Smartphone OS Showdown
Android, BlackBerry, iOS, or Windows Phone? The phone, the features, and the apps you'll get depend on your platform choice. Here's a close look at the big four mobile operating systems.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/smartphone-os-showdown
OB Roundup
It's like picking a religion. The smartphone world is sharply divided between Google's Android, Apple's iOS, and a few up-and-coming players. The one you pick will define which phones you can choose, which apps you can run, and even the games you can play with your friends.
The good news is that they're all basically good choices. We've spent time with every smartphone OS on the market, and they all connect to social networks, take photos, play games, surf the Web, and of course call and text with aplomb.
The differences between the mobile OSes basically comes down to three factors: hardware, apps, and customizability. Google's Android runs on the widest range of phones by far, but Apple has proven you don't need a lot of hardware choice to succeed. iOS has the most popular apps, followed closely by Android, while Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry OS 10 lag behind. If you want to customize your phone, Android leads the pack, with Windows Phone 8 also offering some fun personalization options. Apple's system is much more rigid, but it's very easy to use.
Take a look at the latest smartphone reviews on all four platforms in our Cell Phones Product Guide, and see how we rate the individual mobile operating systems below.
Apple iOS 6.1
Elegance and simplicity are the hallmarks of iOS, which comes on Apple's iPhone line. iOS home screens are a simple grid of moveable icons, and everything within the OS has a simple, logical, and consistent design. The built-in apps are delightfully well designed, and the latest version of the OS includes both Facebook and Twitter integration, the Passbook virtual wallet, robust notifications, and built-in video chat with other iOS users.
iOS's true, overwhelming strength is the best app store in the business. Third-party apps still typically come to iOS first, and Apple offers the industry's best selection of book, movie, TV, and music stores as well. If you're looking for easy access to the Web, games and media, Apple's OS will please you. Read the full review ››
Google Android 4.2.2 'Jelly Bean'
Google's Android OS is available on more phones and more carriers than any other mobile operating system. That's always been its strength: You can get big or small Android phones, low-price or high-end Android phones, and Android phones with touch screens or physical keyboards. There's one for everyone, and you can find exactly the shape and size you want.
The latest Android 4.2 'Jelly Bean' matches or exceeds Apple's feature set in many ways. Android's strength is customizability: Unlike on iOS, you can arrange your home screens completely freely, adding live widgets with Web-based information, your favorite contacts, or quick settings to the usual array of apps. That makes the Android home-screen experience much more powerful than Apple's. Android 4.1 brought us Google Now, an artificial-intelligence-aided search function that aims to deliver customized information like commute times even before you ask for it.
The Google Play market, Android's app store, has hundreds of thousands of apps for every possible desire. It lags behind iOS in a few categories, most notably hard-core games and design-focused apps (that doesn't just mean apps for designers, but apps like the game Letterpress which appeal to a design-focused community.) But it offers hackers and programmers many more options to change and alter the OS, including loading their own customized version of the OS on their phones.
But here's the problem: It's difficult to get Android 4.2.2, which is currently available on very few devices, most notably the Nexus 4 . It'll be on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4, though. The much more widely available Android 4.1 'Jelly Bean' is almost as good, lacking only a few minor features. We recommend it just as enthusiastically.
Drop down to Android 4.0 and you lose Google Now and the speedy Project Butter interface improvements. We're still recommending Android 4.0 phones, though, as they run all current Android apps. But don't buy an Android 2.3 phone. They're still on sale, and the user interface and built-in Google apps are much clunkier. Read the full review ››
Blackberry, Windows Phone, and More
BlackBerry 10 OS
BlackBerry's new OS puts a universal inbox at the center of your smartphone experience, collecting all of your emails and social-network messages into a hub that's never more than a swipe away. It's clean and efficient for those focused on messaging and communication. But while there are already 100,000 apps for the platform, many big-name and popular apps from iOS and Android are still missing.
The OS will be available on two phones, the touch-screen Z10 for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, and the QWERTY-keyboarded Q10 ( at Amazon) , coming later in the spring.
BlackBerry's older OS 7 is still available in phones like the Curve 9315. We do not advise it for anything other than basic calling and texting, as its app selection and Web browsing are far behind other competitors. BlackBerry OS 7 phones will not be upgradeable to BlackBerry 10. Read the full review ››
Microsoft Windows Phone 8
Microsoft's mobile OS entry strikes a happy balance between iOS's simplicity and Android's customizability. Its hallmark is Live Tiles, which are preprogrammed squares that you can rearrange on your screen to bring the people and information you want to the fore. Windows Phone 8 plumbs both Facebook and Twitter deep into the OS, and works brilliantly with Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office, and XBox Live gaming. It's creative, different, and genuinely fun to use.
Windows Phone 8 gets a lower score than the market leaders because it has more limited hardware options than Android, and fewer apps than both iOS and Android. While there are still plenty of apps and games for Windows Phone, we found that about 63 percent of the top 102 Android and Apple apps were available for Windows Phone. The platform's Bing-based search and navigation also score well behind Google's on features and accuracy.
Our favorite Windows Phones are the Nokia Lumia 920 , which comes with its own superior navigation app, and the HTC 8X , which has a beautiful industrial design. Read the full review ››
Other Contenders
Other mobile OSes are bubbling up from below, although none of them are available on U.S. phones yet. The Firefox OS made its debut in February, although it looks like it's designed for developing countries and may never come here. Linux firm Canonical is working on an Ubuntu smartphone OS, which could surface sometime in the coming months. And Samsung will release its first Tizen phone this year, running an in-house, Linux-based OS.
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