10 Reasons Why iOS Is Better Than Android

Superior Design

 The iPhone 5runs circles around the competition when it comes to industrial design. This solid and sexy glass-and-aluminum device is the thinnest smartphone in the U.S. More impressive to me is the fact that the iPhone 5 is about an ounce lighter than the iPhone 4S (3.95 ounces versus 4.8 ounces). You have to really put the iPhone 5 in your hand to appreciate what an engineering feat this is. Add in a best-in-class 4-inch Retina Display that's even more colorful and you have a device that's close to perfect.

AirPlay

There are plenty of alternatives to Apple's AirPlay, but none that work quite so elegantly and intuitively. Out of the box, AirPlay doesn't really seem all that useful if you don't own other Apple devices but there are actually several ways to make your non-Apple devices AirPlay compatible. Two-tap video streaming that actually works really well is pretty great, and you won't find such a nice solution on Android.

Multitasking

iOS multitasking was implemented before Android got their own solution and has done it better since day one.  Just a double tap on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch’s home button brings up the multitasking bar.  You can slide through all of your open apps, or slide to the left and get access to your music controls.  Pause, play, fast-forward, and rewind, or jump straight into the app playing the audio be it Pandora, your Music app, or whatever.  You also can control your iDevice’s AirPlay streaming controls and whether to lock the screen’s rotation.  iOS users also got the ability to kill apps from that multitasking bar, even if they didn’t actually need to.

Android users get most of the same multitasking features like background audio or voice calls, but application switching didn’t get any native solution until Android 3.0 “Honeycomb”.  Android users had been using app-killing solutions from the Android Marketplace, but it took Google until Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” to actually implement that feature natively.  Admittedly the way Android 4.0 does it looks pretty slick, but it seems like something that could have been included so much earlier.  And speaking of apps…

Better Battery Life and Management

Over the past few years, Apple's started to consider battery life to be one of the most important features of its products. This is especially evident in the iPad, which contains around as much battery as humans contain water, but it's also Apple's battery management tactics that make this possible. Some may be disappointed that the lack of true multitasking is lost in the name of power economy, but true multitasking isn't all that great when you device dies because it ran out of juice. While it didn't start off that way, the latest batch of devices running iOS will get you through the day (and sometimes longer). That's not always something you can count on with Android.

Consistency

iOS is nothing if not consistent. When you pick up an iOS device, you know exactly what you're getting. This shouldn't come as a surprise from a company like Apple, who likes to control every aspect of their products. When it comes to receiving major feature updates, you get them on a fairly regular schedule. While there's some update fragmentation with iOS, it's only ever been between phones and tablets. With Android, it's between the many, many different phones as well as fragmentation between phones and tablets. Knowing what you're getting and that you'll be receiving updates for at least the next two generations of devices increases the value of an iDevice long past the date of purchase.

A Well-Designed, Intuitive User Interface

Whether you like Apple's hardware and software or not, it's hard to argue that they aren't beautifully designed. Apple puts a lot of thought in the design of the interface, from its looks to its ease of use. iOS' user experience is one of the most intuitive. Android can take some time to figure out, and there's a lack of consistency in the way third-party apps operate, but if you give someone an iOS device they'll generally be able to figure out much of the functionality on their own. People are posting videos of their very young children using iPads. Android ends up with sites like this (which isn't representative of the platform and a bit much, but still makes a point). iOS is nice to look at and easy to learn, welcoming pretty much everyone to the party.

Better Camera

The Android competition beats the iPhone 5 in the camera features department. Apple gives you a panorama mode, but no burst mode, and you can't tweak settings like exposure or choose different shooting modes. However, the iPhone 5 wins where it counts: photo quality. In side-by-side tests with the Galaxy S III, the iPhone 5's images were sharper and more vibrant, while Samsung's shots had a haze to them. Another flagship Android phone, the HTC One X, delivered better results indoors than the Samsung when we shot little action figures, but iPhone 5 was still sharper.

Apps ,Apps And Apps  

If there was one thing any smartphone or tablet has to have these days, its apps. While Steve Jobs may not have initially liked the idea of iOS apps, it’s pretty safe to say that he was wrong.  Today, Apple’s iOS has the largest marketplace for apps of any mobile OS (and maybe even some desktop operating systems).  iOS has over 600,000 apps with almost half of them for the iPad.  If you’re looking for an app, chances are you’ll find it there.  Apple does place some restrictions on how apps may function, some of this for security while others seem downright controlling, but as a whole, the Apple experience works fluidly, and many developers have figured out how to use the rules of iOS to their needs, especially with the lack of a file manager like Mac’s Finder.  On the user end, many people are leaving the standard computer for the iPad, including the elderly, students, young children, and more.

 Support and service

As an iDevice owner, you can bank on apple support for any hardware and software related glitch. Genius bars within apple stores are quite prompt too. But for android phones, hardware manufacturers or network companies can hardly service if you face any OS related troubles.

Software Updates Without the Wait

Android fanboys. The Nexus 7 tablet with Android Jelly Bean went on sale July 12. Just last week, on Sept. 21, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus got the same update on Verizon. Seriously? Isn't this supposed to be a pure Google device? Meanwhile, it will take many more weeks or months for other Ice Cream Sandwich devices that are skinned with the manufacturers' own software to get cool "new" features like Google Now and offline voice typing. Apple saw more than 100 million updates to iOS 6 in less than a week after the software went live — no carrier gatekeeper required.

iOS vs Android: Conclusion

Ultimately the iPhone vs Android debate comes down to a choice: between Android's flawed, fragmented openness, and Apple's quality experience in a closed environment. Openness sounds brilliant, and if we were talking about a lifestyle or a political philosophy then Android would be hard to beat. But this is about a phone. And if you just want a smartphone that's safe, easy and enjoyable to use, and connected to the best-quality app store around - not to mention sumptuously designed and reliable - then iPhone is the only answer.