Is in the final form just … Android?

If we have compared android with iOS Once we compared them a hundred times. At this time, we may have actually compared them a hundred times. It is not always the same comparison – we have looked at everything from niche AI ​​tools to renewed adaptation functions – and the same operating system does not always come out on top. At this time, however, we have spent enough time bouncing back and forth to notice a few trends, and no one has been more surprising than the slow, steady Android -ifing of iOS. I would go so far as to say that iOS starts to feel like one of my favorite Android skins, and here’s the reason.

I’m old enough to remember when every iPhone felt almost exactly the same – after all, it’s just a year or two. Jokes aside, you just need to go back as far as iOS 16 or 17 to lose many of the Android-Level customization features as we have become known Widgets On the iPhone completely. It is a surprisingly short timeline in just four years since Apple’s software was about as locked as can be.

And don’t get me wrong – like Android -fan I’m glad Apple has made a lot of progress over the last couple of years. It is exactly the kind of competition my preferred operating system needs to continue to move on. I mean, that Apple has caught up a few things I’ve done since I had an HTC Droid incredible 4G in my pocket a decade ago, should have Google Quaking in the boots. Okay, this time I’m really done busing on Apple for its slow, smooth approach.

After all, the relatively new adaptation options turned out to be one of the easiest ways for me to convince my friends to update their phones for once. I couldn’t win them with Rcs or Apple Intelligence (Since it would have demanded a new phone), but the idea that they could suddenly arrange apps around the pet’s faces was all that is needed. In justice, it has also worked on me-I don’t dread my annual dip in iOS almost as much now as I can stick to the two-fold, the two-widget home screen that I love so much. Also, as so many Android devices and leather are starting to look more and more similar, it is good to see someone using the old “Be Together, not the same” tag line.

Of course, there are still many customization features that Android does far, far better than iOS, but it’s nice to watch Apple increase its game. I still prefer a lot of color -matched appikon experience on Android, which picks out a color palette based on your Background Instead of just making each piece of the interface a color and giving your icons dark backgrounds. Maybe it’s better than Apple’s previously free-for-all approach, but it’s still less coherent than Android. On the bright side, Apple has already changed how the themes are working at least a bit, as choosing a color no longer travels my Spotify widget and makes it more difficult to read.

I also want to give Android edge when it comes to widgets, if just because it offers much better shapes and more third -party apps to choose from. I still love that Google opened the image widget to freely form shapes in Android 12, and nothing is a mix of circular, pill -shaped and square widgets does what would otherwise look like a web system much more fun. The day Apple bets outside square (or maybe rectangular) widgets is when I start to think it is trapped up to Android.

And yet I have to give Apple a little credit for the lock screen widget. Although Android technically had them first, they were a short-term feature from Android 4 to Android 5 before they disappeared-self if they could officially return as part of Android 16. Apple, on the other hand, introduced them when it overhauled the entire locking screen adaptation system in iOS 16. In real Apple, they are limited to small, not always readable squares and rectangles, and you have to set them every time you switch locking screen.

Although adaptation is probably the most obvious example of iOS trends against Android, it is far from the only one Apple has squeezed outside the enclosed garden. As Open Source Operating System with far more developers working with Radiant shine As a user interface, Hi UX and Oxygen OS, it is easier for a function to hit Android first and be practiced by iOS later. It often comes down when Apple will use a feature, not if.

Don’t look any further than the always-on-display to see how far behind the eight-ball apple can be. Depending on who you ask, it has been on Android since Moto days almost a decade or on Nokia phones even further back. Apple? Yes, there was no always-on-screen until the iPhone 14 Pro was launched in 2022, and even now it is still a pro-just feature. Some-inclined me-can even say that Apple’s AOD is a little forever, given that I don’t always have to see my background image when I just throw myself down after a notice.

Even something as so ubiquitous Android as App drawer Finally, the road to iOS took after several years of waiting. If I had to guess, I would say you don’t remember ever using an Android phone without a sweep drawer for their apps, simply because it has been a central part of the operating system since Android 1.0, and it’s tough to go back further than that. IOS, on the other hand, only added its app library – which organizes your apps by category rather than alphabetically – with iOS 14 in 2020.

In retrospect, I can even say that iOS 14 was the beginning of Apple’s Android -Fication, when it marked the addition of several other features previously reserved for our favorite Open Source platform. It was the same year that Apple put the opportunity to set certain standard apps – but not all apps – match an ability from Android 2.3. IOS 14 also marked the start of photo-in-image support, which remains as close to a real part of the split screen as we have seen from Apple.

And then it’s Battery Saver mode – one thing that every smartphone user has ever needed at some point. Battery life has come a long way in recent years when it battery life curve. So, in 2015, added it to low power mode as a key function in iOS 9, just a few years after Android brought that system of Power Saver in 2011.

For me, there are two ways to see iOS becoming more like Android – you may be afraid it will pull users away from Android and into the security of Apple’s enclosed garden, or you can see it as Apple admits that it’s not always right. As a pixel fan, I’m going to lean into the second option. After all, I praised Google when it was chasing for Apple When it comes to hardware quality and reliability, so why not price Apple to relax the previous strict control of the operating system?

Besides, it’s not like Apple really gets Android. There are still far the more locked, tighter controlled operating system, with stricter requirements to submit an app to the App Store, borders on what you can do in terms of side loading apps, and optimizations of each last aspect of the software to squeeze every last minute of the battery life out of otherwise bit of tiny cells. I don’t have a significant problem with any of these things because Apple’s ability to push years and years of software updates to iPhones more than make up for the limitations.

And maybe, just maybe, this is the type of press Android needed from iOS all the time. Although software features such as Facetime and iMessage remain reliable ways to push people to Switch to iOS – At least in the US – Android’s adaptation options had long been enough to give people other thoughts. They were good enough and flexible enough for people to ignore their friends saw them as green bubbles simply because it was more fun to spend hours changing their home screens or finding just the right widget for any situation.

With iOS that has many of the same wrinkles, it is time for Android to find another way to differentiate. Maybe it means leaning on it AI featuresEither from Gemini, Galaxy AI or somewhere else. Or maybe it means leaning even further into folding form factors, especially now that Huawei Mate XT is more than just a concept and Samsung’s own triple fold bar is tipped for a summer launch.

But if Android uses AI as its differentiates in the future, I hope it makes it carefully – sometimes pays Apple’s slow, even approach.