HarmonyOS Is Now Firmly The Third Largest Mobile Phone Operating System

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Android Vs. IOS: Which Mobile OS Is Best?

It is possible to use a smartphone running an operating system other than Apple's iOS or Google's Android (Tizen, LineageOS, /e/ anyone?), but the likelihood that you're doing so is infinitesimal. Like it or not, we're currently locked in a duopoly when it comes to mobile operating system choice. That's not necessarily a bad thing: This two-way competition has driven what can only be described as polished, feature-packed, and technologically potent software. Both operating systems are highly tuned and decked out with features.

However, your choice of smartphone OS probably doesn't concern the software's technical capabilities or user features. It's likely that you simply use what your social and family circles are using. If everyone you know uses Apple's FaceTime for video calling, you don't want to be left out of the party, and you wouldn't want your messages to have green bubbles instead of the standard blue ones. Of course, there are cross-platform options for most functions—you can install Google Hangouts or Skype on Android or iPhone—but built-in functionality and consistency usually trump third-party options.

Below, we step through the various aspects by which smartphone OSes can be judged, choosing a winner or declaring a tie for each category. At the end, we tally up the final score. Keep in mind that both are mature works of software at this point, and you're unlikely to be disappointed however you go.

Android vs. IOS: Hardware Choices

Your choice of devices is similar to the options between macOS and Windows computers. With Apple's ecosystem, you have a choice of just one hardware vendor, albeit a top-tier one. With Android and Windows, you can choose from dozens of hardware makers with a large range of price, quality, and performance levels. Android is open-source (compared with iOS's closed system), so any phone maker can use it. The result is a profusion of Android handsets.

You can get a usable Android phone for as little as $149. Our Editors' Choice winner for affordable phones, the Motorola Moto e is a fine choice. Contrast that with the cheapest new iPhone you can buy, the iPhone SE, which costs $429. On the other end of the spectrum, you can actually pay significantly more for an Android phone than for any iPhone: Some configurations of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 (itself a great example of the variety available with the Android platform) sell for north of $1,800, and a 1TB Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra will set you back $1,599. The most expensive Apple handset, the iPhone 14 Plus, costs $1,299 with 512GB storage.

One final Android-exclusive hardware feature: You can add storage on some Android phones with a microSD card; with iPhones, you're stuck with the storage you originally bought.

Winner: AndroidWinner: Android

Android vs. IOS: Interface and Usability

It's fair to say that Android tends to present more complexity—more burrowing down menus to get to the setting you need, multiple home screens, and more variation among different phone model interfaces. With iOS, because of Apple's famed love of limiting users to its way or the highway, interface layout and settings are more consistent and uncomplicated.

Thanks to iOS 16, though, you can now customize your iPhone screen more than ever, with impressive, multi-layered backgrounds and color schemes, large, well-designed widgets, an App Library that automatically groups and organizes icons, and customizable icons. Admittedly, Android has been no slouch in this department either. Material You customization radically updates Google's OS with overhauled color and syncing options, giving your wallpapers and backgrounds a satisfyingly unified look and feel.

Considering that Android is made by Google, it seems strange that the search function on iOS is superior. It's especially noticeable when searching for apps installed on the device. Apple nicely groups results into apps, emails, contacts, and even shows apps not installed, with links to the App Store. In all, iOS presents a more polished, consistent experience.

Winner:Winner: iOSiOS

Android vs. IOS: Technology Support

New wireless tech standards appear every year. In the last few years, Android has been the first to welcome these new specs, almost always preceding their iOS support. Android was the first with 5G network support; previously it beat Apple with support for wireless charging, 4G LTE, and touchless voice commands. That said, Apple tends to wait until the new technology is useful and reliable: As 5G service has become more ubiquitous, iPhones 12 and up have supported the service.

Android also added support for foldable and dual-screen phones. Since the OS is open source, third parties like Microsoft can add functionality to devices like the Surface Duo, an Android device that features two screens that display tailored content (rather than just being a single screen that spans the two). These technologies haven't always been game-changing affairs, but there's no doubt that Android handsets are pioneering them.

