Well this is a truly common and intense battle. Which is the superior mobile operating system? Post your opinions below!

However, please do not flame. iOS fanboys, no attacking Android. Android fanboys, no attacking iOS. Simple.

My own opinion on this is very mixed. Honestly I do like Android somewhat better, but that really does not mean I hate iOS. I own both a Nexus 7 and an iPad 3rd generation, and as far as I can tell, they're both great! Android wins in customization, however, due to home-screen widgets. iOS is very simple, very straightforward, and very slick. It gets the job done and to an average consumer, that's what really matters. I respect both operating systems in their own ways and advantages.

I like Android. Mostly because that is the only mobile OS I use. All my brothers, sisters, and parents own Apple stuff. So, I'm determined to be the only one who does not own anything Apple. XD I don't know why. lol

banana500 wrote:

Android wins in customization, however, due to home-screen widgets. iOS is very simple, very straightforward, and very slick. It gets the job done and to an average consumer, that's what really matters.

Jailbreaking iOS devices gives you as many if not more customizable things than Android.

LucidSquare wrote:

banana500 wrote:

Android wins in customization, however, due to home-screen widgets. iOS is very simple, very straightforward, and very slick. It gets the job done and to an average consumer, that's what really matters.

Jailbreaking iOS devices gives you as many if not more customizable things than Android.

But we're talking about the un-modded, un-jailbroken, un-rooted experiences of the OS's.

banana500 wrote:

LucidSquare wrote:

banana500 wrote:

Android wins in customization, however, due to home-screen widgets. iOS is very simple, very straightforward, and very slick. It gets the job done and to an average consumer, that's what really matters.

Jailbreaking iOS devices gives you as many if not more customizable things than Android.

But we're talking about the un-modded, un-jailbroken, un-rooted experiences of the OS's.

Ah, gotcha.

iOS is wayyyyyy better

CN12 wrote:

iOS is wayyyyyy better

Perhaps you could explain why you believe so?

Before you flame on my opinion, I'll have you know that I own a device running the latest Jellybean 4.2.2 Android ROM, and also frequently use an Apple device running iOS6.

I think Android was a great idea to start with, the idea of building an open-source mobile OS on the Linux kernel. What ruined it was not Google, but other compaines like HTC, Samsung and LG. They started putting skins and custom launchers and software and stuff, that not only slowed the OS but made it look and behave different. This meant that whenever you pick up an Android device, chances are it will be different from any other one you've tried.

My other complaint with Android is the central app system. On iOS you can open music and listen to music you've put on there with iTunes. All your playlists are there, your stuff is backed up and it's ready to go. If you want to browse the web you open safari. Simple but functional. On Android it's a whole different story. The default android player is just really bad. (By this I mean the music player that hasn't changed since 2.3 android.) Some phones bundle their own players and web music systems. That's even worse for reasons stated above. You have to transfer music in a complicated fashion.

Another thing - with Android, you don't have as many apps you can run, and not nearly as high quality. It's well known that iOS has a larger app store, but how many of the Android Play Store apps can you truly run? Chances are that if you run anything less then ICS 4.0, you won't be able to run most of the newer apps including Chrome, a lot of launchers, and most high quality games. Turns out that Gingerbread still almost 40% market share among Android devices.

Back to the browser. On an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, you can basically go to any website you want, although some larger websites may be uncomfortable on the smaller devices of iPod and iPhone. I have a 7" Android Tablet. It's not a bad one either, running at 1.2Ghz Dual Core with 512MB of RAM, it's pretty well equipped. However, if I try to go on a website with lots of content, or at times, any website at all, the browser just crashes. This happens on all the browsers I've tried. Stock, Chrome, Dolphin, Boat, Firefox and Opera. This would be excusable if Android was still in beta or something, but it's many years old.

The final thing I don't like about Android is the launcher. Sure the customisation is cool, and widgets could be useful, but when it gets to the bottom line, it's just too slow and cumbersome. Say I'm in a game, and I press the home button (which, on my device, turns out to be a soft button on the screen). On iOS, I'd return to the grid of icons, and I could choose another app to go into. On my Android, I have to wait for the launcher to redraw all the icons and things. Shouldn't it have a space in the RAM dedicated to that? I guess it's hard because it's not properly built into the system like it is in iOS, but it's just treated as another app. Another app that can be thrown out of RAM space if more is required.

