iPhone vs Android – The FIVE Year Test

[GoldenLag]

14 hours ago, nerdslayer1 said:

 Apple controls everything in their phones, from SOC( even the GPU after they switched over from power VR), so things like drivers are easy for them to make. This is what makes iPhones.

not really an argument when you have  things like windows, who provides support for a huge pile of hardware through drivers. 

[Pasi123]

LG G3 (and most other flagships from 2014) have Android 6.0 which still supports almost all apps on Google Play store so you can get the latest version of Chrome etc.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

i know i'm late on this but i was dead emotionally yesterday and i just had no energy to rage. so better late than never right?

 

WHAT THE F*CK LTT!!! 

at least make an attempt to hide your bias against apple. seriously.

first of all, this was not a fair comparison. you should have done the test with android 6.0 on the G3 since the iPhone also ran an officialy supported OS. 

 

then, even though the speakers, screen and camera on the G3 are ass you did decalre it victorious. why? 

 

also you didn't test things people usually do. i only use the web browser on my phone for the ltt forums and even that i almost never do. seriously who uses the web browser on their phone so often that it's important that it's a millisecond faster than another phone?

 

if you did things like run spotify you would have had a different experience altogether. i have a G3 and runnign spotify on the stock OS is crap. your music will literally skip if you navigate in the app with music playing.

 

i seriously cannot understand why you declared the G3 victorious. you have to do a bunch of crap to get an up to date OS and also who knows how long lineage OS will be supported for? at least with Apple you know what you get. 

 

and even if i ignore you declared the G3 victorious saying oh but the iPhone performed the same and has a better screen, camera and speaker and you don't have to do a bunch of crap to get an up to date OS would have been nice to do. but you didn't. why? a significant amount of your audience uses Apple products and for them an android phone with a different OS hacked onto it is not an option. why would you ignore such a large amount of your audience?

 

anyway rant over. 

drops mic

[GoldenLag]

14 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

then, even though the speakers, screen and camera on the G3 are ass you did decalre it victorious. why? 

think it was because in total it costs roughly half of that of the iphone on the used market. i mean you can get a new nokia 5 for around 130$ so idk why they didnt include something new.

 

or Nokia 6 which is around 160$. and to me, one of those are a better option than an iphone 6. 

[Princess Luna]

In some places a second hand iPhone 5 is still more expensive than actual nowadays flagships like an ASUS ZenFone 4... so yeah...

[TopHatProductions115]

catches falling mic as @firelighter487 leaves the stage - 

 

Starts rap battle jk

 

1. Yes, LTT is biased against Apple products to a degree. I agree with you on this point.
2. From what I'm seeing, the purpose was to compare the latest mobile OS version on two devices from around the same 5-year age. As such, while the iPhone was able to use an officially supported iOS version (and functions as expected, from day 1), the LG G3 wasn't able to do that (due to how Android device OEMs handle mobile device updates). On the software side of things, I think it'd be unfair to compare Android 6.X to iOS 12 or newer. In addition to this, the third-party Android ROM should actually give the iPhone an advantage, since there are no guarantees that everything will work the way it's intended to after official support drops. Things like component driver compatibility and hardware acceleration for certain tasks requires active development and testing to ensure that it continues to work as advertised with new Android version releases. But, the ROM/rooting community doesn't always have access to the resources they need to continue maintaining older devices. Companies like MTK are pretty stingy about that. And even without factors like that getting in the way, there may be other confounding factors that simply prevent certain features and functions from working in a third-party ROM as they used to, in the official ROM. As such, this actually acts as a handicap for the G3 in question. 
3. A 1440p screen is decent. I won't vouch for the speakers and camera, though. 
4. Yes, people use their phones for more than browsing. They play mobile games, make video calls, send files, and more. A more robust test may be in order. One that stresses specific parts of the SoC for extended periods, to see how performance changes over time, in a variety of simulated workloads, perhaps? Oh wait - benchmarks. But people complain about those being a bad indication of real-world performance as well. Point is, you'll have to come up with a better testing methodology yourself if you want that addressed
5. Spotify on the G3 using stock is crap? Have you tried it with a third-party ROM? While they do sometimes miss out on certain features and capabilities, they also can improve the experience at times, by addressing issues that the stock ROM had (which were never addressed in the device's support time frame). 
6. LineageOS is actually pretty good at keeping devices supported past OEM supported updates. I'd look into them before making that statement...
7. That's called laziness. If you bought it, you should be willing to make it last. MacBooks have a similar situation (hacked to force updates on unsupported devices), and yet you prefer them over Windows computers. 