Winner: AndroidWinner: Android

Android vs. IOS: Included Apps

Apple and Google offer many stock apps that appear on your phone from the moment you first power it up. For example, you'll see apps for email, web browsing, photo viewing and editing, audio playing and recording, video playing, and document and spreadsheet editing. Both include apps that you cannot uninstall even if you wanted to, but they also let you replace stock apps with third-party options. One oversight on the Android side is the lack of a task or to-do app—iOS's Reminders app is slick as can be for this. Google does get partial credit, however, since the Keep app is offered as an extra download at initial setup and does a good job with to-do lists.

Messaging apps are worth calling out, since that's a top smartphone activity. Apple edges ahead of Android here, with its dazzling Memoji, Animoji, payments, games, and whole iMessage app store. You can even quickly turn a messaging session into a call or video chat with FaceTime. However, Android is not far behind. Android Messages have been overhauled to Rich Communication Services (RCS), providing much better privacy features including end-to-end encryption for 1-1 conversations. The ability to use it in a web browser paired via QR code is brilliant. On the other hand, iPhone users who want to send messages on their laptop or desktop computer must stay entirely within the Apple ecosystem to do so.

Another important included app for any mobile OS is mapping. Google has long been acknowledged as the number-one map service, but Apple has cut that lead down significantly in the last few years with the inclusion of multi-stop routing and transit card integration with the Wallet app. Google is still more thorough and up-to-date with local information, and it offers full Street View. One personal fave is that it offers biking directions, along with driving, walking, and public transportation. Apple has made strides to keep up with the addition of its own cycling navigation across all 50 states.

Both offer excellent health-monitoring, news, and podcast apps, but iPhone is better when it comes to video editing with the brilliant iMovie and music creation with GarageBand.

Apple features its own Translate app to go against the market-dominating Google Translate. The search giant's app offers far more languages than Apple, along with tools for finding text in photos—particularly important for languages with an alphabet with which you're not familiar.

Apple has radically enhanced the functionality of its Live Text feature for photos, giving iOS its own text-recognition capabilities for images and video. This technology recognizes the photo subjects, letting you highlight, copy, or search text, as well as isolate and save elements from a photo.

Winner:Winner: iOS (by a hair)iOS (by a hair)

Android vs. IOS: Availability and Fragmentation

If you buy an iPhone, you can be assured that it will receive the latest iOS updates for at least several years. Android is getting better in terms of updates becoming more widespread, but it's still behind iOS on this count.

Neither company's developer site reveals the market share of the recently-released versions—Android 13 and iOS 16—but Android 13 runs on approximately 12% of devices. On the other hand, iOS 16 has been adopted on 81% of iPhones, making iOS adoption an order of magnitude greater than that of Android.

Winner: iOSWinner: iOS

Android vs. IOS: Security and Privacy

Both mobile operating systems have decent records and safeguards when it comes to security, but Android, being more open, has more vectors for malware to enter your phone. In particular, apps are more prone to bring trouble in Android, especially if you install them from an alternative app store.

Privacy has been a focus in recent Android versions, with a number of new protections against third-party app abuses. With Android 13, apps ask for permission before they can send you notifications. Android lets you grant one-time access to location and other private data, but iOS lets you tell apps your approximate rather than exact location. Since Google's entire business model revolves around gathering information about each user, it's hard for the search ad company to compete with Apple, whose profit model doesn't involve surveillance or profiling. All this is not to say that privacy-compromising apps can't appear on iPhones, too.

Winner: iOSWinner: iOS

Android vs. IOS: Integration With Other Devices

Apple's Continuity features are hard to beat, but thanks to Windows' Phone Link app and Android 13's cross-device connectivity, you can connect with PCs just as effectively as iPhones connect with Macs. That even includes making calls. These capabilities depend on your phone model, with Samsung units getting preference. Of course, maybe we shouldn't give Android full points for Microsoft's work, but one convenient Google feature that Android enables is SMS messaging via the web.

