Okay, this is not an iPhone vs Android Phone debate. I respect your right to choose whichever platform that you want.
I mean, iPhone seems so antithetical with the idea of freedom. You have to connect it to a server to even use it, all apps have to go through a centralized server, no option to install whatever apps you want, which means, you literally cannot have any third-party apps without an online account.
Most of my fellow americans seems to love the idea of freedom so much, yet just buy into a closed ecosystem with no freedom? 🤔
Like almost 60% of Americans use iPhone, kinda weird to preach freedom when you cant even have an app without a corporation’s approval. If it were any other country, I wouldn’t find it weird, but for a country that’s obsessed with the idea of freedom (so much so that they disobeyed mask mandates), it’s really weird to be using a device with zero freedom.
Not an American, but as an iPhone user who has had Android phones since cupcake before: iPhones „just work“, they are a lot less janky than Android, the ecosystem is smooth (although admittedly and intentionally less so when leaving it), they get updated for longer (and at the same time!) and apple has a much better privacy track record than the competition (a low bar).
Yes, I would prefer to install my apps from anywhere I want on the device I should own. An open source phone from top to bottom would be my dream, but Android is about as far removed from that as an iphone. Google took Linux and made it into a Frankenstein nightmare that is wholly dependent on them.
Just try to stick to open source and make your phone respect your privacy and see how far you get. Start at the usually locked bootloader, install a rom without google and see how few apps are left that do not require google services. And even then you are most likely dependent on binary blobs for the drivers, meaning the manufacturers can (and will) pull the rug from under your efforts as soon as they no longer feel like updating their shitty built of Android for the device in time.
I do not have time for that. What I have is enough money to buy a phone that comes as close as possible to my idea of safety, freedom and privacy without constantly jumping through burning hoops. If I am to be in a cage, it better be golden.
have you considered flashing custom roms on it? e/OS, LineageOS and GrapheneOS (restricted to google pixel for hardware+privacy/security reasons) are all opensource.
As soon as you start flashing custom firmware the “just works” goes right out of the window.
Graphene. Don’t try the others if you aren’t prepared for an uphill battle. Graphene just works.
I agree that graphene is the hands down best. But for people who have a device and want to switch, and that device is not a google pixel, well that severely limits your options.
Just to say. I recently jumped from Android and the iPhone didn’t just work like I remember they did. Two bugs I had were adding comments on Reddit using Firefox. The keyboard would come up but my text would be off screen so I couldn’t see what I was typing. This could be a Firefox bug but it was still very weird and not one I’d seen on Android.
One bug that used to get annoying is I’d unlock the phone and when going to type, the volume would be at max briefly before going back to the volume the phone was set at. This caught me out a few times in the middle of the night.
I couldn’t get on with iOS and felt that after not using it since the iPhone 4S that nothing had really improved. Also the lack of being able to use uBlock Origin on Firefox was awful. It’s been a while since I browsed the web without an adblocker and I really hated having to do something every day. Eventually I sold the 16 Pro I had and went back to my Pixel 8.
The one thing I remember being great about the iPhone was when you upgrade you restore the backup and the phone just works. With Android you typically have to go around and login to all the apps again. Again a developer issue but certainly easier on iOS.
This is likely directly related to the fact that Apple blocks use of any other web renderer than Webkit based on App store guidelines.
This means neither Chrome nor Firefox on iOS are actually the normal versions. Normally Chrome uses Blink and Firefox uses Gecko, but they both use Webkit on iOS.
Except in the EU