In general I like my Android tablet. It's cool, it gets stuff done, it's great for watching TV, Movies, reading books and passing the time playing meaningless games. However, I'm just suggesting how it could get better.

I think iOS is better than Android because it gets stuff done. I really like iBooks because I don't have to install any new apps like Adobe Reader or some ebook reader like Kindle or Aldiko, because they're really bad on Android. Scrolling is terrible, zooming is disfunctional and page turning takes forever and feels like I'm running Android 1.6 on a capacitive screen or something. Websites are stable. Music is built straight into the device.

I think iOS7 is a welcome update because it brings things that were available on Android for a while now, and brings iOS back into the game for people who might have bought a Galaxy S2/3 and are looking for their next contract phone, because it brings stuff like being able to access a quick panel for changing music, volume, brightness, notifications and stuff like that.

Of course there's always the problem of price. I bought my Android tablet because I couldn't really afford an iPad. The iPad mini didn't exist back then. I heard there will be a budget iPhone soon too.

TL;DR: Android is great but iOS is better and will be even better in future.

I do not have any of that loading time errors on Android. Mine runs flawlessly. I also don't have to transfer my music like that. I just sync it over Google Play. The only thing I don't like is that there are so many different layouts!

cobraguy wrote:

I do not have any of that loading time errors on Android. Mine runs flawlessly. I also don't have to transfer my music like that. I just sync it over Google Play. The only thing I don't like is that there are so many different layouts!

You might have more RAM or something. Crazy, because my dad's iPhone 3GS runs flawlessly with just half of what my tablet has

I don't have access to a lot of online music services including Google Play music syncing because I don't live in the USA. Crazy, because all of Apple's services work fine.

Please add Windows Phone 8! I know it will lose with epic proportions, but I still think it deserves a spot.

jji7skyline wrote:

Before you flame on my opinion, I'll have you know that I own a device running the latest Jellybean 4.2.2 Android ROM, and also frequently use an Apple device running iOS6.

I think Android was a great idea to start with, the idea of building an open-source mobile OS on the Linux kernel. What ruined it was not Google, but other compaines like HTC, Samsung and LG. They started putting skins and custom launchers and software and stuff, that not only slowed the OS but made it look and behave different. This meant that whenever you pick up an Android device, chances are it will be different from any other one you've tried.

My other complaint with Android is the central app system. On iOS you can open music and listen to music you've put on there with iTunes. All your playlists are there, your stuff is backed up and it's ready to go. If you want to browse the web you open safari. Simple but functional. On Android it's a whole different story. The default android player is just really bad. (By this I mean the music player that hasn't changed since 2.3 android.) Some phones bundle their own players and web music systems. That's even worse for reasons stated above. You have to transfer music in a complicated fashion.

Another thing - with Android, you don't have as many apps you can run, and not nearly as high quality. It's well known that iOS has a larger app store, but how many of the Android Play Store apps can you truly run? Chances are that if you run anything less then ICS 4.0, you won't be able to run most of the newer apps including Chrome, a lot of launchers, and most high quality games. Turns out that Gingerbread still almost 40% market share among Android devices.

Back to the browser. On an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, you can basically go to any website you want, although some larger websites may be uncomfortable on the smaller devices of iPod and iPhone. I have a 7" Android Tablet. It's not a bad one either, running at 1.2Ghz Dual Core with 512MB of RAM, it's pretty well equipped. However, if I try to go on a website with lots of content, or at times, any website at all, the browser just crashes. This happens on all the browsers I've tried. Stock, Chrome, Dolphin, Boat, Firefox and Opera. This would be excusable if Android was still in beta or something, but it's many years old.

