10 ways Android is just better
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,403 words · ~12 min read
0:00
a portion of this video is sponsored by lastpass
0:14
welcome back to coping with your iphone
0:18
james how do you deal with all the useless seldom used or bloatware apps
0:23
that clutter up your home screen great question well you know it's really
0:27
no problem all i do is i put them all into one folder that i call useless
0:32
garbage and then i just never go in there again and it only takes up one
0:36
square on my home screen one square one
0:39
just one wow that's great and and how
0:43
about you riley well that's a great method but what i do is i put all my
0:47
useless apps on their own special page in the back and i just never swipe them
0:52
it just doesn't ever go there nope you don't have to look at it at all it's
0:55
like it's not there that's terrific
0:59
oh please oh thank you iphones are just they're so easy to use
1:04
aren't they yeah oh that's great join us again next week
1:09
when i'll be sharing my favorite dongle recipes
1:16
i'm just kidding you guys we did a video on 10 reasons iphones are better and now
1:21
Android's getting the same treatment after this message from our sponsor
1:26
lastpass lastpass relieves the burden of trying
1:30
to remember all your passwords for every website let lastpass fill in the
1:35
passwords for you learn more at the end of the video or through the link below
1:46
so once again we've leaned on our community to compile our list and
1:50
surprise surprise the number one most commonly cited perk of Android is
1:55
customization not only does Android let you
1:59
put your app icons wherever you want including places you can actually reach
2:03
use non-hamstrung third-party keyboards a swiftkey on iOS is just truly awful
2:09
and change your default browser to something other than safari it even lets
2:14
you change what's called the launcher which is basically how your desktop
2:18
looks and feels for example the google pixel launcher has the app drawer
2:23
available from a swipe up and the google now feed from a swipe right but you
2:27
don't need to have a pixel to make your phone look like this other Android
2:31
phones can just download the pixel launcher or one of the hundreds of other
2:36
launchers from the play store which whoa microsoft launcher does anyone use that
2:40
10 million downloads look the point is that it's customizable
2:46
and while it is true that you can take more control of your iphone by
2:50
jailbreaking it that basically just unlocks features that Android users
2:55
already get out of the box and Android offers an even deeper level
3:00
of customization if you root your phone and install custom roms which are
3:04
basically alternative firmware with many of them created for free by members of
3:09
the open source community and they allow you to do all kinds of crazy things like
3:14
removing bloatware overclocking for better gaming performance
3:18
underclocking to extend battery life installing updates as soon as they
3:22
become available instead of waiting for the oem to push them or even just
3:27
changing what color your notification light flashes speaking of freedom
3:31
whereas unjailbroken iphones force you to download any and all apps from the
3:35
app store on Android you can number two completely bypass the play
3:41
store by side loading apps as many of you no doubt learned when you
3:45
installed fortnite for Android apps are just dot apk files and they can be
3:50
downloaded and installed directly on any Android phone as long as you've enabled
3:55
the capability in your phone's settings first apps that are side loaded don't have to
4:00
adhere to the play store's rules so some of them can be sketchy but there are
4:04
cases where the decision to go off play store was driven by other reasons like
4:09
the developer not wanting to give 30 of their revenue to google or wanting to
4:14
release a casino app that lets you gamble with real currency or just
4:18
wanting to free the nipple as it were the next
4:21
level is that you can also sideload apps that are themselves app stores so you
4:26
can actually have more than one app store on your phone for example the
4:31
amazon app store used to let you download one paid app per day for free
4:36
like there's no reason to miss out on stuff like that and from a developer
4:40
perspective alternative and often smaller app stores let you target users
4:44
of a specific niche or region i mean the
4:48
google play store is not accessible at all in china without a vpn so if you
4:52
want to access the chinese market you're going to have to submit your app to 10
4:55
cent my app or baidu mobile assistant
4:59
number three took me a little bit by surprise interaction with the desktop
5:03
now when you plug an Android device into a pc it acts like pretty much any other
5:09
usb device or flash drive and you can even use a conventional drag and drop
5:13
interface to access both its onboard
5:16
memory and an external storage device such as a microsd card
5:20
by contrast iphones must interface with the desktop via
5:25
intermediary software namely itunes now
5:29
to be clear it is possible to be an iphone user for years without ever
5:34
needing itunes relying on icloud for backup and downloading stuff directly to
5:39
your phone using the files app which came out with iOS 11 and thank goodness
5:44
because before that you couldn't even download things from the internet but if
5:48
for some reason you need to connect your iphone to a computer with a cable like
5:52
to move music from your phone to your computer then itunes is liable to be a
5:57
huge pain in the booty that prevents you from completing tasks that would
6:01
otherwise be very simple the only
6:04
exception is to copy pictures
6:08
from your iphone to the computer
6:11
that you can do and that's because your computer sees the iphone as a read only
6:17
camera so you can't like copy photos from your computer to your iphone
6:22
something i discovered recently when i tried to help my aunt move to a new
6:25
iphone and i was like oh this should be easy i'll just move all your old photos onto your oops
6:30
number four similar to the software side
6:33
Android gives you infinitely more choice when it comes to hardware because
6:38
Android is open source the software can be found inside devices from myriad
6:42
manufacturers and this again gives you more freedom because instead of saying
6:47
well shucks i don't really like what they did with this year's iphone i guess
6:51
i'll wait until next september's keynote competition pushes oems to continually
6:56
innovate allowing consumers to vote with their wallets on the features that they
7:01
care about headphone jacks stereo speakers expandable storage screens
7:06
without notches all these treasures and more await
