International Journal of Current Trends in Engineering & Research (IJCTER)

e-ISSN 2455–1392 Volume 2 Issue 6, June 2016 pp. 495 – 501

Scientific Journal Impact Factor : 3.468
http://www.ijcter.com

A Comparative study between Android & iOS

Mrs. Krantee Jamdaade1 , Mr. Akshay Khairmode2 , Mr. Sudhakar Kamble3
1
Lecture, MCA Department, L.B.H.S.S.T’s I.C.A, Mumbai University, Bandra(E)
2
T.Y.M.C.A Student, MCA Department, L.B.H.S.S.T’s I.C.A, Mumbai University, Bandra(E)

Abstract—Android and iOS have been rivals from many years and still competing with each other.
Nowadays there are more than a billion smartphone users who use Android or iOS based phones.
Android claiming around 82.8% of the market share while iOS claiming 13.9% of the market share
in 2015. The Key comparison features between the Android and IOS will be measures like Security,
App Market Analysis, Hardware Requirements, Cross Platform App Development, Architectures and
Frameworks, etc. Through this research paper, researcher is giving a brief comparison between
Android and iOS mobile operating systems.
Keywords—Android, iOS, Comparison, App market, Security.
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays mobile technology is having a rapid growth because of billions of users using
smartphones depending on most susceptible OS. The Android and IOS are most commonly used
operating systems.
1.1 IOS
iOS is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. and distributed
exclusively for Apple hardware [7]. It is the second most popular mobile operating system in the
world by sales, after Android. The iOS user interface is based on the concept of direct manipulation,
using multi-touch gestures. iOS shares with OS X some frameworks such as Core
Foundation and Foundation Kit; however, its UI toolkit is Cocoa Touch rather than OS X's Cocoa, so
that it provides the UIKit framework rather than the AppKit framework [7].
1.2 ANDROID
Is a mobile operating system (OS) currently developed by Google, based on the Linux
kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets [7]. It
has been the best-selling OS on tablets and on smartphones. In addition to touchscreen devices,
Google has further developed Android for television, cars, and wristwatches, each with a specialized
yet similar interface. Variants and forked versions of Android are also used on notebooks, game
consoles, digital cameras, and other electronics. Android was initially authored by Android, Inc.,
which Google bought in 2005, and unveiled it in 2007, along with the founding of the Open Handset
Alliance – a consortium of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to
advancing open standards for mobile devices.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

This review is performed on the basis of following research papers and other sources.

A. According to Research on ANDROID VS IOS by Divya Singla & Luv Mendiratta

More than six Billion mobile users in the world are be presents now and they use Mobile phones
every day and every time. Every mobile has present hardware and specialized software site called
operating system. Android is a software stack-set of software subsystems needed to deliver a fully
functional solution for mobile devices & iOS is a mobile operating system that allows all other apps

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 International Journal of Current Trends in Engineering & Research (IJCTER)
Volume 02, Issue 06; June – 2016 [Online ISSN 2455–1392]

to run on an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. The android vs IOS discuss about Android mobile OS
advantages, Apple iOS advantages and Global mobile OS usage statistics.

B. According to Research on Android vs. iOS Security: A Comparative Study by Ibtisam

Mohamed

Mobile device developers, designers have increasingly focused on security of the mobile phones.
The massive adoption of mobile devices by individuals as well as by organizations has brought forth
many security concerns. However, present security features may not be providing accurate and more
powerful security interface to the mobile user. In this factors that influence security within the
Android and iOS platforms, are presented and examined to promote discussion, consider various
factors that influence security on both platforms, such as application provenance, application
permissions, application isolation, and encryption mechanisms.

