You'll tell me to get a Google Pixel and get 7 years of updates. Agreed, but the price isn't as good and it seems a little less quality than an iPhone.
I'm a daily user of free and opensource software, with Linux on all my PCs. My emails, calendar, contacts, photos, files... are not hosted by GAFAM and I want to keep it that way. My main use for my smartphone: photos, GPS, web reading, RSS reading, chatting. That's about it.
In terms of smartphones, you always have to choose between the plague and the colera, between Google or Apple.
So what's the best choice in 2024 for a user like me, iOS or Android?
All phones reach a point where people don't support them anymore, on both Android and iOS. However, Android does 2 things right that make it much better in my opinion:
1. Provide the AOSP so the community can provide support for outdated devices via LineageOS/CalyxOS style forked ROMs
2. Give all phones the ability to directly install software packages (even over ADB) so that they can still be used when they lose Play Store support or even once the TLS is outdated.
You're welcome to check if the grass is any greener on iOS, but there hasn't ever been an iPhone with an unlockable bootloader. Once Apple cuts support for your device it's over, which is a possibility that can at least be precluded on some Android devices.
Sailfish is actual Linux. Not just a Linux kernel with an alien userland. The OS is beautiful. Some parts of the system are excellent, like offline maps. There are lots of indie applications. But other things have less or no support unless you fall back to using Android via the compatibility layer. Both OSes should provide long-term support.
There are android phones out there (namely Samsung and Google) that have long time span security updates. S24 for example should be updated for 7 years, which is about the same time as any Apple Phone
Even then, this is a very very niche thing to be concerned about. The vast majority of security "flaws" require an insane amount of frontload work to exploit to the point if you are ever hit with one of those, you are most likely are targeted by a government agency.
LineageOS has support for at least a decade until the devices aren't supported anymore. And even then, usually the project just needs people that build the images for them. [1]
On the iPhone…
- The built in camera app is pretty good. If you don’t want to use Apple to store your photos, there are likely options that can upload them where you want… or plug it into a computer and copy them off like a camera.
- GPS, the usual suspects are there for maps or other GPS needs.
- Web. All browsers use WebKit on the backend (for now), but then if you have a particular browser of choice to sync bookmarks and things, it’s probably there. I did this with Firefox for a while, and it worked fine.
- RSS. NetNewsWire is open source and has been around forever. It’s what I use.
- Chat, again, it’s all there, plus iMessage, which is not available elsewhere. And RCS is coming later this year, which should make things better between iOS and Android, instead of SMS.
Although, it uses an e-ink display, so things like texting and gps may be a bit weird to use. Not sure if you'll get guaranteed updates for an extended period of time like 7 years though.
One thing I've noticed is that, paradoxically, Google apps tend to be more polished and reliable on iOS, rather than it's own Android platform. It's as if those app developers care more about the iOS versions. That kind of leaves a sour taste.