Why did you buy an Android phone?

[mr moose]

The only reason to buy an android phone is because it's really hard to find a WP anymore and you can't get a brand new iphone for less the $300

[Yongtjunkit]

Using a Redmi 5 plus as my android phone 

 

—Great battery life for hotspot use -4000mah (Redmi 5+)

—Dual sim ( and both of them were physical sim) 

— has more micro usb cable than lightning cable even though I use an iPhone as my daily driver

 

 

[williamcll]

Android is more flexible in changing UI and allows internet installation.

[Bigbootyjudy]

Reasons:

• cheaper with more options / not locked to a slightly upgraded phone over the last every year
• Soooooo many file management options, I love being able to move files between folders and storage devices.
• more customizable options, the ios launcher feels too outdated with its apps spread out over multiple pages 
• Cameras can compete even at lower prices even though some devices do use too much smoothing to compensate 
• Already made the switch to usb-c (though it looks like apple is coming to its senses)
• I feel like battery life is improving over Ios

Cons:

• Less secure
• no ecosystem that it easily integrates with
• Its literally impossible to make people with iphones listen to you.

[mxk]

All of my Androids have been cheap and had features I wanted. That's pretty much the reason I bought them all. My phone is 18:9 and came with a speed charger and headphone jack, whereas my brother's iPhone X didn't come with a speed charger and he doesn't have the headphone jack. He paid a stupid amount of money to get a speed charger and he even told me "I can't wait to go back to Android".

[FloRolf]

2 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

It’s that last bit   iPhones have a folder for pics in file explorer. 

Oh yeah I remember now. We found that but it was constructed out of dozens of other folders in some weird fucking organization where we weren't able to find anything. 

[poochyena]

Well, my current lg g6 I actually got for free
But the last phone I bought was an lg ultimate 2, a $60 android phone. Literally all I needed was a phone that can text, GPS, process credit cards, call, and read emails. My current phone that is all I do, except also play pokemon go and sometimes browse the web.
 

Basically, I just need a phone that can do simple tasks. I have no use for any of the extra features a $800 iphone provides over a $100 android.

 

Also, I heard you can't even set your own ringtone on iphones???? Is that actually true?

 

[NumLock21]

The reason I picked an Android phone such as my Asus Zenfone 2 is the amount of customization is has.

For example this phone has 11 types of scroll effects just for the home screen itself. Even the small thing can be customized, such as the calculator buttons, that can be switched from tiles to circles. 

 

The other reason is the ease of use and getting a the job done as quickly as possible. Let's say you want to backup your photos to your computer. With an Android phone, you can just plug it to your computer, it shows up as a USB storage drive, simply go to where your photos are, and just copy and paste that to where you backup your photos on your computer. Can't do that with a Apple iPhone as they require iTunes, just to do the same thing.

I can't remember on top of my head on the other grips I had with iphones. The thing with them is even the smallest of task, which takes seconds to complete on Android, will take hours as, you'll be on the internet, pulling your hair out, looking at site after site, for a solution to your problem.

 

One thing I don't like about Android is the lack of updates. My phone stuck on Android 6.0, (even for Android 6.0, I had to force install as Asus won't officially release it) where I can't get the latest Android OS 9.0, and I believe others like me, have phones with hardware that capable of even running the latest Android OS. The only minor difference in hardware between a old phone and new phone is the Soc, while rest is almost the same or slightly updated, such as storage and ram.

Because of this, I might switch to a iPhone and give it a shot one more time to see how it goes. Now some might argue, but Android is cheap, well they're aren't cheap as they used to be. Even budget Android phones are starting to get expensive.

[strajk-]

Quite honestly, I rarely buy a smartphone, but when I do I always go for the most Stock Version possible and that allows me to customize it at will.

The only Apple product I owned was an iPhone 3GS because I could Jailbreak it and customize it with Cydia at will, that was almost 10 years ago.