C. According to Research on Android vs. iOS: The Security Battle by Fattoh AI-Qershi
and et.al

Smartphones are comfortable for personal use and they are one of the most demanding popular
technologies in the world nowadays. The more important used to be saved personal data of the users
in their smartphones. The personal data of a user contains privacy and sensitive information which is
very important that's why hackers can be hacked user’s smartphones to access all user private
information, pin, bank passwords etc. Therefore, the security technology of the smartphones
becomes one of the prime research concerns within the smartphone research community. Threats and
malwares which target the iOS or Android so mobile vendors specially focused on those two
operating systems in terms of their adopted security technologies & comparison between iOS and
Android based on different security criteria.

D. According to Research on Android app Vs Apple app Market: Who is Leading? By

Shivam Jaiswal and Ajay Kumar

Google android has more number of users than Apple has also android apps are more downloaded
than apple’s app but apple is earning more revenue than Google[4]. Since google is planning to get
more user base on the Play Store and then make revenue from showing Ads that will be their main
source of income while app developers will have to add Ads in their apps making apps less likely to
be liked by the users. Since iOS App developers get paid more than the Android Developers, New
apps likely come to iOS first and then to Android.

E. According to Mobile Operating System: Analysis and Comparison of Android and iOS
by Bharati Wukkadada and et. al

After comparing the two OS’s they both have their advantages and disadvantages. iOS require a
specific type of hardware which can be difficult to obtain while Android can be developed on any
hardware. And according to the cost of the phones, Android is much cheaper as compared to iOS
while the error reporting feature is much better in iOS than in Android. Overall they state that the
iOS is better than Android but Android is better in terms of cost and can be obtained by most of the
people.

F. According to Cross-Platform Mobile Applications for Android and iOS by Ng Moon

Hui and et. al

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 International Journal of Current Trends in Engineering & Research (IJCTER)
Volume 02, Issue 06; June – 2016 [Online ISSN 2455–1392]

They discuss about the cross-platform game development and the most suitable tool to work for that
is XMLVM Framework so that it can run on multiple OS’s. It is necessary to keep in mind that each
and every app development framework have their own strength and weaknesses and we should make
a good use of that and there are many potential works which are not explored fully and will be very
useful if proper implementation is made on them. This will save money and time to all the platform
developers and reduce lot of their work.

III. PARAMETERS FOR COMPARISON

3.1 Security

3.1.1 iOS VS. ANDROID SECURITY OVERVIEW

Strength of the android is the remote removal mechanism. Android are using java & performing its
own secure role to preventing memory damage attacks. In android 46 malwares are present and 18
Android attacks may be possible in this OS.
In the other things in IOS considered a high secured smartphone & Don’t allow to using
unofficial market in iOS. iOS provide security advantages of Apple, by mentioning it as a layered
secure OS, layer is the using of Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) and Data Execution
Prevention (DEP).
3.1.2 SECURITY MODELS
It is component based OS & applications archived to be as a packages & those packages should be
signed using valid certificates known as a Signing applications in android. Android ―application
permission‖ used to be allowing/disallowing a requesting of mobile resources. There are four
permissions levels normal, dangerous, signature, and signature-or-system.
On other thing in IOS Security model it has a strict control with different Components like
hardware, OS, and applications. In iOS Devices, Security works to access of the device, creating
passcodes, restricting device resources, and preventing the installation of unwanted applications. iOS
also uses data encryption techniques to protect using the passcodes and some hardware encryption
keys.
3.1.3 SECURITY TECHNIQUES
i. Application provenance
is a method where each third-party application is scrutinized for its intended functionality and
security & requires apps to be digitally signed.
ii. Application permissions
When an application is downloaded on a device, it can access the entire device resources based on
the given permissions. Typically, the user is informed about the permissions for application to
requires access. Installation period of an application, all permissions that the application needs is
shown to the user.

iii. Isolation
Isolation system prevents accessing resources beyond the approved permissions. iOS apps can also
access some resources without asking the user for any permission & Android isolation system is
similar to that of iOS.

