5 reasons why droid does: real advantages of jumping off the iPhone train

I loved my iphone and every other phone i have tried just falls a little short. the thing just worked amazingly well.

The problem is that ATT in the US is very bad and makes the phone unusuable. It works for most folks because they do more text messaging than talking. But the dropped calls in the US is unbelievable.

Ironically, the second day after leaving my iphone and trying the eris, i got a call from an ATT marketing survey company to check up on my satisfaction. They called while i was on the train from NYC to BMore. The survey took at least 30 minutes and my Eris never dropped once (despite going through tunnels under the Hudson).

My iphone would have dropped that call three times.
 
Ok dude, you got valid points, but you are still talking about the network and not the phone itself. its terrible if Apple made it with ATT, and not with another provider...

here in canada, 3g service is perfect!
 
Essentially the weakness in the service is the iPhone's biggest failure here in the US, so it will be the most significant reason for most people to switch and just pick themselves up an iPod touch to partake of the best features of the OS as a portable entertainment unit.

I used my first gen on t-mobile and the service was much better. I switched to AT&T when I bought the 3G to take the high-speed for a spin. The phone ran like a dream, selling me instantly on it. Over the next 5 months I realized why all the complaining had been so rampant against AT&T.

The points I've emphasized are reasons outside of this, since that part is really NOT apple's fault directly. They wanted to launch it on Verizon, the generally recognized tried & true strongest network but the company's leadership could not figure out an agreement with Apple so they moved on to the only other viable choice.

I think Apple's hardware is a bit better so there's a slight advantage for developers thanks to the design solidarity for the hardware in the OS. It's a total package built to support the most responsive UI. Most would argue the touch qwerty is the best available, period, so it would always have the edge on a touch-only android device. We're at the point where iPhone Vs Android is going to be just like the Mac Vs Linux box arena. There isn't a clear winner, just perks and minor setbacks to either. Prior to now nothing could really stand up that well to all the wins on the iPhone, so I'm incredibly pleased that the time has come, and I am very satisfied with my Android.
 
1 - notifications: Doesn't the iphone have push notifications? All my apps notify me of new messages, emails etc. What am I missing here?

2 - evolved browser: You do know that even on a non-jailbroken iphone that there is more browsers available than safari. Oceanus, Perfect Web Browser, Icab mobile. All do what you just mentioned and more. Arrange folders in bookmarks, download files, fullscreen mode, transparency, most recently visited etc. All with multi-touch. Something Droid does not do. A browser without multi-touch is sorely lacking, no matter how much you are telling yourself it doesn't matter, you know it does. Keep telling yourself that, still will not make you feel any worse about not having it.

3 - FREEDOM. You need to jailbreak your phone to get freedom. Not a big deal but sucks right out of the box. The App store kills anything else out there as far as apps go. Including the Android market place.

4 - organization between different apps and processes - simple multi-tasking that is under your full control. the ease of using the things you use most is phenomenal on this device. the ability to arrange things exactly how you want and keep other apps hidden away in the main app list is wonderful, not to mention widgets and functionality shortcuts (things like speed dial to specific contacts). UI features like having the menu key to access hidden functions, and ability to press and hold home to pull up a quick app switcher just doesn't exist on iPhone. Being able to get things running concurrently for the purpose of real-time notification and keeping your place between notes, web pages, and messaging is awesome. trying to do this on iPhone is a chore since each app has to run in isolation and you frequently lose your place or get slowed down a lot when you have to jump back and forth

"UI features like having the menu key to access hidden functions, and ability to press and hold home to pull up a quick app switcher just doesn't exist on iPhone"

Yes it does. Hit the home button takes you to spotlight, start to type the name of the app and there you go. Yes can even set spotlight to keep the apps in memory so you can use spotlight as a quick app launcher so you don't have to go through pages of apps.

Yes can arrange things exactly the way you want and hide away apps you don't want, without jailbreaking. You can keep apps hidden away in the main app list on the iphone.

You can add speed dial to specific contacts on the iphone or use spotlight to remember your contacts by pressing the home button.

How doesn't the iphone keep its place in notes, web pages, and messaging? I use Oceanus and it keep my pages just fine, messageing ditto. pocketinformant does this very well also as a whole list of other apps including the iphones native notes app. Slowed down? All of the iphones native apps run in the backround, as well as many third party apps run in the backround. Oceanus runs in the backround, so does pocketinformant.

