Comparison of Android and iOS
Note:- To have the best experience for this article use - view as "Desktop site" in your browser if you are using a smartphone .
Many mobile operating systems are available in the market these days. But the predominance of Android and iOS is much better than any of these operating systems. However, technology and features of Android and iOS varies but the usage level of these OS by people is almost reaching to the same extent. Android is an open-source application development platform so it becomes a soft target for privacy attacks. The paper presents a review of the comparison between Android and iOS operating systems. The various parameters selected for comparison include Security, File Transfer, App Market Analysis, etc.
Introduction
Nowadays, mobile phones have become the most essential device for humans. People are used to carrying mobile devices with them where ever they travel to make their life easier. Mobile devices have now been developed not only for voice communication it is much more developed for data communication. The innovation of mobile devices and applications for mobile devices has created huge economic value. Due to the advanced development of mobile devices with including data communication people used to do their work on mobile devices such as sending emails, internet accessing, downloading’s, online payments, etc. Concerning this upcoming generation mostly used to use wireless devices more than wired devices because it is easy to use and it saves time as it can be used anywhere without a doubt. These devices are variants used for applications like banking, personal digital assistants, remote working, e-commerce, entertainment and medical usage. The Open Handset Alliance is a consortium whose goal is to expand open standards for mobile devices and promote innovation in mobile phones and also provide a better experience for consumers at a lower cost. Due to the developments in technology, the capabilities of the mobile phone have been increased. One of the major uses of mobile phones is accessing the Internet.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the android architecture, Section 3 presents the iOS architecture, Section 4 presents the related work, Section 5 shows the comparison of the android and iOS operating system, Section 6 includes conclusions and future scope of the research work.
Android Operating System
Android is intended to revolutionize the mobile market by bringing the internet to the mobile phone and allow to use in the same way as on the PC. Android mobile operating system is developed by Google. The Android mobile operating system began with the release of the Android alpha on November 5, 2007. The term “Android” has its origin in the Greek word android-, meaning “man or male” and the suffix - eides, used to mean “alike or of the species”. This together means as more as “being human”. The first Android mobile phone was T- Mobile G1and launched in United states which contains a pull-down notification window right from day one and also having home screen widgets. Android was founded by an android Inc. company in Palo Alto of California, the U.S in 2003 whose founder was Andy Rubin. Acc. to Andy Rubin one of the founder of the Android company that “smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner’s locations and preferences” the other founders like Rich Miner co-founder of Wildfire Communications Inc. Nick Sears once Vice-President of T-Mobile and Chris White-headed design and interface development at WebTV began to develop a platform for mobile devices. In the Android operating system, there are four layers and have their own libraries. This is helpful for developing and designing android mobile applications. These libraries are supported by C/C++. Linux kernel is a first layer which is also written in C language. Android is an open-source mobile operating system built on the Linux kernel which is powered by Google’s services such as Search, Gmail, YouTube, Translate, Maps, etc. Linux kernel is used to manage core system services, for instance, virtual memory, networking, drivers, and power management. Google released the Android code as open-source under the Apache License. Android is a justly young platform, the development takes place very rapidly. Each major release is named in alphabetic order after a sugary treat.
iOS
Apple was released on June 29, 2007, in the USA and released its latest OS version known as iOS 9.1 on 8th December 2015 and the most recent version of ios such as iPhone, iPhone 5 released on September 21, 2012. IOS was derived from Mac OS X with which it shares the Darwin foundation, and Unix based operating system, it was exclusively for Apple hardware only. iOS is a proprietary operating system or closed source language, which means its source code is not available for developers to build applications. iOS support C, C++ and Objective C programming languages. iOS is based on the conception of direct manipulation and utilized a multi-touch interface. It is used to run iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices. Every IOS developer needs to pay 99$ to sign up as an IOS app developer and upload any number of apps on to the app store within that span of a year. i.e. approximately 68 million dollars that apple made from the new developer registrations. iOS 7 allows us to function between various iPhone apps, a similar UI (User Interface)than previous versions. Paying electricity bills, bank accounts maintenance are a tap away. It has improved Siri, Airdrop to transfer files and data. In the iPhone operating system, application sandboxing is a set of fine-grained control that limits the application access to the file system, network, and hardware. IOS has a robust sandbox model and Shares the same sandbox model which is more secure and less open to the crowd.
Comparison of android and iOS
The comparison result helps to identify different results by comparing different operating systems is shown by given below-
Table 1: Comparison between Android and iOS Operating system
|
|
Android |
iOS |
|
Family |
Linux |
Darwin |
|
Environment (IDE) |
Eclipse (Google) |
XCode (Apple), AppCode |
|
Buit-in Antivirus |
Antivirus can be downloaded from Google Play, virus checking is done on Google Play only, can be easily attacked because no built-in antivirus, any application outside from Google Play is risky |
No antivirus needed because the application can be downloaded only from Apps store and checking been done in Apps store. |
|
Application Store |
Google Play |
App store |
|
CPU Architecture |
ARM, x86, MIPS |
ARM, ARM 64 |
|
Virtual Machine |
Allowed |
Not Allowed |
|
Vendor |
Open Handset Alliance, Google |
Apple Inc |
|
App executable file size range (.dex & Objective-C binary) |
3KB∼6.2MB |
25KB∼39.5MB |
|
Internet browsing |
Google Chrome (or Android Browser on older versions) |
Mobile Safari |
|
Voice command |
Google now |
Siri |
|
Source model |
Open-source |
Closed, with open source components. |
|
File transfer |
It is easy as compared to iOS. Files can be transferred using USB and Android file sharing application |
It is difficult than file sharing in Android. Media can be transferred using iTunes desktop application. |
|
Security |
Android patch updates are available to pixel and nexus devices. Other manufacturers tend to lag behind in pushing these updates. So if we check at any point of time majority of Android smartphones may not be running on latest updates |
Most users don’t encounter a problem with malware as iOS doesn’t allow apps out of the App store. The updates provided by apple support the older iOS devices too. |
After comparing the two Operating systems they both have their advantages and disadvantages. Android was developed by Google whereas iOS was developed by Apple Inc. Android open-source platform requires strong as compare to iOS closed with open source components. iOS no need to require antivirus because the application can be downloaded only from Apps store while Android requires antivirus because it can be downloaded from Google Play. According to the cost of the phones, Android is less expensive as compared to iOS .iOS is difficult than file sharing in Android.
Conclusion
We find both have their advantages and disadvantages. iOS development requires a specific type of hardware that may be more difficult to obtain — but that might encourage cross-departmental collaboration and expose us to another operating system. The bar for Android is somewhat lower, as development can take place in any meanly equipped computer science laboratory.
Concerning security issues, iPhone Operating System is fully secured, and there is no need for any antivirus while android has some security issues.
