genuinely curious as to why people choose that brand, are alternatives really that bad?
As I see it:
- you pay for the hardware and software, which is fine, but
- if you want to upgrade the OS, you have to pay once again, but this doesn’t work if your hardware model stops being supported. Why pay for something with a limited life expectancy?
- you cannot get rid of bloatware, only hide it
- software is made specifically to be only compatible within their ecosystem. If you want to build up on existing software and hardware, you either stay in their system and keep paying them or start anew with a freer alternative.
- I find it ridiculous they use fancy names to name even their support staff instead of just calling it support staff. Why make things complicated?
- I don’t understand why they use pentalobe screws instead or regular ones (with a line or a cross section)
Feel free to correct me, I may be misguided.
No specific answer to every bullet point, but here it is. For reference, the last iPhone I owned before my current iPhone 15 was a 4S, so you can say it had been a while. I still like Android very much, and believe in the importance of there being a thing like AOSP, and I have used Android way more than iOS in my life. I used to be big into rooting/ROMs. IMHO, both stock Android and iOS were incredibly lacking as OSes, but Android at least had rooting and ROMs, and it was much less of a hassle to do it with that than iOS. I still fondly remember my bright red Nexus 5 w/ ParanoidAndroid and a sexy grey/black/red theme. Oh, and Xposed tweaks were neat too.
Biggest reason for switching for me was Android Auto. It’s either complete garbage, or my car’s head unit sucks, but I kept getting random disconnects multiple times per drive. Android Auto just stopped, then reconnected, like if I unplugged and replugged the cable. I tried changing cables for a bunch of different low and high quality brands. I cleaned my USB ports, both on the phone and in the car. I tried a wireless AA adapter dongle. I even changed from a Pixel 5 to a 7 and saw no difference. My nephew had the same issue with his Galaxy Flip in my car. Garage tried to resettle all connectors, etc.
Meanwhile, Carplay worked seamlessly on my wife’s iPhone 11. The last straw was when AA dropped as I was semi-lost downtown in foggy rain. From there, the thought process was basically: is there anything I do on my phone or think I may eventually like to do in this phone’s lifetime, that I can’t easily do with an iPhone? Answer was no. I can sign with Signulous for the odd app I want to sideload like emulators, but like 99% of what I actually need and use is on the App Store. Both stock Android and iOS are, for me, usable enough nowadays. Neither are perfect, but they’re fine as is, and so much less hassle lol.
TL;DR, I don’t really care any less or more about either one of the OS, both their UX is compatible with the things I use a phone for, and CarPlay works better than Android Auto for me.