Apple Versus Android: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Both Systems

Over the last decade, companies such as Apple and Samsung have been trying to improve mobile devices. In fact, today’s phones are multifunctional gadgets that can host a wide range of business and consumer applications. Like a computer operating system, a mobile operating system is a software platform that determines the features of your device. Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS are some of the most common and well-known mobile operating systems. Leading the device market, they power our smart phones, tablets, and even appliances. Android and iOS were created around the same time and ever since, there has always been a heated debate between them. They are actually very alike but digging beyond the skin and deep into the guts of the operating systems, the two begin to differ. Even though they share some superficial similarities as they serve the same purpose, the differences between the two are remarkable, and we can see that iOS has significantly surpassed Android in several areas. Hardware is the first place that makes the differences between iOS and Android become clear. While both are mobile operating systems, iOS can only be installed on Apple devices. Apple is the only enterprise that makes iPhones, giving it tight control over how the software and hardware work together. 

On the other hand, Google offers its software to many phone manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, LG, and many more. According to Aijaz Ahmad Sheik in ‘‘Smartphone: Android Vs iOS’’, Android Inc. was founded by Andy Rubin and it was acquired by Google in 2005. A Rubin-led team developed a Linux kernel-powered mobile device platform. He also explains that likewise, the iOS, created by Apple Inc. in 2007, is the kernel, drivers, and services that comprise of the iPhone Operating Systems. However, Android is a Java based platform while Apple software is written using Objective C, which is an object oriented version of C that uses messages instead of references. In addition, Apple's iOS is and will always be based on simplicity. This is where some of the differences come into play. Android has a variety of user interfaces available, such as ‘Touch Wiz UI’ for Samsung, ‘Sense UI’ for HTC, and ‘Optimus UI’ for LG. In “A Comparative Study on Mobile Platforms”, Smt. Annapurna, K.V.S. Pavan Teja, and Dr. Y. Satyanarayana Murty state that Apple devices are known for their smooth UI and the feel that their user gets while doing simple gestures or navigation among the applications. iOS and Android both use touch interfaces that have a lot in common from swiping to tapping and pinch-and-zoom. 

Both boot to a home screen but while an iOS home screen only has application icons, Android allows the use of widgets that display auto-updating information, such as weather. The iOS UI features a dock where users can save their most frequently used applications and access them at any time. A status bar runs across the top on both iOS and Android, offering information such the time, Wi-Fi, cell signal, and battery life. On Android, the status bar also shows the newest notifications. Android gets applications from Google Play, which currently has 2,600,000 available, as reported by ‘‘Google Play Store: number of available apps 2009-2018’’. However, some Android devices use separate app stores that have a smaller selection of apps available. Many originally iOS-only applications are now available for Android but the most popular ones are available for both. It is also important to note that our phones offer many services and applications but not all of them come for free. In order to access every feature that you wish for and install what you want on your device, Android lets you use Google’s Wallet, which allows mobile payment. The Apple operating system offers mobile payment through Apple Pay. It surpasses Android with an application, ‘Passbook’ that collects all of your debit cards, tickets, reward cards, etc… With everything being stored on our smartphones, it is difficult to speak in favor or against the android or the iOS in terms of security. 

The way of using the device plays a crucial role in determining the security level. In terms of storage, data can be stored at internal storage or external storage and an antivirus can always be installed for a better protection. Lu Cheng says, in “Analysis and Comparison with Android and iPhone Operating System”, that Android is a multi-process system, in which each part runs in its own process. As an open platform, Android allows users to load any software from any source onto a device. On the contrary, he claims that the iPhone, a closed platform, has no security software and Apple does not let people load any third-party software on the device, which could reduce the risk of malicious infections. The iPhone Auto-Lock disables the device's screen after a preset time period of non-use, and the Passcode Lock feature takes that a step further by asking for a four-digit code to be entered. With the password failure actions, it is possible to configure an iPhone to perform a soft reset, lock the device, or wipe all the data after a certain number of failed unlocking attempts.