Apple's device ecosystem includes far more than just laptops and phones, though: iOS ties in neatly with Apple Watch, Apple TV, the HomePod smart speaker, and iPads (which now run their own iPadOS operating system). Google has the Wear Watch OS that's far less prevalent than the Apple Watch, and Android tablets trail iPads substantially. The Google Nest family of smart speakers and screens, however, generally exceed Apple's Siri-powered devices in PCMag's ratings, and third-party Google Assistant speakers are available from the likes of Bose and Sonos.

Winner: iOSWinner: iOS

Android vs. IOS: Camera and Photos

Smartphone cameras—and maybe just as importantly, the photo-processing apps that come with the phone OSes—have recently been a focus for new smartphone and mobile OS releases. In either system, you can find excellent camera options (including multiple-camera systems). Don't get bogged down in megapixels, however: Even though you can find Android phones with super-high megapixel numbers—the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra can shoot at a whopping 200 megapixels—that number is less important that the design of the camera sensor. For a detailed analysis, read PCMag.Com's comparison of the best smartphone cameras.

Both OSes also have impressive photo enhancement software to make your pictures look even better than the sensor and lenses are capable of by themselves. Both can add bokeh (background blur) to a portrait, and both offer slow motion, panorama, low-light, and time-lapse shooting. Android has the advantage of letting users create photo sphere 360-degree photos, while iOS users need a secondary app for this function. Otherwise, Android and iOS are neck and neck in regard to photo functionality.

Android 13 uses Google Lens functionality to let you search for nearby shopping, as well as translate text and scan documents. IOS 16 uses its expanded Live Text function to the same end, and even lets you use the feature in videos as well. Impressively, iOS 16 expands this to recognize image subjects. Called Visual Look Up, iOS 16 can identify objects and subjects in a photograph, letting you isolate them from their background to use as a separate image. It can even provide additional information about the subject, if you were photographing a landmark, for example.

Both OSes let you save raw camera files, which photographers will no doubt appreciate, so you no longer need third-party apps like the excellent Adobe Lightroom Classic app (which is available on both platforms).

Winner: TiedWinner: Tied

Android vs. IOS: App Ecosystem

It used to be the case that apps came to iOS first, and then eventually made their way to Android. That's still the case with some major providers like Adobe, which has launched the Photoshop tablet version only to iOS (now iPadOS); that makes eminent sense, since Android is fairly moribund in the tablet arena, which Apple basically owns. But some major apps now come to Android first.

Another important differentiator is that Android actually allows you to install software from non-Google app stores, and even to side-load them, bypassing the store entirely. This is one of the only ways to download and play Fortnite on Android devices, amusingly enough. Another convenience you won't find in Apple's store is the ability to remotely install apps onto your phone via the web. Say you come across an app in an article you're reading on your laptop. If it's Android, you can simply go over to the Play Store's website and install it right then and there. With iOS, you need to go to the device itself to get the app installed.

Winner: Android (by a nose)Winner: Android (by a nose)

Android vs. IOS: Voice Assistant

Apple's Siri and Google Assistant let you perform actions using your voice. Both are easy to invoke and offer a wake word, always listening option (which we're not a fan of on a phone that's always with you).

In our experience, Siri often gives an unhelpful answer or doesn't perform an action that you want done. She's fine for calling someone, but when you want to open an app, you may see web search results instead. Apple claims its assistant improves with every iOS release, but we'll just have to wait and see. Google Assistant displays more intelligence, albeit with less personality. We find Siri's voice options to be more pleasant than Assistant's.

Siri offers Shortcuts and Automations. Shortcuts are multistep action recipes, and Automations launch actions based on triggers like your location or the weather. Google Assistant claims over a million actions, including things like asking it to play a particular show on Netflix or order a skinny latte at Starbucks. Both assistants tie into rich smart home ecosystems, Android with Google Home and Siri with Apple HomeKit devices, so whichever you have, you can rest assured that you'll be able to turn up the heat, raise the shades, or open the garage door—assuming you have all the requisite smart appliances.

