In the US, replacing a Samsung phone battery is not any cheaper than iPhone, and likely you'll get the phone next day unless you show up at the repair shop at 8am. Apple store? Just walk in one and you'll get it done in 1-2 hours.

It looks like Apple would charge $89 to replace a battery in my iPhone 13 Pro. I tried to find the price Samsung would charge for my wife's S21 but I had no luck (their site and SEO is a disaster). Is it much less than $89?

I feel sorry for you. I have experienced their support in both Germany and The Netherlands and it's stellar. You can call them, get someone on the line in a few minutes and they will genuinely try to help you. One time there was an issue with a transaction (amount subtracted twice), within a few minutes of calling I was in contact with someone from their finance department who not only solved the issue, they also called back a few days later to verify that I got the refund and to check if I was happy with their help.

Another time my wife wanted Apple Care, but decided on the last day and the website didn't offer the option anymore. She called, they were really helpful and again called back a few days later to check everything is good on our end.

They are a big-tech company, but actually being able to call someone and getting swift help is refreshing.

Edit: I only now realize the accidental pun: you probably won't be getting 'Swift' help. :p

So I can just adb install any apk I want, no matter if it's a Google authenticated developer who signed the app? So f-droid would continue to work fine so long as they install via adb instead of the intent mechanism or whatever it currently is?

Since the 6s, iPhones get 6 or 7 versions of iOS (including their release version), which puts them at about 7-8 years of full support less whatever features (like Apple Intelligence) don't get support on some hardware. Before the 6s, it was lower but the hardware was also changing a lot faster (like going from 32-bit to 64-bit ARM).

But for security updates they've pushed it up to 10 years. The 6s, 2015, got a security update this month.

They're actively supporting (at least security updates) iOS 15, 16, 18, and now of course 26. 17 was skipped because no devices lost support with it, everything that could run 17 can run 18.

I have phones between Android 12 and Android 15, they still get the updates that are available from PlayStore.

Everything else, it isn't like I am a public figure that has to have ultimate security devices.

Since Android 5 that ART uses AOT, and nowadays it is a mix of JIT and AOT with PGO metadata shared via PlayStore.

Additionally, Java and Kotlin are quite usable outside Android, instead of flourishing in a single vendor ecosystem.

Swift outside Apple ecosystem is as interesting as using Objective-C with GNUStep.

Typically, Android apps launch faster than iOS apps even on significantly slower hardware because Dalvik/ART is optimized for that, and iOS is not.

> The latest iPhone is usually about twice as fast as the latest flagship from Google or Samsung

So my text messages will arrive twice as fast to the destination? Or phone calls will be two times shorter? Or I will read HN comment twice as fast while taking shit? Or the route found by Google Maps will have two times less traffic lights?

That’s non sense metric.

Nobody cares about how fast their phone cpu is. My iPhone 13 was significantly less performant than a top of the line modern Qualcomm CPU and never felt slow. Apple chips are also no more twice as fast as the competitions. The gap has been smaller for years.

If that’s all you have, you have basically nothing.

Only the experience matters and the iPhone UX is strictly inferior to the competition. Battery life is worse, camera is worse, screen is worse. So happy I switched and really regret ever trying buying one.

> Android has nothing equivalent to AirPods, airdrop, find my, list goes on and on.

Sony has a product which is considerably better than the AirPods and the Pixel Buds are competitive.

Google has an alternative to Find my which works the same and allows to use trackers from multiple brands, including some which are better than AirTag.

Android has a default feature called nearby share which works the same and has had sharing via WiFi for much longer than Apple including some options which are not annoyingly gimped proprietary technology.

It’s always the same issue with Apple fan. They are completely unaware of how far behind Apple is because they don’t want to even look outside.

AirPods → Google Pixel Buds, Samsung Galaxy Buds, OnePlus Buds (and similar)

AirDrop → Nearby Share (Google), Quick Share (Samsung)

Find My → Find My Device (Google)

70% of the world kind of disagrees.