‘You’re Telling Me in 2023, You Still Have a ’Droid?’ Why Teens Hate Android Phones
(unpaywalled version on archive.today: https://archive.ph/03cwZ)
Interesting figure that comes out of the article: 87% of US teens prefer iPhones. Also the explanations given aren't quite surprising, I guess it's mostly because of iMessage. Teens will feel like outcasts if they get an Android phone while their friends still use iMessage because of the green bubbles.
It's actually hilarious how we allowed consumerism to take us this far and that we have now peer pressure over smartphones.
“You’re telling me in 2023, you still have a ’Droid? [...] You gotta be at least 50 years old.”
ouch 😔
https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/why-teens-hate-android-phones-30005a9cOpen linkView original on lemmy.world459
Comments546
My entire life I've been reading news that only iPhones are cool, yet my social circles don't care and have never said anything like this. I feel like this is a 'Hello fellow kids' type of investigative journalism, that is a secret apple ad.
I'm also convinced these are really just paid for by Apple ads. I've never seen anyone care about such a thing.
How often are you around teens though? My dad is a high school teacher and his students are always surprised and ask him why he has an Android and not an iPhone.
High school teacher here, and I see this a bit (although I have an iPhone)
I've heard this is an American thing. I'm Canadian, and my kids are teenagers and only one friend they have has an iPhone, the rest are on Android (as are all of my friends now, the last one went over to Android last year)
Yes this is definitely a major American thing. There isn't really anything equivalent to the green bubble shaming outside of America. And I would Hazard a guess that this is also more prevalent in more affluent coastal areas. As well as especially on the West coast. Apple's back yard.
Most tech "news" is paid by the subject of the said news.
Nah. That's North America. iPhones in North America have become a status symbol, you have to be available on iMessage, otherwise they'll contact you by SMS. I know a lot of people in Canada who have no other messaging app (WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc.). They only communicate via iMessage.
Unless you care about privacy (signal), why even have a second messaging app? I have the phone to make calls and send texts. The default shit works well on iphone and android.
It's called the network effect. The rest of the world (except China) uses WhatsApp so if you want to communicate with them you use whatever they use.
Just off the top of my head...
Because SMS is unreliable. On several occasions, SMS messages have either been delayed by hours or simply never reached their destination. Mind you, that's my experience here in Canada.
My family uses Whatsapp and my work uses GroupMe. If we just text, things get lis5t or come in oit of order.
Eh, that was my highschool experience at least. It was never super serious or anything, like it’s not like I was being bullied lol, but I was regularly teased about it in my friend group.
When I was in highschool, the phone was attached to the wall in the kitchen. Simpler times.
When i was in school, you could throw the phone against a wall and the wall got damaged. Simpler times.
How do you do fellow consumer
Who the fuck calls Android devices "'Droids" unironically? This couldn't have been real teenagers. Not ones from the past decade at the very least.
What you are referring to as droids is in fact Android/Linux, or as I've recently started calling it, Android+Linux.
...
Good one! :)
Motorola 👀
guess we can thank TikTok and Snapchat for that?
Psst. Side bar.
I like retro stuff.
Oh my god. I didn't even see that! Lmao
I've never run into that, but I feel like it's a good pivotable moment:
"Yeah Bob, this closed source walled garden isn't playing nice with the group chat.. good point, let's move to Signal where everyone can have a good experience. "
Going from one app (iMessage) to two isn’t an unambiguous win though. All the iPhone users’ experience got worse.
To be clear, this is such minor shit that the real answer is, "ok, I guess we’ll live with it because that’s how we communicate with our friends now", but it is certainly nicer for them if everyone is on an iPhone and they don’t have to solve that problem.
Our group moved to a private discord. Solved that problem.
I hope Sup. will take off. That will get a lot more people using the Fediverse in a format they prefer if there's a FB Messager alternative attached to it.
I'm 36, have had windows mobile pocket PCs thru HTCs and eventually Samsung Galaxies, and have absolutely been shamed several times by different friend groups over the last decade plus lfor not having iMessage. It def ramped up in the later 2010s
Can you expand on your experiences? Was the social pressure constant, or just a comment? Do you think it impacted your relationships with your friends?
I have, in my dating life, gotten lightening charging cables to have around the house.
It's never fun to have someone ask you for a charger, you saying "Sure, use the fast charger right there", and not have the lightening cable for their phone. But it's also a catch-22, if you DO have the cable they need then its "Why do you have this cable, you don't have a iphone".
It's like having some spare toothbrushes and women's hygiene stuff just in case someone stays over. You'll score points for being thoughtful, but on the other hand they'll be like: waaait a minute ...
Top iphone tip, heh -
When guests leave little reminders around the house, keep them in labeled zip loc bags, not in a general lost and found bin.
Far less awkward when they ask where their stuff is and you pull out a huge box of jewelry and clothing - "Can you describe your earrings for me?" - never goes down well.
Yeah, much better to go: "What's your name again? Ah Jessica, let's see... Jade, Jane, Jasmine... ah right Jessica, here's your stuff!"
![email protected], now also the best place for dating tips.
Personally, I would appreciate the thoughtfulness of it.
"it's an ex girlfriend's" is a good ice breaker.
Apple has a great advertisement department. They are great at pumping such news stories.
I mentioned it in another comment, but this was real in my experience. At least in highschool. It’s not like I was bullied or anything, but I was teased about it quite a bit and honestly it made me want to switch to iPhone just to fit in.
"This unbiased and purely informative piece of journalism sponsored by Apple."
Only in theaters July 21st. 😊
Theater at home early with Apple TV+ Ultra!
No one gives a shit which phone you have.