5 - google integration & flair - talk, contacts/calendar, slick gmail, backup, navigation, voice search. there are plenty of other little perks google has provided also such as the battery usage analysis, ability to specify which notifications will use sound or vibration, contact merging, smooth OTA updating, the polish in the system is just enormous

Ahh... the iphone already does this all and more. What exactly is your point. The advantage the iphone has is it's ability to add functionality by third party apps, there are litterally dozens of battery apps and system apps available.

Did you ever own a iphone? If you did you simply did not know how to use it or never learned. Great for you if you like "Droid" better. But your reasons for liking it better hold no weight when the iphone does most if not all that you claim it doesn't. And does it better than most.
 
not sure how anyone can argue anything other than Iphone is a killer device. once jailbroken it crushes droid (i have both). BUT it is a worthless piece of junk in such insignificant locations such as New York, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Fran, Orange County, San Diego, etc. These are all places that i ahve been in last six months and had numerous calls dropped on the iphone. Completely outrageous.

I will say that Iphone did not drop a single call in Providence, RI or Hartford CT and worked all the way between the two. Also works very well in Washington DC.
 
Ok dude, your post amuses me a little. Are you in denial that the almighty iPhone is not the king of every single feature imaginable? My iPhone experience goes back to launch day, all the way from throwing down $599 out of the gate, to running the first software jailbreak & unlock, to running the phone on t-mobile from there.

1 - What you're missing is the fact that iPhone push notifications SUCK. Sure, it can push me a single notification box at a time. What good is that when you aren't attending to the phone and have multiple waiting email, IMs, etc? I have to launch the 3rd party IM app and wait and wait while it loads in its isolated environment. This is vastly inferior to the notification UI on the android, which collects all events and allows one to preview them and quickly hop into the event origin to respond without waiting for the excruciatingly slow app load process. More on this in a few categories.

2 - Android can also download other browsers. This is not a good argument. What android browser has: Quick Bookmark access (Start typing and you will be presented with relevant bookmarks) works just like on google chrome. Couldn't tell you whether an alternative iPhone browser has this, as I never went looking for one. The browser itself renders perfectly and particularly on the droid I find I do not need pinch zooming because I can read webpages in full zoomout with the higher res, wider screen. If i need to pinpoint a small print link, I can use the direction pad and it is fast & easy without having to battle with the zoom like I would on the iPhone for the same operation.

3 - Freedom: You have to modify your device significantly to gain access to development freedom. Even with this, you are now relying on the homebrew community to stay up to date and stable. I am not disputing all the useful things you can do on the jailbreak platform. It was really cool to have it during the first year when there wasn't even a damn SDK. The community reversed all the code and built its OWN SDK. The real freedom I'm talking about on android is that google allows the SDK to be open and not subject to gross bureaucratic dictation for developers who want to monetize their work. I recognize there is also still homebrew community, that will always be the case. The fact is there is more freedom by default and thereby better innovation is facilitated and developers' costs will be lower, allowing higher quality releases overall. Right now we could compare android market to iPhone 2.0 a few months after SDK finally released. By now it has some totally killer apps for all kinds of users. It's a wicked platform thanks to the thought process driving the total package of the hardware+os, and a force to be reckoned with. I don't think anyone is really going to want to try to outdo it per se. If you need X app, why do you NEED it to be on android? Computing is becoming more platform independent as more innovation happens. I still use my games and music production apps on the iPhone. Do I really care whether they get ported to android? Use the mobile device that offers the features and flexibility you need on the go. It's not a difficult concept.

4 - How doesn't the iphone keep its place in notes, web pages, and messaging?

Well, it doesn't. You are saying all of this stuff "runs in the background." It really doesn't. It's not running. Think of it like being paused. On unmodified software, you have a chance when you come back to a webpage tab you've been off for a bit that it will all be there, you won't need to reload. But it might have gotten bumped out of the immediate RAM and then require refresh. This impacts browsing and messaging notifications noticably. If you want to run google voice for sms, GFL. It just can't do it. You have to launch the app and wait for a refresh. With android, your IM, google voice, browsing, and any other important ongoing process is preserved and allows you to instantly enter any recent process from the hold-home function. Another example of this is when you want to run a music stream (not files, a netradio or a pandora process) while doing something else such as browse or IM. Good luck with iPhone unless you've jailbroken and go through the process to activate backgrounder in the processes you are trying to run. It's kind of a crappy UI, and I found it runs buggy at best. I would still frequently find the phone crashing as it exhausted available RAM while trying to stream and go into other tasks.