Quote

A significant amount of your audience uses Apple products and for them an android phone with a different OS hacked onto it is not an option.

Why is it not an option? Please tell me - you own the device. You decide how it's used and operated. If it's no longer supported and the warranty's out, is there really any incentive to keep it as is? If you can extend the life of an older device to make it workable and secure in the current year, why not? It's literally 3 steps - unlock bootloader, flash custom recovery (TWRP), flash ROM (your choice again). 

 

Also, I think the Android has a better budget proposition, for people who can't afford to pay a lot for an older device. iPhones tend to hold their value on the used market, which makes shopping for them a pain at times when you're on a budget. Another thing - who truly wins depends on who's using the device. Therefore, no one won this  

 

puts mic back on stand and walks off the unbiased stage.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

@TopHatProductions115 

 

*grabs mic off stand*

 

3. the iPhone 6 has a Retina display. the 1440p screen on the G3 is a higher number but it makes no difference. from a normal distance both my G3 and iPhone 7 look the same in terms of sharpness. IMO better colours is the more important spec here and the iPhone 6 won that. 

 

5. no I haven't. 

 

7. it's not an option because most Apple users want to stay within the ecosystem. if you already have the device sure. but if you need to buy one as an Apple user and have the choice between an Android phone with a different OS hacked onto it or an iPhone you'll choose the iPhone usually. 

[TopHatProductions115]

@firelighter487

 

3. If you want colours, get an OLED screen instead. Your phone choice, yet again. But, you have to pay for it. Preference will determine whether the use can use a display or not.

 

5. You should try it sometime if you ever get the chance.

 

7. It's not an option for Apple users. Android users can remain in the Android/Google ecosystem even after flashing a ROM. BTW, what are your thoughts on the jailbreaking community? #Hak'diPhone #PWNiPhone

[Stefan Payne]

Oh well, here we go again...

Another Video from LTT with a bad video description...

 

 

The Video should have some mentions to Lineage something like "5 year old Phone, how to put Lineage OS on it and how does it compare to the iPhone 6".

 

But I can understand why you make a clickbaity title.

[Stefan Payne]

1 hour ago, TopHatProductions115 said:

3. If you want colours, get an OLED screen instead.

...wich might or might not age not as well as a normal TFT does, as seen with the Playstation VITA...

[danwat1234]

I like videos such as this. People want the latest and greatest 'gotta catch 'em all' mentality. You can get a much newer Android phone for a bit more than $70. Moto Z2 Force with a Snapdragon 835 in it for about $120 on Ebay. Battery isn't easily replaceable however but the battery wouldn't necessarily be too old yet.

How much battery degradation did the iphone 6 have? It should support the iOS 'Battery Health' meter.

 

Ring doorbell, despite it being 1080p, it's not really HD quality. It uses a lot of compression. Ring Pro is better than '2' but still not really HD IMO. Wyze Cams are much much less expensive ($25!) and can actually store footage locally, unlike Ring. Can store it on an microSD card, and also will soon have NAS storage support. Can record 24/7 without getting motion alert notifications all the time (doesn't need to have a motion alert in order to save footage). Motion zones are coming too and can let you know if it hears a smoke or CO detector. Comes with 12 second clip cloud storage, so it is limited there, but it's free. The quality isn't really HD either.

With that, not sure if the DIY security camera project video is still worth the time besides the nerd factor.

[RejZoR]

6 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

I could get an iPhone and hope it doesn't break after a year or so because of a hardware flaw which Apple likes to blame on its users. I would rather get an Android phone that costs half of what an XR does, have a 1080P screen, and nice things like a headphone jack or a microSD slot. The XR is stupid expensive compared to other phones in that same price range, saying there is "no difference" in image quality just isn't true. The OS updates aren't that necessary for average users, most users are going to buy the newest phone regardless of platform anyway, and not having the latest version doesn't make the device "useless" as most apps will still work.

