The top reason was actually an issue with the Android experience. Over 53% of respondents said they moved to iPhone because of problems with their Android smartphone. Specifics cited were “their old phone did not serve them, because it was aging, needed repair, or had some deficiency that affected their user experience.”
Android is a low-quality platform with limited security updates, multiple app stores, preinstalled crapware, and other debris. I chose an iPhone so I wouldn't have to deal with these issues.
My experience exactly. I always said bad things about iPhone. Hay it is closed, it has fewer options, worse hardware than top Android phones, etc.. It was the time during which I fiddled with the phone much, installed Ubuntu on Android phone, etc.. But then my last Nexus started to glitch like any other Android top phone after 1 year of use. I was so irritated by it that I said well I will try iPhone now.
It was about 6 month ago and I could not be more happy. I have phone that just works, never glitched, not once in 6 months, never sttutered with animation or anything. Yes, it is less extensible, has less options, but actually I like that now better. I wan`t it to work good, work well and be reliable.
One major additional benefit is that I use iPhone less than Android phone, and it spams and pings me less. At first iPhone, notifications felt overly simplistic, but now I love them. There are no permanent notifications/icons that some android app can put there, and I can just scroll from the lock screen and see without clicking/opening everything that happened. Also, I can disable every notification/spam per app, disabled all bubbles (red circle numbers over app icons) except for messaging apps. This way I feel that I don`t expect dopamine dose from my phone, and I use it only when I really need something.
Well both my parents have replaced android phones with iphones because they had trouble using them. I had a cheap LG that went flat continuously and I gave it away and went back to a feature phone so I could use the phone for the purpose I need it.
I know a few people who are sysadmins with android, but I also know more sysadmins with black berries. I don't know anyone who isn't a sysadmin that has an android phone, most people I associate with tend to be in sale or design... so probably no surprise all of them use iphones.
I made the jump from Android fairly early on when I realized that phones are terrible general purpose computers and that I mostly just use it as a phone - i.e. use almost exclusively the restricted subset of features that’s typical of smartphones. I lose nothing moving to the iPhone and gain a better UX (no crap installed by carriers or anyone else for the matter) and get better post sales care (long term updates and quick security patches).
As a reverse example, my wife _just_ switched from iPhone to Android (Samsung S21) because she was sick and tired of her iPhone not doing what she wanted it to. The cries of "arg, why is it doing that?!?" were pretty common. Things like adding a song to it using iTunes, only to get in the car and it turns out it's not on the phone (the phone wants to grab it from the cloud... and we don't have unlimited data).
I started using Android in 2010 (switched from Windows Phone) because it was more flexible than iOS. Things were so easy on Android but required Jailbreak on iOS. That plus I hated iTunes. These criticisms may no longer apply so maybe I'll take another look.
I had more problems with the iPhones I had before I switched to Android than I've had with Android; the product that fails to deliver for you isn't necessarily the product that fails to deliver for everyone else.
I bought an iPhone a year ago for this exact reason. Both are user-hostile platforms now, so I might as well pick one that respects my attention more and treats me more acceptably. In addition, it looks like a near-future version of iOS will allow sideloading, which would make iOS an overall better mobile OS than Android.
Sent from my iPhone (after 13 years of using Android)
Truth. I hung onto Android for many years for that little shred of more choice, mostly the ability to install APKs. But Apple’s stability and user experience runs laps around Android and it’s extremely hard to justify not going with iPhone. Now I would have 0 reason.
It seems to me that Android would be the easiest to switch away from. Not so much for any technical reasons, rather because of the mindset most Android buyers (I know) have.
Android is the default choice if you don’t want an iPhone. It’s the default and generic smartphone. All people who have Android phones I know don’t care about the OS at all. They may like the phone (Look at my nice new Samsung smartphone! Isn’t this HTC phone cool?), they know nothing and don’t care one bit about the OS.
I had my last Android phone for 5 years, and never had a problem until the last month; when it was just too slow and would reboot every now and again. It had security updates for the first 4 years.
My wife just switched off her iphone to an android because there were just too many places where it would ... just do it's own thing instead of what she told it to (like I noted in another response; placing songs on the cloud instead of on her phone like she told it to). It didn't "just work" in a lot of cases, for any sane definition of that phrase.
I had the same experience when first switching to Android after a lifetime on iPhone. But after a year of really getting to use Android features it eventually became apparent Android has its own problems, and I ended up switching back to iOS. It'll seem great at first since it does things differently and improves on many aspects of where iOS fails at while it's fresh in your mind, but you'll need to spend much more time using it day to day to get a real sense of the pros and cons.
As a counterpoint, I'm looking quite seriously at an Android as my next device, this after being a "life-long" iPhone fan.
It's simply gotten to the point where Android works well enough for my big use cases, is open enough to changes to allow me to do some things I can't with the iPhone, is cheap enough that it saves me money, is big but light... overall, iPhone has less of an advantage every day.
After 7 years Android user across three phones, I decided to try iPhone. Now 2 years in, on my 2nd, and never going back. Android tends to slowly slide into glitch land and demands you throw away your phone far more aggressively than iPhones do. The 911-crash on Android was the last straw. That's when you call 911, and the phone crashes instead of, you know, calling for help.
iPhone might not be latest and greatest. But the overall package is better. Definitely not perfect - I've experienced a disabled Phone app on iPhone where I would not have been able to call 911 had I needed it - but all my i-devices have been glitch resistant in a way none of my Android devices ever were.
I've carried an iPhone and an Android (some variety of Pixel) for the past several years. I use them both heavily for work and I feel like the main difference between the two is that the Android phone fails in more obvious ways, such as the occasional momentary freeze or an app crash dialog appearing. Stuff on the iPhone seems to fail more subtly, such as data not loading properly or an app silently crashing and restarting in a way that doesn't seem like a crash, just the loss of state in whatever app I was in.
I know a few people who did that primarily on principle. They all regret it today, android just isn't anywhere close in the long run( their words not mine)
I have both iPhone and android before you go all fanboy on me.
"I already deal with problems at work, I don't want to deal with problems with my phone"
Truer words never said, I also had several androids over the years which went crazy after some time, switched to iPhone, never an issue again.
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