The android has been designed to put all the things you use most at closer reach and easier organized into a way that makes sense to you as the user, and allow them to all coexist without a convoluted process. Widgets are a natural extension of this design philosophy. I noticed this functionality has barely been launched on the iPhone in the form of the lockscreen customizations in jailbreak platform. A good start for sure, but iPhone has some serious catching up to do mainly on this front which enables smart notification and great integration with processes that need to be ongoing.

5 - google flair --- The iphone does all this and more? Where is solid google voice integration? Where is a solid reliable gtalk interface that's responsive and flexible, or ANY instant messaging? Blackberry even destroys iPhone when it comes to this since the apps can run and notify persistantly and customizably. Where's automatic backup and sync? Where's free google navigator and latitude? Where's OTA os update? Where's combined mail inbox? Where's the ability to choose for any type of notification event what type of sound or vibration would occur? The list is endless for flexibility that google has thought out in full that does not EXIST in iPhone OS. Comparing default OS environments, android WINS. Jailbreak comes closer, but still loses.

I used my iPhone to what I felt to be its fullest potential for over 2 years, and after only a short time testing droid these advantages were painfully obvious. Do I still love my killer apps on it? 100%. I will continue to use the platform and purchase apps that prove their worth. However I no longer have to compromise on google voice, great IM, easier management of multiple email accounts, the list goes on. Google has provided evolution with android OS and in this areas Apple needs to take a few lessons.
 
the strengths can really be summarized by the three main categories. I have called out browser and notifications because they are glaring 1-ups on iPhone unmodified OS. Simplified, the advantages are 3:

Freedom as root design philosophy: a better default OS environment that encourages open-source innovation, in stark contrast to the pains developers are subjected to when they wish to release software on the iPhone OS.

Well thought out multi tasking that allows ongoing processes under full control of end user through the intuitive notification UI

Google flair: including google services done better than any alternative- voice, talk, the chrome-style browser that's capable of referencing bookmarked site from the URL bar, and I'm expecting a sweet wave client once it is launched in full. well thought out customization options without having to do heavy modding, all kinds of added flexibility is really google's way of designing tools for today's internet. They are an underdog compared to Apple when you start talking about software experience/UI. They have done a great job with this
 
Today's project was to research custom browsers, multi tasking solutions, and the smartscreen interface. Looks like oceanus and perfect browser are quite nice. Can't tell whether they have quick bookmark referencing like chrome, but I am impressed by the feature set after reading a few app store reviews. kirikae works awesome as a simple true multitasking interface, I was able to play some wolf3d while listening to pandora. all you do is double-home and it zips up. Choose springboard to go home and start new apps, auto-backgrounding what you've come from.

It does not solve the state of crappiness for IM and google voice whatsoever. You could background your IM client, but the best that gets you is vibration only when a new message arrives. More or less you can already accomplish that with the intrusive push notification setup. It's multi-tasking, just not well thought out to allow your apps to work better for you.

For my iPhone to be caught up to my android in a real way, I would need to develop a smartscreen widget for google talk, and the gv app would need to work correctly with google voice SMS so I could have it backgrounded and autorefresh every 3 minutes, potentially implemented into the same smartscreen widget. At first, GV worked perfectly, but after a few weeks it started crashing out of the SMS screen consistently. Could not resolve by remove/reinstall or any other troubleshooting. Apple should embrace google voice in my opinion, but it seems like it is not going to happen.

For my purposes the smartscreen messaging integration combined with simple backgrounding would be what would allow the iPhone to again best the android, as it is the closest thing to the design behind notification panel. Currently I have been looking into how to develop a messaging notification preview lockscreen widget within android 2.0, I figure I can also research developing it for smartscreen at the same time. On smartscreen it seems to me that you could make the widget work exactly like the android notification panel. Light up the screen, and swipe downward from top of screen to open waiting messages preview panel.

If Apple were a bit smarter, smartscreen would have already been part of the 3.0 interface and there would be a huge selection of widgets available by now in the app store.
 
There is also something the iPhone lacks, which also is seriously lacking on Symbian and Windows Mobile. This is a unified Contacts app. First began to appear on Blackberry, then Palm WebOS and now even on Android 2.0.

Let's say, you start with a standard Contacts page. Like everyone else.

Install Facebook. But wait, you can now sync all your Facebook contacts to your main Contacts. Or if that is too much, you can take a Facebook contact and associate it with an existing contact. If your friend John Smith is in Facebook, you can sync Facebook John Smith to the main contacts John Smith. Even the Facebook picture as well as other info are imported into the Phone Contacts.