No, there isn't any difference. Unless you in all honesty look at the screen from 5cm distance... If we did A/B test with hidden phone frame, I highly doubt people would spot the difference correctly and repeatedly. And Apple is known to have one of the best color calibrations. I've had Huawei Ascend P7 that was 1080p and I just kept it in ROG mode which was actually 720p upscaled. You had to look so hard to spot tiny difference in font. Which just wasn't worth it at all compared to how much longer battery lasted in ROG mode and how smoother it was. I also had Xiaomi Mi5, also 1080p. And now using XR for like 3 months and I don't miss anything screen wise and it's basically half the resolution.

 

How is XR "stupid expensive"? It STILL has THE BEST chipset (because it's exactly the same as in their most expensive phones) in the world and it is half a year old. SD 855, is absolutely brand new chipset and it still doesn't match it. Gets very close but no cigar. How many other "flagships" have headphone jack? How many have SD cards? You can literally count them on fingers of a stupid clumsy carpenter. And don't get me started on privacy which is absolutely shit with Google and their long term support for OS is pathetic. Saying casual users don't care is a lame excuse because half of them don't know they are running insecure outdated OS when they could have up to date one with competition. If that was actually the case Google would be forced to provide longer support. Which would be great for end users in the end.

[NeuesTestament]

Honestly, I still don't think the iPhone 6 is a good option. The 6S is usually not that much more expensive but has double the RAM. All things indicate that Apple will drop support for the iPhone 6 with iOS 13 while the iPhone 6S will probably get at least one more updaten.

[MrFixitBlankFace]

iOS is the better os IMO, but Android phones look better.

[kaiju_wars]

If we're going stock, of course the iPhone is better.

Hell, the iPhone 5S is better than any android from it's time period, or even the G3 or S5.  
 

When flashing custom firmware on there, the G3 held up surprisingly well.  It did better than my Galaxy S5 does.  But I feel like a better comparison would be a mix.  It would probably have to be a little longer, but a stock LG G3 vs an (obviously stock) iPhone 6, vs a new budget smartphone that falls somewhere in between the price of both.  Afterwards, flash the G3 to Lineage OS and then redo the comparison.  

Well, I don't know if it'd be better per say, but it would be more interesting. 

[Bouzoo]

8 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

3. the iPhone 6 has a Retina display. the 1440p screen on the G3 is a higher number but it makes no difference. from a normal distance both my G3 and iPhone 7 look the same in terms of sharpness. IMO better colours is the more important spec here and the iPhone 6 won that. 

I would just like to point the contradiction here.

"iPhone 6 has a Retina display". The main and original definition of a Retina display was 326 (or 401 after Plus models and 458 with latest phones) ppi above everything else. G3 has 538 ppi. 6 Plus has the same screen size as G3 and packs 401 ppi. Just to be clear here, G3 had a bad panel. It was noticeably worse than the one in my G2 which had a pretty darn good one. But saying "the iPhone 6 has a Retina display" and "1440p screen on the G3 is a higher number but it makes no difference" is contradictory to say the least since iPhone there loses on "first Retina requirement". The sharpness increase is visible (probably best to say for some people), but the colors are not so much. You don't see the difference? I see a difference between my G2 on 5.2'' and my gf 6s with 4.7''. Quick test, just open Youtube and set 1080p on G3, and put 720p on iPhone 6 since you can't put higher res. I used to watch a lot of TV shows and movies on the go in 1080p, the difference was night and day. But just trying to show how usage and subjectiveness may vary on what's better.

"IMO better colours is the more important spec here and the iPhone 6 won that." In your opinion yes. For other people that may vary. Both are important imo. 

Now to go a bit further, Retina doesn't mean a lot since almost no one knows what the definition is used for nowadays except for marketing. Apple screens are usually in top and way above average, that is all there is to say. It is what about them is more important for you, screen size and pixel density or color accuracy. If you can notice any of those. 

[SkyHound0202]

Remember, the phone you bought back in the days won't magically upgrade itself to support future technology (unless they were built to be future-proof or had reserved functions to be enabled). How's ARkits on you iPhone 6 or Vulkan on G3 working out for you?

