iPhone
or Android: Which Smartphone Should You Buy?
13 factors to consider
before you buy
When
you're looking for a new smartphone, choosing an iPhone or Android phone isn't
a simple task. While both phones offer a lot of great features, they may seem
so similar that it's hard to distinguish between them. If you look closely,
though, you'll find that there are some key differences. Thirteen of those
differences are examined here to help you decide whether an iPhone or Android
phone is right for you.
1. Hardware:
Choice vs. Polish
Hardware is the first place that the
differences between the iPhone and Android become clear. Apple is the only
company that makes iPhones, giving it extremely tight control over how the
software and hardware work together. On the other hand, Google offers its
Android software to many phone makers (Samsung, HTC, LG, and Motorola, among
others, offer Android phones). As a result, Android phones vary quite a bit in
size, weight, features, user experience, and quality.
It’s not uncommon to hear that some
Android phones regularly overheat or freeze up or that some models are simply
low quality. This inconsistency of quality isn’t an issue for the iPhone.
Apple offers users a single choice:
what model of iPhone do you want (3GS, 4 or 4S), not what company’s phone and
then what model. Of course, some people may prefer the greater choice Android
offers. Others, though, will appreciate the simplicity and quality offered by
the iPhone.
2. OS
Compatibility: A Waiting Game
If you want to make sure you always
have the latest and greatest features that your chosen smartphone operating
system offers, you have no choice but to buy an iPhone. That's because Android
makers are very slow about updating their phones to Google's latest Android OS
releases--and sometimes don't update their phones at all.
While it's to
be expected that eventually older phones will no longer have support for the
latest OS, Apple's support for older phones is generally better than Android's.
Take for instance, iOS 5, its latest OS. It includes full support for the
iPhone 3GS, a nearly three-year-old phone as of this writing. Because of that, roughly 75% of iPhone 3GS-4S users were running iOS 5 6 months after its release.
On the other
hand, Android 4.0, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, is running on just 2.9% of Android devices 6 months after its release. This is
partly because the makers of the phones control when the OS is released for
their phones and, as that linked article shows, some makers have been slow to
release it to their users.
So, if you want the latest and greatest as soon as
it's ready, you need an iPhone.
3. Apps: Selection vs. Control
While
the iPhone App Store offers more apps than the Android
Market--about 425,000 versus 250,000--overall selection isn’t the
only factor. Apple is famously strict (some might
say unpredictable) about what apps it allows and how it changes its
policies, while Google’s standards for Android are somewhat more lax. Many
developers have complained about the emphasis on free apps for Android and the
difficulty of developing for so many different phones.
As a result, not all of
the best apps make it to Android, and those that do don’t necessarily run on
all phones.
4. Gaming: A
Growing Giant
Just
a couple of years ago, video gaming--and especially mobile video gaming--was
dominated by Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PSP. The iPhone has
changed that. The iPhone (and iPod touch) has rapidly become a major player in the mobile video game market,
with tens of thousands of great games.
The growth of the iPhone as a gaming
platform, in fact, has led some observers to forecast that Apple is well on its
way to eclipsing Nintendo and Sony as the leading mobile game platform.
Beyond that,
the general expectation that Android apps should be free has led game
developers interested in making money (i.e., almost all of them, and certainly
all the major ones) to develop for iPhone first and Android second.
In fact,
due to various problems with developing for Android, some game companies have stopped creating
games for it all together.
While Android has its fair share of hit games, the
iPhone has the clear advantage here.
5. GPS Navigation: Free Wins
As
long as you’ve got access to the Internet and a smartphone, you never have get
lost again thanks to the built-in GPS and maps apps on both the iPhone and
Android. And while both platforms sport GPS appsthat
can give drivers turn-by-turn directions, only one has a high-quality, spoken
turn-by-turn GPS app that’s also free: Android.
Android users can use Google Maps Navigation, an app
that’s not available for iPhone, to get free turn-by-turn directions to
virtually anywhere. While there are lots of other GPS apps for both platforms,
there’s no equivalent free app for iPhone.
6. Flash
The
iPhone famously doesn’t run Flash--and never
will--and makers of Android tablets trumpet that their devices do.
If tablets using Android can run Flash, will Android phones be able to do the
same?
At one point it
was hard to say, but now we can: the answer is no. Or not any more than they
can now. That's because Adobe, the makers of Flash, have ceased
development of Flash for Android.
After reports
that the experience of running Flash on Android was never very good--many
reviewers have pointed out that Flash doesn’t work terrifically well on Android tablets and that it
drains batteries quickly--Adobe's decision seems to validate Apple's
original point: Flash is bad for batteries and device stability.
While its lack of Flash prevents the iPhone from
viewing some web content, many sites have alternate versions that work with the
iPhone. So, iPhone users do miss some of the web, but less and less all the time.
And, they may miss the parts of the web, but with HTML 5 set to displace Flash
and Flash's own maker admitting it can't make a version that works well on
Android, you'd have to conclude Apple wins this one.
7. Battery Life:
Consistent Improvement
Because of the greater variety of
hardware used in Android phones, Android’s battery life is more varied and, on
average, less than the iPhone’s. While early iPhone models had batteries that
required a charge nearly every day, that’s no longer true. With recent models,
it’s easy to go days at a time without needing a charge.