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 International Journal of Current Trends in Engineering & Research (IJCTER)
Volume 02, Issue 06; June – 2016 [Online ISSN 2455–1392]

iv. Encryption
Mobile devices are at risk of being lost or stolen, which makes them vulnerable to data breaches.
Mobile platform vendors have addressed this issue by encrypting sent and received data on these
devices. Using fingerprints for device protection and encryption and might underestimate their
limitations and pitfalls, leading to an overly-large and overly-broad trust being placed in their usage.
3.2 App Market Analysis

App market is a place where we find manufacturer apps and 3 rd party apps. After the development of
smart phones, the app markets have been highly developed with more and more features adding to
the date. Google the owner of Android has its own apps on Android as well as iOS market, like
Google Maps, Google Chrome browser, etc. while NO apple Apps are available in the android app
store.
Apple App market is exclusive to Apple Hardware users only while Android has many manufactures
which use their OS and their App market giving Play Store very high number of users. All the Apple
Apps are thoroughly moderated by the apple team and then released on the app store.
Apple Apps are currently developed on Xcode which is an IDE and they have introduced the new
swift 3 Language to develop the Apps. Android apps can also be developed on various IDE’s but
android’s official IDE is Android Studio where Java Programming Language is used to program the
apps. Apple apps can only be developed on a Mac OS system while android can be developed on
windows, mac os as well as Linux based OS
The thing to notice is that Apple Apps are mostly Piracy free unless the Device is JailBroken which
voids the warranty while Android Apps can be tinkered with and can be sideloaded making
developers go for iOS apps for a proper income for their hard work. And also the reason why some
of the apps are released on apple app store before play store.

Fig. 1 Total No. of Apps by Store

[Source adapted from [8]]

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 International Journal of Current Trends in Engineering & Research (IJCTER)
Volume 02, Issue 06; June – 2016 [Online ISSN 2455–1392]

Fig. 2 Showing No. of Apps

[Source adapted from [9]]

Fig. 3 App Downloads and revenue

[Source adapted from [9]]

3.3 Performance

This is a very frequent topic of debate that which OS is better in terms of performance but
this also depends on the hardware of the phone. Since android has various manufacturers the
performance may vary among them. iOS is a very light weight OS while Android is quite heavy in
comparison because of so many customizations available. Apple devices running iOS haven't had the
best high end hardware but still have had better results in benchmarks because of their light weight
OS. Android device on other hand may had better hardware specifications than Apple devices but
still lost to Apple devices.
3.4 Android Architecture

Kernel - It acts as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the rest of the software stack.

Libraries - Android has a set of C/C++ libraries used by various components. Application
Framework-Android provide various applications with ability to open development. In Application

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 International Journal of Current Trends in Engineering & Research (IJCTER)
Volume 02, Issue 06; June – 2016 [Online ISSN 2455–1392]

Framework The activity manager manages the lifecycle of applications and provides a common
navigation back stack.

Framework -Android SDK provides you the API libraries and tools for building and developing
new applications on Android operating environment using the java programming language. This
procedure of developing the applications on Android platform in java programming language using
the tools and API libraries provided by Android SDK with the help of Android Framework.

3.5 iOS Architecture

Kernel - The kernel of iOS is the XNU kernel. On older iOS versions the separation was 3/1), closer
to the Linux model. As of iOS 6, the kernel is subject to ASLR.

Libraries -You probably know that using third-party libraries in your iOS projects can save you a lot
of time and hassle. Here are 5 libraries that we use in every-day development and think every iOS
developer should know about.
AFNetworking, JSONModel, MagicalRecord, SDWebImage, ReactiveCocoa are some of the
libraries.

Framework-A framework is a bundle (a structured directory) that contains a dynamic shared library
along with associated resources, such as nib files, image files, and header files.iPhone application
projects link by default to the Foundation, UIKit, and Core Graphics frameworks.

