It never was. I had android when I was young and it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

It’s imessage.

If android phones showed up in imessage as red bubbles or purple bubbles but everything still worked OR if Apple released iMessage for Android very few would actually care about the type of phone used .

Google has got to fix the messaging disparity. RCS is not iMessage. It never will be. It relies on your SIM card having an active network connection to work. The apps are the other issue. Let’s just face it… Android apps on the whole are not as good as their iOS equivalent. Developers spend 90% of their time and money on the iOS versions of their apps, the Android version gets the crumbs leftover.

Well yeah, no one wants to look poor.

I think it still comes down to user experience. A phone’s OS is not supposed to get in the way of you using it. It’s been a while since I’ve had an android phone, but for instance I remember when an app crashed it would give a dump of the technical details. People don’t want to see what’s going on under the hood. They either want it to just work, or to completely exit and then try again. Android is still a “tinkerer’s phone.” Even I, a computer programmer, want a phone that lets me do what I want to do, with a phone that is designed around a refined, intuitive, high-quality OS.

I worked 3 years as a representative for an android brand. I was always top 3 in my team regarding results and sales. Even if I could convince people to buy android, I could never convince myself. Also 8 in 10 people in my team used iPhones. It’s not just younger people. While the iPhone is not perfect, it’s simply better, more polished and more reliable. Get a new case and screen protector for your 3 year old iPhone and it still feel new, while your 3 year old android is ready to be recycled by then.

Customer satisfication matters… a lot.

I had such a terrible experience with the first few generation of Android phones, such as the phone app, the thing the device was called, took 10 seconds to open! And this was just a tad below a flagship phone!

Android have gotten better but once I switched, I switched. Android would really have to have a true game changer to have me change. And it’s not any little gimmicky toys or folding screens, but something that rivals the invention of the internet, some groundbreaking AI or something that isn’t on iPhones.

there was a survey or something a while back that showed that if you had an android you were 2-3x less likely to land a date than if you had an iPhone

Father of a teenager and young adult here. It’s more than iMessage; it’s the entire environment. iPhones are more durable and supported far longer than Androids and this makes handing down phones to kids a natural proposition. My kids have hand me down phones and my youngest is jealous because my phone has the .5 lens. They share music via the Music app. They know the cameras inside and out. And sure, green bubbles are a thing. But the lock-in is far more important. Parents with middle schoolers who aren’t ready to give their kids a phone are now getting Apple Watches with cellular as their kid’s first Apple device. Android is in serious jeopardy of being an also-ran in the next 10-15 years here in the US.

Tbh android isn’t “cool” for adults either. lol well some of them are like the unique folds and such

US US US. UNITED STATES, as always is the problem. Kids everywhere else like Android fine

I used Android from 2009 (HTC Dream) until 2021 (bought an iPhone 13).

I switched to iPhone because:

• Android (and Google as a whole) is an ecosystem that pays its bills by giving 3rd parties access to your personal information, and because of this Android will never offer privacy features that iPhone does
• iPhone offers far better privacy and security features
• The vetting and security that Apple puts into the App Store makes me more comfortable. The Google Play store is a cess pool garbage apps that have serious privacy concerns that Google is very slow to respond to
• iMessage is superior to RCS

However, there are some factors that make Android better (based on features alone):

• The fact that everything you download is just treated like normal “files” in the phone’s file system. You open your file explorer, and you can access everything (iPhone’s silly distinction between things that live inside “Photos” versus things that live inside “Files” is extremely stupid)
• Being able to side-load apps that you manually download on your own as APK files means that you can do things that Apple doesn’t allow on their app store. Like video game emulators
• Android allows other web browsers. All 3rd party browsers on iPhone are actually just reskinned versions of Safari. Android allows entirely different browsers that are built on their own technology. This means that you have access to browsers with plugins that offer you more advanced features
• Android allows the installation of custom “Launchers” (a replacement for the UI of the home-screen of the operating system), which offers more customizability.
• Keyboards vary from brand to brand on Android, but all of them are lightyears ahead of iPhone’s trash keyboard

I used to have an s23 ultra and loved it. But all of my family have iPhones and share locations. It’s much more convenient. I also got tired of the comments of me Not having an iPhone. I caved. Got a 15 max.

Why is that a bad thing? Android is shit, everyone knows that.

I couldn’t be more ok with this. Samsung continues to throw money at me to upgrade my stuff. I get like $800 and new buds pro to upgrade to a new phone. Pretty much get a new tablet every year for $100. New watch for like $80. It’s insane.