Why iOS though? 10 Reasons why - for me - it beats out Android

Following my longer-than-expected 'how I came to iPhone in the 2020s story' last week, I wanted to list the reasons why its human interface, iOS software and applications also play a part in keeping me from looking too hard at the Android competition...

I should preface this list by saying that both iOS and Android operating systems have copied the best features from each other - and from other previous OS, including Windows Phone, Meego, Blackberry OS 10, and Web OS. For 90% of practical use, iOS and Android are now interchangeable and you can certainly set up your home screens and applications to mirror a setup that you might have had on the competing OS. 

However that does leave the interesting 10%. So, away from mundanities like launching a web browser, running PIM and social media apps, watching YouTube and Netflix (etc), all of which are nigh identical on each OS, here are some of the reasons why, in 2025, I stay on the iPhone and iOS:

1. Face ID

It's easy to say that Apple's infrared-laser-dot-scanner 3D face authentication is just their quirky take on biometrics. But it's more than that because it's way, way better than either traditional camera-based face unlocking (which fails in poor or irregular light) or ultrasonic, optical, or capacitive fingerprint sensors (which fail, for me, due to poorly defined thumbprints). 

In contrast, Face ID works in all light, including pitch dark, works in a split second, is secure enough to enable almost unlimited value financial transactions, and - amazingly - is tied to algorithms that learn your changes in appearance over time (e.g. growing a beard, changing your hair, getting older).

It's such a game changer that when, in the Android world, we got a glimpse of something similar with the Pixel 4 series from Google, that tech instantly got lauded. And yet Google fumbled the implementation, requiring all apps to explicitly change to accommodate the new sensor, while Apple was able to slide in Face ID seamlessly to replace Touch ID (as it sounds, the pre-iPhone X fingerprint sensor) without developers having to lift a finger to accept such authentication. As a result, Apple's system has flourished and Google's died a quick death.

2. Media handling

Now this is a subtlety, but an important one for me. No, I'm not talking about syncing music and movies from iTunes or similar apps on the Mac (though I do in fact sync over my main offline music library), but iOS is much more efficient in the way it handles video files in particular. 

For example, I shoot a video on the iPhone (any one, not just a flagship) and want to do a trivial edit, say chopping the beginning and end off. I tap on the Edit icon and then drag in the begin/end markers. Tap on 'Done' and 'Save video' and the video is instantly truncated. On Android, in Google Photos or similar, I drag in end markers in the same way and yet, when finished, the entire video has to be re-rendered to accommodate the new start and finish. Which, on a longer video, take a while. When you're used to instant saving on iOS, to suddenly have to put your life (and phone) on pause while a video re-renders is very annoying.

As with Face ID, media handling is just baked into iOS at a low enough level that users (and their apps) can just enjoy the benefits. Which I do.

3. Bass Octave Shift

As I seem to be just about the only tech person in the world who ever writes about this, I'll spell it out here. All iPhones have bass octave shifting baked into their speaker drivers. By which I mean that sounds below about 100Hz are octave shifted (i.e. their frequencies are doubled, so effectively becoming a second 'harmonic' of themselves) by the OS. In practice this means that bass notes in music that would otherwise be inaudible on tiny phone speakers (because 'physics') are shifted from, say, 60Hz to 120Hz, meaning that they still sound in 'tune' with the rest of the music but they actually be heard.

OK, so you're not hearing the original deep rumbling (perhaps 20Hz) bass that the artist intended (they'd be horrified that you're hearing their music on phone speakers anyway!), but it's a lot better than not hearing any bass at all!

This bass octave shifting applies to all iPhones and makes music and soundtrack audio richer and 'punchier', in my experience.

4. ProRAW

As featured in the previous article, ProRAW is a major attraction for me, as someone who loves natural detail in snapped scenes, as opposed to over-sharpened, edge-enhanced populist versions. I don't shoot everything in ProRAW, but when nature is involved, particularly grass and trees, then ProRAW makes a world of un-sharpened, un-enhanced difference.

True, many Android flagships can shoot photos in basic RAW and Samsung devices in 'Expert RAW', with the same idea. But Apple did it first and best, and because of that ProRAW .DNG files are accepted and understood by many desktop applications.

5. Ecosystem

This is obvious, but it has to be stated, since it's a major driving factor for me. Despite the 'pros' listed in this article, I have no idealogical leaning towards Apple. In fact, possibly the opposite, in that smaller, 'pluckier' Android manufacturers such as Planet, Fairphone, and Unihertz are traditionally more my bag. But I live in an all iPhone family and I use a Mac (for video editing reasons), so I get huge benefits from staying compatible with systems around me.

