wasn’t aware there was a difference in the notification system. What makes android better?

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#133

Post by afterburner »

freedomben wrote: post #69
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience if you stay on the Google flagship/Pixel line then everything is great. Pretty much every other vender is garbage and will screw you and you'll have the experience you're talking about.

I typically tell people if you want an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison, you can't compare iOS to Android. You need to compare iPhone to Google Pixel. If iOS was open source and available for 3rd parties to roll-their-own, you wouldn't take a cheap "iPhone" maker and compare that against the latest Pixel Pro, so the reverse shouldn't be done either.

It seems though in the latest iteration at least, the Pixel 6 is actually worse than the Samsung S22. And frankly I've often felt like Samsungs were the flagship Android phones, not Google's phones.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#134

Post by guitarbill »

nextos wrote: post #50
lawl wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pick your poison. The only reason I'm still on android is because at least I can (still) have root there. I'm saying still because of safety net. But if apple let me have root, i'd probably prefer an Apple over Google. Mobile phones and their user hostility is a cancer. I'm seriously considering using a full GNU/Linux handheld for mobile things i can do in a browser, and keep an android phone for app garbage tha…

Call me crazy, but I think there is room for a third platform. Especially if this platform was bootstrapped in a smart way, for example with an emulation layer to be able to run applications from Android. Or perhaps WebAssembly will make it viable to do more things from a (mobile) browser. I really miss the N700-N9 series with Maemo and Meego. It was so elegant and simple.

Windows Phone was a shame, but completely Microsoft's fault. I liked the Windows Phone UI/UX, and the irony is that if they had've invested more into something like Xamarin, they could've likely had extremely compelling tooling for big enterprises (like banks) to support Apps on different platforms. But even Skype for Windows Phone took ages to actually land.

Or emulate Android apps, like you said. That solves the initial issue of having no apps. It seems like Google Fuchsia will likely take this approach. Although it isn't clear if another platform could do this, without a lot of goodwill from Google - and good luck with that.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#135

Post by jl6 »

What I find quite interesting amongst my colleagues is that they are deeply invested/locked into either the Google ecosystem or the Apple ecosystem. I know zero people who have recent experience of using both iOS and Android - they’re either in one camp or the other, and have only superficial knowledge of what it’s like to use the other. It feels like two parallel universes running side by side, just out of reach of each other.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#136

Post by coolsunglasses »

lumb63 wrote: post #7

I’m not surprised. I used Android devoutly, had a Galaxy S4, then an S8 when that started showing its age. I upgraded to an iPhone 12 when AT&T ran the promotion to get a free one. I wanted to keep liking Android. The amount of time I spent arguing vehemently that Android was superior made the switch hard, but several factors came into play for me: - Extremely slow and fragmented upgrade of OS. This resulted in subst…

My iPhone 13 Pro Max has 120 hz, so that feature is available. I don't mind that it was Android only for a bit, very little on that platform can actually render a non-static UI at that rate.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#137

Post by drdec »

throwawayboise wrote: post #70
rejectfinite wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Extremely slow and fragmented upgrade of OS. This resulted in substantially older features and security patches. Samsung phones does 4 years of updates now. - Privacy. iMessage’s encryption (though I stand by that it is gimmicky to only offer for iPhones, and I despise that) has a serious network effect. Apple is also far more transparent in what data they use, how they use it, etc. iMessage? Everyone here (Scandin…

Yep. There is one reason and one reason only I am on Android: price. A mobile phone does not have enough value to me to pay for Apple's least expensive phone.

Exactly. I was recently talking to a guy who had had his iPhone stolen. But it was no big deal - he had replacement insurance and the deductible was only $200. Which is more than I have ever paid for a phone in my life.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#138

Post by galkk »

I'm very long time android user (since original galaxy s). Bought my first iPhone this year (13 pro max), and have 0 regrets. It just works. Great screen, great camera, I still use most of Google apps on it: maps, calendar, mail, assistant

I lost my drive to tinker with os/apps long time ago, so the fact that everything is quite friction less makes me happy.

On Android I constantly had issues with lastpass, dji asks you to download apk to fly drone etc.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#139

Post by pmoriarty »

hellisothers wrote: post #59
lawl wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pick your poison. The only reason I'm still on android is because at least I can (still) have root there. I'm saying still because of safety net. But if apple let me have root, i'd probably prefer an Apple over Google. Mobile phones and their user hostility is a cancer. I'm seriously considering using a full GNU/Linux handheld for mobile things i can do in a browser, and keep an android phone for app garbage tha…

What does having root on your phone improve for you?

I use an app called X-Privacy which can block specific permissions in other apps.

For example, I see no reason why a calculator app needs access to my contacts, phone, or microphone, and X-Privacy will let me disable permissions to those specific resources for the calculator app while still letting me use it. As a bonus, it'll also put in fake data in to these apps when needed, so the apps continue working, thinking they have access to my data but they don't.

Something like this should be standard in every smartphone, but obviously phone OS makers don't value privacy enough, and even require root in order to allow you to do this.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#140

Post by brundolf »

QuikAccount wrote: post #48

I've been heavily considering getting an iPhone because of how terrible the Android experience but my problem with Apple is that you are either fully in their ecosystem of you aren't a worthy enough customer in their mind. I have no desire to use iCloud or Apple mail or have an AppleID. I just want a small phone that gets updates, has maps, and has a decent music app.

I’m a happy Apple hardware customer for all of my devices, and while you will want to have a (free) Apple ID/account for the App Store if nothing else, you don’t really need to use any of their real services. I have iCloud mostly turned off, I use Apple Pay and Apple Music because I like them, but that’s all. Most of their paid services are garbage and I use alternatives.
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