Also, no one uses the term “droid”.
This article reads like “fellow kids” nonsense.
In high school, they absolutely do.
Like, the epitome of the high school experience is social peer pressure about dumb shit.
And this can have a huge effect on the market in 5 years time.
this must be a us thing, I'd say over half the people have in Ireland have iPhones but nobody cares really, if anything my custom rommed Poco f3 has gotten a bit of interest from a few friends
Same. I mean I haven't been to highschool in a little over ten years, so I can't say what kids are using these days. But here in Australia, none of us really cares about what phone you have. Though I think most of us were Samsung users.
There should probably be a sticky post on every article about anything US related. Something like,
"DEAR NON-AMERICANS (ESPECIALLY EUROPEANS). THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT AN AMERICAN PHENOMENON. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO COME INTO THIS THREAD AND TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND IT. YOU MAY SIMPLY MOVE ON. CHEERS."
Seriously, it's a good 1/4 of the posts.
I see articles all the time that don't specify the country.
I think that would be a good blanket rule for every post. If it's a news article, list the country.
I feel like most non-Americans understand that not everything is about them.
It's the Americans that need to learn that not everything is about them. (Not saying that you don't, but there's way too many Americans I talk to who think that the world revolves around them).
Here in Canada from what I've seen at my school at least 85% of students have an iPhone. I have been the only person in multiple classes to have an Android phone.
as a high schooler (outside of america) my friends mostly have androids, I'm not saying they are better, just saying that they are more common
I'll tell you a secret...
All the phones suck. Some more than others.
God, the memories you just unlocked
There was this one guy at school who one day rocked up with his new Windows Phone, that was the cool, new thing then.
When I came up to him and told him he wasn't going to be the only one with a 4" Amoled screen, he was devastated
Man, we were stupid
I got roasted by a room full of interns for having an android phone last week.
Idk what people use. I had two coworkers from another country ask why I don't have an iPhone?
Yeah I could not care less. Seems beyond weird to me. Reminds me of the old video game console arguments in elementary school.
It's always been this way. Some people are just slaves to the brand. "why aren't you using a MacBook instead of that cheap Windows laptop?"
Because the Windows laptop had better hardware, better support for the apps I want to use right now and potential apps in the future, was cheaper, and is easier to repair or expand if I want to in the future.
"But...but....apple said they're the best...."
glance at sidebar
🥲
for those who are out of the loop: https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=7nvijQ-L_ms
No, this is real. An iPhone to kids is like a social status symbol and potential family wealth indicator. Of course it's absolute bull, but just as adults are, kids are horribly manipulated by marketing and advertising too. Kids have glommed onto phones for conspicuous consumption whereas adults glom onto cars and houses for said signals.
Of course not all adults or kids do this, but a great deal do. That's where the stupid bumper sticker comes from that says, "He who has the most toys at the end wins!" Very ugly stuff, in my opinion. And if there is a devil, that's where it lives mostly.
I think that is mostly a US thing, as I see way more Androids in Europe than iPhones. But I could be wrong
Yeah, it's definitely a Yank thing.
Yep. Primary chat protocol is still SMS. The general population hasn't latched on to WhatsApp or others like many countries have.
I really struggle with switching stuff to WhatsApp just because it’s Facebook. But yeah, every time I go to another country I end up having to download it for something.
fuck whatsapp
Get signal instead
say that to my entire country
Can you try Signal in those cases? If you tell people "I'd rather not use Facebook stuff if possible, can we try Signal" there's a good chance they either have it installed too or are willing to throw it on.
I'd take SMS over Facebook any day.
We like to think that but if you want to reach people who are on Whatsapp you're gonna have to install Whatsapp. And the other way around, if people have a group for whatever (plan a group outing, kids' soccer team, tenants' association etc.) on Whatsapp and one person is not on Whatsapp, tough luck buddy, they get left out.
Apple framed it as an "iPhone vs Android" issue for their own reasons but the larger issue (social network peer pressure) is very much a thing in Europe too.
And it's so outdated too. The iPhone was a "cool" status symbol in like 2010 and 2014. Not so much when everyone has them.
I thought that time period was more a Blackberry thing, and to a lesser extent the Sony Xperia and Galaxy series was taking off
Nah, since 2007 when the iPhone came out everyone had to have one. Then the 2nd model had GPS and apps in 2008 and blew the doors wide open. By 2010 HTC was releasing phones like the incredible and the "droid" moniker was in full swing - with Apple consistently mopping the floor.
I'd say iPhone fervor kind of died down around 2010 actually.
100%, I've lived both in the US and Europe, and Androids are definitely more prevalent in Europe than in the US.
Judging by the amount of times I hear the same ringtone as mine, I think where I live in the UK is about 70-80% Samsung Android phones.
I live in Brazil and don't know many people with iPhones, most have Android phones
Definitely not in Germany, I think. People here are obsessed with apple. But im not native German, so maybe im wrong.
Idk, I see plenty of both, and most people I know are capable of having objective discussions about it.
Objective discussions about why apple is better?
sigh
I think the most frustrating part is Apple is willfully hampering the ability to intercommunicate between iPhones and Androids and people aren't like "Oh, fuck them for doing that", they're like "Oh, Android sucks." Like it's just a wildly successful and incredibly scummy tactic to convince people that Apple devices are superior and people didn't just fall for it, they're willfully diving in headfirst.
It's a shame, really, because I do think they make some pretty good hardware. Might not be my thing, but they make a good phone. That said, I'll never patronize them because of the bullshit I've had to endure trying to communicate with my iPhone-owning family.
Teenagers are well known for their experience and insight
Teenagers, as a group, are very stupid people.