7:10
and of course this plurality of devices represents number five different price
7:15
points not everyone wants to or even can
7:19
spend seven hundred eight hundred fifteen hundred dollars on a phone there
7:24
are four hundred million smartphone users in india and only three percent of
7:28
them have iphones it's for a reason at seven hundred and fifty dollars the
7:33
budget iphone is price prohibitive for millions of people but on Android
7:38
there's a device for everyone number six is split screen multitasking
7:43
provided that you're using supported apps Android lets you divide your screen
7:47
in two so you can say read an article
7:50
while you watch a twitch stream it's a feature that some power users
7:54
cannot live without while others like myself hardly bother using it but hey at
8:00
least we have the option the really bizarre thing here is that ipads got
8:04
support for split view with 2017's iOS
8:07
11 including the 7.9 inch ipad mini but
8:11
but but but no you can't use split view on your 6.5
8:16
inch iphone 10s max because screw you apple doesn't think you should
8:21
be able to number seven
8:25
usb type c adoption of usbc is really
8:29
picking up steam now and having a standard interface on your devices is
8:33
the bee's knees because in theory nearly every device in your house could use the
8:37
same cables i brought one charger with me on my last trip and i was able to use
8:41
it for my phone my laptop and my switch
8:45
awesome but what's weird is that while i could
8:48
charge all of those things including a macbook if i had one but it won't work
8:52
with the iphone now granted in the past
8:55
the iphone's lightning connector was definitely superior to usb micro b it's
9:01
reversible and can handle more power but usbc has closed the gap and even surpass
9:07
lightning with many more features and much higher data transfer speeds and
9:12
apple honestly just looks kind of silly for not supporting it
9:16
all of their devices could have the same port for the first time ever
9:21
but no number eight Android has more unlock options you can unlock your phone
9:26
with a code a pattern your face your eye
9:30
or your fingerprint depending on your device of course and each method has its
9:34
place depending on context a fingerprint reader whether you prefer it on the
9:38
front side back or even under the screen
9:42
glass is still more convenient than facial recognition in some cases but
9:47
then face unlock is great to have too and even passwords have their place
9:52
what doesn't have a place is fixing something that ain't broken
9:56
i loved touch id and i gave apple a ton
9:59
of praise for it but then they went and took it away probably forever even
10:04
though it would have been so awesome to have the apple logo just work as a
10:08
stealthy fingerprint reader like it's just sad that they didn't do that
10:11
seriously number nine Android has a universal back button now
10:16
many of the apple faithful and even some Android users might find this point
10:19
controversial but hear me out yes you can go back on an iphone either
10:25
by swiping pressing the button in the header or using safari's back button on
10:29
the bottom when it's visible which method you use is totally dependent on
10:33
the app but it's not the inconsistency here that
10:36
i have a problem with it's the positioning the back button is easy to
10:41
reach on Android because it's right here by your thumb and what's cool is that on
10:45
many phones you can even choose which side you want it on but on the iphone
10:50
right-handed people so that is most of us have to reach all the way
10:54
across our increasingly ginormous screens to initiate a swipe or even
11:00
worse way up to the top to reach the button now back when iphones were small
11:04
one-handed devices that was fine but this was something i criticized back
11:08
when they launched the iphone 6 and they still haven't fixed it it's just not
11:14
ergonomic i mean at least they let you swipe right from anywhere on the home
11:17
screen and finally number 10 OLED screens
11:22
yes iphones do finally have OLED screens now starting from 2017's iphone 10 and
11:28
while it looks like all models will have OLED starting in 2020 right now their
11:32
cheapest model still sports an lcd meanwhile on Android OLED screens are
11:37
starting to appear even on mid-range devices and they actually use it for
11:43
some reason apple still has not given its users always on display
11:47
functionality while some Android brands have already started expanding the color
11:52
and interactivity even of their always-on screen locks now
11:57
i am not saying Android is perfect
12:00
software updates hey with some handset makers forget about it random battery
12:05
drain i have complained about that on this phone it in particular the one that
12:09
is my daily driver manufacturer spying scandals those have happened and also
12:15
just the fact that there's kind of always it's always seems like there's a
12:18
compromise like there's no one perfect device that has
12:22
everything that you want there's always some kind of an issue the point i'm
12:26
trying to make here is that there are just plenty of reasons to buy an Android
12:31
just like there are plenty of reasons to buy an iphone and one reason to enjoy
12:36
your use of either of them is the sponsor of this portion of the video
12:40
lastpass lastpass relieves the trouble of remembering your passwords and
12:44
reduces your anxiety about getting locked out of accounts and then like
12:47
waiting for that password reset email you won't need to write down remember or
12:52
reset your passwords anymore because lastpass allows you to keep track of
12:56
them in a way that is safe and secure
12:59
there is no cap on your password storage they have password breach alert it
13:04
doesn't only work on mobile it works on the desktop as well with extensions for
13:08
the major browsers that make it just so easy to automatically populate not just
13:13
passwords but even things like credit card numbers it's flipping awesome it
13:17
just happens automagically and you guys don't have to take my word for it you
13:21
can click the link below to try out lastpass for yourself
13:25
so thanks for watching guys if this video upsets you you know what to do but
13:29
if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link
13:32
to where to buy the stuff we featured frankly we don't care which one you buy
13:35
at the link in the video description also link down there is our merch store
13:39
which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should
13:42
totally join thanks minus thanks
13:45
this was just great i really loved it
13:49
you know what i love camera bumps thanks apple for bringing this innovation to
13:54
the industry so courageous oh great
13:57
here's your wallet