The final thing I don't like about Android is the launcher. Sure the customisation is cool, and widgets could be useful, but when it gets to the bottom line, it's just too slow and cumbersome. Say I'm in a game, and I press the home button (which, on my device, turns out to be a soft button on the screen). On iOS, I'd return to the grid of icons, and I could choose another app to go into. On my Android, I have to wait for the launcher to redraw all the icons and things. Shouldn't it have a space in the RAM dedicated to that? I guess it's hard because it's not properly built into the system like it is in iOS, but it's just treated as another app. Another app that can be thrown out of RAM space if more is required.

In general I like my Android tablet. It's cool, it gets stuff done, it's great for watching TV, Movies, reading books and passing the time playing meaningless games. However, I'm just suggesting how it could get better.

I think iOS is better than Android because it gets stuff done. I really like iBooks because I don't have to install any new apps like Adobe Reader or some ebook reader like Kindle or Aldiko, because they're really bad on Android. Scrolling is terrible, zooming is disfunctional and page turning takes forever and feels like I'm running Android 1.6 on a capacitive screen or something. Websites are stable. Music is built straight into the device.

I think iOS7 is a welcome update because it brings things that were available on Android for a while now, and brings iOS back into the game for people who might have bought a Galaxy S2/3 and are looking for their next contract phone, because it brings stuff like being able to access a quick panel for changing music, volume, brightness, notifications and stuff like that.

Of course there's always the problem of price. I bought my Android tablet because I couldn't really afford an iPad. The iPad mini didn't exist back then. I heard there will be a budget iPhone soon too.

TL;DR: Android is great but iOS is better and will be even better in future.

Hm…

Well, I certainly understand your arguments, but I think you may be basing your opinions on Android around the tablet and the experience that you have had with it. May I ask which Android tablet you have been using? My Nexus 7 can run most apps very fast and very quickly (it has 1GB RAM, and it can even handle a DS emulator somewhat decently), and it faces none of the difficulties that you've listed.

LeDerpy123 wrote:

Please add Windows Phone 8! I know it will lose with epic proportions, but I still think it deserves a spot.

Meh.

Windows Phone 8 is an alright operating system, but let's be honest here, it really can't and probably never will be on par with iOS and Android. If it had better app support, then I would consider.

All Android devices I have used for any reason such as helping someone or whatever were a bit slow/laggy especially web browsers. My mum has a Galaxy S3 and I think it is just too big to hold. Also, iPhones apparently have technology that disables the touch screen when your ear is close to the screen (for making phone calls). My mum was wondering why she was hearing water noises when she was talking on her phone. She figured out it was her ear touching the screen. iOS devices are fast and usually run flawlessly without bugs or glitches. I hope the rumors about the cheap iPhone are true because I have noticed a lot of people buy old iPhones (mostly 3GS) because they are much cheaper than buying the latest iPhone. iOS 6 supports the 3GS, but iOS 7 won't so if someone buys a 3GS they won't be able to get iOS 7. Android is good because it is open source, but the companies that make the phones put unnecessary stuff on the phones that the user doesn't need and sometimes may not be able to remove it. Some phones come with Facebook. Facebook actually sends your GPS location data to their servers even if you don't have an account or haven't logged in on the device. I don't understand why they need to do that though.

banana500 wrote:

jji7skyline wrote:

Before you flame on my opinion, I'll have you know that I own a device running the latest Jellybean 4.2.2 Android ROM, and also frequently use an Apple device running iOS6.

I think Android was a great idea to start with, the idea of building an open-source mobile OS on the Linux kernel. What ruined it was not Google, but other compaines like HTC, Samsung and LG. They started putting skins and custom launchers and software and stuff, that not only slowed the OS but made it look and behave different. This meant that whenever you pick up an Android device, chances are it will be different from any other one you've tried.

My other complaint with Android is the central app system. On iOS you can open music and listen to music you've put on there with iTunes. All your playlists are there, your stuff is backed up and it's ready to go. If you want to browse the web you open safari. Simple but functional. On Android it's a whole different story. The default android player is just really bad. (By this I mean the music player that hasn't changed since 2.3 android.) Some phones bundle their own players and web music systems. That's even worse for reasons stated above. You have to transfer music in a complicated fashion.