The story is
much more complex with Android, thanks to the large variety of models that run
it. Some Android models now have 4-inch screen or 4G LTE networking, both of
which burn through much more battery life. To get a sense of what
that means, some 4G LTE Android phones are being touted as successes because
they can work 8 hours straight without a charge. That means they don't last an
entire day, just a work day. I'm sure the faster networking is great, but
that's too much of a trade-off for me.
Add that to the battery-intensive apps Android phones
run, a charge every day (or less) isn’t unheard of.
8. Screen Size: How Big Is Too Big?
If you're looking for the biggest
screens available on smartphones, Android is your clear choice. It's not
uncommon to find Android phones with 4.3-inch screens, and the HTC One X offers
a 4.7-inch screen, while the Samsung Galaxy Note stretches the ruler at 5.3
inches. So, for sheer size, Android it is.
The question, of course, is whether a screen that big
on a phone is actually a good idea. After all, phones go in our pockets or
purses, they're held in our hands and to our faces, where huge devices may not
necessarily be a benefit. And as we've seen already, large screens consume more
battery power.
To date, Apple
has always offered the same size screen on the iPhone: 3.5 inches. Instead of
making it bigger, its new screens are better: the Retina
Display technology
makes them much higher-resolution than Android screens. Still, if it's raw size
you're after, Android's the choice.
9. Networking:
Android Leads in 4G
For
the fastest wireless Internet experience, you have to go to Android. That's
because--for now--only Android devices support true 4G LTE networking, the
wireless data standard that is succeeding, and outspeeding, 3G.
Not all Android devices have 4G LTE, and not all areas
of the U.S. have 4G LTE available yet, but if you've got a compatible device,
have an available network, and are on a carrier with 4G LTE, some Android
phones can offer blazing-fast speeds.
While iOS 5.1 changed some iPhone signal-strength
indicators to show "4G" instead of "3G," there's no true 4G
LTE iPhone--yet (click the link above to find out why). It's a virtual
certainty that the iPhone will include 4G at some point in the future, the
question is only when. When that happens, this category will be a tie.
10. Carriers: 4 vs. 3
If you like to have a lot of choices,
Android is your best bet. Just like there are many Android phones from many
companies, you can also get Android phones that work on any of the U.S.’s four
major phone carriers: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile.
On the other hand, the iPhone is only available on
AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. Both options are available through
the many small,
regional carriers in
the U.S., too
So, if you’re already a T-Mobile
customer, or just want maximum flexibility, Android should be your choice.
11. User Experience: Elegance vs. Customization
People who like complete control over
the customization of their phones, and want to be able to fiddle the lowest
level functions, will prefer Android thanks to its greater openness (one
downside of this, though, is that each company that makes Android phones can
tweak them, sometimes replacing default Android apps with inferior tools
developed by that company).
Taken as a comparison done on a features list, the
distance between Android and iPhone doesn't seem that far--and it seems that
Android is ahead in some areas. And while that's true, the experience of using
a phone, a device that's with you all day long, doesn't boil down to what boxes
get checked. The experience is driven by quality and attention to detail, how
the device works and how you feel about it. There's a reason people feel
passionately enough about the iPhone to wait hours to get one on the day of a
new model's release. This happens sometimes with Android phones, but less often
and at lesser scale.
Most people want a phone that works well, lets them
run the apps they want, and is easy to use. On that front, the iPhone wins
hands down. Apple’s intense focus on ease of use, quality experience, and
things just working (see hardware, apps, and Flash above for examples of how
Android’s openness can make life harder) makes it the clear choice for most
users.
12. User Maintenance: Storage and Battery
Apple
prizes elegance and simplicity in the iPhone above all else. That’s a major
reason that users can’t upgrade the storage or replace the
batteries on their
iPhones (it’s possible to get replacement iPhone batteries, but they’re have to
be replaced by a skilled repairperson). Android, on the other hand, is open to
user customization, meaning that users can change both phones’ memory and
battery.
The trade-off is a bit more complexity and a bit less
elegance, but that might be worth it compared to running out of memory or
needing to pay for a battery replacement equal to a large percentage of the
cost of your iPhone.
13. Cost: Is Free
Always Best?
If you’re particularly concerned with
what your phone costs, you’ll probably choose Android. That’s because some
Android phones, when paired with a new two-year contract from a phone company,
are free. The cheapest iPhone--also with a two-year contract--is currently
US$49.
For those on a very tight budget, that may be the end
of the discussion. If you’ve got some money to spend on your phone, though,
look a little deeper. Free phones are usually free for a reason: they’re often
less capable than their more-costly counterparts. Getting a free phone may be
buying you more trouble than a paid phone.
Otherwise, expect to spend $199-$299 (with two-year
contract) for the newest and best Android phones or iPhones.
14. Bottom Line
The decision of whether to buy an iPhone or Android phone
isn’t as simple as tallying up the winners above and choosing the phone that
triumphed in more categories (7-5 for the iPhone, with one tie, for those
counting). That’s because all of the categories won’t count for the same amount
to all people. Some people will value hardware or carrier choice more, while
others will care more about battery life or mobile gaming.
While it should be no surprise that the guy writing an iPhone
website might prefer the iPhone, Android phones are good choices for many
users. You’ll need to decide what factors are most important to you and then
choose the phone that best meets your needs.