Frost Nova

Continued from Part 1

Why Choose Android?

Apple. I dunno they are so fucking evil lately. This is not the Google or Facebook “Oops! We’re idiots!” kind of evil. No, this is the Microsoft “Use us or die!” intentional monopoly kind of evil. Google probably also want a monopoly but they are a bit nicer about it. Apple appear way more evil because they are shoving their monopoly in everyone’s face, just like Microsoft did in the 90s. But I will defer the Who is Eviler? discussion for a future post.

Antenna. Real or not, the issues with the iPhone 4′s antenna are scary. I won’t choose a phone that might work some of the time. I am not enough of an Apple fanboy to accept poor reception or a $30 bumper because Apple’s shininess outweighs a serious design flaw. I am only interested in products that JustWork™. I’m sure the problems have been blown way out of proportion by the media. The software miscalculation excuse seems plausible; it would be a classic Apple thing to do: make their phones appear to get better reception to upstage competitors. If they have been doing this, they should pay. My theory on why Apple didn’t pick it up in testing? All the iPhone 4s sent out into the field were housed in stealthy plastic cases to disguise them as 3GS which also insulated the user’s hands from the antenna. Even if this issue is resolved completely, I cannot forgive Apple censoring discussion boards on the topic. See above image.

Development. The Android SDK is written in Java which is my strongest language. Basically I would have to do less work to break into App development on this platform, so would tend towards the path of least resistance. In comparison, the learning curve on Apple’s iOS would be steeply prohibitive for an endeavour that’s just an experiment, and not my day job.

Android is just way more open. Anyone can develop. I can download and install apps without going through the marketplace. This also removes the potential risk of developing for Apple’s platform only to have them reject your app on submission, or worse, at a random time in the future because they suddenly decide they don’t like it. In contrast, Google appears to value making developers’ lives easier, instead of forcing them into a corner. This is a smart move. It makes their SDK more accessible. This will let people with really good ideas but limited programming skills into the market, which is a good thing. I also totally respect the Google for opening up a public issue tracker for the OS. Where is Apple’s equivalent? Forums? Hardly organised enough to be useful.

Multitasking. iOS 4 lacks multitasking polish. Users are reporting frustration when swiping through a billion apps in the 1×4 real estate of the switcher (see image). What is the point of this bloody switcher anyway? It’s completely redundant. Apps which support multitasking should just be backgrounded instead of closed when Home is pressed. Then you have regular app screens, folders etc. to switch between apps. As users learn where their apps are, this will be instinctively quick compared to the random placement of apps in the switcher.

Services. I use more Google services than Apple services (Gmail, Reader, News, Talk, Docs, Code, Calendar). I would expect a Google OS to have better native support for its own services than an Apple OS. Currently, there is no native support for Google Docs, but that will come. However, Google have been polishing their mobile web offerings so may not spend as much time on their apps. We’ll see.

Phones. In phone land, six months is a long time. Now we are starting to see Android phones that Don’tTotallySuck™. See Samsung Galaxy S and a promising review by GSMArena. We’re also seeing innovations like Swype, which is basically “drawing between the letters” without lifting your finger (see image). In my opinion though, all mobile typing has gone speedily downhill since the efficiency of T9 predictive text. Qwerty has no place on devices this small.

The Verdict? iOS has pleased me as a user, but I’m over just being a user. I’m sick of submitting feedback which is dismissed by egotistical app developers because 100,000 idiots bought their app and gave it a positive review after first use. On Android I could just write my own damn apps.

I predict I’ll inevitably end up switching to Android. The alternative would be to get an iPhone 4, but that’s looking less and less attractive these days. Read on for Part 1 of my long-winded debrief. Part 2 is here.

Why Choose iPhone 4?

Accustomed. I am quite used to using an iPhone. When it’s not being slow as hell it is really fun and intuitive to use for most things. I would have to learn a new OS and it might not be as good as I’m used to. On the other hand, a new OS may not have many of the iOS annoyances, e.g. Safari purging background “tabs” from memory then reloading when refocused and losing my place in a LONG list of articles I was sifting through.

