A few weeks ago, I finally bought my very first iPhone. For the first time, I was going to see what all the hype was about. You see, for the past six years of my life, I’ve only owned Android phones. My very first phone was an LG K8, and my most recent one was a Samsung Galaxy A13.
When I was growing up in Enfield, North Carolina, almost everyone in school had an iPhone. I was constantly reminded, by my peers and the internet, of how great iPhones were and how bad Android phones were.
However, even with all of this, I never thought Android phones were bad at all. They always did whatever I needed them to do and I could always count on them. So, after finally getting an iPhone of my own, I thought I’d compare my previous Samsung Galaxy A13 –because Samsung makes the best Android phones – to my current phone and see which I thought was truly better.
Right off the bat, I’ll say that since the iPhone 12 is one of Apple’s more expensive phones, and the Samsung Galaxy A13 is one of Samsung’s more inexpensive models, there are going to be some big, fundamental differences between the two, like speed, picture quality, frame rate, etc.
I’ll start with the first thing you see when you turn your phone on, the lock screen. When unlocking my iPhone I have the option to either put in a PIN (personal identification number) or use the face-scanning feature to unlock my phone. On Samsung, you also have the option to put in a PIN to unlock your phone, but you also can choose to use a fingerprint scan.
Notifications are an important part of everyone’s phone usage. The notification center is where you’ll find your notifications on the iPhone. If you want to access the notification center while your phone is unlocked, then you must swipe down on the left side of the screen.
If you swipe down on the right side of the screen, you’ll get the tools center, where you’ll see your flashlight, calculator, brightness, volume and other applications. To get rid of a notification that pops up, you must swipe up.
On Samsung, if you want to see notifications, you can swipe down anywhere and you will see your notifications as well as tools. If you want to get rid of notifications that pop up on this phone, you must swipe right or left.
One big difference for Samsung phones is that many of their features come from Google. Apps like Google Chrome, YouTube, Gmail and Google Messages come preinstalled on these phones. However, on an iPhone, you would have to download them.
Apple’s iPhones of course come with their own unique apps, like Facetime, iMessage, Safari and Apple Pay. Most of these apps, however, are exclusive to Apple and can’t be downloaded onto Android phones. IPhones also come with AirDrop. The Samsung alternative is Nearby Share and the two are pretty much the same in how they work.
These are just a few differences between the two phone brands, and I’d imagine there are many that someone more knowledgeable about the technology could tell you about.
So, what’s the verdict? If I had to choose between the two, I would have to go with Android as the winner. While there are some things about iPhones that I like, there are things about Android that I like better.
The way notifications work, the fingerprint scan, the implementation of Google, and the overall aesthetics are just better to me. I could be biased since I owned Android phones for much longer than my iPhone. But overall, I don’t see a reason for iPhones to be as over-celebrated as they are.
Even if you do feel that iPhones are better than Android ones, I don’t think you can say the difference is great. I believe people just have iPhones just because everyone else has one. That’s one of the reasons why I bought mine. While I’ll probably stick with this phone for a while, I’ll definitely think about going back to Samsung once I do decide to get another one.
