Another in the series if my technical blogs, where my technical knowledge comes out and splashes over my blog posts.
In this post I’m going to discuss about the feature of two of the major smartphone rival operating systems, namely google’s android and Apple’s iOS
1. Sales
If you look at the official figures android just edges out iOS in number of products sold.
And that too has happened very recently, until now apple had been leading, it’s surprising provided the number of handsets having android and there low pricing compared to apple’s devices.
2. Quality of hardware
The quality of hardware used in android varies a lot. On one hand we have phones like Samsung galaxy S III, which clearly outperform the latest iPhone 4s, on the other we have phones that run on cheap hardware and call themselves budget android phones.
As far as apple is concerned it’s the very close hardware and software integration that its product is all about. Apple usually doesn’t reveal its hardware’s too many details. The company buys the best of hardware from companies around the world, even from Samsung!!! and integrates it to provide best user experience.
The introduction of iPhone brought a revolution in the industry and changed the way we look and mean the word “smartphone”, it was purely because of the great combination of hardware capabilities and the operating system to take advantage of such hardware that this revolution kick started.
3. Customisability
Here is a very clear distinction between the two OSs as clear as a big yes or no
Android has it, you say it they have it, launchers, themes, keyboards, icons, wallpapers etc
They have it all. Whatever you want your phone or tab to look like you can have it
iOS’s answer is nearly no, you can just change your wallpapers, standby screens and …. nothing.
Yes, you cannot change much… Thats a common users nightmare, you spent 500 dollars or 50000 rupees on your new ipad, but you cannot make it the way you want… kind of, but still it’s a cult and a dream device for everyone. Why? Because it doesn’t let you mess things up, an iPad will always be the same iPad you bought( unless you jailbreak it) The same behaviour, the same home screen, the same apps arrangement etc. It’s a gadget for tech hungry to anti-tech people. Because it’s simple to use, but at the same place it’s advanced.
4. Originality
I was reading an article on cnet about the apple versus samsung war, it was a picture gallery of 26 shots that described how samsung compared its galaxy s with iphone, and comparing products with competitors is not a new thing, but what i observed that they were trying to copy iphone fully.
The pictures show how samsung engineers say that the iphone’s UI flips when the orientation is changed which gives a feeling of euphoria, and then they instruct developers to make that feature come alive in Galaxy S, and there are numerous features, like 3d looking icons, minimalistic design, view-ability, scrolling etc. every iphone feature has been copied.
And everyone knows that galaxy s the ancestor of all phones we say are iphone like or iphone beaters, so my originality award will go without a doubt to iOS.
Verdict
Though my article may seem a bit biased to android fanboys, but there are some things I really love about android, like great customisability, pirated apps( not legally or morally good though), cheap phones for everyone, scalability , it’s open source etc.
But iOS will remain my favourite, as it is original, safe, easy to use, has quality apps, great hardware integration, and to top it all, late Steve Jobs’s backing.
Hope you had a great time reading my article, please comment if you have an opinion or argument, will love to hear from you.
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