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...
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.
I think the data and sensor access logs is a newer feature since I don’t think I’ve seen it before, but network activity has been in there for at least a few years. The network activity is also only domains and ip addresses, nothing about protocol or what data was sent unfortunately.
How do you do that on Android? You can inspect the manifest to see some triggers, but an app can set more triggers when it first launches.
Task managers have been killed by Google about 10 years ago and it's impossible to see that's running in real time.
If you enable developer mode you can kind of see a partial list of what's currently running I guess, is that what you're talking about?
Like fetching map routes in multiple anonymised parts so that they don't know where you're going.
What is the least worse option in terms of privacy, when comparing apple and google? I think there’s a broad consensus it’s apple. But let’s not call it the “best” option please.
You can go with something else than google and apple, they are not an inevitability. Alternate OSes offer significantly more freedom and privacy.
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.
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.
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.
So unless you're willing (and can afford!) to buy and carry multiple phones, the new severely downgraded Android is about as open as iPhone, but with zero expectation of it respecting your privacy.
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
It's also the only permitted method for 2FA which is required to make online payments. Even logging into the website requires you to approve the login on the app.
The second bank app is also my primary way of sending money to/from my friends, for example if we split the bill at a restaurant.
So the answer is several times a day.
Nobody has used paper checks here since the 90s, that's not what the app is for.
On old Android phones it's easier to install newer browsers without having to update the OS.
Edit: your comment is also not valid on occasion. I've recently witnessed some banking mobile webapps being broken for long periods of time and one bank that decided to remove the agreement approval function from their webapp, forcing you to download the app in order to approve updated agreements.
And while we have something similar to Venmo, we don't see any good reason why should we use them. Back transferring already happen instantly.
I mean the fact that GrapheneOS and PureOS and Plasma Mobile etc. are not even in the running for me is probably a good indicator that where it's placed is first.
- N Banking Apps
- Whatsapp / Telegram
- Uber/Lift/ Whatever your local flavor of theses are, or even regular taxi apps
- Deliveries and Groceries (I don't have/need a car, I get most of my groceries delivered, and just but fruits and vegetables on a farmers market near my house)
- Some payments app
- Access control for my building
- Navigation
- Entertainment
- 2FA/OTP
Many of these are local apps that have 0% chance of getting built for anything outside of Android and iOS, and further, some would break on GrapheneOS / Plasma / A stock rooted device (I'm pretty sure at least one of my banking apps auto closes if it even detects Developer options enabled)
Compare the New iPhone Models - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186294 - Sept 2025 (95 comments)
iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186044 - Sept 2025 (42 comments)
iPhone Air - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186015 - Sept 2025 (431 comments)
Or a “related” feature, separate from normal comments, that only admins can access. You manually designate the related posts and then the site displays them dynamically.
But yeah, fully automated would be pretty amazing, but challenging.
I could buy two Steam Deck LCD's, but an iPhone has a much higher resolution display and I also use it every day and take it everywhere I go.
Buying one every year, not worth it in my opinion. Buying one and using it for many years is. I still have my 12 and will likely upgrade to the 17.
I think modern smart phones are pretty remarkably un-fragile compared to 20 years ago before the iPhone ($300-700 for a Symbian with a tiny plastic screens that got scratched super fast) or even 10-ish years ago with much more fragile screen glass and cases. Last phone I did major damage to was my HTC Evo in 2012.
(That Nokia N95 was in 2007 dollars, too!)
Watch me! My point was more about how expensive phones are.
I'm not so sure about modern smart phones being less fragile. My first phone was a Nokia 3310-descendent, and my second a Samsung Beat flip phone. Neither were over $100 at the time of purchase, and both were rugged devices I could throw in my pocket or in a bag without thinking it would need a protective case or that their screens were going to break.
Modern phones are extremely sturdy, people are just more precious about them because they’re much fancier and more expensive and more of a requirement for everyday life.
The buyer would get a chromium-plated metal case within which a slightly fancier version of a dumb phone was enclosed, and bragging rights as a bonus, and that would be it.
So, today’s USD 1k (or less, for the non-Pro versions) buys the user – depending on one’s point of view – either a commodity appliance or a personal computing contraption whose performance exceeds that of many high-end RISC workstations that once commanded five-digit price tags, and all for a ⅓ less than the launch price of the Nokia 8800.
For a phone similar to the feature set of the original iPhone, you can get a Jelly Pro today for $100.
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It will be another three or four years yet though as my SE is only three years old.
Economists knew this phenomenon well before, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good.
Wonder if we'll ever see folding phones. I'm not concerned with the thickness but the overall foot print that's pocketable would be amazing.
There are more people on HN claiming to use a 13 mini than Apple actually sold.
Another area where we're falling behind in tech
If you scroll halfway down the press release page you can see an image of the internals https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/introducing-iphone-ai...
