Home
Mobiles
Mobiles Features
Six Things You Can Do on Android That You Can’t on an iPhone

Six Things You Can Do on Android That You Can’t on an iPhone l244s

By Rohan Naravane | Updated: 8 February 2017 19:17 IST

Highlights

Android and iOS are becoming more alike since the past few years
You still can’t look up an unknown incoming call on an iPhone
You also still cannot record phone calls using an iPhone

ment

For many years, there have been several debates about which smartphone OS is better — some choose one over the other. But, fact of the matter is that the two have been closing the gaps in the past few years, with Android becoming more fluid and beautiful, and iOS becoming more flexible and customisable. 5b4e6e

But there are still things that you can do on Android phone today, that you just can’t on an iPhone. And we’re not referring to things like swapping default Android with custom ROMs. We’re pointing out some of the things that average, non-techie s do on their smartphones. So here it goes:

1) Smarter calling, and messaging
also has Truecaller installed, but during the initial rollout this feature didn't work reliably. The Android app also syncs the call logs so you can even see names of unknown numbers listed in a chronological fashion - you can even use it as a replacement for your default dialer. Whereas in iOS, the app only shows a log of people whom you’ve called using the app, not all calls.

Next, there are many interesting third party SMS apps that have added functionality. For example, Textra and other cool apps, that are more functional than the default SMS app that your Android phone typically comes with.

2) Backup to Google Photos in the background
offers unlimited backups of photos and videos captured on your phone, for free. And although there’s some compression, the quality will be fairly acceptable for most of us. Now, although there is an iOS app for this service, it doesn’t reliably backup photos when the phone’s on standby - that’s because Apple doesn’t have APIs for apps to perform tasks like ing content in the background. On Android though, not only will photos sync when your phone is asleep, you can even set a rule so that they start ing only when the phone’s on charge.

The only way to seamlessly backup photos on an iPhone today is by using iCloud, which has a monthly subscription fee beyond the first 5GB - though it does not compress your images.

3) Run two apps at once
Although you can run two apps side-by-side on an officially baked into Android 7.0 Nougat. This can be useful when you’re juggling between two apps constantly - like for example talking to someone on a messenger app while checking your Twitter feed at the same time. Oh, and a neat little bonus, on Android Nougat you can ‘Alt-tab’ between two apps by consecutively tapping the multitasking button.

4) Record phone calls
This is yet another thing that you can’t do on an iPhone - record phone calls. Sure, there are some hacky ways around doing this or by using third party subscription services on iOS, but it isn’t as easy as installing an app on an Android phone. Apps like Automatic Call Recorder can record every call by default and you can also share the AMR file over email or cloud storage.

5) Share your device with others
Multi- mode has been around on Android since version 5.0 Lollipop. With it, you can hand over your phone over to another person with ease of mind, by simply logging into the guest , or by creating a separate , which does not have access to your private data - much like we do on computers. While this is how it works on stock Android that runs on phones like the Second Space'. Xiaomi and other manufacturers have also created dedicated Child Modes, which allow you to lock down access to apps, and block functions such as SMS access.

6) Manage files better for easier attachments
Android’s way of handling files is similar to that of a computer - there’s a root folder (like the C Drive on a Windows machine) and files sorted within a folder structure. Every app has access to this centralised storage, making it possible to say, attach a PDF file from within an email app on Android. The same thing isn’t possible on iOS, because by design, files are encapsulated within the apps themselves. On iOS, if you go to the Mail app and want to attach any file other than photos, then you have to open the app that contains the PDF file, hit the ‘share’ button, and choose an email client, which then creates a new email.

Bonus
Apart from these, there are some other features that receive a bonus mention - things like the ability to torrents, which is near impossible to do on an iPhone. Not to mention launchers, that can radically transform the way your home screens appear.

Lastly, and this is just a pet peeve, for clearing notifications on an iPhone, it’s a two-step action - a swipe and tap on the ‘clear’ button. Just imagine the number of times you have to do this daily. Whereas on Android, clearing notifications is easier, with a simple swiping gesture.

These are the highlights of things that Android has that still set it apart from iOS. The article is not intended to put iOS that powers the iPhone in bad light, as there are many things that it does better than Android, which you can read about here. But for people looking at differences between the two most popular mobile operating systems, this could be illuminating.

Which other Android-exclusive feature will you miss if you were to move to an iPhone? Let us know via the comments below.

Comments

For the latest reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.