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Lock and home screens
On each home screen of an iPhone 5, 5S, or 5C there's room for 24 icons in total. Interestingly, a stock Android home screen on a Google Nexus 4 leaves room for only 20 app shortcuts even though the smartphone has a larger display with higher resolution. Of course, that's not too big of a deal, especially when both interfaces allow apps to be sorted in folders. Speaking of which, the iOS 7 approach to folders is more elegant as there is virtually no limit to how many apps the user can place in one. On Android in its stock form, there's a limit of 16 apps per folder, which isn't bad, but it is a drawback nonetheless.
The layout of an iOS 7 home screen is well designed, but perhaps it's all a bit too static, which is why we tend to like the versatility of Android. It is just that widgets are a pretty cool feature that Apple's mobile OS has yet to adopt in one form or another, and we don't see this happening anytime soon. But there are things that Android might learn from iOS 7. One of them is that the text, which is used to display the names of apps, changes color depending on what wallpaper image is being used (but it doesn't work with dynamic wallpapers for some reason). If the image is light, the text goes dark, and vice versa, which makes app names much easier to read. On Android 4.3, there's a shadow under the apps' names, but still, text isn't as legible as it is on iOS 7.
Quick controls and notifications
The Notification Center in iOS 7 has been overhauled and now takes the user straight to their agenda. That's very convenient for people who actually use the Calendar app. Those who find it too crowded in there are free to pick what notifications are to be displayed there – stocks information, unread email, Game Center alerts, reminders, and more. Android's notification bar is a bit different for it doesn't display much if there aren't any pending notifications. But on the other hand, the user does get updates via Google Now.
A noteworthy advantage for iOS 7 versus Android is that both the Notification Center and the Control Center can be accessed from any screen, even when they are hidden. Yup, even if you're playing a game or watching a movie. However, a double-slide is required in order to do that, which prevents the user from accidentally pulling out either of them. In Android, the notification panel is often not visible if a full-screen application is running, which renders it inaccessible.
Customization features
In addition, we have Apple's dynamic wallpapers (yup, they are just like Android's live wallpapers) – these can be set on both the home and the lock screens. Unfortunately, all you get out of the box is a single dynamic wallpaper in several different colors, and the wallpaper is suspiciously similar to Android's stock Phase Beam live wallpaper. We hope that someday, more dynamic wallpapers will be released for iOS 7, but this could be just wishful thinking.