I am sorry :(
For what? Being a teenager? Nah. I used to be a teenager. I was very stupid.
87% of americans is not a surprising number...
87% of teens. I'm surprised it's not a higher number. Have you seen teens? They're right stupid
Brands have been always important to teenagers.
That's what he said.
Now you're getting it
Holy fuck, kids are cringe. I hate this blue bubble elitism so much. Glad it's not a really a thing in Europe.
This news just in: teenagers can be arseholes to each other.
Back in my day, it was over the brand of sneakers or jeans that you wore.
I'm 14 and I hate iphones I prefer Android phones rooted with a custom rom
I'm amazed it's 2023 and we've still not universally adopted a protocol better than SMS. Thanks Apple
This has to be a US thing, in Switzerland there is not a single person I communicate with using iMessage. It’s WhatsApp or Signal.
*Why American Teen Hate Android Phones
Also I'm very glad how Lemmy is a lot less US defaultism than Reddit is. It's pretty tiring having to constantly hear about Democrats vs Republicans, or green bubbles, or Nissan cars bad, you get the point.
They'll also say they're too smart to be affected by advertising.
I am a teen and I love android becuase it give me freedom I can do whatever I want to do by rooting or installing Custom ROM. Also It's Privacy Focused(degoogled my Tab + Root). Other Teenager don't know shit about privacy and FLOSS fuck them I don't care.
Same boat here, no one else in my school cares about their privacy. They take everything for granted. They only see the surface level of the world around them.
I would never daily drive an iPhone. Or use any of the social medias they use. Or vape, vaping is a big one here in the UK.
I do think you're a bit too hostile there though, it's important we voice our concerns and not just lose all hope for them, even if they are hostile towards us.
That fuck them mentality won't get you anywhere. Your phone is a communications device. You need others to be using free protocols and software, otherwise your phone will be useless.
I don't even like IPhones, but aren't they one of the most private?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_dispute#:~:text=The%20Apple%E2%80%93FBI%20encryption%20dispute,public%20access%20to%20strong%20encryption.
Apple only got around to encrypting iCloud data last December.
The FBI dispute happened because the guy in that case was not doing iCloud at all. In that sense they're private. But if you've ever had more than one iOS device or are using iCloud backups they already had access to it.
Thank you for the context!
Using iphones, you have to trust apple, because everything is closed source and no one can audit the code to make sure that apple isn't being nefarious.
Using AOSP (the open source android project) like CalyxOS or GrapheneOS, you don't have to trust--you know. All the code is open source and is continuously audited.
The same can be said about Mac's and Windows (both closed source) compared to Linux (open source).
Privacy is more than just a choice, it's a conscious effort.
I appreciate you linking your source, fighting for privacy (although good) does not mean they are actually private or even secure.
As it stands today, if you or your information is on the internet, you are vulnerable.
Edit: I forgot to mention, there are way too many tools out there to extract information from Apple/Android devices.
Apple has better privacy features than Google.
Nobody should trust companies with their privacy, especially when they always get away with lying and their tools are in no way auditable.
No, not really.
You are telling me the company which sells ads to you care more about you privacy than a HW company?
I never said that. Both have your information regardless.
Honestly, I have found teens using iOS to be more tech illiterate. Like they dont know about Piracy, Ad-blockers and stuff. Crazily believe that apple IS privacy friendly and shit like that.
Ah yes, news so US centric I can't even understand what's the point being made in the article, that's what I didn't miss from reddit.
Not an American and couldn't care less about the scene there lmao the rest of the world uses Android
I know a 46 year old man who constantly complains about green bubbles in group texts. He doesn't seem to realize that it's his phone that isn't following a standard and instead has chosen to refuse the RCS standard and lock him into proprietary bullshit.
Even worse. Over a decade ago, Google offered to integrate with their protocol for a shared improved user experience. Apple forbid it.
It's not laziness on their part, or "better features" because they get to have control. They literally want the poor user experience to encourage just this kind of bullying.
Funny thing is that Google does the same thing all the time. Back when Microsoft released Windows phone, they had made a few really amazing apps. One of them was their email app. Google went out of their way to ensure Gmail would never work on it past the basic functions of reading and sending email. They also pretty much forbid YouTube from working on windows phones.
The email thing stuck out the most because Google announced they were dropping support to whatever protocol Microsoft was using to communicate with Gmail servers, then Microsoft announced they would use a different protocol and next week Google went "oh right we are also dropping support for this other protocol".
Yep. Apple may be shits for their hand in this, but no one should kid themselves into thinking Google is the “good guy” in this. The only reason they are trying to play the interoperability and open standards card is because they have tried everything else and it has fallen on its face.
That's fair. As a developer that has been burned by Google dropping support for shit they created, I can't say for certain it was malicious or just Google being Google.
They used to create a ton of tools and protocols and drop support a couple years later because it wasn't worth it to them to maintain it. Lots of pet projects used to get promotions, but no budget for sustained support.
A big client onboarding and exposing major flaws could absolutely shine and unwelcome light and force them to take a critical eye and come to the conclusion of "yeah, everyone that worked on that has moved on, it'd take too many resources to revive it, and it's just going to help our competitor anyway. Our business need for it is gone because does similar things. Cut the cord"
It sucks, and isn't an excuse. I stopped using Google dev tools because of it long ago. Very unreliable. But I don't think it's the same intent as Apple by a long shot.
Sheep come in many age groups. I have an iphone for work, and I have turned off iMessage.
"why don't you have an iPhone?"
"I do, unfortunately. But turned iMessage off because it's shit."
"But now your messages come in green bubbles. It's annoying!"
