This section should be important to everyone. We rely on our phones, and knowing that everything will work well when we need it to is important. On the Nexus 4, apps crash on a daily basis and complete lags occur often. And the software buttons freeze at least once a day. My iPhone definitely wins in this section.
Agreed, and this is why, after my Nexus 7 experience, I don't want Android anywhere near my daily driver. I've never had my home button lock up for as long as you, but it happens on my N7 too. Also the app quality is shocking in comparison- so many more lockups, or features that don't work, or weird little freezes when things were fine a second ago.
App selection:
This is a hot topic, especially coming from iPhone users. The fact of the matter is they are pretty close. Quantity wise, Android is right up there, so it is easy to find the same apps or equivalent apps for the most part. That may sound all fine and dandy, but quality is just as important. Apps on Android don't feel as fluid. For some, you may not be able to find an equivalent. And there have been multiple reports that ~2/3 of all mobile developers prefer to work on iOS. In this category, my iPhone wins.
However, from a personal standpoint, I have not had any major problems in this category besides one. I use a delivery app on iOS for all my packages. The only "equivalent" I have found for Android is Parcels, but every delivery for Amazon I put in brings an error. Totally pointless. So really, it depends on the apps you use. But as a whole, iOS has the upper hand.
iOS most definitely wins here. Android doesn't even compare in both quality and quantity when it comes to apps I use on a regular basis, a huge number of them are missing, or are of such low quality that they're basically unusable compared to their iPhone counterparts. That may sound like I'm overreacting but it really is the case, Android is terrible for a lot of Australian-exclusive apps (they either don't exist or are of terrible quality) and for a lot of other smaller markets, like surfing.
And I don't even think I need to compare maps 😉
Except here, according to Apple Maps, my local beach has grown an extra 200m of land. I go surfing on grass apparently.
Notifications:
I always hear people say how notifications on Android are better. And after using the Nexus 4 for a while, I partially agree. I love being able to swipe down to see current notification. And I love swiping down with 2 finger for controls. I also love using Power Toggles to get even more quick controls.
But there is one thing about notifications that I love about iOS. When I get a new Facebook notification or something else and unlock the screen once I see that notification pop up, it takes me right to the app. I love that.
With the Nexus 4, it seems like that if something is in the notification bar, there also has to be an icon at the top left. This, I don't like so much. For power toggles, it requires something up top, but I don't want anything up there. Sure, I can change it to be transparent, but then if there is something else that needs to go up there, it will cause a gap. And yes, thats a small thing I know, but personally I don't like it. Also, for some widgets that I just want to show, for example, the current date or battery percentage up in the corner, there has to be something in the notification bar as well. For some apps, I just want functionality in the notifications bar. For others, I just want information at the top. But its either both or neither.
I wasn't that big a fan of Android notifications either. I didn't mind them, for the most part, but wow did the notification tray fill up with junk quickly. PVstar telling me it's playing music, great, the OS telling me my screenshot is saved (WOW, you don't say?), the OS telling me an app is updated, no way, I only pressed the update button! And so on and so forth. After hearing how amazing Android notifications were, it felt like I spent most of my time in the notification centre sifting through redundant information, or having apps take up a bar in it doing next to nothing (PVstar). I know you can permanently stop some notifications from occurring, but some of them just shouldn't be given, and aren't worthy of one, in the first place.
I also hugely missed iOS' lockscreen notifications and swiping from an individual notification to enter that app straight away.
Vibrate Switch:
This is one thing I really miss from my iPhone. I love a physical switch to make sure things are silent. Going to class or going to church, I could just reach in my pocket and feel what side the switch was on.
Agreed, it'd be hard to consider a phone without one.
I love the LED notification light. Widgets are very functional. Lockscreen widgets look cool, but developers really need to start taking advantage of them.
I honestly used widgets as much as I did Gadgets on Windows Vista/7 and Dashboard on OS X, I.e. barely at all. I only ever used the calculator and a couple of time zone clocks. Same goes for Android, the novelty wore off quite quickly and I found myself only using 2 after that.
Not a big fan of onscreen buttons.
I definitely agree when it comes to home buttons. I don't know what it is, but having everything 100% onscreen and needing to wrestle around with the side of the device to reach the power/wake button just feels clumsy and unnatural. Maybe it's the fact that I've grown up with physical buttons, from the first ever 286 I had as a kid, through to my SNES and N64 and later my PS3 and Sandy Bridge machines, physical buttons have always been a constant on them all. Having the physical home button on the iPhone feels like a reassuring homage to every other device I've used- even though almost all input is now done onscreen, there's always the physical button to get you out if you've screwed something up, or if things are going wrong. It in part reminds me of the START button on game controllers.
