Stephanie Steiner | Arts & Life Co-Editor

The never-ending debate between Apple and Samsung phones continues to stem across the Buena Vista University (BVU) campus. Which one is better? Which one will prevail? It is hard to tell, but some students have begun to make these decisions.

Junior Griffin Truslow has never had an iPhone–until two weeks ago. As far back as middle school, he received his first Android phone. Up until recently, he continued to use Android phones, but when everyone in his family started sending group messages with their iPhones, his Samsung would send individual replies to them instead. These minor details can make or break the decision to switch over.

“I already had an iPad and a MacBook, so getting an iPhone and being able to have the same information on all of my devices seemed like a logical and convenient thing to do,” Truslow said.

He would automatically trust that his Samsung phone was sending messages to people, but he started realizing that sometimes the messages would not send, and people thought he was ignoring them. Truslow is happy with his decision of switching to the iPhone, but there are a few things he misses about his old phones.

“The personalization was nice. All my icons on my phone were pokèballs. Little things like that. I could also play music from my phone and record a Snapchat video at the same time, which the iPhone doesn’t do,” Truslow said. “My old phone was a Galaxy S4, which was a big phone at the time, and I got the iPhone 6 Plus, and I like the size. Even though it’s pretty big, it easily fits in shorts or sweatpants.”

Phones started off large, then were created as small as possible, and now they are back to being large again. Trends do tend to repeat themselves. While some people are enjoying this “big phone” trend, others are not as big of fans. Junior Alicia Savoy had a Samsung Galaxy S2 before she switched to the iPhone 5.

“I was set against getting an iPhone, mainly because U.S. Cellular didn’t have them, and I didn’t want to change my number. But once my mom’s phone broke, I gave her mine and switched,” Savoy said. “I don’t like that the iPhone 6 has a huge screen. The small size of the iPhone is what made it different from Samsung, and now all of the phone screens are really big.”

Junior Lexi Fisher is a Samsung user, and she is comfortable with the way it functions.

“I already had an iPad from the university, and I figured the iPhone would be a lot like that so I thought I would stay with something different,” Fisher said.

Only time will tell how this competition will play out, but when it comes down to it, people just want a product that works well and has the most efficient and convenient features and benefits for them personally.

“I wouldn’t say I have any loyalty to Apple or Android, even though the devices I have now would say otherwise. I would say I feel more comfortable purchasing Apple products because you know what you’re going to get from Apple,” Truslow said. “For me it seems like a safe option. Apple is always going to be up-to-date with technology, but at the same time they do a great job of simplifying it.”

Photo by Justice Gage