"Send your message in Teams"
"On android phones you can get different messaging apps, and on some of those apps you can change the color of the text bubbles (both send and receive) to suit your needs. If the color is really an issue for you, just change it! Oh iPhones can't do that? Shame.."
Yup. And one that randomly assigns a color for each chat. It's nice.
Why do you know this person? Seems like you shouldn't have to listen to anything he has to say anymore...
Is this US specific? Because plenty of people (kids included) use Android in our country. Samsung is the most popular I think.
Those teenagers are the victim of a failing educational system because they're clearly idiots.
Why would I care what teens think? Android gives me more control over my phone.
I don't think you're supposed to have your opinion swayed by what teens think but it is important to know what they think because they reflect future trends and ideals.
They’ll vote against whatever the kids want just to pwn them, even if it ends up hurting themselves in the long run.
Who's they in this context?
Not the kids.
Because their opinion will decide what we will be using in decade or two.
Touch luck world, i will be too out of touch to care. Full boomerism here i come!
https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2023-57129-the_nix_phone_and_the_end_of_android
Bold of you to assume that just because a product is better, it will overtake Android.
You don’t personally have to, but some of us have kids who will have to deal with this nonsense, and the social pressure on teens is hard enough.
Honestly fuck that "blue bubble" entitlement.
The people who actually care more about what phone their friends are using enough to peer pressure them into getting a phone of a specific brand or model are about as dense as a black hole and about as smart as a bag of rocks.
Look, I'm cheap, and I'm not swayed by Apple's smug, trendy marketing horse shit. Remember "I'm an Apple, and I'm a PC?" Who didn't want to punch that smug Apple guy in the face?
But sure, whatever. You fetuses go ahead and cling to Apple because you're told to do it with slick ad campaigns. We all fell for it too... once. Then we realized we were paying for those ads with the Apple tax, and we found better things to do with our money than subsidize paranoid Orwell fantasies and thirty second music videos.
It's not just fetuses and we fell for it more than once. Sega vs Nintendo, Sony vs Microsoft, any car manufacturer vs any other.
What this is, is class warfare, and a chance to build class consciousness.
@AlmightySnoo
I see this from another angle. The 99% average people using stuff like this and judging people based on the color of a txt bubble simply are not worth hanging with. I mean the whole reason I use Lemmy and mastodon and not the platforms that the 99% use is for this reason. Let your honest choices filter the crap from your life.
I really question this supposed study by an advertisement company
It's not the kids, the parents in my extended family all prefer iPhone's because they can't figure android out. They passed this on to their kids.
It's US only so it doesn't matter to the rest of the world. I don't understand how it became like that there.
Kinda hard when half your mates are unpaid ambassadors for said brand
what's this meme called?
It seems we've come full circle. I remember early adverts for Android phones showing a line outside an Apple store waiting for the latest iPhone. An older couple ask the youngsters in front of them if they're excited and they reply "oh no, it's not for us .. it's for our parents. We use Android".
I was there Gandalf, I was there 1000 years ago when you had to install itunes and there was no copy/paste
Kids are dumb
I truly do not understand how so many people still fall for apple's pr strat. It's almost like a cult for some, when there's been competition in the premium market segment for over a decade now, that offers products that are at least as good as apple's...
It's definitely a cult.
Yeah they like beats too
This is what happens when you succumb to techno AIDS.
But WHY? God I can not understand why someone would willingly use iOS. I have both an Android and iPhone and every time I pick up the iPhone I wonder why anyone would use this willingly.
Idk, these seem to be first world country problems
In rapidly and non rapidly developing countries, we have brands like realmeme(realme), tecnologically braindead(tecno) and xiaomeme(xiaomi) take over
iCrytoSleeps(iPhones) are alright but people here like to be conservative with their money. Ironically they look at good specs since mobile gaming is all the rage here
I personally daily drive a oneplus one, to spite people like the ones mentioned in the post
US teens are stupid.
Or are just being given slow and aweful low end android phones. IPhones will be faster and better in every way.
It was the same with laptops 10-15 years ago, people were comparing cheap 400USD laptops with 1500USD macbooks and saying thise are better without ever seeing 1000+ USD PC.
It is about money/status and performance too.
I can freely laugh at a colleague with new 1.5k USD macbook with soldered 8GB ram + soldered 512GB SSD while using my three year old thinkpad with 48GB of RAM and 2TB SSD costing the same with upgrades.
There's probably a lot more to this than people realize. My parents definitely did this crap; give you kid the cheapest garbage that you can find them act surprised when they hate it and ask for the more expensive alternative that's nearly guaranteed to actually work.
If you're getting your kid an iPhone then you kinda have to spend for something that's at least barely competent. Android gives you near-infinite ways to cheap out.
My dad did this with me when I asked for a guitar when I was in HS. I got his co-workers crappy classical guitar that was practically made out of plywood. I think I played it for 10 minutes. Fast forward over 20 years later and I own over 10 different good guitars (after a few years of not playing at all, don’t give him credit for that lol 😃)
This is probably it. iPhones all meet Apples standards but low end Android devices can be true garbage.
It's like having a shitty netbook and swearing off Windows as a result.
This was a major point in the intel mac era, but since they moved to their M-series chips, it's a lot more of an apples to oranges comparison anymore. Pixels moving to the tensor platform is similar in this regard.
I did this; got my husband's kid a low end android phone on "pay as you go" since I knew he would either lose it or have it smashed within a few months. Was right on both accounts.
And yes that phone was as slow as molasses.
Always have been. My generation liked Vanilla Ice and Milli Vanilli.
Welp, I am the only one in class using Android, so I get some laughs. If I am going to drop Android, it will be for full fledged GNU+Linux phone. Postmarket OS already officially supports Android apps via Waydroid.