3.6 User Interface

Android is highly customizable as compared to iOS and the looks of the device can be
changed completely as the user wants while it's not possible in iOS. Third party launchers, lock
screens, etc. gives a number of options to the users. One of the main reason that most users use
android is also because of the customization. Apart from customization the Notification Bar in
android shows much more information compared to the iOS one and that too is customizable.
iOS in their latest releases may have added some customization to their operating system but that
cannot compare to what android provides. iOS devices have a similar UI on all the available devices
making it easy for people to understand who have lot of apple products while each android phone
have manufacturer skins on them.
While android provides full customization option, the third party launchers may be buggy and can
cause the user to see unwanted bugs.
3.7. Software Updates
While both Android and iOS provide proper updates to the devices. iOS is much faster as
compared to Android. The primary reason behind that is that apple devices get updates directly from
apple while android devices has to go through the manufacturer so that they may change things
according to their devices. This delays the updates and sometimes some phones never gets the
updates as the manufacturer is working for an update on a newer device or other reasons. The only
devices which gets fast updates in android are the Nexus Series of phones which uses Google’s stock
android.
3.8. Unlocking Devices
Apple does not support unlocking their devices because it causes security threats but the third
party developers have found a way to do that by jailbreaking the device. It is an unofficial process
and voids the warranty of the devices.

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 International Journal of Current Trends in Engineering & Research (IJCTER)
Volume 02, Issue 06; June – 2016 [Online ISSN 2455–1392]

Android on the other hand supports unlocking devices officially (nexus devices). Manufacturers may
decide if they want their devices to be unlocked or not unlocked. Some manufacturers like One Plus
officially provides ways to unlock their phones and some of them are pre-unlocked according to the
region.
3.9 Affordability
Android devices range from minimum 6k to more than 50k while apple devices are mostly
priced at high range as compared to the others. Price range is very crucial matter in India where
people are mostly from middle income family. So the android users are very high as compared to
other countries in India.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper we have compared iOS vs Android platform and have found comparison between
security techniques, models, app market analysis, software updates, etc. Both OS’s uses encryption
techniques but iOS considered a high secured smartphone as compared to Android. In iOS
Applications Apple apps can only be developed on a Mac OS system while android can be developed
on windows as well as Mac OS.Apple Apps are mostly Piracy free unless the Device is JailBroken
while Android Apps can be tinkered with. Both OS have many other applications presents in their
own app market. The interface of iOS devices has a similar UI on all the available devices making it
easy for people to understand while android provides full customization option. Finally, as a
conclusion both smartphones provide better and interesting interface and UI to work easy for
peoples. Both Android and iOS provide proper updates to the devices but iOS is much faster as
compared to Android. Apple does not support unlocking devices while android is supported. Overall
comparison state that iOS is better than android but by cost wise Android is better.
REFERENCES
[1] Research on ANDROID VS IOS by Divya Singla & Luv Mendiratta Dronacharya College Of Engineering,
Farrukhnagar, Gurgaon
[2] Research on Android vs. iOS Security: A Comparative Study by Ibtisam Mohamed Ibtisam Mohamed, PhD
Candidate Department of Computer Science University of Denver Denver, CO 80208, USA
[3] Research on Android vs. iOS: The Security Battle by Fattoh AI-Qershi and et.al Department of Information Systems,
College of Computer and Information Sciences King Saud University Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
[4] Research on Android app Vs Apple app Market: Who is Leading? By Shivam Jaiswal and Ajay Kumar IS SN:2319-
7242 Volume 3 Issue 4 April, 2014 Page No. 5553-5556 University of Delhi
[5] Mobile Operating System: Analysis and Comparison of Android and iOS by Bharati Wukkadada and et. al K.J.
Somaiya Institute of Management studies & Research Vidyanagar, Vidyavihar, Mumbai-77
[6] Cross-Platform Mobile Applications for Android and iOS by Ng Moon Hui and et. Al School of Computer Sciences,
Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Penang, Malaysia
[7] www.wikipedia.org
[8] http://www.zdnet.com/article/ios -versus-android-apple-app-store-versus-google-play-here-comes-the-next-battle-in-
the-app-wars/
[9] http://www.androidauthority.com/google-play-store-vs-the-apple-app-store-601836/
[10] http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/best-smartphone-os/2/

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