Why do you like Android over iOS?

oh yea and i like being able to expand memory and change my battery if i run out.

I can't believe nobody has mentioned this, so I'm going to throw it out there; the android logo is just plain adorable, an apple with a bite out of it elicits no emotional response from me at all. Koochy-koochy-koo, strange little android man.

Honestly the decision was simple for me before I even saw the OS in action. With Apple I had the choice between a 16gb and a 32gb phone. With Android, I could actually choose a phone I liked.

In India iphone is darn pricey and most of people here just buy it to show off their material wealth, in India Iphone4 retails at 800 $.

when i buy something expensive, the first thing i wanna do is make it "mine." with android os, i can do that. and when it's time to upgrade to another android phone, i can keep the same layout with an improved phone. ios is fine and yeah, the itunes is pretty cool how you just plug your phone in and manage everything that way. androids working on it. but i'm ok with manually managing my music and pics (that's what i did when i had my ipod anyways). i can't really use specs as an advantage with android phones since the iphone 4 runs much as smooth as the most advanced android phones with a last years specs. just like windows phone 7 phones. android definitely has its bugs but when/if they're ironed out, android will definitely be a lot more popular

I guess I prefer Android so that one day I can root it and increase performance by playing with apps from the Market. I cannot really judge cuz I never used iOS. They say it's perfect from the user prospective but I cannot stop to recall one nice pic I found on the web, where they were comparing iOS and Linux updates

okishead said:

I guess I prefer Android so that one day I can root it and increase performance by playing with apps from the Market. I cannot really judge cuz I never used iOS. They say it's perfect from the user prospective but I cannot stop to recall one nice pic I found on the web, where they were comparing iOS and Linux updates

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Believe me, iOS is far from perfect from a user perspective. Do not be misled.

I have iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad 2. iOS has some terrible flaws. No real multi-tasking, notification system is the WORST ever, can't do anything other than just having rows and rows of icons. I get springboard crashes frequently, my iPad 2 freezes when running certain apps, and I have to reboot every so often.

Don't get me wrong, I do like my iOS devices, but I love my Android devices.

The Android Market Place is easier to navigate and comes with more free apps than iOS doe &access features such as emulators, animated wallpapers etc without having to jail break.
I like it because apps have their own separate screen & Keyboard is better to use, and looks better & cheaper.

in this world we have choices and options. In this world we make rational and irrational decisions. Some are just smarter than others .

Here in cambodia I bought my HTCDHD for $450.00 and the Iphone 4 goes for $680.00. When the iphone3 first came out about a year ago the Iphone 4 was going for $1500.00. People buy it for the brand without using any logical reasoning. I was researching HTC phones and Android OS for months before I actually bought one. I was considering the Iphone4 at one point(i'm not a fan of iphones) because i was a BB user before and I needed a phone where internet was easily accessible and easy to navigate. I like apple products and I'm a big fan of Macs but when it comes to their phone...i was never a fan. I love the Android.

Slug said:

No, what are being expressed are opinions. The topic title asks "Why do you like Android over iOS?" and people are giving their reasons. Opinions can't, by definition, be wrong. You may not agree but calling them "lies" is unfair.

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I think there are a number of issues to consider: are we talking about stock products or jailbroken/rooted devices? If hacked, many of the short comings of either platform can be easily addressed.

Out of the box, either platform will work extremely well for the majority of users. And many of the things some people want to do require rooting and jail breaking.

For example, iFile is a great file manager but you need to be jailbroken.

I do not necessarily like one OS better than the other. I went to an iPad simply because there were no tablets on the shelves and I needed a tablet. As I work with iOS, I find many reasons why it is "better" than Android. Far more applications are available for the iDevice compared to Android.

And when you look at the amazing apps for iOS and the lack of native Android tablet apps, iPad wins. Many iPad applications are visually stunning to look at and a pleasure to use.

Will this change? Likely, but until then, in my considered opinion, no Android tablet can come close to the iPad.

jannydisuza said:

The Android Market Place is easier to navigate and comes with more free apps than iOS doe &access features such as emulators, animated wallpapers etc without having to jail break.
I like it because apps have their own separate screen & Keyboard is better to use, and looks better & cheaper.

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But the advantages of jailbreaking is you have access to dozens of "app stores" or repositories. I am not sure how many Android apps there are compared to iOS apps, but quantity does not mean quality or usability.

There might be more free Android apps compared to iOS apps, I do not know any specific numbers. And quite often a free app is a bad choice because a paid app is often better. Not always, but sometimes.

Bob

AndroidSPCS said:

Believe me, iOS is far from perfect from a user perspective. Do not be misled.

I have iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad 2. iOS has some terrible flaws. No real multi-tasking, notification system is the WORST ever, can't do anything other than just having rows and rows of icons. I get springboard crashes frequently, my iPad 2 freezes when running certain apps, and I have to reboot every so often.

Don't get me wrong, I do like my iOS devices, but I love my Android devices.

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So due tell, what JB software did you use to break your iPad 2? As far as I understand it, there are no jailbreaks for the second version just yet. So how can you run Springboard?

Not to pick a nit, but something left out of a device is not a flaw. The iPads are designed to be what they are and the fact that they will not multi-task, for example (even thoug it will indeed multi-task)
is not a flaw, it is a design decision.

Bob

one reason, and one reason alone. with Android, i will never be forced to use, in any way, iTunes. for anything. ever.

pool_shark said:

I don't care for the clustered icon view of the iPhone. I don't like that there is no way to navigate or manipulate the files, and I don't like having to go thru iTunes for just about everything.