Another thing - with Android, you don't have as many apps you can run, and not nearly as high quality. It's well known that iOS has a larger app store, but how many of the Android Play Store apps can you truly run? Chances are that if you run anything less then ICS 4.0, you won't be able to run most of the newer apps including Chrome, a lot of launchers, and most high quality games. Turns out that Gingerbread still almost 40% market share among Android devices.

Back to the browser. On an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, you can basically go to any website you want, although some larger websites may be uncomfortable on the smaller devices of iPod and iPhone. I have a 7" Android Tablet. It's not a bad one either, running at 1.2Ghz Dual Core with 512MB of RAM, it's pretty well equipped. However, if I try to go on a website with lots of content, or at times, any website at all, the browser just crashes. This happens on all the browsers I've tried. Stock, Chrome, Dolphin, Boat, Firefox and Opera. This would be excusable if Android was still in beta or something, but it's many years old.

The final thing I don't like about Android is the launcher. Sure the customisation is cool, and widgets could be useful, but when it gets to the bottom line, it's just too slow and cumbersome. Say I'm in a game, and I press the home button (which, on my device, turns out to be a soft button on the screen). On iOS, I'd return to the grid of icons, and I could choose another app to go into. On my Android, I have to wait for the launcher to redraw all the icons and things. Shouldn't it have a space in the RAM dedicated to that? I guess it's hard because it's not properly built into the system like it is in iOS, but it's just treated as another app. Another app that can be thrown out of RAM space if more is required.

In general I like my Android tablet. It's cool, it gets stuff done, it's great for watching TV, Movies, reading books and passing the time playing meaningless games. However, I'm just suggesting how it could get better.

I think iOS is better than Android because it gets stuff done. I really like iBooks because I don't have to install any new apps like Adobe Reader or some ebook reader like Kindle or Aldiko, because they're really bad on Android. Scrolling is terrible, zooming is disfunctional and page turning takes forever and feels like I'm running Android 1.6 on a capacitive screen or something. Websites are stable. Music is built straight into the device.

I think iOS7 is a welcome update because it brings things that were available on Android for a while now, and brings iOS back into the game for people who might have bought a Galaxy S2/3 and are looking for their next contract phone, because it brings stuff like being able to access a quick panel for changing music, volume, brightness, notifications and stuff like that.

Of course there's always the problem of price. I bought my Android tablet because I couldn't really afford an iPad. The iPad mini didn't exist back then. I heard there will be a budget iPhone soon too.

TL;DR: Android is great but iOS is better and will be even better in future.

Hm…

Well, I certainly understand your arguments, but I think you may be basing your opinions on Android around the tablet and the experience that you have had with it. May I ask which Android tablet you have been using? My Nexus 7 can run most apps very fast and very quickly (it has 1GB RAM, and it can even handle a DS emulator somewhat decently), and it faces none of the difficulties that you've listed.

LeDerpy123 wrote:

Please add Windows Phone 8! I know it will lose with epic proportions, but I still think it deserves a spot.

Meh.

Windows Phone 8 is an alright operating system, but let's be honest here, it really can't and probably never will be on par with iOS and Android. If it had better app support, then I would consider.

It's really horrible. That was my first phone, and I quickly switched to a Galaxy S3. I still never use that phone anyways though. I should just sell it.

Okay, now time for a post to rival jji7skyline's…
Note that I don't really have access to Android. I'm familiar with some hardware. I have an iPad 2 and no iPod/phone.

I love my iPad. I really feel like it has amazing capabilities. It is a device that I can use for hours on end. I have in the past had issues with crashing of springboard. I sent in the iPad and within a week recieved a replacement. That isn't the whole story of the fix (turns out I had a setting issue that I think occasionally caused the system to run out of RAM) but it was a good customer service experience. Other than that, I am lucky to have a good amount of reliability. But I have one major issue: Apple. More specifically, their insistence on controlling everything. There is no customization on an iPad. It's a joke. Every iOS device looks exactly the same. Applications don't get low level features and the overhead cost of developing is high. They stifle competition in the web browser market by forbidding Google, Mozilla, and more from creating anything other than a reskinned version of Safari. Forget about plugins. By striving to create a product that is easy to use, Apple limited what its products can achieve.