 

Ever since I try to go after Smartphones that:

• Stock Experience with the least bloat possible
• Have the smallest Bezel possible and as much screen real estate possible
• If possible, no Front Camera but a pretty good Rear Camera
• Wireless Charging
• Unlockable for low level customization and flexibility
• Best Community support, including Open Source community
• High Refresh rate displays instead of High Res
• Expandable Storage or at least a lot of Storage at the time of purchase that justified not really needing the expandable option
• Good Battery life, at least 48 hours (100% to 5%) with moderate use, 12-24 hours if you spend almost all day on it
• Don't care about the headphone jack, haven't used one since my Phat PSP 3000, what I care about is good BT codecs that have low latency, so basically, having a smartphone with APTX support and if possible APTX LL support is a must nowadays, been using headphones with APTX and damn is it night and day to traditional BT
• Affordable price or price that actually meets the expectation of the device, I don't give a shit about branding, give me the perfect product, the logo could literally be a steaming pile of shit, what I want is worthwhile features

Android phones fall under those requirements more often, specially because the Android ecosystem has a very competitive market where manufacturers keep pushing their boundaries while shoving prices down.

While Apple products also performing in the top of the line do have more leeway since they're kinda in their own marketspace with iOS competing only with themselves while jacking up pricing more and more with lack of innovation to justify it, it became a status symbol instead of tech to look forward to.

 

Unfortunately there has yet to be a smartphone with everything I desire, so I never end up paying $900 for the top of the line, and instead just go for cheaper options that kinda fill my desires, which currently is an Unlocked Essential Phone that I bought for $300 almost 2 years ago.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

1) I don't want to give money to Apple, a company I greatly dislike

2) Cheaper

3) As good/better performance

4) Better cameras

5) More open ecosystem

[Pasi123]

It's really easy to choose to buy an Android phone since there isn't really any other popular mobile operating systems than Android and iOS.

 

Here is a few reasons why I prefer Android:

 

• A lot more open. iOS is way too locked to me
• File manager
• A lot more ways to customize (launchers etc.)
• App drawer
• No iTunes kind of things
• Cheaper devices
• Headphone jack on some models
• No ugly notch on some models
• MicroSD card slot
• Dual sim
• USB-C on most newer models
• Better multitasking
• Larger battery on some models
• Settings are easier to find
• Stock Android looks a lot better than iOS
• More phones to choose from
• Phone are cheaper to repair
• Custom roms
• I can do whatever I want to do
• Isn't made by Apple
• Doesn't have Apple logo on the back

[seon123]

The Oneplus 3 in July 2016. In no particular order:

 

-reasonably sized (5,5") OLED screen

-reasonable amount of storage

-USB-C

-very fast charging

-headphone jack (this was before the Iphone 7, but still)

-customazability

-price

-decent camera on both sides of the phone

-isn't prone to inflection damage the same way the Iphone 6 and newer are

-have I mentioned the very fast charging?

-decent battery

[Granular]

For me, the fact that Apple is a gatekeeper for software on iOS is a complete no-starter.  It's like 'buying' a house that only lets your furnish it with what the house builder allows. Or a car that only drives places that the manufacturer approves of (a likely future with self driving cars).

That said, while I bought a phone with Android (TM), I'm not using mine with it, I'm using Lineage OS, because Android (TM) is spyware. If I had read up on Jolla before I committed, I probably would have bought a phone compatible with that instead.

[brownninja97]

Honestly the biggest thing for me was price, I just cant afford to own an iphone, I cant afford to own a last gen or the gen before that of iphone. I had to bust my ass to buy my first phone last year which was a Honor 10 for £280. 

 

So my first smartphone was the Iphone 3GS but that was stolen and I got a Samsung galaxy S2, changed to a Galaxy S3 which was a hand-me-down from my brother, I then got my mums HTC one M8 and then the S6 edge she replaced that with. The battery life was what made me move to the Honor 10 mainly. I had what I needed as well, a decent screen, a nice body, headphone jack and was not crazy expensive.

 

For someone like me on a catastrophic wage thats all that matters at the moment, it does what I need it to at a nice price. Everyone I know thinks its an iphone though. 

