Bill Gates explains why he uses Android on platform that doesn't support Android

Earlier this week, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates gave an interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. During the interview, Gates discussed a lot of topics, including his late friend and sometimes-rival Steve Jobs, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and more. The interview was mostly a promo for his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.

However, Gates also found some time to talk about Android. Although it shouldn’t be surprising to learn knowing the man’s history, Bill Gates is an Android man, as he states here:

I actually use an Android phone. Because I want to keep track of everything, I’ll often play around with iPhones, but the one I carry around happens to be Android.

After he said that, Sorkin asked if it was “a religious thing,” referencing the decade-long Android vs iOS argument. Gates mostly ignored the question, but did give some reasons for his choice:

Some of the Android manufacturers pre-install Microsoft software in a way that makes it easy for me. They’re more flexible about how the software connects up with the operating system. So that’s what I ended up getting used to. You know, a lot of my friends have ‌iPhone‌, so there’s no purity.

Ironically, this entire interview happened on the new audio-based social app Clubhouse — which does not support Android. To use Clubhouse, you need an invite and an iPhone.

With Bill Gates praising Android during the interview, Clubhouse co-founder Paul Davidson actually interjected. On damage control, he said that bringing Clubhouse to Android is the company’s “top priority” at the moment, although there were no other details than that.

Way to make things awkward, Bill.