I don't see how I'd use something as restrictive as iOS. Not even being able to sideload apps without jailbreak, so Apple decides what you install.
There's so much stuff I'd miss, I'd feel like using a modern day feature phone.
How is that cool?
Imagine taking the wall street journal seriously
Perfect timing for this
Apple propaganda"journalism," as Apple is releasing another phone and have openly stated they don't expect it to sell well.Maybe they could improve more than 1-2 tiny things that have already been implemented by Android phones 5 years ago. That might help them sell a few more, although it would cut into their "new" features the following year. Oh, I know! Take something away! That always gets them a lot of exposure. Maybe a phone without speakers this time?
That would actually be great. Fewer douchbags having speakerphone conversations in public
Great clickbait title from them. This is a US / NA specific issue and thankfully isn't fully reflective everywhere else
Marketing, and the fact that phones are now super boring, everything is web based, there's no more cool apps, everything is just a frontend for some web service, or a damn webview.
The historical feature gap between Androids and iPhones is mostly gone, and since the tech doesn't matter anymore, marketing can go a long way.
The article is also very us centric, in places where cost matters more, the iPhone is seen as a status symbol, just like every other thing that costs a lot for no reason.
I dont really like android. Symbian and even windows phones performed better on inferior hardware. Their weird lifecycle seems to me wasteful and blurs the line between what's running or not. It only became stable once hardware got way better. It's a shame that every other option failed. because the only thing worse than android is an apple controlled environment.
This literally translates how dumb kids become by just abstracting everything from them, having little to no digital literacy, having little to no customisation, hands on. Fuck you apple, Fuck you iToddlers
Ah great, so Apple won. They have a gynormus mass of imbeciles addicted to a logo. Good to know.
So I've heard this sentiment a lot, and at one point it certainly was true, but are teens still texting these days at all? I swear almost everyone moved to instant messaging over Snapchat, Instagram, Discord, etc.
Anecdote: The local high school I see nearly no one using the built in text messaging system. WhatsApp is the thing I see most often. Quite a few use Signal.
I have even heard once that, "You use iMessage to text your parents or your FBI agent."
So you may be on to something. But obvious YMMV in general.
…what? In the US? Weird, every single person I’ve ever known in my 24 years of living in this country exclusively uses iMessage, unless they’re from another country ofc.
The article is obviously about US teens. In Europe it does indeed feel out of touch.
From these stats it seems 17% of US adults use iMessage. Also from Android Authority:
It's as I guessed: bullying people due to Apple's choice to segregate iMessage and not use open source standards.
Mom, I'm tired of having software choices! I need to be locked into an ecosystem immediately!!
You are assuming they know about and care about those issues. The teens in my life don't care.
You are assuming I should be taken at face value :)
I love ruining your group chats!
You're telling me in 2023, kids are using "Droid" again to refer to Android?
I hadn't heard that since they literally first came out.
Also, this isn't surprising. It was assumed that younger generations, those growing up with PCs, Tablets, Smartphones, etc, would become inherently skilled with their use. Turns out that was entirely false because it also turns out people don't want to learn what they aren't interested in. So if you don't care about anything more than TikTok, Insta, and Snapchat, then you don't learn anything more than what is necessary to operate them. And Apple makes this very easy in terms of not needing to relearn even an iota between their models. Android cannot say the same.
Isnt "Droid" a Motorola trademark or something?
I believe that Disney/Star Wars actually owns the trademark on the word "Droid" and they make money on every droid-phone sold.
Kids are dumb
My kids both have android phones (cheap ones) and if they demanded iPhones I'd tell them to gtfo. But my kids aren't brats and are content with their phones they have - cheap Samsungs - that are capable of running all the crap they're into - Tiktok, Snapchat, Whatsapp etc. Why would they even need anything more powerful?
Maybe there are private schools where phone snobbery is a thing and rich parents indulge their brats every desire. Maybe in that environment an iPhone holds an allure that an Android cannot match. But there are plenty of weird premium Android phones - flip phones, folding phones etc. so maybe that is nonsense too. If I were a spoiled brat with rich parents I might be demanding mommy & daddy buy me a Z Fold to show off. If my parents were super rich I might be demanding they get me a designer phone like a Vertu.
They must love having to ask their parents for a new phone every couple of years because they can't install apps due to their phone being out of date
Just idiots applying peer pressure to get others down to their level.
Nothing makes me cringe more than kids who buy an Apple device and pretend they own it.
Tell me more about this Pinephone.
It has no apps. But it runs Linux!!!
So is it awesome or shitty?
Yes.
They are talking about running LineageOS on Pinephone. LineageOS is based on Android so Android apps work on it.
Ohhhh, ok then it’s not private unless it has hardware switches.
Don’t they all?
Don't know if you've already heard about this or not, but I highly recommend looking into GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel. GrapheneOS is fewer headaches than lineageos, and the Pixel is easier to acquire. On the whole, it ends up being more privacy focused as well, despite the irony of being a Google phone.
Fairphone then
The lion is not concerned by the opinion of a sheep.
Status symbol VS smartphone, a phone isn't smart if you can't sideload apps or flash a custom rom.
I saw a young American tech YouTuber, he would get an old iphone SE as a backup phone just so he could use iMessage with his friends. I'm not judging though, i think iPhones are nice devices just very limited.
Consumer fetishism
My stepson announced that he was going to save money to buy an iphone, and these are incredibly expensive in Brazil. We don't even have that blue/green bubble nonsense here, because everyone uses whatsapp and teens use discord or twitch or whatever when they're on their pcs.
Anyway, we give him a 50bucks allowance per month, so I said ok, good luck saving your lunch money for two years to get one if you want it so badly.