[cj09beira]

15 hours ago, LordOTaco said:

• For the S8+  headphone jack. 
• As someone who has only ever had androids I found it simpler than iOS for the settings (i'm just used to it)
• Easy to use file manager particularly important for moving photos and media over a direct USB connections from my phone to computer ( i know i cloud is a thing but you have to pay for extra space and need a internet connection)
• Expandable memory for relatively cheap
• Ability to install 3rd party apps with .apk files for some cool indie projects like this:  http://amadeusproject.weebly.com/

   

woW , someone is actually making it, very nice

[ManIkWeet]

I had a Windows Phone... The WiFi on it was kind of broken/bad after I replaced the non-replaceable battery. Then I bought a OnePlus 5T and have been happy with it ever since.

 

I used to have an iPod Touch 4G and that thing's always been bad (battery, stability, smoothness, memory management), so there's that.

 

Oh yeah, it's CHEAP!

 

Of course, having a universal charger cable that isn't designed to break after 1 year is nice too...

[RuffRuffmcgruff]

Complete freedom of whatever i want to do on the phone, also i hated the fact that when you bought a new iPhone within 2 days it felt like the old one.

 

 

[elfensky]

Better camera (at the time, and tbh I still think today as well). Pixel 2 XL.

 

The camera was really the only reason I went for the pixel, I was thinking of saving my money and getting an S8 (and putting something like LineageOS on it) or a OnePlus.

So far, given the quality of pictures, I have 0 regrets. Sure it was hella expensive, but it was so worth it.

 

Of course, there's also the fact that I've been with android my whole life (my first smartphone was an HTC Wildfire, and after that a Nexus 4) and I'm used to it's customization, ability to do whatever I want with it and a "normal" file system and file manager. Also the Google Play eco-system, I've amassed quite a collection of paid apps over the years.

 

There's also one thing on iPhones I absolutely hate, and it's the lack of a back-button at the bottom of the screen, basically forcing me to 2-hand it.

[flashiling]

does One+ count because it uses android operating systems?

if so

 

cheaper cost for better performance overall 

[Amazonsucks]

Because its made in Korea and not China.

[Inversion]

As someone who's only ever used Android phones (although I did own an ipod touch 4 which ran iOS) I'm pretty attached to android. I've owned a Samsung Galaxy Ace, Motorola Moto G 1st Gen (When google owned Motorola), a Samsung Galaxy A5 2016 and now a Samsung Galaxy S8.

 

My reasons for buying android are:

• Price - To this day I've never spent over £25 a month on a phone contract. My current phone (Galaxy S8) costs me £23 per month with 4 GB of mobile data. For that much data on an iPhone of the same age (iPhone 8 ) you're looking at over £35 per month so a significant cost saving.
• Screens - This was less of an issue for me when I got my first 2 phones but by the time I got to the A5 and especially the S8, I could tell that I preferred Samsung's AMOLED panels to the LCDs used in iPhones and a lot of other Android phones. But the bottom line is that they gave me a choice. And I could have basically any size I like. With or without notch (I don't like it so the lack of notch on the S8 was a factor)
• Expandable Storage - This is a major one. An SD card slot can be invaluable if you have a lot of music on your phone (which can happen easily if you download music with Spotify premium) or you take a lot of photos on your phone which with modern cameras can take up a lot of space.
• More open - I can install apk files onto my phone easily without rooting it or anything.
• A logically placed back button - This may seem minor but having a back button under my right thumb is so much more ergonomic than having to stretch or bring in another hand to press a back button in the top left. Especially when the vast majority of people are right handed.
• Headphone Jack - No one can deny that when you're tired or in a hurry, it's a lot easier just to plug in a pair of headphones than have to go through the effort of dealing with the ever annoying bluetooth pairing process. Not to mention that older cars are more likely to have an aux input, and although it's now becoming a legacy standard. I find myself using it. Perhaps not as often as I used to now I have some good bluetooth headphones but when I need it I can't really do without it.
• Fingerprint sensors - There was a time I couldn't have brought up this one but now that Apple have removed touchID from the current iPhones I can. It's a lot easier to pull my phone out my pocket and have it unlocked with a quick press on the back than have to wait till it's out and lined up with my face to unlock with facial recognition. I bring this up mainly cause the apple logo on the back of the iPhones should really be a fingerprint sensor.
• Battery life - Surprised it took me this long to come up with this one but it's something I've noticed a lot recently. Now I use my phone a lot more than my girlfriend when we're out cause the S8 has a better camera than the iPhone 6S (not to mention the fact that it has more storage) but the one thing I've noticed most is that in a day when I leave WiFi, BT, mobile data and location on all day and she turns off all but location and WiFi, my phone loses charge at about a quarter of the rate hers does and we've both had our phones for about a year. She's also said she noticed the reduction in battery life when she moved to her iPhone from her previous Samsung.
• File Manager - Being able to just drag and drop files from my computers to my phone without needing to deal with an intermediate like iTunes is just a lot more convenient. I can also use 2 in 1 USB sticks (My current one is Type A on one end and Type C on the other) to transfer files when I don't have a cable (which can happen a lot while this just lives on my keys) or just to watch movies directly from it.

