I'm actually considering buying myself an iPhone for the first time. I have basically two priorities when buying an phone:

1. Freedom. I should be able to build and run apps on it without the platform holder having a barrier on it.

2. Privacy. The phone shouldn't be an object to track me for better ad sales or any other purpose.

Of course, priority 1 has until recently always led to Android while priority 2 has always led to Apple.

But with the upcoming announced changes where google is going to require registration and signing for even third party sideloaded apps, while at the same time the EU is forcing Apple to open up and allow sideloading, it seems pretty clear that in the near future both Apple and Google's policies regarding point 1 are going to converge. On a position less free than Android has hitherto been, and less free than I would like, but unfortunately they are the two options on the market.

So with priority 1 no longer a differentiating factor, it comes down to priority 2.

I've used both Android and iOS over the years, as while my personal phones have always been Android, my employer provided phones have always been iOS. I think I do prefer the Android user experience and have used enough of both that that's not just a factor of which I'm accustomed to, but it's also not the huge difference it once was for a lot of apps.

Right now I'm using a Pixel 7 Pro and I might weigh sitting it out another year, but my USB-C port is failing and I'm also watching the pixel battery issues creep up the model range to newer and newer models...

Thing is, privacy with apple is a marketing term.

if apple offered actual privacy, you could:

- find out what/when apps are running

- find out who they are talking to

- prevent it, including apple if you want

and apple has all kinds of nonsense like deep links (apps can intercept links), bluetooth beacons (apps can talk to stuff in a store/location), and lots of other stuff behind the scenes. You can't find out if it is in use.

My Pixel 5 made me switch to iOS after a software update made it unusable.

A year later, the iPhone mostly gets out of my way. However the keyboard and browser options are artificially limited. I can't easily set my own search engine on Safari either. Ad blocking works fine though.

The hardware is the best I've had in years. Battery life is really good. Airdrop and Airplay are very useful, as are many other small features.

I have come to prefer the iOS experience, but don't expect a life changing upgrade, just a longer-lasting phone.

I wasn't aware about how bad the situation was for devices, in general, about privacy until I installed a Pi-Hole in a Raspberry and used it as DNS service at home.

It's really surprising the amount of data that tries to leave the premises, and this just the one that I block with a mid-range security ban list.

Has something changed in the Apple ecosystem to put item one anywhere near the table?

Let's be very clear here: all Google has announced so far is that installing apps from anonymous builds is going to be taken away and only if you want your phone to be considered "certified". Let's not get drawn too far into hysteria.

Well said! I share those two priorities, and am now moving in the inverse direction, but I plan to use GrapheneOS.

Battery and USB-C ports can easily be changed. You don't need to change the whole thing to fix that. Just like you don't buy a new car when you have a flat tire or broken AC.

> but my USB-C port is failing

I'm having the same issue with my pixel 8 (along with the screen randomly turning green out of nowhere, so I have to "ground" the display to get it to work again)

In general the 8 feels a lot more cheaply made than the 6

I agree that the android UX is better than apple (or at least, it makes more sense to me). But I'd consider moving to iphone for build quality alone

I'm in the exact same position down to the Pixel 7 pro. It feels like my options are either to move to graphene os or move to iOS. But grapheneos seems like it'll cause headaches that I am not that interested in dealing with, however my wish to escape vertical integration which plagues tech ecosystems still tempts me.

It seems you are searching for Librem 5 (my daily driver). It runs PureOS (a Debian derivative) and turns into a desktop when connected to a screen and keyboard.

Funny that EU made iPhones more compelling by enforcing USB-C and side loading.

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