US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone • Hacker News Board

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#641

Post by dawidpotocki » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 2:32 AM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #346

pmontra wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you could use any app asking WhatsApp, Telegram, Skype, Signal or even Messenger (is it still a thing?) They work well with video. WhatsApp wouldn't be running Europe if its videos were bad.

Telegram is by far the best one for video/photo quality because it doesn't do any (visible) compression, meanwhile WhatsApp and Messenger (yep, still exists) noticeably degrades the quality.

Telegram has very visible compression, especially when you send screenshots with text.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#642

Post by ethbr0 » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 2:37 AM UTC

s3p wrote: post #383

ethbr0 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dichotomy to me is in the hardware vs software divide. Apple mobile devices are absolutely luxury hardware . Apple mobile OS/software is... functional to a most generous description.

AirDrop? Handoff? Fully encrypted iCloud storage, a first-of-its-kind offering that no other mass market OEM has been able to match? Apple pay leading the market and getting mobile vendors to literally adopt contactless payments for the first time? Mobile video chat that took Google years to replicate? The list goes on. I don't know how one could say their software isn't powerful. It is.

Shipping features that only work in a first party hardware ecosystem simplifies development a lot.

Of those, only Apple Pay has a touch point with non-Apple products, no? And enabling it was more business bludgeon than software feature.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

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Post by wvenable » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 2:39 AM UTC

skydhash wrote: post #629

wvenable wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is totally in the iOS ecosystem and I'm fully in the Samsung ecosystem and they both have their pros and cons. Pros on Android: My work profile is isolated from my personal profile, I can just copy movies onto the device and play them with VLC, automatic routines are better, audio controls are much better, the back button, ad blockers, real alternative browsers, etc. The problem with long term iPhone users is…

As a technical user (I was rooting my phone to get upgrades and remove bloatware and I was jailbreaking out of iphone), I got bored out of doing customization. I just want something to work and do the stuff I need to do. If I need to tinker, I will buy something to tinker with, but I don’t want that in other areas of my life. I don’t want to modify my fridge or my washing machine (I know what I should learn to do it)…

My Android customizations are all in the direction of minimalism. I turn off ever-present icons that provide no useful information. I turn off anything I don't need and keep it small and simple.

One thing I did literally 2 days ago: I've been using my phone for navigation a lot more this month than ever before but having the maps audio go through the Bluetooth to the car is awful in my car. For media and calls it's fine but for navigation it's just not a good experience. So I've been manually flipping the app audio to my phone every time I use it. I finally got fed up and created a routine to automatically set the audio for maps to the phone whenever it's connected to the car and, if also plugged in, launch maps automatically. Took only seconds to setup (should have done it sooner) and now I'm less annoyed whenever I have to use my phone for navigation.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#644

Post by sdwr » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 2:52 AM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #620

QuarterReptile wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Android market is way way harder to pin down than the iPhone market. Manufacturers have been walking out software support horizons in the Android world, which should have an impact. To the extent that Android users have shifted toward Samsung and Pixels, that would also tend to walk out the software support window of the Android cohort. And finally, last year there were crazy sales that I don't think have been as…

Another sign of the HN bubble. Google only has lifetime sells of 27.6 million pixels over 6 generations https://www.phonearena.com/news/pixel-7-pro-6a-google-best-s... Apple is estimated to sell twice that many in a quarter https://www.statista.com/statistics/299153/apple-smartphone-...

Well I bought 1.5 pixels and 0 iphones, so, uh, add that to the data!

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#645

Post by kingrazor » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 2:55 AM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #598

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say "with much worse support"? That's not the case anymore, at least for Pixels.

Because it’s true? The pixel 6a will get 3 years of updates and 5 years of security updates. On a phone that was released 12 months ago. So it hasn’t been tested yet. Plenty of time for google to renege on that. The Pixel 6a is at least a cheaper phone. But the Pixel 7 are flagship prices for the same support. iPhones have been getting this level of updates since almost day one. The last iPhone I ran into the ground…

This is exactly why I own an iPhone. I don't even personally like apple as a company. I don't like Mac computers. There are things that really irritate me about iPhones, but I use them anyway because of how long they get updates for.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

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Post by ezconnect » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 3:00 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #539

Loveaway wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No mate, people value themselves and get the best thing they can have. Smartphones are so essential now and used 24/7, don't cheap out on it. You don't cheap out on food either. Nothing to do with status. Not all about Apple either, there are nice premium Android phones as well. What are you doing, saving for a golden tombstone?

