I am based in India and this is from my experience using both Android phones and iPhones over the last decade specifically in India. This is important because a lot of features available to people in the United States and Europe are not available in India, this is mostly true for iPhones but some phone specific features are not available in in Android phones as well.

This article is based on my personal opinion, based on a realization I had as me and my family begin to change our old phones as they are old, in need for repair or running out of security updates.

Price

At this point in time, the smartphone market has matured more than enough that even the cheap phones are great for basic day to day use. They don’t have the latest and greatest in camera and performance, but for the average person it doesn’t matter.

I have been using a _Moto G52_ a 150 USD phone for over a year now and you know what, Its great. It doesn’t necessarily take the best in photos and I am not that big of a photographer to tell any better, I have gcam installed and people say it takes really great photos with it, therefore I have it.

This is not just limited to the price of the phone but also the price of repair, I have gone to authorized or otherwise repair shops for iPhones as well as androids and let me tell you, when you ask Apple to repair something, they suggest such an outrageous price, I rather buy a new phone. It is cheaper to buy the android phone I use than to get a screen/back glass of an iPhone repaired.

Dialer

Here in India a lot of people use whatsapp, google meet and other such apps rather than just to use the default dialer for voice and video calls. On IOS other dialers are not given same level of preference as the default dialer or facetime calls. What this means is that, you sometimes don’t see a call coming from other apps, this can be quite the hassle as it means that you miss calls.

On the other hand Android gives every single dialer equal rights. I get a call notification/dialer app pulls out for whatever app a call is coming from.

Another advantage is the call recording feature. Can all the iPhone users imagine recording a call?

Little things

1. Before the iPhone 15 all previous models had a speaker grill on the notch (other than iPhone 14 pro and pro max). Now the problem with this stupid speaker grill is that it gets filled with dirt regularly and you have to clean/get it cleaned regularly. This is also a part which gets damaged incredibly easily when cleaning, no matter where you get it cleaned, even if you get it cleaned at an apple authorized repair center. Once it damaged, it affects the speaker, muffling its sound and to repair it you have to get the whole front display changed, which costs $300 USD. This was what I was quoted a few months ago.

2. Button. My grandfather uses the iPhone SE, because it has a home button. He does not understand gestures. At least android has an option to choose gesture/buttons, If there is no home button on the next iPhone SE, he will have to get an Android, simply because he is not comfortable using gestures.

3. Emergency services messages. Almost all android phones being sold in India have this feature. You can receive disaster management/ emergency messages on your phone. This is not a feature here at least till the iPhone 14 pro max, can’t say about iPhone 15. I know this because I received one, my mother who is also on android received one, but no one else in the family, who all use iPhones received one.

4. Spam Blocking. The Google phone app has this really great feature, where it auto blocks spam calls. This doesn’t block every single spam call, but takes care of I will say around 90% of the spammers. The messages app is also amazing, it puts most of the spam messages in junk and has an option to auto delete OTP messages after 24 hrs. This is not available on IOS.

5. Whatsapp has unlimited backup on Android. If you don’t know whatsapp has pretty much become the default messaging app in India. On iPhone for whatsapp backup you are limited to your iCloud space. On android, your whatsapp backup doesn’t count toward your Google drive space.

6. Side loading and custom roms. Don’t like your OS? you can probably change it and install a custom rom. Don’t want Google, just install a custom rom without Gapps. Sideloading is also amazing, I use tons of apps from F-droid, which are not available on the play store. My launcher of choice Lawnchair, I downloaded the apk from their website. About custom roms you have to careful when deciding on your phone as, for some phones it is not possible to find custom roms, this is highly dependent on the Manufacturer.

7. Higher refresh rate screens. iPhone users say iPhone 60Hz feels like android 120 Hz, heres the thing my mother couldn’t tell the difference between her iPhone 60hz and androids 60Hz and did feel a difference when changing refresh rate to higher.

Fast round

1. Google Assistant > Siri
2. Headphone Jack, some don’t, but many still have it.
3. SD card slot and dual sim support on many phones.
4. Material You > whatever shitty theme IOS is using.