My Android Conundrum: Benefits of iOS

This is my second post detailing the best parts of iOS and Android in my quest to see whether the iPhone 5 or Nexus 4 is best for me. This one details my three main positives for iOS.

The iPhone 3GS and 5 homescreens

App Ecosystem

The App Store has the best app ecosystem for me. I love that all apps appear to head to iOS first and it appears most developers prioritise iOS. This means that I have access to all of the best apps as soon as they are available. This is something that I didn’t think was particularly important - I bought the Omnia 7 Windows Phone. It turns out I was wrong, there were some great apps I found I was missing. This problem doesn’t take place on iOS. I have access to all of the Apple apps like iTunes, Microsoft’s apps like Skydrive and OneNote, and Google’s offerings like Maps and Drive. No other platform has access to all apps of such high quality from everyone as iOS. This gives the iPhone user arguably the best app ecosystem and it really has spoiled me!

Apple’s offerings

Due to the small number of iOS devices Apple has created, it is very straight-forward for developers to build their apps and market them for the devices. This means that it is easy to install apps that can work on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches and are able to work between all of them with their own interfaces. The word ‘fragmentation’ is bandied around quite a lot, but with iOS, there are four different screen sizes that developers can target, whereas with other platforms there are often a lot more, you just need to look at the number of Samsung screens on their mobile devices, let alone other OEMs! This makes the apps better for the user, as the developers are able to specifically target every iOS device Apple has built, ensuring a great experience on all of them.

Immediate updates to all (supported) devices

This does have to come with a caveat: Google’s Nexus devices receive updates as soon as they are released as well, their so-called "Best of Google" just like the Apple devices. However, all of Apple’s iOS devices currently receive updates as soon as they are released, allowing people to update through iTunes or over the air. Apart from Google’s Nexus line, other Android devices often come to market with outdated software and take months to receive updates to the next version, by which time an even newer version has been released. This doesn’t take place with Apple’s devices, however which receive updates on Day 1 for as long as they are supported.

These are my best reasons for using iOS. The next post will discuss the big benefits of Android!