>You don't cheap out on food either Except many people do. Friend of mine is a chef and likes to quip that people will pour the most expensive oil into their car and the cheapest into their pan. The median American takes home like 35k a year, they're not saving anything for their tombstone, they're lucky if the house is paid off by that time. Yet you see a lot of people run around with the newest top line phone. That…

I think the wide variety of payment scheme is the main reason for buying luxury or premium items from lots of consumers. The monthly payment is so low they don't feel it unless they lose their jobs.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#647

Post by aio2 » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 3:07 AM UTC

collinc777 wrote: post #94

In the US, having an Android is one of the biggest social status negative signals I can think of. I used to have an android and when I'd meet people the primary thing they'd remember about me was that I had an android. Their blinders were up after they had that information. I think phones like the Galaxy line might be better than iPhones, but the experience of owning an iPhone far exceeds owning a Galaxy.

From experience, the type of people who judge you on that aren't the ones worth dealing with.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#648

Post by amf12 » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 3:19 AM UTC

121789 wrote: post #337

lolinder wrote: post #278

The link should really be to the original report [0]. This 55% is iPhone's share of phone shipments in Q2, not the number of users of the respective phones at any given time. In other words, fewer people are buying smartphones than were before, but Apple saw less of a hit to their numbers than everyone else did. Contrary to existing comments here, this stat doesn't appear to indicate that people are switching from An…

i worked a little in this space in the past. what we learned was that most people don't switch, but if they do, it's overwhelmingly in the android->ios direction and not the other way around (this is in the US). you may see some anecdotal evidence otherwise but on aggregate that was true

Anecdotally, some part of it is also the hype which makes people who use a mediocre Android switch to the iPhone. Once in the ecosystem its significantly harder to switch back. All of my friends who use a high-end Android haven't switched and don't want to.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

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Post by mlinhares » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 3:25 AM UTC

tmpX7dMeXU wrote: post #544

zh3 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm constantly amazed by how people spend so much of their income on Apple products; it's almost like their lives are ruled by the status they feel an iPhone brings (and the consequential sacrificial purchasing). It likely varies by area and average income, here it's almost an inverse correlation - the less-well off kids at school tend to have parents on iPhones and the comfortable parents are on whatever works for t…

I’m astounded by the pervasiveness of this meme, given its origins are really from a Mac vs PC internet flame war era that I would like to think we’ve moved past. I’m astounded by the fact that one can imply with a straight face no less that over half the market are status-driven dorks that have no legitimate reason to use an iPhone over an Android phone, the obviously superior for all people in all circumstances cho…

People just like to think they're special "thinking out of the box" rebels because they use android when the equivalent android phone costs the same as an iphone. There's very little price difference between the models for the main brands (you can off course find cheaper alternatives with their own issues) but if you get an iphone and a samsung side by side odds are they're at the same price range.

And as a professional developer that uses a mac (that is by far the best bang for the buck if you're not into gaming) it just makes sense to pick an iphone instead of an android due to the ecosystem value. I doubt many people in developed countries care that much about the fact that you use an apple device or not, that's the kind of shit you'd expect from developing nations like Brazil (where I'm from), where they do remain a status symbol mostly because the population in general is still pretty poor.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#650

Post by Izikiel43 » Sat, Jul 29, 2023, 3:34 AM UTC

darksaints wrote: post #581

Izikiel43 wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a friend telling me why use iPhone instead of Android: "I already deal with problems at work, I don't want to deal with problems with my phone" Truer words never said, I also had several androids over the years which went crazy after some time, switched to iPhone, never an issue again.

I’ve used both, currently on an iPhone, and I can’t understand this sentiment at all. Both are shitty in different ways.

Android gets shittier with time in my experience, phones get buggy and unsupported in like 2 years. iPhone software works consistently, and the phones are supported for like 5/6 years by Apple with software updates.