10 Reasons Android Beats the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus
Android handily beats the iPhone because it provides a lot more flexibility, functionality and freedom of choice.
Apple's iPhone 6s and 6s Plus phones generate a lot of press, but there are many reasons why 82.8 percent of all new smartphones sold run Android. Apple provides a completely catered, top-down experience in which it dictates exactly which apps you can run and which features your phone can have. Android takes off the training wheels and lets consumers have a swath of hardware and software to choose from, along with access to key technologies, such as NFC pairing and 4K screens that Apple doesn't think its users are ready for.
Here are 10 reasons Android beats the iPhone.
1. More Storage for Less Money
The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are priced like high-end phones, but that doesn't stop Apple from skimping on storage. For starting prices of $648 and $744 respectively, you get just 16GB of internal memory. After you deduct 1.3GB for iOS 9, you have almost no space for the 12-MP pictures you'll take, the 4K videos you'll shoot, your music collection or iTunes movies, which can take up between 1 and 3GB depending on resolution. Some popular iOS games can also eat as much as 1GB to 2GB a piece. If you really want to make the most of your iPhone, you need to add another $100 to the price to get 64GB of storage.All of the latest high-end Android phones, including all the major Samsung phones, the HTC M9 and the LG G4, start with a more-reasonable 32GB of internal storage. Better still, HTC and LG's flagships come with microSD slots that allow you to add more capacity by using very inexpensive memory cards. A 64GB microSD card costs around $20.
2. Higher-res screens
Apple's tagline for the iPhone 6s and 6s plus is "the only thing that's changed is everything," but "everything" apparently doesn't include screen resolution. In 2014, the company finally released its first full-HD phone, the iPhone 6 Plus — two years after the first 1080p Android handset debuted. Today's iPhone 6s Plus is still stuck at 1920 x 1080 while the mainstream 6s clocks in at a mere 1334 x 750. By contrast, the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium has a 4K (3840 x 2160) display and several mainstream Android phones offer 2560 x 1440 screens, which makes them a lot sharper for high-res video viewing, reading and gaming.3. Customization, widgets and skins
Like the father in a 1950s sitcom, Apple thinks it knows what's best for you, no matter what you need or want, so it locks down the UI and offers fewer customizations than Google. Whereas on the iPhone, you can put a few select widgets in your notification drawer, with Android, you can choose from thousands of widgets that live on your home or lock screens and provide everything from music playback to weather and note-taking.
Manufacturers such as Samsung and LG add custom "skins" on top of the core operating system that offer a unique look and feel, along with features Google hasn't implemented yet (e.g., gesture controls and Air View). Better still, you can install your own launcher or add a custom theme, which makes your phone look and feel completely different — and yours.
4. Many more hardware options, including rugged phones
Google's marketing tagline for Android is "Be Together. Not the Same." That makes sense, because the platform appears on hundreds of different phone models around the world. You can get Android phones with giant screens, small screens, built-in projectors, QWERTY keyboards and replaceable batteries.
Perhaps most important, there are many rugged Android phones that are made to survive being submerged underwater or dropped. If you want a new iPhone today, you have four choices: the a iPhone 6s Plus, a midsize iPhone 6s and three old models: the similarly-sized. None of these is designed to take a beating.
REBUTTAL: 10 Reasons the iPhone Beats Android
5. Freedom to install any app you want
Apple may get some apps first, but it also limits which apps you can install by forcing you to go through its tightly controlled app store. If the tastemakers in Cupertino decide that an app competes with Apple or is too violent, sexual, political or controversial, you won't be able to buy it. While Google has its Play store for Android, it allows competition from alternative stores, such as Amazon's Appstore. You can also take any APK file you download and sideload it on your own. Try that on the iPhone 6s.6. A working file system
Want to copy files from your iPhone to your computer? You'll need to install iTunes and set up an account, and even then, you can move only media files, such as photos, back and forth. Plug an Android phone into your PC, and it instantly mounts as an external drive filled with folders you can drag and drop. You can also navigate through the file system on the phone using apps such as Astro File Manager or ES File Manager. Apple apparently doesn't trust you to see the file system on your iPhone.
7. Universal sharing
You see a Web page in your browser, a map in your navigation app or a photo in your gallery, and you want to share it. On Android, you can share to any service whose app you have installed: Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or anything you've installed. Google doesn't need to bless an app for it to show up in the sharing menu, nor does the browser maker, the navigation app publisher or drawing app developer.