'Find my' lets me keep track of my family members, and they me. Useful every day. iMessage gives me complete binary compatibility with them, in fact with other iPhone users generally, in terms of sharing content, though recent RCS developments have started to bridge the gap to generic and Android users in this regard. While 'AirDrop' lets me wirelessly share (e.g.) large video files to my Mac. So I can shoot a video and have it on my Mac for onward editing, without wires, in under ten seconds.

None of this is a showstopping reason to only use an iPhone. I've managed for short periods on test Android-powered phones, using WhatsApp for rich messaging, for example, along with Google Maps for location sharing. But it's a little cobbled together by comparison.

6. Apple Weather

This may seem quirky, given how many weather apps are available for all operating systems. Hundreds. Most of which use the same underlying data. But once upon a time there was Dark Sky, an independent weather app that was extraordinarily accurate and localised, thanks to integration of real time cloud tracking (e.g. "It will start raining in 5 mins and last 7 mins"). Apple then bought it and integrated it into Apple Weather, which inherits its capabilities, and very prettily. 

So yes, I can and do use other weather apps from time to time (e.g. BBC Weather, and Google Weather), but Apple Weather's widget has pride of place on my main homescreen, for its sheer real time, localised accuracy.

7. Security

Having lived with every OS over the last 30 years (literally), I have a pretty good understanding of companies keeping users safe and secure, ever more important now that so much of our lives is both online and managed from the phone.

And as such, I've been enormously impressed by Apple's speed of response to vulnerabilities discovered in the OS and in the Safari browser. These aren't found often, but when this does happen, within a day or two, the appropriate update is offered to every iPhone in the world. At the same time.

(In contrast, Android phones, even flagships, usually have to wait a month or so before OS fixes roll out, and even then only for specific phones from the last two to five years. The situation's getting better in Android land, but it's still some way behind iOS and iPhones.)

8. More reliable snaps

Away from arty nature shots and ProRAW, above, I've also come to depend on everyday snaps of moving subjects (think pets or humans indoors, in particular) also being... well, more reliable than on other phones I've tested. 

When Apple's Camera software is running, it's constantly reading the sensor and anticipating your tapping of the shutter button on-screen. What this means in practice is that there's (literally) zero shutter lag. So what you see centred in the viewfinder at a particular moment is exactly what you'll capture. Not what's happening in a tenth of a second's time, or longer as on many other phone systems. 

All this makes a big difference when snapping people or pets, I've found. In fact, several times I've mashed down the shutter icon and thought 'Darn it, I was too late', only to find out that in fact, Apple's Camera app had snapped the microsecond my thumb started to make contact with the phone screen and that I'd captured a fraction of a second before my brain had fully registered the virtual press. Impressive.

Sprinkle in intelligence in taking multiple images and combining or rejecting them as needed to provide something with good detail, colours, and contrast, and you can see why I do like Apple's imaging system here.

9. MagSafe

I know, more hardware than software, though the two do work well together. I adore the idea, when out and about, of simply slapping on a MagSafe battery pack and instantly, through my phone case, the phone starts to recharge. No plugging in, no balancing an accessory or juggling it in the hand. We have half a dozen of these and I keep them topped up, ready for days out and any emergency charging needed (rarely me, usually the others, but hey...)

Plus, when back at home, having MagSafe to auto-align my phone on wireless charging pads so that it never gets knocked off by accident is a real boon.

MagSafe does seem to be patented (for phones) by Apple, so its ingress into the Android world is very limited and only implemented in cases.

10. Slide to mute

Something else that's largely hardware but fully integrated into the software is a proper 'mute' slider switch on my current iPhone 14 Pro Max. I love it to bits and can operate it in a second, blind, with my hand inside a pocket, say. And looking at the switch, I can see its state clearly.

Standing out in a real world situation, amidst protective TPU and err... dust, the orange depressed state indicates my older iPhone is on mute. I can see it at a glance!

Unlike... in more modern iPhones, bah humbug, where Apple has rolled the function into an Action button, which you have to press in order to find out its state, with the phone vibrating to confirm. Apple, it's really not the same. Shame on you.

Interestingly, there are a few Android manufacturers who played with copying this feature and putting in a physical slider, notably OnePlus, though it does seem as if the whole 'action button' idea is prevailing across the board. Again, I don't like this trend.

Bringing it all together

Hopefully you've found at least some of the reasons above compelling. Maybe not enough to persuade an Android die-hard to switch platforms (and there are, of course, some reasons why Android is 'better'), but enough that you at least understand why I've made the choice of iOS over the last six years.