I could probably go on and talk about customisation (ESPECIALLY NOT NEEDING A RANDOM CRAP FOLDER!!!) , camera, android auto (which I maintain looks better than apple carplay), Samsung's edge functionality, larger screens, more productive (and also entertainment friendly) aspect ratios without notches, the list goes on but I'll finish now since it's pretty clear I do have my reasons for buying Android. I invite any apple fans to question me on this though.

[Mihle]

Just because I like how it works better. How the menus are for example. How android looks.  Android on my phone is quite stock.

 

You don't have to have all apps on the front pages but you instead have an app drawer.

 

That you can have apps at the bottom of the home page (you know, where it's easier to press them) without having apps at the top.

 

That android have an back button always at the bottom on the screen (you know, where it's easier to press it) instead of it being an in app back button on the top of the screen.

 

More reasonable priced, I am not going to spend 1000 € on a phone.

 

Other than background and move apps around on the home screens, I don't actually care that much about customizebility.

[Otellino]

Honestly, after being mostly an iOS user for most of my Smartphone life (Barring a short stint with HTC and Windows Phone 6, yikes...), I finally switched to a Google Pixel 3 and I couldn't be happier, for one single reason:

I don't need to compromise with it.

I'm a Windows 10 user, and it's integration with iOS is.... Pretty weak. I wanted to use Firefox on my iPhone as I used it on Windows, and wanted to be able to easily pick up where I left off. iOS made that bloody difficult for me, always insisting I just use Safari.

Nor could I easily reply to messages or quickly pull photos off my phone from my PC. I was spending hundreds on this expensive phone that I just couldn't use how I wanted to. WIth the Pixel, that's a thing of the past.

 

I get near Mac to iOS level integration between Windows and Android, I can super easily continue my web browsing, or document editing, or general conversations between my two devices, and I just don't feel like I need to fight my device any more.
 

[Franck]

9 hours ago, Bigbootyjudy said:

• no ecosystem that it easily integrates with

Taking a cable and plugging it into anything is not easy to integrate ?

 

Android phones are literally big USB flash drive with bluetooth and Wifi how easier can it get ?

[SansVarnic]

I switched from Windows Mobile and as much as I despise its lack of integration there were ways to get Android to allow me to  at least have a better experience closer to WM than I would have gotten through iOS, it was [and I admit] a difficult decision to make. My choice came down to which OS I would be less aggravated with... I could also mention price but I bought an S9+ for the wife and a Note9 for myself replacing the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL and I was not happy ...

950: $250       S9+: $720

950XL: $500   N9: $1200

 

For very similar performance. Yeah I wont be buying new phones for next 5 years minimum. I know someone will tell me that I could have bought a cheap variant but my choice was driven by having Dex which is the same as Windows Mobile desktop function of which I use a lot in my job. 

 

Windows Mobile is still better imo.