MORE: The Best Android Apps to Try Today
Unfortunately, on the iPhone, you can share only to the apps that the browser, photo gallery or other app specifically support. So, because Apple doesn't think much of Google+, WhatsApp or Pinterest, you can't share to them from Safari, and you won't be able to unless Apple’s gatekeepers specifically build in support.
8. A back button
Android's back button provides a really simple and helpful way to return to a previous screen no matter where you are. The button even works across apps. If you hit a link in Facebook and get transported to the Chrome browser, you can return to the social media app when you hit the back button.On the iPhone 6s, you can use only app-specific navigation or hit the home button to end up back on the home screen. That's a lot more swipes and taps that waste your time and tire your fingers.
9. Multiwindow support
If you want to multitask on your phone, you want an Android phone from Samsung or LG. Both of those brands let you split your screen between two apps, allowing you to, for example, look at the company Web page in one window while you reply to your boss's email in another. Google hasn't built multiwindow mode into the Core OS yet; it is adding that ability in the next version, called Android M. Apple is adding a split-screen view in iOS 9, but only for tablets, not phones.
10. Full NFC support
For several years now, all Android phones have come with NFC (near field communication) chips built in. With NFC on board, you can tap to pair with gadgets, tap another phone to exchange files or contacts, tap information tags, tap to unlock a door and even tap to pay using Google Wallet. Apple has incorporated NFC into the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, but you can only use it for Apple Pay.4 Ways to Run Android on Your PC and Make Your Own “Dual OS” System
Intel is now interested in pushing “Dual OS” PCs — devices with both Windows 8 and Android on them. But you don’t have to buy a new PC to do this — you can run Android apps and even the Android operating system on your current PC.
This allows you to use Android’s ecosystem of touch-based apps on touch-enabled Windows laptops and tablets, so it does make some sense. Of course, the process is clunker than just using Windows 8 apps.
BlueStacks
The Windows Store may be fairly light on great apps, but BlueStacks gives you access to over 750,000 apps on... [Read Article]
This solution can’t replace Windows with Android, but that’s not a bad thing — competing solutions that allow you to dual boot Android with Windows are currently unstable. This is only a solution for running Android apps on Windows. Unlike many of the other options here, this is a fairly stable and polished experience.
Similar applications, including YouWave and Windroy, lack the speed and easy app installation BlueStacks offers.
Official Android Emulator
Google provides an official Android emulator as part of the Android SDK. You can use it to run the Android operating system in a window on your existing computer. This gives you complete access to the entire Android operating system. It’s intended for developers to test their Android apps.Unfortunately, the official Android emulator is rather slow and isn’t a good option for everyday use. It’s useful if you want to test apps or play with the latest version of Android, but you wouldn’t want to actually use apps or play games in it.
To get started with the Android Emulator, download Google’s Android SDK, open the SDK Manager program, and select Tools > Manage AVDs. Click the New button and create a an Android Virtual Device (AVD) with your desired configuration, then select it and click the Start button to launch it.
Android-x86
Android-x86 is a community project to port Android to the x86 platform so it can run natively on Intel and AMD processors, allowing you to install Android on a laptop or tablet just as you’d install Windows or Linux. This project was originally noteworthy for providing a way to run Android on low-power netbooks, giving those old netbooks some additional life.
Want to run Android on your PC? The Android-x86 Project has ported Android to the x86 platform from ARM. Android-x86... [Read Article]
Bear in mind that this project isn’t stable. You should exercise extreme caution when installing it on physical hardware.
Android on Intel Architecture
Intel develops their own distribution of Android for new Intel-based PCs with UEFI firmware. It’s named Android on Intel Architecture, or Android -IA. Intel even provides an installer, which you can use to install Android on your Windows 8 device. The installer will ask if you want to preserve Windows in a dual-boot scenario, so this is a way to dual boot Android and Windows on a new laptop or tablet.Bear in mind that this project isn’t stable and won’t work on every device yet. At the moment, the Samsung XE700T, Acer Iconia W700, and Lenovo X220T and X230T devices appear to be officially supported targets. This project is really interesting because it’s being driven by Intel itself. This is likely the same software you’ll find on those new “Dual OS” Intel PCs.
This option isn’t for casual users, but it may become more stable over time. For more information, consult Intel’s Downloads, Quick Start, and Devices pages.
If you really want to run Android apps on your Windows computer, you should install BlueStacks. It’s the easiest, slickest, most stable option.
In the long term, the Android on Intel Architecture and Android-x86 projects may make Android easier to install and use on a wider variety of hardware. They could provide an easy way to dual boot Android and Windows — or even replace Windows with Android. For now, these projects aren’t recommended unless you have supported hardware — and you should be careful even if you do.
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