Yet a flagship is always flagship, but only at its time. Old flagship is at best a mid-high end product when the newer generation comes out. (Remember GTX 680 re-branded as GTX 770)

That said, their price-for-performance has improved dramatically compared when it first launched, due to their drop in value and surge of second hand market. The will still works great for the legacy workloads it was used to doing, but they will not cut it for the newer, more demanding tasks.

My stance is buying a (second-to-) last gen product is great, like getting 8th gen Core in 2019, but going too far back just not even worth pay such low price for them since they were long unsupported and will not work well anyway (Sandy Bridge does not even have proper Windows 10 driver support)

 

On a side note, why not track down one of those HTC One M8 with Windows Phone to complete your comparison? 

[Blademaster91]

5 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Oh well, here we go again...

Another Video from LTT with a bad video description...

 

 

The Video should have some mentions to Lineage something like "5 year old Phone, how to put Lineage OS on it and how does it compare to the iPhone 6".

 

But I can understand why you make a clickbaity title.

It's not really that bad of a title, I have to agree with the mention of if you bought it you should be willing to make it last, a flash isn't that difficult to do if you can follow some instructions. And if you're going to be keeping a phone for a long time you're going to have to replace the battery anyway which isn't exactly easy on phones that are glued together.

4 hours ago, RejZoR said:

No, there isn't any difference. Unless you in all honesty look at the screen from 5cm distance... If we did A/B test with hidden phone frame, I highly doubt people would spot the difference correctly and repeatedly. And Apple is known to have one of the best color calibrations. I've had Huawei Ascend P7 that was 1080p and I just kept it in ROG mode which was actually 720p upscaled. You had to look so hard to spot tiny difference in font. Which just wasn't worth it at all compared to how much longer battery lasted in ROG mode and how smoother it was. I also had Xiaomi Mi5, also 1080p. And now using XR for like 3 months and I don't miss anything screen wise and it's basically half the resolution.

 

How is XR "stupid expensive"? It STILL has THE BEST chipset (because it's exactly the same as in their most expensive phones) in the world and it is half a year old. SD 855, is absolutely brand new chipset and it still doesn't match it. Gets very close but no cigar. How many other "flagships" have headphone jack? How many have SD cards? You can literally count them on fingers of a stupid clumsy carpenter. And don't get me started on privacy which is absolutely shit with Google and their long term support for OS is pathetic. Saying casual users don't care is a lame excuse because half of them don't know they are running insecure outdated OS when they could have up to date one with competition. If that was actually the case Google would be forced to provide longer support. Which would be great for end users in the end.

To you there isn't any difference,though to plenty of people there is a difference in screen resolution, sure Apple does have some of the best display calibration but it is stupid expensive when the XR is a screen resolution downgrade from the iPhone 8 Plus. Why do you keep mentioning flagships? I never mentioned "flagship" priced phones, it is sad when Android phones in the $250-300 range have a higher screen resolution, and many of them have a headphone jack or a SD card slot.  I never mentioned anything about chipsets either, Apple does have the best chipsets but really aside from benchmarks most people don't care. Long term support would be great however again most people don't keep their phones that long regardless of the platform.

[RejZoR]

2 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

It's not really that bad of a title, I have to agree with the mention of if you bought it you should be willing to make it last, a flash isn't that difficult to do if you can follow some instructions. And if you're going to be keeping a phone for a long time you're going to have to replace the battery anyway which isn't exactly easy on phones that are glued together.

To you there isn't any difference, but to plenty of people there is a difference in screen resolution, sure Apple does have some of the best display calibration but it is stupid expensive when the XR is a screen resolution downgrade from the iPhone 8 Plus. Why do you keep mentioning flagships? I never mentioned "flagship" priced phones, it is sad when Android phones in the $250-300 range have a higher screen resolution, and plenty of them have a headphone jack or a SD card slot.  I never mentioned anything about chipsets either, Apple does have the best chipsets but really aside from benchmarks most people don't care. Long term support would be great however again most people don't keep their phones that long regardless of the platform.

Because there isn't any real difference. It's just that people are ABSOLUTELY obsessed with specs on paper. 1080p this, 1440p that, 4K something else. Bah. Pointless. Phones are not 32 inch monitors. These are tiny devices and while I was skeptical at first because everyone was whining about XR's screen, I can just say it's all BS. Image quality is superb and I see absolutely ZERO need for anything more just for the sake of raw specs to brag with.