My little brother has an Android (like the rest of my family) and he hates it. For the longest time he has been begging for an iPhone.
Does he hate it because it’s a cheap phone or because it’s not cool?
Mostly because it's a cheap phone, but I also think it's because Android is percieved as "uncool" by his peers.
Sometimes his old phone would glitch out occasionally and he'd say stuff like "This wouldn't have happened if I had an iPhone!"
You can get a cheap android (but don't have to). You can't get a cheap iPhone.
And are you really going to get your 12 year old the latest flagship android when there are cheaper options?
If every android kid got the latest Pixel, I bet they wouldn't be seen as "the cheap phone".
Plus Apple's been pushing nearly every anticompeitive angle they can. The iMessage thing is 100% intentional. It's not that the android phones aren't capable of working with iMessage. It's that Apple wants to make your experience worse when something happens that doesn't involve giving them money. Because they want you to push your friends into an iPhone, and people are dumb enough to fall for it.
I'm in my early 20's and I just changed my iPhone for a Pixel, actually. Got fed up with a lot of the Apple crap, and the Pixel looked sick. Then again, I'm not American and I don't use SMS anymore, so no one I talk to would ever know what OS I'm using.
The fact that Americans still use SMS is fucking bizarre. It's like the Japanese still using fax in this day and age for some reason
I just dont want to see any ads on my phone. I can't control a iPhone, but on android with f-droid I can see zero ads, newpipe, mull with ublock origin.....
I'd even say that Apple targeted teens from the start, because we all remember when we were all kids how those little details mattered and how kids can be really horrible to each other about that. Them including a social differentiator inside a texting app is just evil.
Apple is the company who gave all the elementary schools free computers in exchange for putting their advertising posters up in.the hallways.
It was fully intentional.
Exactly. Apple knows what they have been doing for decades. When I was a kid I "needed" a Mac because of their advertising campaign in schools. My father bought us an Atari st barely used. It was almost twice as powerful as the Mac of the same time period and he paid a quarter the price. I remember my peers at the time saying "what's that good for playing pong?" No it's good for programming, databases, word processing, but also yes it's good for playing pong.
Yeah it definitely sucks... a significant portion of your social status is tied significantly to what you have (via your parents)... Probably because at that age almost nobody has actually done anything yet
I didn't realize how big of a deal iMessage was until I spoke to a few US iPhone users. They make such a big deal out of it. Completely surprised me.
iMessage is by far the biggest hurdle for Android to overcome in the US. Convincing your friends to use a third party app just so you can participate in a group chat is next to impossible
Which is weird. The following two requests are not equivalent:
You should spend 45 seconds downloading and activating a free app (I prefer Signal) so we can all have a nice group chat experience
You should buy a new $800 phone so we can all have a nice group chat experience
You dropped this:
/s
To a degree you can override Googles choices, including running your own private Android version.
With iOS you must take what Apple gives.
Not really, there's degoogled ROMs that run on different smartphones: CalyxOS, DivestOS, iodéOS, /e/... But it is generally recognised that the best one for privacy AND security is GrapheneOS, which indeed only runs on Pixel phones.
Apple earns 4 billion a year from ads and growing.
I recently moved from Chrome to Firefox, so I get that. But Apple is a hell of a lot worse about it.
Using the iMessage thing to create social pressure in kids is pretty evil.
Which Android does he have? I do see this happen a bunch, a kid will have a bottom of the barrel cheap Android phone (you don't have cheap options of iphones) and hate Android, not the fact that it's a budget $100 phone. Get him a note 23 ultra and he won't have those issues. Then he can show off the spen features iphones will never have
Not sure exactly what model it is, but it's definitely a Motorola phone.
Maybe if he had a Pixel he'd appreciate Android more.
I think a highish end Samsung phone is also a great experience.
I recently switched from Pixel -> Samsung -> iPhone. I think the iPhone might be the worst outside of battery life.
This another factor why kids lean to iphone. Their parents buy them the shitty $100 android phone from the carrier store. Compared to a $1000 iPhone, it sucks pretty bad.
My little brother didn't like android because it was too complicated. I think some people just aren't interested in having to go figure android out is all. I like the extra options but not everyone wants that.
Install YouTube ReVanced, Firefox with adblocker and Emulators+Roms and if he still hates it disown his ass cuz I don't know what to say. For me iOS is not an option.
Apple just has good marketing honestly, growing up it was pretty rare to give out your number so I message wasn't really a thing. The main driver honestly is marketing. Androids are seen as cheap, iphones are seen as rich. The UI is sleek and magical. The ecosystem just works, and services like airdrop are ubiquitous. I fear we might see all major flagship players step out of the US as gen z gets older and android being branded in the US as exclusively budget and IOT.
Phones have gotten to the point now where switching to an iPhone would be an inconvenience since I'm somewhat bought into the android ecosystem, but other than that, I genuinely wouldn't care that much. It's amazing how little there is between them now.
I own a Pixel 7 but I hate that you always have to reach a compromise on something. This time it's the SOC. The Tensor G2 is a toaster. I looked for the Galaxy S23 and it has camera issues with shutter lag.
I don't think that's applicable to Germany for example. We have plenty Android-Phones here and ppl aren't using iMesage really.
Yeah I think this survey was done in US only. In Europe everyone uses what they prefer and no one has problem with your OS choice
iToddlers are liked by kids. News at 11
Please don't antagonize people for liking different things. Thanks.
That's when you give them a flip phone then see how they feel about the android when they earn it back.
Because flaunting your smug and condescending sense of superiority using outdated technology will really get your point across to disaffected teens.