Google Assistant lets you control a TV with a Chromecast, and the company just released a new model with a Google TV interface based on Android TV that also ties in with the voice assistant.

One final point is that you can use Google Assistant or Google Home on an iPhone, but you can use Siri only on Apple products.

Winner: AndroidWinner: Android

Android vs. IOS: Parental Controls

Both OSes have strong parental controls, but the biggest difference among the two is that Android lets you more easily and completely install third-party parental control software. That said, iOS offers deeper built-in parental controls.

According to Apple's support pages, you can use its Screen Time feature to "block or limit specific apps and features on your child's device," and "restrict the settings on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch for explicit content, purchases and downloads, and privacy." As its name suggests, you can also keep tabs on the amount of time a child spends in apps and on the web. You can also view detailed reports on all activity. Parents can configure limits for children using the Family Sharing feature, and lock them down with a passcode that only the parent knows. They can also set communications limits, only allowing calls, messages, and Facetimes with set contacts.

The first thing you do when you set up an Android phone is to choose whether it's a parent or child's phone. As mentioned, Android doesn't limit you to its own parental controls, allowing third-party options like our Editors' Choice pick, Norton Family. Google's Family Link app lets parents view kids' activity, approve app downloads, set screen limits, lock their device, and see their location.

Because Apple offers stronger built-in parental features, and Android has the advantage of allowing third-party solutions, it's a wash.

Winner: TieWinner: Tie

Android vs. IOS: Gaming, VR, and AR

Apple and Google have put efforts into games, and enabling VR and AR technologies in their mobile operating systems. Both offer large libraries of casual and near-console-level games. And both now let you subscribe to a selection of games as opposed to having to buy each separately. Apple's Arcade and Android's Google Play Pass both cost an identical $4.99 per month.

The subscriptions lack ads. Play Pass includes some non-game apps from less-known developers. Unfortunately, Google Stadia is now defunct. The streaming games service may not have been reviewed well, but it was interesting conceptually, as part of the Google ecosystem.

The iOS App Store offers a healthy selection of VR apps and VR games that you can explore on certain VR headsets. Apple continues to improve its ARKit technology to power augmented reality apps that bring 3D objects into your actual worldview. In fact, Apple is rumored to be releasing its own VR headset, perhaps even sooner than anyone expected. Apple-driven virtual reality tech may be just the push the genre needs to hit the mainstream.

Google sadly abandoned its promising Daydream VR and Tango AR initiatives, but work continues on ARCore augmented reality technology, and the company still has a dozen VR projects letting developers build apps using the technology. The Camera app's Playground mode offers nifty 3D animations that fit into the real world, and its Google Lens uses AR to overlay nearby shopping and dining places. You can still also indulge in VR using Google Cardboard.

Winner:Winner: TieTie

Android vs. IOS: Business Features

Two of the previous sections come into play here: Security and Updates/Fragmentation. Both are wins for iOS, but there are other important considerations when choosing a smartphone platform for business. For some businesses, the open architecture of Android is preferable, letting them create apps that go deeper and wider in terms of accessing system features. For example, Android lets third-party services take over the phone for parental control, while Apple doesn't.

Either phone plays well with both Microsoft Office and Google Docs, so that's not a differentiator. Android does integrate better with Windows 10, however, particularly with the Phone Link app discussed above. Since most businesses run on Windows, that could be a reason to choose Android.

Winner: TieWinner: Tie

Android vs. IOS: Accessibility

Both companies have been working on adding features that help people with disabilities use their phones. Android has a Live Transcribe feature that lets deaf people read what's being said on the spot. It also offers TalkBack to speak what's on the screen, Lookout to tell you what's in view, and Voice Access for controlling your phone. It also supports external switches (from AbleNet, Enabling Devices, RJ Cooper, and Tecla), and lets you reprogram phone buttons. It recently added per-app language personalization, which is superb for multilingual users, even if the feature is not as app-ubiquitous as we would have liked.