My stance on Apple is not a lot changed in the past few years. I believe that they make top-notch hardware that is limited by Apple's software. It can not be argued that the iPhone is not a beautiful device, and inside are guts that, while maybe not leading the pack, are certainly enough to distinguish itself from the hordes of low end Android devices. Device manufacturers have infused the market with so many cheap smartphones with awful names and pathetic internals that it isn't even worth looking at. As jji7 said, manufacturer skins are the worst thing to happen to Android. They don't allow for updates, and the development cycle is more about stupid gimmics (Samsung is by far the worst offender. The GSIV is a pathetic excuse for a flagship, IMO) than creating features and an experience that people will actually use. The shining beacon of hope here is the Google Play edition phones as well as the Nexus lineup. These come with a pure android experience without being bogged down by manufacturer additions.

What we see is a tale of two ecosystems where both have artificially limited their abilities. If Apple were a little more hands-off, or if Google were a little more hands-on, the perfect balance could be struck resulting in mobile device nirvana.

My post was longer >

Anyways, I see your point, Google should definitely be more controlled over who can use Android. There should be standards. So far they have not controlled the installation of Android itself, but they have controlled the Play Store.

Google Play editions are ok, but I prefer nexus devices, despite the fact that they use the stupid soft buttons.

Samsung should definitely be setting a better example of an Android handset maker.

Apple should allow it to be easier to develop for the system (though it doesn't really matter because iOS is so popular everyone wants to develop for them anyway. Maybe it raises the standard for apps as well? I dunno.)

Allowing third party apps to be default would also be nice.

Apparently iOS7 will allow apps to access other apps storage. I really like iOSs way of organising the space by giving each app it's own folder, unlike Android… open an Android phone's tablet's storage with a root file explorer and you will be amazed how messy it really is.

jji7skyline wrote:

My post was longer >

Anyways, I see your point, Google should definitely be more controlled over who can use Android. There should be standards. So far they have not controlled the installation of Android itself, but they have controlled the Play Store.

Google Play editions are ok, but I prefer nexus devices, despite the fact that they use the stupid soft buttons.

Samsung should definitely be setting a better example of an Android handset maker.

Apple should allow it to be easier to develop for the system (though it doesn't really matter because iOS is so popular everyone wants to develop for them anyway. Maybe it raises the standard for apps as well? I dunno.)

Allowing third party apps to be default would also be nice.

Apparently iOS7 will allow apps to access other apps storage. I really like iOSs way of organising the space by giving each app it's own folder, unlike Android… open an Android phone's tablet's storage with a root file explorer and you will be amazed how messy it really is.

Actually you don't have to root an Android device to get a file explorer, there's an app called Astro File Manager, and it's actually extremely useful.

And Android's directories are quite well-organized, actually. Almost every single one of the files are in their own respective folders, and it's almost like a regular computer. Using Astro, it's very easy for me to organize my files, including my ROMs, and my applications.

Note I said a root file manager.

My apps seem to dump their data files wherever they want whether it's in the android folder, the data folder, or even just the sd root.

@jji7, I'm posting this on a mid end LG phone (800 Mhz CPU, 384 MB RAM) in Dolphin Browser, so it's deffo your OS in particular.

The Android environment is generally much more tinker-friendly than iOS: you can change just about every aspect of the OS, and gain even more control by rooting it - and no invasive, restrictive company cares if you decide to do so.

And most companies I've seen so far bring a good out of the box Android experience. Should you not like it, it's dead easy to root your phone and remove “system” apps you don't use (for me, Facebook, Twitter and other stuff I can use the browser for), or install a new Android ROM altogether, such as Cyanogen Mod.

The only con to using Android is that many “high end” (for the lack of a better term) apps such as FL Studio or ROBLOX are released for iOS only. Presumably because iOS users seem more willing to buy paid apps (some websites already use cookies to bump up prices for Mac users, so I've read), and because Apple's various restrictions on the environment mean that all target devices will be of similar characteristics. Understandable from a businessman's, and a programmer's point of view, imo.

So, in case you can't tell already, Android gets my vote.

I'm posting this from my android and I did say android was great. Never said its bad.