Let's say, John Smith is also in Gtalk, AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo Messenger. Install all these IM apps, and you can sync your IM contacts on every app into the main Contacts selectively.

Under Contacts, John Smith now has the following Info

Facebook information
Yahoo Messenger Info
GTalk info
AIM info
ICQ info
Windows Live info

If I want to send a message to John Smith, without even leaving the contacts page, I now have the following options:

SMS, MMS,
Email
Facebook (message or post to wall)
AIM
Yahoo Messenger
Windows Live
GTalk

I click on Yahoo Messenger for example, and it brings up John Smith inside Yahoo Messenger automatically ready to chat or leave a message.

Can't do this on iPhone OS without some serious rework on the contacts app. Nokia is already trying to do this, but so far not as well (Ovi Chat). Palm and Google saw this early from Blackberry (don't have earlier BBs, but the Bold had this), and started building similar capabilities to WebOS and Android.

A good example what Palm WebOS and Google Android learned from RIM Blackberry, since this was a Blackberry unique feature, emphasis on Was.



Yup, a unified Notifications / Messaging box.

The Blackberry OS still has one thing over the Android and WebOS notifications is that it has already, and for quite a while, integrated Facebook notifications right into the unified notification-messaging system. However, given the rate of progress, only a matter of time this will happen to Android and WebOS too.

If John Smith commented on your Facebook post, for example, you will get a notification message from Facebook to the unified notification folder, along with your typical red blinking light and vibration. If you open John Smith's Facebook message, the Blackberry would immediately take you to Facebook, open all the right context, and you're reading and replying John Smith' Facebook message. After you sent it, you will get another Facebook notification on your message box to indicate a successful post.

This is what you call Social networking being integrated right into the OS level.
 
Sure, and so what if your end user wants to see their twitter+facebook+IM+text+email timeline all in one on the lockscreen itself?, with control over which contacts will have their messages appear in this timeline? This would be a natural extension of this kind of OS philosophy, aimed squarely at the end users who value the device because it lets them be more easily connected if they are busy enough they don't have a lot of time to attend to it all at the computer. Just rename the lock screen to the preview screen or timeline screen and you're good to go. Windows could do this and name their lock slider the START slider. With the small amount of knowledge I was able to gain about motoblur from their flash page, it seems they are on to this idea but aren't thinking about it quite right.
 
In a unified notification timeline, every notification would be marked by an icon. A Facebook notification would have the Facebook icon, a Yahoo notification would have the Yahoo icon and so on.

Blur, Sense, Rachel all working into this direction. But these are UIs. Google is putting them on Android 2.0 and future Androids, which means capability on the API level, not just on the UI. When its on the API level, it means newer social networking apps can be added and integrated into the system, not pre-integrated like what Sense does. Sense has Twitter and Facebook pre-integrated but lets say, what about LinkedLn and Four Square? If other social networking sites become the Twitter of tomorrow, having this on the API level, means any future app can integrate as well.

Another mobile OS that is trying to social network is Maemo and it looks they're ahead of similar efforts on Symbian.

So I keep following Android, Blackberry, Palm WebOS and Maemo and how they evolve into social networking centric OSes.

Social networking is the killer app for smartphones. We are evolving from SMS/MMS, then to Email and IM, and now Social Networking. There is a direct correlation on the rise of Facebook and Twitter, especially on the mobile use of such, with the growth of iPhone and Blackberry. Now Android is beginning to make its presence felt recently.
 
Am I the only one who doesn't use Facebook as a communication medium? i.e. fb messages and wall posts are never as important as calls and texts or even e-mails?
 
Using Facebook and Twitter, as well as IM as a mobile communication medium is fast rising. No SMS charges, no long distance charges. Personally I pump far more text into Twitter, Facebook and IM + email than I do on SMS.
 
My favorite example in answer to your question (Mark & burger) is twitter. It's so much simpler than other communication mediums. It's not really gonna replace calling your friends, but brings streamlined communication that anyone can use easily. That's why there are so many "big names" using it. It's just hassle free & useful.

I was a twitter skeptic at first, till I used it for a bit. With IM, you have to "sign on" and hope that your contacts are signed on. You have to download copies of your email and manage it. SMS you can only send to one other person.

On twitter, just push your message out and it's there. Your contacts will see it when they see it. It allows you a persistent space for communication that's not as complex as a facebook wall or as narrow as SMS/email. I think of it as an SMS-space, and really its usefulness has come as a result of the growth of the mainstream internet and popularity of SMS specifically.
 
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