How about we let that mindset die with the boomer generation?
In Spain nobody uses SMS since 2010's (or iMessage), IM's go mostly on WhatsApp and lately some Telegram
I don’t think it truly matters what phone you use so long as you’re satisfied with it.
I started with a Nokia and migrated to the galaxy s2 then a HTC. After some time I switched over to an iPhone 5 and then spent a couple years with a middle of the road android who’s brand I have not even committed to memory. My current is an iPhone 11 which I’m pleased with.
All this to say, I think there’s weird cultism around the android ecosystem that is, to me, offputting. Wave your flag with pride sure, but no need to poo poo someone else’s yum all the while.
Edit: I just looked at what community I commented in…
Article bought to you by Apple™️
I wonder what the numbers are for the rest of the world. it seems to me that Androids are much more popular at the far reaches of the EU e.g.
Teenagers are well known to do everything differently in a way of rebellion to the majority. So, the majority has Android phone. Right!
No one give a shit about iMessage. I've watched my kids exclusively communicate with their friends via Snapchat and discord.
Conspicuous consumption in a nutshell.
Just a note to all you can do the same thing with web.archive.org since archive.today (and all its associated other TLDs) is clearly doing with your info. They purposely won't respond to CloudFlare DNS requests because CloudFlare doesn't release extra information about you. The Archive owner released some half-assed story about per-country requirements, but DNS is the worst way to enforce that programmatically. So there is something shady there. Archive.today is shady in regards to your privacy. So if you're using CloudFlare DNS, you'll just get repeated captcha's because Archive.today doesn't follow correct DNS standards.
I'm of course open to edit and put a better alternative to archive.today, but web.archive.org doesn't bypass paywalls, all it does is archiving, it won't try all the things archive.today does like rendering the page inside a headless browser with some JavaScript disabled.
This enrages me more than it should
Teenagers do not have fully developed brains, literally, not an insult, their brains are not finished developing. Their brains are inferior to fully formed adult brains, certain individuals may be brighter than others but still inferior to their adult selves. Their opinions should mean nothing to you.
Ouch? Who gives a fuck about the hormonal opinions of naive teenagers?
I like my iPhone… but that’s because I’m used to Apple stuff, and I can get a good deal on the things. Judging people is stupid. You gotta admit, the Galaxy Z Flip is pretty damn cool.
I hear a lot of iPhone users in agreement that that phone is one of the first ones that has made them even briefly consider what life on the other side would be like.
But all of them also say they'll just wait for Apple to do it. I'm not convinced they will, but only time will tell.
You pay over $1000 for a iPhone? Pretty fucking cringe if I do say so.
That's a gringo problem.
another thing with the iPhone/Apple ecosystem is everyone having roughly the same experience for a given generation... the android platform is a wild west of varying degrees of hardware performance and capabilities. take a cheap ass carrier branded phone vs. an S23 ultra... both are running the same underlying android OS, but the carrier phone is going to be a barebones platform barely capable of running anything other than the OS... and then you factor in how well the manufacturer integrated their crapware on top of android, people willingly pay the Apple tax for a reason. personally, i'd never give up my s23u for an iPhone, but i'm also not Apple's target demographic.
Yeah, this is my takeaway as well. I'm willing to bet teens aren't opposed to Android itself, but rather "oh your mom only got you the $200 budget phone lol"
Well now that a bunch of dumbass teems don't like my phone, guess I'll get rid of it.
@AlmightySnoo Thanks WSJ for rubbing in yet another cliche.
“The teens are running low on conformity pressure, let it be known then that it is fashionable to hate on the green.”
I tried a full phone cycle on Android. A Wileyfox Swift. I stuck with it for 4 years. I’ve dealt with a handful of Android tablets. I still have to wrangle Android on fire sticks.
I love to mess around with electronics but holyshit never again. These are devices that need to work and perform, I got so damn tired messing with Lineage and TWRP - the alternative being the zero updates from the manufacturer. The whole stack is a janky mess, and a moving target in terms of security and performance. Flagship phones that might stay current and perform well for a couple of years? Wtf?
So many android apps are dogshit. There’s no minimum bar to entry. Malicious apps sneak onto the play store. Out of date apps linger around.
My phone is not a project piece. It’s an essential device. Apple gives me a stringently vetted App Store, strong privacy controls, dependable hardware and performance. They expose the settings that I need and optimise everything else. My iPhone works and does it’s job with far less painful maintenance. I’m definitely willing to trade some freedom for that utility.
Not only that but Apple hasn’t tried to drm the open web lately. Are you sure this is consumerism and peer pressure? And not a dogshit software stack with poor performance, security and hardware driving away the users who are most engaged with their devices?
Do I care what phone you’re using? No. But I think bullshit click bait articles which effectively denigrate an entire demographic for the sake of instigating a tired back and forth about apples vs oranges should stay on the other side of the fucking paywall.
Did you really just compare an iPhone to some hacked version of an android phone? No shit it'll perform better. And complaining that you can't stop yourself from installing bad applications so you need Apple to stop you is kind of a weird flex. Just be a responsible computer owner. Don't just install anything because it's there. Be aware of what you install.
And it's kind of funny how you denigrate the other phone yourself and get mad that someone else did it towards your phone. Dont try too hard defending your decisions.
I think it's a pretty fair comparison because in order to get the lifespan that I expect out of my hardware (3-5+ years), on Android I need to install a custom ROM just to get security updates.
Meanwhile Apple is still publishing updates for devices even 10 years old sometimes.
Yes, I know Google is starting to commit to 5 years of security updates, but if you bought a Pixel phone last year (like I did) then there's a decent chance that yours still only came with 3 years of updates. So if you want a similar level of service then you end up having to do a lot of work yourself to make it happen.
