Please.
Briefly put, Android allows you a lot more freedom to change your device. If you'd compare both of them to full-blown desktop computers, iOS limits you to the superificial changes such as backgrounds and other forms of customization, while Android gives you access to a full control panel, command prompt, task manager, registries editor and so on.
Not so briefly put, here are some of the main features / differences. Apologies for the wall of text, but I was bored during my class.
- Choice. If you want a new iPhone / iOS device you have two choices. The 6 and the 6+. For Android, however, there are dozens of powerful and new devices out there, all with their own strengths / focal points and coming at different prices / designs. You want a phone with a brilliant camera that shoots in 4k? You can. You want one that's water / dust / scratch resistant? Sure. You want a tiny or insanely large one? Go ahead. Your choice.
- Customization. Yes, this is mainly just dress-up as you put it, but it's still pretty cool. Having the options to not just change your background and what icon you put on what page, but also customize every little part of every aspect of your phone is pretty wonderful. Everything from start-up animation to font, text size / color, lock screens, lay-out, icons and just about anything that you can think of, can be changed. This also includes your UI, for example. I can pick and choose which buttons I want and where. Apple only has its "home" button, but I can add a search one, a back one (which I absolutely love as it allows you to go one step back in any app), an index one and so on.
And this goes to extremes, sometimes. A great example is using your own launcher, such as NovaLauncher. Do you want to change your load animation? Step away from a rigid grid to place your icons? Have them upside down, smaller, larger? Do you want to change the animation of swiping to different screens? The way your folders work, look, function? Edit every little aspect of what your phone does in this aspect? You can.
Same goes for a lot of other aspects that I love about my Android. The index button, for example. On iOS, all of your
apps are on the screen. On Android, you can choose to only have the ones you want on there. The index button will reveal a nice list of all the other ones without having them clutter up your phone. This is one of my personal favorites, as I can have apps that I rarely use just sitting in the background.
- Widgets. In case you're unsure about what this means, it's basically interactive parts of apps that you can put on your lock screen or on any part of your phone. For example, if I want to, I can have a mail widget on my lock screen that allows me to directly access the parts of my mail that I want. Same goes for the weather, calendar, note-taking, voice recording, battery settings, music, maps, battery, equalizers... Pretty much any app you have, you can cut into pieces and paste some of them on any screen you want for direct access. It's a great feature that I miss on iPhones.
- ROMs and rooting. Android devices allow you to root them, which basically opens the most basic and fundamental parts of your phone up for use. Of course, most of us don't know shit about this. Fortunately for us, there are hundreds of coders and programmers out there that do and make this available. Rooting your phone will allow you to implement things like Adblock on your phone. Or full and complete back-ups of all your apps, mails, messages, settings and whatnot. Apple has its back-up / syncing, but it doesn't even compare to what you can save here.
Once you root your phone, not only do you get access to literally everything your phone has to offer, effectively allowing you to turn it into a PC in every way, but you can also load your own ROMs, which are effectively modded operating systems. This gives you the possibility to completely overhaul the way your phone looks and works. Some of these mods have hundreds of thousands of users and are unanimously praised for their efficiency, flexibility and general amazingness. Cyanogenmod is one of the most famous and has recently partnered with certain phone brands to actually become the default OS running. I have used it for the past few months and I am absolutely hooked. It's incredibly efficient, fast and easy to use while providing extreme flexibility. It's brilliant.
To summarize, think of this as of a safer and better form of jailbreaking on steroids, and one that often doesn't break warranty.
- Profiles. You can have different user profile for different users, or even different profiles for different scenarios. Setting a profile for "work" that automatically starts when you connect to the work wifi, can (for example) set your phone to mute, turn down the volume, turn down the brightness, engage the password protection, close of sections like personal pictures and so on. Same goes for "home". When I get home, my phone recognizes this and turns off my password, while upping the brightness and taking it off mute.
- App Management. I'll just copy paste this: "In Android’s Settings menu, under Application manager, you can force quit and uninstall apps as you see fit. You can also clear the cache for apps that are acting up, or view how much storage space each app takes up. And if your carrier bundles bloatware on your device, you can disable it in stock Android or hide it entirely. Best of all, you can choose your own app defaults, so if you really don’t want to use Google Chrome as your browser (for example), you can choose something else from the Google Play Store."
- Google. Even though Apple is coming close, the Google interlinked services are amazing. Google Now, Mail, Youtube, Facebook, Maps, Calendars, People... Everything is integrated and interlinked perfectly and smoothly.
- Split-screen multitasking.
- File browser. Android works as an actual and more traditional desktop computer. While iTunes is a necessity for iPhones, you can simply browse the entirety of your Android phone as if it were a folder on your computer (both on the phone itself, and through the computer if you hook it up to your PC). You can simply drag, drop and edit everything you'd like. No need to mess with iTunes syncing and all that crap, you just copy/save, drag and drop, cut and delete and do whatever you'd like. There's no limits or any special extensions that the iPhone uses. On Android, your phone is just as accessible and managable as any USB drive. After having to deal with Itunes for years, this is a breath of fresh air. No more special extensions or compression, you can just insert and take out any file (music, video, photo, app, contact...) with great ease.
