In 2015, Android has a market share that is a lot higher than the market share of iOS. The outrageous growth of Android started in 2011, when the two operating systems had an almost identical market share. An important thing to know right now is that there is no operating system that is strictly better than the other. Both the operating systems offer more or less the same functionalities. There is no OS that is faster than the other, for example. Of course, there are many differences, but these differences lie mostly in the way that something works, not if it does or doesn’t work!
The main difference, and this difference is visible in all of the factors of the operating systems, is that iOS wants to do everything as simple as possible and that Android wants to offer as much functionality as possible. iOS focuses on a user friendly experience. The design of iOS is fairly simple. All of the applications are shown in the same way, and actually, that’s it. There isn’t much more to it. Where Android offers a lot of customizability in the home screen, iOS doesn’t. Widgets for example. A widget can be described as a sort of small version of an application. If you have a news application, a widget of this application can show you the headlines. In Android, you can put these widgets on your home screen. With iOS, widgets don’t exist on your home screen.
Something that is important, is the privacy and the security of the operating systems. iOS offers a lot better privacy and security settings. For example, the App Store of iOS only offers applications that were approved by Apple. The Play Store, the application store of Android, doesn’t do this. The applications are put in the Play Store immediately, and they are checked at a later moment. A pro of the policy of Google is that the developer doesn’t have to jump through al the hoops that Apple has made up. This means that applications can be developed more quickly on Android. But on iOS, the applications have to be of a higher quality standard than the Android applications have to be before they are approved.
An important thing that you need to know is that iOS only runs on devices that are made by Apple. Google’s Android is open source. Which means that everyone who has access to the internet can download the source code of Android. This has the following result. There are a lot of manufactures who offer a different versions of Android. These different versions are called skins. You can look at this like an extra layer of software on top of Android. Samsung has its TouchWiz skin, HTC has HTC Sense, Sony has Xperia UI and there are tens of other manufacturers which have other skins. All of these skins try to offer extra features on top of Android. There is a lot of criticism on these skins. Many people think that Android itself offers more than enough features. These people say that these skins make Android heavier and a lot slower. An other aspect of the criticism on the skins is base on software updates.
Software updates work very differntly for an Android phone than it does for a iOS phone. For Apple, software updates are a lot easier to manage than for Google. This is the result of the skins that lie upon the different versions of Android. If you own a Samsung phone, Samsung manages your updates. This means that if Google roles out a new version of Android, your Samsung phone doesn’t immediately get it. First, Samsung has to update her skin and make it compatible with the new Android version. As you can imagine, this takes some time. For Apple, it is much easier. Since there is only one version of iOS, and there is a limited number of iPhones, the updates can be rolled out a lot quicker to all of the phones.
Actually, these are all the things you need to know about the differences between iOS and Android. Fact is, that you can not really buy a phone with a wrong operating system. It all depends on what you want of your phone. Do you care a lot about customizability? Or do you simply want everything to work and look nice. Apple has built up certain reputation. This repuation tells us, that everything on your phone works the way that Apple wants it to. This way is heavily tested, and a lot of people are positive about it. But the thing is, if you are not satisfied with it, you can not change it. We simply recommend everyone to try the different operating systems in a store. That way, you can find out for yourself which one you like more. After that, you can buy the phone that suits you best.