Pretty sure Samsung guarantees 4 years of upgrades and support.
You were pretty unlucky to buy a Pixel 5A in 2022. Every Pixel device that's been released since October 2021's Pixel 6 has had 5 years of security updates*, including the A line starting with the Pixel 6A in mid-2022. So the only phone Google still sold in the first half of 2022 that didn't have that was the 5A.
At this point the Pixel phones specifically do have pretty decent support lifetimes. iPhones are still doing better, and Android phones in general are terrible about it, but for the Pixels in particular this has ceased to be a big issue. It sounds like you managed to snag the very last phone with this problem.
*They still only get 3 years of OS upgrades, but that hasn't made a meaningful difference in several years.
No I did not and the Swift was (at the time) an official lineage target. It performed well, but the amount of work and effort it took to attain and maintain that performance was simply unacceptable to me. I like the concept of Android and I like how open it is but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be an apologist for it’s shortcomings. Of which there are many. I would love to be able to justify using an android device but it is just not a rational choice for me. And it would seem many others.
Denigrating something is by definition unfair criticism - and I don’t think even the most evangelical of android fans can support the mediocre manufacturer support and security history of the platform.
Honestly the only thing Apple vets is that the app maker isn’t trying to weasel their way around Apple’s cut of the revenue. They’ll 100% catch it if you have a link to your sign-up page instead of using in-app purchase, but if you want to make an app called Threads and scam 300,000 people’s info, go nuts.
The Google Store is no better, but if I gave 1000 people money to spend on software, the ones who would be scammed out of the most are the people using these app stores. It’s an absolute travesty that Apple continues to get so much mileage out of their bullshit claims about their strict and thorough review process.
Also, I think it’s kind of hilarious that you just want a phone to work without you needing to mess with it, and then your phone cycle with Android sucked because you apparently picked something called the WileyFox Swift and started fucking around with bootloader replacements.
Except that somehow it just keeps happening to google:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/android-malware-infiltrates-60-google-play-apps-with-100m-installs/amp/
https://www.wionews.com/technology/google-deletes-50-apps-after-joker-malware-attack-users-should-delete-them-if-they-are-installed-501251
https://www.zdnet.com/article/android-warning-these-malicious-apps-had-over-a-million-downloads-from-google-play/
Whatever Apple is doing, you just don’t see this level of compromise on iOS. It’s not just that the google store is no better, it seems to be so much worse.
The Wileyfox Swift was a rebadged device from an ODM, and at the time was quite well known and liked because the company was UK based and touted responsive local support. The hardware was good and the software support certainly no worse than any other at the time. The frustration of using it came from the problems inherent in the android stack, not the device itself.
I wanted to use android and I tried my best to make it a rational choice. The issues I encountered applied all the same to phones many times the price I paid, hence making iOS my only option. All these years later most of those core issues persist.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/06/apple-app-store-scams-fraud/
https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/84-dangerous-scam-apps-found-on-iphone-app-store-your-stealing-money-check-full-list-of-apps-71658128703429.html
https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-scams-apple-app-store-google-play/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/crypto-scam-apps-infiltrate-apple-app-store-and-google-play/
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/pig-butchering-scam-apps-sneak-into-apples-app-store-and-google-play/
https://www.laptopmag.com/news/84-scam-apps-still-active-on-app-store-steal-over-dollar100-million-annually
I could keep going down the rest of page one of the search results, but why?
My concern is with malware that exploits the software stack though, and those links pertain to scams that exploit human nature. Hence they don’t really support the argument that the iOS/android stack is more/less secure.
Scams that exploit human nature are an inevitable part of being online and there is no foolproof way to prevent them. I never said that either company was better or worse at reactive removal.
Scam apps require user interaction to achieve their goals. They largely aren’t doing anything that the user doesn’t allow them to do. So while I would always advocate swift removal, the onus is on me to protect myself rather than the store itself.
The links I posted related to software on the play store exploiting aspects of the Android stack to surreptitiously perform tasks without the users knowledge. If somebody downloads one of those apps they are able to do things that the user isn’t aware of and never allows. This is the kind of exploitation that is preventable by thorough fuzzing. And this is the kind of threat that iOS does a fantastic job at protecting against.
Put it this way: I can safely download any app from the Apple App Store knowing that it is highly unlikely it will fuck with my device. I know that if it does it’ll probably be noteworthy enough to make the news. I can’t say the same for the Google Play Store.
This distinction only exists in your head.
https://privacyis1st.medium.com/abuse-of-the-mac-appstore-investigation-6151114bb10e
Those are apps that got through app review and silently did malicious things in the background with no user action aside from the initial download.
Who cares what the technical exploit was? The net result is that there’s an app in the store that if you download it, does harm to you in a way you can’t prevent except for uninstalling the app.
Shout out to FDroid for being awesome. But realistically it’s not going to cover all the apps you’ll ever need.
As much as I would love to only rely on f-droid, they do not have the same apps as the playstore or alternatives for everything.
Apple and Android developers go about creating their experiences in different ways. Android developers look at specs on a piece of paper. They want the highest and best specs and customization, so that, on paper, when compared side by side, there devices appear to be objectively better than iPhone.
Apple on the other hand, looks more into the psychology of how or why people do what they do, and how they interact with their devices. They take the “thought” out of it, so anyone can pick it up and figure it out.
I think Apples way speaks to people on a subconscious level, where it’s just a fluid pleasant experience all around, but people have difficulty figuring out WHY they prefer iPhones.
This makes people believe that the only reason people might buy an iPhone is because they want to appear “cool” and are victims of good marketing