Apple iPhone

What hackers pick instead

• FairphoneRecommended for easy self-repair, manufacturer-sold spare parts, long support, ethical sourcing and official microG support, though critics say OS and security updates lag well behind.168recommend
• Apple iPhone ProRecommended for its excellent cameras, especially the telephoto, plus long battery life and hardware that stays useful for years; critics cite laggy, buggy iOS and heavily processed photos.144recommend
• iPhone 13 miniThe last truly small iPhone, easy to use one-handed and pocketable, so owners hold onto it; critics cite sluggishness on iOS 26, a weaker camera and short battery life.141recommend
• Jolla PhoneLinux phone running Sailfish OS, praised for its usable interface, Android app support and unlocked bootloader; critics point to its high price and the company's record of shipping problems.88recommend
• iPhone SEPeople recommend the iPhone SE for its small size, light weight, and long software support at a low price. Common caveat: apps increasingly require newer iOS versions.84recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 2055 comments. Each links to the original.

1. The iPhone is still more secure than graphene, otherwise it wouldn’t be the only device that NATO approves carrying around information related to them.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “GrapheneOS protections against data extraction from locked devices”

2. Better in my opinion, because they never pretended to value freedom, and have a sense of ownership over their customers that is sometimes protective.

   Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Today, we hacked what we'd set out to hack: the iPhone”

3. Many people benefit from Apple's closed system. Especially when you look at the malware and viruses that don't exist, because it's so protected.

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Today, we hacked what we'd set out to hack: the iPhone”

4. iPhones are probably the most secure off the shelf phones you can buy, but based on leaked documents it's clearly inferior real-world security

   Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “GrapheneOS protections against data extraction from locked devices”

5. There are only minor technical rough edges: for example an iPhone's user emoji reaction sometimes (not always?) shows up as separate text

   Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Apple, fix my keyboard before the timer ends or I'm leaving iPhone”

6. My Aunt Millie's iPhone is secure against herself because she can't install random garbage off the Internet and is in a walled garden.

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Apple Security Research Device”

7. Whatever tricks they pulled to make the keyboard work like magic speak to the execution of the smartphone that Apple excelled at.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra”

8. the first iPhone simply not having the brand name of the carrier plastered on the front like every other cell phone felt so nice

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Fifteen years later, the Apple Cards origin story”

9. None of which would have existed without his original design and all of which remain relatively close to that original design.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Jony Ive's Ferrari”

10. Apple controls an integrated hardware/software experience, which makes it less likely that private information is being leaked

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Mobile carriers can get your GPS location”

11. the awesome hardware and software optimizations for that hardware that make video recording fast and web browsing even faster

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app”

12. I judge it to be more secure yet I'm constantly fighting the same bugs and misfeatures that seem to never get fixed/improved.

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Nobody knows how the whole system works”

13. the broader consumer market fully embraced it and it single-handedly drove an entirely new generation of consumer electronics

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “European Tech Alternatives”

14. the original iPhone is the conceptual progenitor of virtually every phone that's mattered in the market since it was released

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Apple accidentally left Claude.md files Apple Support app”

15. Apple has been smart by keeping iOS only for them and not work with partners as Android does, it helps keeping it optimized.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “The iPhone's Last Stand”

16. The biggest reason I have mostly stayed with iPhones over the years was because the tight integration with my MBP was useful

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief”

17. The functionality and user experience provided by first iPhone compared to its peers at time completely justified its price.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “iPhone Duo”

18. I quite like someone to be acting as a firewall between my device and the unfettered soup that is stuff out on the internet.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop”

19. Apple does its best to make things just kinda work well, and if you're in their ecosystem fully, it usually does work out.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “My thousand dollar iPhone can't do math”

20. the iPhone was definitely a pivotal player in changing web technology to become what it is today (for better or for worse)

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “Walking Men”

21. I appreciate the battery life, camera and general stability but I hate the new addictions to social media it has caused.

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Jolla Phone Pre-Order”

22. A locked down iPhone or Chromebook is going to thwart everyone but the most determined without compromising any privacy.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Congress Wants to Hand Your Parenting to Big Tech”

23. And occasionally I press hard enough with my thumb that the finger on the perpendicular side of the phone presses the volume up button and whoops I have taken a screen shot instead.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots”

24. It locks down devices like ransomware, permanently restricting functionality of web browsers, messaging apps, and other apps until the user submits to age verification.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Two-tier encryption in the UK”

25. Treating the passcode keyboard as a transient UI element that can be "cleaned up" rather than a hard security dependency is a massive architectural oversight.

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user”

26. Both of these methods have an undesirable side effect for me, which is that it immediately pops up the passcode dialog saying that a passcode is required

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Stop Using Face ID”

27. now we all have what could be General Purpose Computers in our pockets that just refuse to run any software that The System doesn't want us to have

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “The Debt That Apple Owes to the CIA”

28. It just seems like massive software development malpractice to tie together critical operating system updates with whatever else they've bundled.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “CVE-2026-28952: Apple macOS 26.5 Kernel Vuln found by Claude”

29. very flashy, very overhyped, adds a bit of convenience to people's lives but also likely to measurably damage people's brains in the long run

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Gas Town's Agent Patterns, Design Bottlenecks, and Vibecoding at Scale”

30. the nature of a locked bootloader that prevents any third-party software from being loaded / installed without getting an approval from Apple

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Your Phone Is an Entire Computer”

31. I could list endlessly the issue with iPhones and Macbooks, but they're _just_ more convenient enough to have to use them over alternatives.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)”

32. I practically cannot install and keep on using an app that I created without any interruption on the phone that I paid more than 1k$ to buy.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change”

33. Apple and Tesla are two companies that somehow have a widespread reputation for great UX that I think are absolutely atrocious in that area.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “iOS 27 is adding a 'Create a Pass' button to Apple Wallet”

34. The "no root access, no bootloader unlock, no installing your own Apple-unapproved software" bullshit is mandated by Apple, with no opt-out.

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Apple Security Research Device”

35. i'll give him the iPhone, however. i think he was smart enough to understand the forces were aligning to make a product that your average user would like

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams”

36. The Maps experience on the iPhone was sufficiently better than on any other platform that it was justification in itself for many people to buy one.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Nokia's 14 Years of Mobile-Phone Supremacy Ended in an Afternoon”

37. Current Apple hardware has a number of selling points for me, but the number of iPhones they've carelessly pumped into the world is not one of them.

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Xiaomi: New CPU matches Apple cores single threaded, much faster multithreaded”

38. They've been vastly ahead of everyone else with features like text OCR, image element recognition / extraction, microphone noise suppression, etc

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Dell's CES 2026 chat was the most pleasingly un-AI briefing I've had in 5 years”

39. The most available lidar is found on your iPhone, but the results are orders of magnitude less detailed than that derived from photogrammetry.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “LoGeR – 3D reconstruction from extremely long videos (DeepMind, UC Berkeley)”

40. Tim Cook was excitedly waving his hands in the last event video about some kind of evaporative cooling mechanism in the latest low-end iPhone

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Apple, What Have You Done?”