 

People don't keep their phones for long enough? Yeah, coz they give up with stupid Android because low and mid end phones usually never even get any updates at all. I see LOADS of people still on old iPhone 5, 6, 7, 8...

[Bouzoo]

1 hour ago, SkyHound0202 said:

Old flagship is at best a mid-high end product when the newer generation comes out. (Remember GTX 680 re-branded as GTX 770)

That is highly debatable but completely wrong. Things don't work same way for phones. A (proper) 1 year old flagship is not a mid ranger at best, it is still a high end phone, just not a flagship. I'd agree on higher mid tier for 2 year old flagships. 

[Loote]

I think that video was entertaining enough, they just couldn't include all of what you guys pointed out, that said, I will write my thing:
I don't look for a phone that's X years old, I look for a phone that costs X amount of money.

But I can see how it's supposed to be a test of how well the hardware copes after said time. Maybe I missed it, but what about iPhone's battery? My friend replaced 6 some time ago because it would die after less than 2 hours of usage, but don't they allow you to replace the battery at the iStore for an acceptable amount of money?

[SkyHound0202]

35 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

1 hour ago, SkyHound0202 said:

Old flagship is at best a mid-high end product when the newer generation comes out. (Remember GTX 680 re-branded as GTX 770)

That is highly debatable but completely wrong. Things don't work same way for phones. A (proper) 1 year old flagship is not a mid ranger at best, it is still a high end phone, just not a flagship. I'd agree on higher mid tier for 2 year old flagships. 

Don't get me wrong, I was talking about the generational performance increase (the evolution of "flagship"), not the time-dependent (relative) performance decrease (the devaluation of "flagship")

 

This phenomenon is more pronounced in the Android world. For example: a 2016 flagship sporting Snapdragon 820 will become the mid-high end when a similarly priced Snapdragon 835 comes out in 2017. In this case, the price of a phone has not changed, but the performance has increased to some extent. (Apple is less prone to such problem since their A-series processor was following a conservative dual-core design, until 2016 when the quad core A10 Fusion launched alongside iPhone 7)

 

As for the latter, think of it this way: the 2016 Snapdragon 820 flagship is nearly matched by a mid-high tier 3017 Snapdragon 660 handset. Now the performance is roughly the same, yet the price has come down. (Apple also does not have such problem since they has a much leaner product line, even its cheaper 5C, SE and XR share largely similar specs with 5, 6S and XS)

 

In both cases the changes can be attributed to the development in technology, improved manufacturing node and yield, etc. This is a universal technological trend, regardless of which perspective you choose.

 

Generalization:

Assuming the product is technology dependent:

A newer product will have higher performance at the same price point.

A previous generation product can be match with a lower-priced current generation product.

[NickCatal]

You gave an app you found on a forum admin rights on your PC, and root-level rights on your phone.

 

You are relying on a 3rd party not only to provide you security updates, but also to provide you actual security updates and not malware designed as a security update.

 

You're using an unauthorized copy of Google's play software from a 3rd party forum, which you need to enter your Google credentials into.

 

Your device is rooted, so Play apps which may have minimal review by Google can get root-level permissions with a tap.

 

There was a lot of security risks that were completely glossed over in this video.

[Wh0_Am_1]

The g3 would not have been my first choice (and it wasn't as I own a phone from this era) I would have grabbed the S5 if I were Linus due to the novel IP 67 rating with it's removable battery, an OLED FHD display which make for a much better pair for the Snapdragon 801, and simply how light the S5 is, literally if you ever hold these things, they feel very nice in the hand (in my opinion) and feel like they weigh half as much as the competition. Honestly though I am a bit biased as A) I bought one, and B) my ideal phone is a modern S5.

[Bouzoo]

8 hours ago, SkyHound0202 said:

As for the latter, think of it this way: the 2016 Snapdragon 820 flagship is nearly matched by a mid-high tier 3017 Snapdragon 660 handset. Now the performance is roughly the same, yet the price has come down. 

While I agree in some things and am happy that is happening, just don't forget it may depend on type of performance. I have an 835. 710 that came year later was pretty close CPU wise but light years behind in GPU power. The new 730 look to be better in perf cpu wise, slightly, but seem to lag in gpu power. That's how mobile market goes. But it's getting better.