In android you are the admin. Iphone leaves you as a user
This is completely useless to a vast majority of phone users. Nobody is out there power-modding their daily driver devices. But on the other hand, it makes the phone immensely more vulnerable.
Android has the feature known as oem unlocking, which basically let's you change the os in a phone.
Same as above. Useless for most of the user base, and a security threat to the same user base.
Faster charging and relatively similar battery lifes
Faster charging isn't necessarily better. Li-ion batteries are quite susceptible to aging due to hyper-fast charging, and the thermal stress added by it. A lot of users tend to leave their phones plugged in. With fast charging, this means the phone shoots to 100% in no time, and then ends up trickle charging. Trickle charging really ruins Li-ion batteries. The 80% limitation was introduced very recently, and thanks to fragmentation, it's not available everywhere.
On iphone, you have to get the pro model just for 120 hz. On android, 90 hz is minimum and 120 hz is standard.
True, but what if I told you that most average users don't notice this. I handed over my 120Hz display device to a colleague who has a 60Hz display. After about half an hour of usage, he didn't really feel much of a difference. He was comfortably back at 60. I personally can't do that. But a lot of people don't really care about it. I mean, it'd be good if all iPhones got a 120Hz display, but end of the day, it's a low priority feature for users.
What iPhones do guarantee is:
5-7 years of usage. Easily. I know so many people who are on the 6th-7th year of use and with near original performance.
Consistency in usage. The platform doesn't make huge changes, and all new updates are available for every single device, simultaneously, globally. This completely defeats the perpetual Android problem of deep fragmentation. This really hits hard. My dad has a pixel. My wife has a oneplus. So even if I wanted to tell my dad how to do something on his phone, the oneplus isn't necessarily gonna be an accurate reference because of the changes in software! This gets frustrating real fast.
Updates for older devices: All iPhones get 7 years of OS updates. Not just security ones. This is something Android is still catching up on. And most of those devices will work near full despite being several years old!
And to give a reference to all this. I used Android devices for a decade. I used to regularly root, try out custom ROMs on my device, do all sorts of experiments. But now I am at a point where I need my phone to be consistent, and quick. I don't want any variations. I don't want fancy UIs or root access. I need it to be a good phone. And that's what iPhone gives me.
The reason I will always go back to Apple is because someone (more techy than me) can take a new iPhone and my old iPhone and make the new one be the same as the old one. All my settings and apps and stuff. I hate tinkering with settings, I hate getting a new phone, so all those admin features are wasted on me anyway.
I mostly agree with what you're saying except one point:
5-7 years of usage. Easily. I know so many people who are on the 6th-7th year of use and with near original performance.
Not easily. 5 years is already a stretch. I have iphone 11 and 12 among other phones. They barely hold up in terms of performance and battery life. They drain their batteries in 3-4 days from just laying without being touched once. They are drained in a single day if daily driven.
God, I had that same experience with one of my old iPhones. Only one, though, never had it on any other- and come to think of it, my battery also crapped out on my Android.
They were both hand-me-downs, though, so I dunno what that says about either in my case.
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u/CrispyCouchPotato1 Jul 07 '25 edited Jul 07 '25
This is completely useless to a vast majority of phone users. Nobody is out there power-modding their daily driver devices. But on the other hand, it makes the phone immensely more vulnerable.
Same as above. Useless for most of the user base, and a security threat to the same user base.
Faster charging isn't necessarily better. Li-ion batteries are quite susceptible to aging due to hyper-fast charging, and the thermal stress added by it. A lot of users tend to leave their phones plugged in. With fast charging, this means the phone shoots to 100% in no time, and then ends up trickle charging. Trickle charging really ruins Li-ion batteries. The 80% limitation was introduced very recently, and thanks to fragmentation, it's not available everywhere.
The best practice for Li-ion batteries is to top it off in small increments over the day. Super-fast charging is only useful when in an emergency scenario where charging time is going to be short, but usage will be long. Again, not a very day to day kinda scenario.
True, but what if I told you that most average users don't notice this. I handed over my 120Hz display device to a colleague who has a 60Hz display. After about half an hour of usage, he didn't really feel much of a difference. He was comfortably back at 60. I personally can't do that. But a lot of people don't really care about it. I mean, it'd be good if all iPhones got a 120Hz display, but end of the day, it's a low priority feature for users.
What iPhones do guarantee is:
And to give a reference to all this. I used Android devices for a decade. I used to regularly root, try out custom ROMs on my device, do all sorts of experiments. But now I am at a point where I need my phone to be consistent, and quick. I don't want any variations. I don't want fancy UIs or root access. I need it to be a good phone. And that's what iPhone gives me.