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Step 1 - Jailbreak
Step 2 - Install iFile
Step 3 - Use WinSCP and learn about SSH
Step 4 - There you go

Ssith said:

one reason, and one reason alone. with Android, i will never be forced to use, in any way, iTunes. for anything. ever.

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You are not forced into using iTunes with an iDevice.

I tried at least three of the iTunes replacement programs and I finally went back to iTunes. Easy to use, fast, simple, no problems.

Bob Maxey said:

I think there are a number of issues to consider: are we talking about stock products or jailbroken/rooted devices?

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Looking at the starter post, I'd say the intended target was stock mobile handsets. The OP is/was looking for reasons to move from an iPhone 4 to a G2X because his friends were pressuring him to. Bad start....

What the OP (mcarlos95) should be asking himself is.... "do I prefer Android over iOS?" It doesn't matter a darn what the rest of the world thinks, he's the one who has to live with the handset. The only useful way of finding out is to get hands-on with an Android device and make the comparison himself. If, like a great many people, he still prefers iOS then I say good on him for making an informed decision. Better a happy iOS user than an unhappy Android one, imho.

Slug said:

Looking at the starter post, I'd say the intended target was stock mobile handsets. The OP is/was looking for reasons to move from an iPhone 4 to a G2X because his friends were pressuring him to. Bad start....

What the OP (mcarlos95) should be asking himself is.... "do I prefer Android over iOS?" It doesn't matter a darn what the rest of the world thinks, he's the one who has to live with the handset. The only useful way of finding out is to get hands-on with an Android device and make the comparison himself. If, like a great many people, he still prefers iOS then I say good on him for making an informed decision. Better a happy iOS user than an unhappy Android one, imho.

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Well said.

One of my gripes with equating jailbroken iDevice and rooted Android is that at face level, it's the same, but when you dig deeper, you find that the iDevice is still closed.

For example, I jailbroke the iPad and was able to SSH into it wirelessly. I put iFile on it so that I could access the filesystem from within iOS. Great, just like a rooted Android.

But the main difference here is that even though I have access to the filesystem, I cannot interact with iOS in a reasonable way from the filesystem. That folder I created? Not visible from iOS. All that music I put in my folder? Invisible to iOS. Only iFile can see it. The built-in OS music and movie player cannot. So I find a solution to transfer files to my iPad without needing shitty iTunes, but the tradeoff is that i must use iFile to see them. And iFile isn't a great launcher for interacting with the apps on the OS. This frustrates me to no end.

Furthermore, iOS intentionally obfuscates file names and locations to deter people from tinkering with files from the file system level. A single application is scattered all over the place and the bits are renamed so it's near impossible to piece it together to figure out what is what. Same goes for songs and movies stored in the filesystem. They are all renamed to gibberish; music and movies are lumped into hundreds of folders only containing 5 files each. Metadata for these files are stored somewhere else completely. On the Android side: rename/remove the apk, and the app is uninstalled instantaneously. Still think "things just work" on the Apple side?

On the iOS side, I've yet to see the flexibility of something like a recovery image and popping in and out kernels or custom operating systems, doing full image backups, or using external storage as an extension of the OS's filesystem/partition.

A jailbroken iDevice allows for very basic customizations and theming that's available on Android without root. But a rooted Android's customizability goes way beyond theming. The OS itself can be enhanced or modified. That's the beauty of OS being open source; people can see how it works at the code level and make improvements. Hardware not utilized by the factory OS can be turned on via kernel modifications. iOS is completely locked down. It also doesn't offer APIs for applications to completely access the hardware, which is why you don't see profile apps on iOS like tasker, even on Cydia. Sorry, you can't change the volume with an app on iOS; not allowed, jailbroken or not. And you can't mount the iPad or iPhone as a USB mass storage device (without installing a program on the computer you connect to).

The homebrew community for jailbroken iOS devices is much weaker than in the Android world. It's hard to find a centralized location for information. Any given thing you want to do, you have to Google, and the results are flooded with irrelevant crap. Probably because the info you seek doesn't exist. Try searching in google: custom kernel ipad.

Don't let anyone tell you that jailbreaking and rooting are the same. When you get past basic theming and customizations, they are a world apart.

Not really adding anything new that hasn't been said, but for me it's two points:

1. Open v. closed ecosystem
2. No hardware keyboard

Of course, it probably helps that I am an unashamed Google fanboi and use all their products, so Android is a much better choice for me.

Dark Jedi how did you do that to your home screen?

Is it just me or does apple new notification a copy of Android..

smokesoapbar said:

Dark Jedi how did you do that to your home screen?

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I would also love to know. Absolutely friggin gorgeous.

Bnice said:

Is it just me or does apple new notification a copy of Android..

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They copied the feature that allowed the volume control to be used as the camera shutter button as well. It's beginning to look like the best feature of iOS 5 is copy and paste.

Stuntman said:

They copied the feature that allowed the volume control to be used as the camera shutter button as well. It's beginning to look like the best feature of iOS 5 is copy and paste.

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I sometimes wonder about how people view what one company "stole" from another company. Seems reasonable to assume that some things should be done a particular way. If Company A does it first, does that mean Company B is copying the idea or has stolen the idea, even though it makes perfect sense to do certain things a certain way?

My Zio has a particular arrangement of buttons at the bottom of the device that duplicates many other cell phone's placement of buttons.

I think it often goes to those 'Look and Feel' lawsuits I absolutely despise.

Just curious.

Like what was said above. I like Android's customizability. I like that my tablet or phone belongs to me and not just that I'm allowed to use it.

What I do like about ios, is the clean/uniform look of the way the icons look on the tablet screen. I like also like the fixed icons on the bottom.

Does anyone know if there is an app for android to make samsung's galaxy 10.1 look more like an ipad?

Thanks