There are some great renders in the first post in the thread, and towards the end you can see 3d printed mocks [0] of foldable devices. Very cool.
0: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/rumoured-iphone-fold-si...
I would assume this means Apple laptops with integrated cellular modems are on the near horizon.
Because Qualcomm charges a percentage of sale price for use of their modem.
https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/23/gurman-apple-modems-integrati...
Outside Qualcomm, there has been a limited number of players out there, with MediaTek seeming to pick up the pace and giving Qualcomm a serious run for its money – if not now then pretty soon.
What is left is… not a lot and appears to have constraints of one sort or another:
Samsung – with 5G-integrated Exynos SoC's. It doesn't make sense for Apple to house 2x SoC's in the same appliance;
Huawei – they target the mainland Chinese market with its own flavour of 5G. One doesn't want their modem anyway due to national security concerns;
Sequans Communications – they focus on the IoT market, which is a niche and has its own unique constraint space;
Intel – they quit the 5G modem market in 2019 and sold the IP to Apple, which has given them the C1/C1X.Perhaps people who buy a MacBook are likely to have an iPhone in their pocket that will function as a hotspot and iPads are much more often used by people who are otherwise outside of Apple's ecosystem?
You don't need an iphone, even a $50 phone will hotspot just fine. How many people travel with a laptop but no phone ?
If you are signed into the same Apple account on your iPhone and your MacBook, the iPhone shows up as a WiFi network option you can select without having to do any additional configuration.
It's one of those "It just works" continuity features, like sharing the clipboard between your Mac and iPhone without needing to configure anything.
ROFL. Apple wants to sell as much different devices to a single person as possible. What next, you expect cellular iPads to be able to make calls without tethered iPhone?
Thinking through my own use case, I just use my phone for messaging, maps, and the occasional app, so I'm not going to need a big screen for consuming content. I also don't want to spend a lot of money on a phone, since I don't need any fancy features. So perhaps that intersection of use cases doesn't make much sense to target?
The sales back up my statements.
Yes I romanticize about an iPhone 17 mini pro but in the end I like being able to watch some downloaded content on a plane without having to bring an iPad from time to time and I'm not going to do that on a tiny screen.
It’s a bit like selling increasingly carbonated water and then selling slightly less carbonated water and pretending that it was still water that you were selling- and using the data (of nobody buying it) to tell everyone that “nobody likes the still water; so we will continue only selling carbonated and carbonated+.”
I don't get why people make statements like this.
6: 2.64 (W) x 5.44 (H) x .27 (D)
6s: 2.64 (W) x 5.44 (H) x .28 (D)
13 mini: 2.53 (W) x 5.14 (H) x 0.30 (D)
The only dimension in which the mini was larger than the 6 or 6s was in depth, and that was just barely. It was smaller otherwise.
It did have a larger display, but it fit it into a smaller device.
----
All iPhones before the iPhone 6 were smaller than the 12 and 13 minis. The 1st gen SE was smaller. Everything from 6 on, including the 2nd and 3rd gen SEs, have been larger, though barely for the SEs. The downside to the SEs compared to the minis was that they have smaller displays than the minis.
Betrays the point anyway: the ideal size was the 5 and it was nowhere near that, even by your official numbers (which I would guess are excluding the rounded edges maybe? - regardless, not the point)
So you did that and still wrote that the minis were larger? Or you did that after I pointed out that the minis were smaller?
I provided pictures in a sibling comment thread to show what I mean, there's about 20% of a difference between the iPhone 5 and 6, and that size difference is very similar for the mini.
If people wanted to buy a phone that was the size of the 6, they would have purchased the SE from 2020, which was that roughly that size.
People who want cheap iPhones buy older models. You get better specs buying a used or NOS premium model than a new budget model.
Still good, still works.
Being able to turn Liquid Glass off to sth like flat design would be nice but this probably won’t happen.
Now when it comes to the event itself, it felt so cartoonish.
I cannot agree more on the event video. It looks like a pure TV ad for a full hour long. Also, it used to cover more diversity in terms of presenters. Where are they now? I want to hear lovely accents from people all around the world.
In this one, I noticed that the presenters all stood very still; more still than in previous ones.
It looks like they were all green screen, and the video composer was just very good. I was impressed by the woman standing in grass. It looked fairly “natural.”
What is Thread?
> Thread is an IPv6-based, low-power mesh networking technology for Internet of things (IoT) products.
> Often used as a transport for Matter (the combination being known as Matter over Thread), the protocol has seen increased use for connecting low-power and battery-operated smart-home devices.
> Thread uses 6LoWPAN, which, in turn, uses the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol with mesh communication (in the 2.4 GHz spectrum), as do Zigbee and other systems. However, Thread is IP-addressable, with cloud access and AES encryption. A BSD-licensed open-source implementation of Thread called OpenThread is available from and managed by Google.
Funny thing, I know very little of networking, but this bears more sense than just Thread.