Hardware. The iPhone hardware looks sexyawesome (putting aside antenna issues). I guess the ideal device would be an iPhone 4 running Android but that’s a long way off. I still reserve judgment until I see this device.

Maturity. Android is quite immature in some respects (e.g. no proxy settings for WiFi connections). But these may not effect me so more research is needed before I can say “Android does 90% of what iOS can do” or whatever. It’s interesting to observe a power distribution in the graph of open Android issues, with respect to perceived importance by the community.

Note: “Number of Stars” above reflects how many users “care about” each issue. There over 5000 open issues but in a power distribution only the first few are interesting.

This graph illustrates two things:

• There are a few issues which many people care about
  
• There are many issues which only a few people care about
  

Sync. iTunes syncs everything beautifully, and I might miss this convenience and security. It warms my heart to know that if my phone dies because I dropped it while texting on the loo, I have a backup and won’t have to waste time setting the whole phone up again. It syncs, in order of importance:

• Settings (all customisations, esp. WiFi networks and mail accounts)
• Google Contacts (very handy but have noticed some duplication)
• All my apps and their settings
• My iTunes music library which is highly organised (not)
• Browser bookmarks
• Calendars (don’t really use)
• Photos (could live without sync)

Android syncs all the Google stuff out of the box (except Docs) but it’s up to third party vendors to provide their own apps for the rest. There are apps to sync iTunes with Android phones, which is nice. But what about the settings and other crap? A quick Google suggests “rooting” the phone and installing custom firmware is the current solution. Blegh.

What Android needs is universal (works on any Android device) automatic back up to “The Cloud” (FTP, dropbox, etc.). I would imagine this working something like: first take an initial snapshot of the phone state and store on cloud, then each time a user changes a setting, downloads a file, or takes a photo etc. add metadata for this “delta” to a local queue of “stuff that’s changed on my phone”. Then when the phone is idle, gradually push this queue up to the cloud backup service. But WAIT until I’m not browsing the web or streaming audio thankyouverymuch. And you can save large queue items like video for when I’m on WiFi. I can has. Someone write this and I’ll switch to Android today.

Music. It’s a really great iPod. I am not so sure about other Android phones. But the Samsung Galaxy S music player seems pretty good, and audio quality gets a big thumbs up. It also comes with ear sunctiony headphones out of the box, which is a step up from Apple’s default earphones which are only good for trussing your roast chicken.

Apps. I might miss some iPhone apps. Also, I feel like I’d be losing an investment on bought apps. But rather than trust my vague feeling I have collated a categorised breakdown of my frivolous app spending.

It’s also worth considering the free iPhone apps I use frequently and would miss dearly. More broadly, this could make Android the phone equivalent of Linux in that I have to do work to hunt down and install the things I want, rather than just have them. Thanks AppBrain for making this easy.

	iPhone	Android	Comments
	IMDB	Free Official	Looks good.
	Tram Tracker	Free 3rd Party	Impressive that a 3rd party would write this.
	Last.fm	Free Official	The iPhone app still streams radio despite them making it not free via the desktop client. I wonder if the Android app is the same.
	Scrobbled	Free 3rd Party	Jailbreak app, submits every track played in iPod to Last.fm. Android version dependent on support for specific music player app.
	Flickr	Nothing	The free official iPhone app is very basic so I bought Mobile Fotos which I only use when I’m really bored. I wouldn’t use their mobile web offering.
	iTunes Remote	$4.99 3rd Party	Don’t use enough to pay.
	IceTV	Web Official	Acceptable if it remembers my login
	Wikipanion	Web Official	Any Wikipedia app needs bookmarks and font size control and I’m sold.
	Facebook	Free Official	Looks like garbage compared to the iPhone version.

The verdict? If a suitably polished Android phone came along, I probably wouldn’t miss the iPhone. As I rant on in Part 2 Android’s openness would go a long way.

Continued in Part 2