Apple has a long list of accessibility features, including the VoiceOver screen reader, zoom, dictation, Magnifier, Voice Control, Pointer Control, and more. A Sound Recognition feature resembles a similar Android capability. One accessibility feature introduced on iOS is Back Tap, which anyone can use to trigger an action by tapping the back of the phone (and it works on models all the way back to the iPhone 8)

There are Made for iPhone hearing aids, and the platform also supports external hardware switch controllers, like the AbleNet TrackerPro hands-free mouse that follows head movements. Both platforms can also take advantage of third-party accessibility apps such as Be My Eyes, AccessAble, and TapTapSee.

Winner:Winner: TieTie

The Final Tally: iOS 5, Android 4, Tie 5

As you can see, this is a close race. Apple's iOS ultimately comes out on top—but by a slim margin. The near parity is hardly surprising when you consider how the two platforms have been matching features and polishing their interfaces for years.

Despite the close race, our review rating has Android with a lower score because such a small percentage of Android users can actually run the latest version, and because Apple generally does a better job of implementing the same features. Not all of the categories above receive equal weight, in other words. Both OSes can serve you remarkably well. In the end, your decision will likely have as much to do with your social and work circles as with the operating system's features.

Read More: Apple macOS vs. Microsoft Windows

The other big operating system war is at the desktop level. We compare Apple macOS with Microsoft Windows point by point, just as we've done for Android and iOS. For more advice on smartphones, read PCMag's roundup of the best mobile phones money can buy today.

Google To Improve Split-screen Apps On Mobile, But Likely Not Before Android 14

Android 14 logo pasted onto a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra screen

Google will finally be updating the App Pairs feature for the native version of Android 14, giving users a way to save certain split-screen apps on their phone.

For those who need a refresher, App Pair is a multitasking tool allowing Android owners to open two apps, place them side-by-side, and interact with them at the same time. The annoying thing was you couldn't save them on Pixel hardware, so you had to redo the pairing every time you closed them. That is, until this latest leak, which was discovered by freelance tech journalist Mishaal Rahman who shared his findings on Twitter.

He came across a "launcher flag" digging through the files of the second Android 14 beta "that, when enabled, surfaces" a new 'Save app pair' option "in the context menu of split-screened apps". Rahman states the selection doesn't work at the moment, but he does expect it to work as intended later down the line. There's no indication in his findings whether or not the feature will be available with the launch of Android 14, however.

Now you may be asking: "doesn't this already exist on Android?" Yes, it does. The problem was split-screen saving was never available on the base version of Android OS nor on Pixel. It's something usually added by third parties to their respective tech. Samsung, for example, gave users the ability to save app pairings from the get-go when it introduced its own rendition of App Pairs to Galaxy phones back in 2017. Pixel devices, for whatever reason, have lagged behind.

Staying on this thread of Google playing catch up, industry leaker Nail Sadykov discovered another new multitasking feature in the latest Android 14 beta. This time, the operating system will allow you to "use system navigation" while dragging and dropping items. So, you'll be able to grab a photo from one app, "open another, [then] drop it there" without much hassle. It also works with text. Highlighting a string of words lets you move them to somewhere else, effectively eliminating the need for copying and pasting.

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Just like Rahman's findings, the improved drag and drop tool does exist on other smartphones from iOS to Oppo hardware. It's just that Google has been a little slow on the uptake. Hopefully, these quality-of-life updates will appear on the Pixel 8. While they're not the most game-changing additions, the small stuff does add up, and it can turn an okay device into something special.

Speaking of the Pixel 8, a recent leak for the Pro model reveals it may be getting a thermometer of all things. It'll be next to the camera lenses on the rear. We're not sure what Google intends to do by adding a thermometer to Pixel, which seems a pretty random inclusion.

Once you're done catching up on our coverage of Google's next flagship, be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best Pixel handsets for 2023 if you're looking to upgrade.

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