The US army is upgrading its fleet of Android phones and replacing them with iPhones.
The switch to the iPhone 6s comes after the US Army Special Operations Command found its “Android Tactical Assault Kit” slow, glitchy and prone to freezing, according to reports.
Tactical Assault Kits are modified versions of popular smartphones, such as the Samsung Galaxy Note, that are connected to a networked Harris radio, and designed to run custom-made military apps.
In this instance, the Special Operations division found Android inferior to iOS when running an army-made app with a live video feed from a drone on one side and its route on the other.
In 2010 the US army gave soldiers iPod touches in Afghanistan and Iraq that had language-learning apps installed on them to help with Iraqi Arabic, Kurdish, Dari and Pashto.
The US Department of Defense said in 2013 that iOS 6 devices were secure enough to connect to Pentagon networks and to be used for low-level security clearance work. Before then it used 470,000 BlackBerry devices, 41,000 Apple ones and 8,700 products running Android.