Comment by 650

15 hours ago

I used to love Apple because they were so far ahead of the game in terms of UX and hardware. They have dropped the ball so much recently with all these UX mishaps from Apple Glass to most of the bugs in the post that affect me. I am more than willing to switch to Android or some other device regardless of price, but haven't found one that is close to equivalent yet. I worry it'll be a few years before something comes close to the battery life + screen quality + camera quality + decent software/security of iOS.

In the context of laptops, I would agree (MBP's hardware just outclasses everything else, even if I prefer Fedora over macOS).

However, for phones, this just doesn't shake out. The Pixel 10 Pro for instance, has:

* A battery that outlasts the iPhone 16 Pro by an hour

* A slightly better display (higher brightness for outdoor use, higher PPI, higher color accuracy, same refresh rate)

* A better camera for still photography, especially HDR and low-light (although admittedly worse for video)

  • The problem (for me) isn't the hardware. The Pixel 10 Pro is arguably a great phone, and I had a 9 Pro Xl for a short time before going back to iOS and I enjoyed it while I had it.

    But what I found was I was just trading Apple's quirks for even worse Android quirks, all while losing all the nice ecosystem integrations with my macbook and iPad.

    App quality on Android is still hit and miss. Companies still don't put nearly as much effort into their Android apps as they do their iOS apps. Even my banking app was a laggy, buggy mess on Android compared to the iOS version. Heck, even Google's own apps are better on iOS.

    Plus, until Google decides to offer E2EE for their cloud services like Apple with advanced data protection, it's a non-starter for me and I really don't feel like going full self-hosted just so I can run Android.

    I want to like Android again, but there's just nothing there right now that definitively makes it a better experience for me despite Apple's flaws.

  • >MBP's hardware just outclasses everything else

    No it doesn't. Battery life isn't that much greater when you use the laptop. Meanwhile, if all you are doing is browsing web or watching youtube, an android phone with the same size battery lasts longer.

  • I loved my Pixel 10 Pro until it broke just a week after purchase (screen went unresponsive all of a sudden and I needed to learn to factory reset it).

    Pixel Android doesn’t support disabling the control center when locked in lock screen, and widgets are also available.

    I saw all of that reported just recently too, so obviously not a single issue. The screen issues are known across several Pixel generations. The screen lock since 2013.

    I don’t know whether I’m going to touch anything Pixel in the next couple of years, it’s not mature enough yet.

  • Admittedly the hardware of the pixel 10 pro is very nice, but it still runs android which is the main issue for me. Also I love magsafe

  • Why are you comparing the latest Google flagship phone with a previous generation iPhone? The iPhone 17 is better than a Pixel 10 on most if not all fronts.

    • There’s little hardware improvement in iPhone 17 over iPhone 16. Arguably only the move from titanium to aluminum in the casing is a tangible performance enhancement (better cooling).

      The software is the same.