drakeshady:

I know most people don’t care, but here’s the real answer.

Snapchat built a shitty Android app. On iOS, Snapchat uses the phone’s camera directly to take a picture, ensuring the highest possible quality.

On Android, Snapchat opens the camera, but then takes a screenshot, instead of telling the camera to take a picture. This means that the camera never gets to adjust it’s focus and lighting, or provide stabilization to the picture. Instead, you get the best that shaky human hands can get, which means low quality pictures.

Due to the popularity of Snapchat, this difference actually spreads the superiority complex of iOS. Android manufacturers have been innovating new hardware since the creation of cell phones. Apple only upgrades when they’re worried about being seen as outdated, or they need “new features” to push their phone. It also shows that iPhones are a status symbol, that have no reason to be as expensive as they are.

To be fair to Apple, they’ve built a consistent ecosystem. If you have an iPhone, you can pick up any other iPhone and know how it works. Android is different by design however, with literally anyone free to modify it as they want to. Whether that is to fit certain hardware, or add new features, or meet a specific artistic design, Android has more total devices, support for more hardware configurations (even laptops) and is available for anyone to use however they want.

Snapchat made a deliberate poor design decision, and should shoulder the blame for their shitty app. But that would require supporting the largest userbase in the world over their elite base of iPhone users.