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Nina asked: “I’d like to know the difference between an Android and an iPhone.”
Nina, iPhone and Android are two different flavors of smartphones, in fact the iPhone is just Apple’s name for the phone they happen to make, but their operating system, iOS, is Android’s main competitor.
You should probably look at iOS and Android as you’d look at a Ford and a Chevy, 99% of what they do is the same, and they both do it well. You’ve probably heard that iPhones are better or Android is better, in reality they’re comparable, it’s mostly a matter of personal preference.
Now, we should mention that the iPhone is indeed better than a huge number of Android phones, BUT so are all the higher-end Android models. Manufacturers put Android on some very cheap phones and you do get what you pay for.
All iPhones are expensive, and they’re expected to perform the way expensive phones should
All iPhones are expensive, and they’re expected to perform the way expensive phones should, but don’t take that to mean that high-end, expensive Android phones do any worse, they don’t, the cheap ones that cost a fraction of the money do.
If you compare make sure you’re comparing things that are in fact comparable. Again, think of it as Chevy and Ford, don’t compare a base model Spark and think it will be as nice as a fully loaded Lincoln… Now, if you want to compare Cadillac and Lincoln, or a Spark and a Fiesta, knock yourself out.
The iPhone’s iOS tries to be predictable and simple and it does that at the expense of customization, iOS can be rigid. Android is the opposite, it can sometimes make people dig a little bit more, but a huge portion of the user experience can be customized.
iPhones obviously play very nicely with the rest of the Apple ecosystem, so you can share a clipboard and copy and paste from one device to the other, start your mobile hotspot from another device, start an email or document on one device and continue it on the other at any point, access a Mac’s folders from the iPhone, etc. That means that if you already have other Apple products, the iPhone has a little bit of an edge in that, but that alone is not a reason to rule out Android.
Both are good options, if you’re stuck choosing between them our advice would be to try them both and see what you think, to not go for the absolute cheapest Android handset if you can avoid it, and if you’re new to both platforms maybe see which one your friends use, in case you need to ask for help.