Of course, for those who like iTunes, there are several similar managers for Android that effectively work the same way and that allow you to use, sync and manage your phone just as you would with an iphone through iTunes.
- Apps. Not only does the Google Play Store have a larger selection of apps in general, it also doesn't pose the same restrictions on its users. With Apple, all the apps need to be approved first. The developers who want their apps on there have to submit them and pay a fee. On Android, you can download and install any app from any website or the play store that you would like. The main difference here lies in the fact that Apple aims to keep a "closed circuit". As little third party as possible. No apps that allow any deviation of what Apple goes for with their iPhone. It goes their way, or no way. On Android, you have thousands of apps allowing for all sorts of third party stuff and customization options. I can literally make my phone look and behave exactly like an Iphone, if I wanted to.
Apps like Greenify (manage your battery and drastically increase battery life / performance by freezing apps), Adblock (for both internet browsing and in-app), screen recording, privacyguard (encrypt everything on your phone and go behind the apps' back to determine in detail to what parts of your phone they have access. This is especially great with apps that want access to your location, for example. Just accept the apps accession, open up privacyguard and go behind the app's back to disable its access without voiding the app.)
Another (less legal) benefit here lies in APK files, which are basically the .exe files for apps. I can get any app I want for free for my phone with little to no effort. Google "name of the app APK", download the file from one of the many sites, drag an drop it on my phone, open the .apk file and there you go. A 99$ professional GPS app for free.
- Defaults. Apple does not allow you to pick any default uses for things. Android does. If you open a link on iOS, it will automatically use Safari. Same goes for things like pictures, music, your launcher and whatnot. On Android, you can stray away from the default settings and pick whatever you like for whatever program/link/file/exec.
- Third party support. Again, Apple has a very closed circuit. On Android, I can get different UI's, different keyboards, different ways of setting up passwords / designs / voice control / word prediction / swipe... I can get a different everything. On iOS, you are 100% limited to what Apple wants you to have. And this isn't just limited to software. Apple generally only allows things that are made with its products in mind. On Android, however, you can hook up pretty much any external keyboard / charger / plug-in / mouse / appliance there is. Because it works with a default micro-USB port instead of Apple's own creation, there are near infinite things that you can do with it.
For example, once you try Swiftkey, you'll never go back. A brilliant keyboard that you can completely customize just the way you want it with the best word / sentence prediction out there and near flawless voice command / swipe control.
Android, in other words, has an open ecosystem that allows you to connect with different services, formats and plug-ins by default, as opposed to the very closed and limited Apple ecosystem. This includes cross-platform working, which flawlessly lets you control your phone with your PC or let it match up with pretty much anything.
- NFC enabled. Google Wallet and such are things that in the near future will make paying with your phone an everyday thing.
- Battery / storage. Albeit this isn't the case for all Android phones, most will allow you to insert SD cards for extra storage or swap out the battery. On iPhone, you are limited to your phone's internal storage (for which Apple charges exuberant prices too) and its own battery life, with no way of adding / swapping things out.
- Notifications. This depends on the ROM that you have, but if you're using Cyanogenmod, for example, the notifications are brilliant. iPhone has notifications too, but they are far less accessible and efficient. In my notifications pull-down menu, I can respond to texts, open emails, install apps, review files and so much more. All very customisable too, of course.
- Automatisation. Android has Tasker, which basically let's you automate everything your phone does to ridiculous extents. For example, I can make it so that when my alarm goes off, turning the phone upside down will snooze it for 6 minutes. Simple, right? But I can also make it so that when my phone detects my home wifi network, it automatically connects to it, unmutes the phone, turns up the brightness all the way, automatically sends my girlfriend a text message telling her that I'm home, connects to my music system and starts playing my favorite song before I even come through the door, launches chrome to open sep7agon and sign me in. Or I can make it so that when my calendar says I'm supposed to be in a meeting and I turn my phone face down, it automatically goes quiet and blocks any noise / mails / calls / distractions. Or I can have it set to if I shake my phone 3 times on the day that my calendar has marked as Porch Day, my phone will automatically start taking dozens of pictures and sends dick pics to every contact I have, while opening up my GPS and giving me the direct and fastest route to a nearby hospital.
- Minor things. More phone unlock options, more security options, more free apps, often cheaper apps, more sharing options...
I could go on for a while longer, but these are just some of the things that matter to me. After using an iPhone for years, I'm extremely pleased with my current Android and don't see myself going back. However, I'm not an Android fanboy thinking that everyone with an iPhone is technologically impaired and settles for easy and stupid. They're both undeniably great devices. But in the end, I have a phone that literally does everything hardware/specs better than the iPhone 6+, runs the brilliant Cyanogenmod and is amazing in every way, and cost me less than half of what the new iPhones would've cost me.
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