IOS Vs ANDROID? What Do You Think About Them?

IOS Vs ANDROID? What Do You Think About Them?

It’s been 7 years, and the great iOS vs Android debate rumbles on—in internet forums and real life. But these platforms have come a long way even in the last year or two. Do the old arguments still apply? What features separate iOS 8.3 from Android 5.1 Lollipop? We used a Nexus 6 and an iPhone 6 to investigate.

The ground rules are now well established: iOS is very much Apple’s software, and you either accept it or find a different phone. In contrast, Android lets you swap out one dialer or SMS app for another, supports home screen widgets and even lets you install alternative launchers if you want to (now an official feature with Lollipop). That’s the first major difference that most users are already aware of.

The second is that Google apps run quite happily on iOS, whereas Apple programs are nowhere to be found on Android. It’s not only apps, either: Moving your emails, contacts, music, movies, photos and documents from Android to iOS is much easier than trying to transfer them the other way. Again, this is a well-established contrast between the two platforms—let’s dive in and see what else is different in 2015.

Interface and Notifications

The sharp, flat, clean lines of iOS 8 owe a great debt to iOS 7, when Apple dragged its mobile OS into the modern age. Google’s bold and colorful Material Design, meanwhile, introduced with Android 5.0, wants to unify the visual experience across all of your apps and act as a guide for your eyes at the same time.

Both are distinctive and easy on the eye—if you’ve grown used to one you may not particularly care for the other. Overall, Apple’s mobile OS adopts the more refined aesthetic, whereas Google’s carries more of an impact. Both are beautifully designed, in their own way.

On the whole, notifications work in a similar way whichever platform you’re using, and the differences that still exist are small and subtle: Apple’s software still lets you set notification styles on an app-by-app basis, for example, whereas Google’s software makes it easier to clear and respond to alerts from the notification drawer.

With Lollipop’s new Priority mode, Android finally has something to rival iOS’ Do Not Disturb feature, though both implementations can be a little tricky to get your head around at first.

Then there’s the back button, a must-have for Android veterans and a confusing irrelevance for anyone well-versed in the ways of iOS. It’s one of those differences between iOS and Android where there’s no real right or wrong way—it depends what you’ve grown accustomed to.

Siri up against Google Now is an interesting head-to-head. Siri is more about voice control—pulling up information with your voice, and using your phone hands-free. Google Now accepts voice input too, but the main focus is on pre-emptively throwing up information it thinks you’ll need based on your emails, search history, recent travels and so on.

We’ve already talked about customization, the way you can reskin Android pixel-by-pixel if you want to—there’s no such capacity on an iPhone. In-app sharing offers a significant contrast too: Android lets you share pretty much any file through any app, and while iOS has opened up slightly in this regard, it still lags behind.