Google actively shooting themselves in the foot. Why would I choose an Android phone over an iPhone if Google continues to remove features and user freedoms that set it apart from apple's "walled garden"
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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This is actually why I ended up switching a couple years ago. I started when Android was balls-to-the-wall customization and there were tons of custom ROMs. You could theme all of Material UI and my phone looked nothing like when I first got it. By the time I left, you could get like one of 5 very expensive phones that had unlocked bootloaders and even those had very few ROMs.
Even with the custom ROMs, the joy was dead. You couldn’t wildly theme everything from the boot logo to the lock screen to the notification bar. It had been boiled down to pretty much the same set of customizations as the iPhone and the iPhone was more reliable. I didn’t want to switch, necessarily, but for my use cases as least, it just ended up being the easier choice.
If Android and iOS are on par in terms of locked down software, I'd probably go back to an iPhone. Not before desperately trying to find a feasible alternative to the duopoly though
I'm really hoping more adoption of Ubuntu Touch and other alternative mobile OSs will come from this, and with that, more support and development to make them feasible alternatives for the average user