design & mobile

swipetap:

I was looking at getting the iPhone 4. I currently don’t have any phone, but I do have the iPad and I love it….so naturally I would think that going with an iPhone would be a logical choice as I can use many of the apps I have on the iPad with the iPhone. 

But I also listen to people like Leo Laporte. He LOVES Android phones and talks about them all the time. So I looked into possibly getting an Android and this is what I found:

1. There is no “Android Phone”. With the iPhone you don’t really have to make any choices, it’s the iPhone. You get it, you use it. The only real choice is to either get the 16gig or the 32gig. You get the iPhone, you run the latest iOS on it.

Not so with Android. There is no one Android phone. So…do you go with the Nexus One? The Incredible? The Droid X? The Evo? The Eris? They are all different…some have different cameras, some have bigger displays. Some even have different UI’s….which brings us to #2.

2. Several different UI’s on Android. With the iPhone you have iOS…that’s it. Now some may say that it lacks customization and it doesn’t give users a choice, but on the Android you see where this becomes a quagmire. Some of the Android phones run Android 2.2, some run Android 2.1. Some don’t even run those versions. So when you get an Android you may or may not be running the latest software. You may or may not be able to run certain apps because you don’t have that certain OS version that it may need. And we’re not talking about older phones that may not be able to run certain applications like older iPhones do. Where’s Android 2.2 on the Evo? That’s a brand new phone, isn’t it? Why is it up to the phone company and manufacturer to insure the OS is upgraded?

Why do some phones have a different UI than other Android phones? Get an Evo and you get this pretty Sense UI on it. Have a buddy that has a Droid X? Sorry pal, your Android phone doesn’t run this. But wait, I thought it was all Android? Why do some Android phones run some things but others can’t? I want a Droid X with Android 2.2 and the Sense UI on it…do I have to jailbreak the damn thing just to do this? I thought this was all an open free-for-all system.  

To be fair though, there may be some confusion with the new iPhone 4 and the older iPhones. Some new games may need the gyroscope only found in the iPhone 4 for instance…but I think the API is that you can still run those games on the older iPhones, just not with the same level of control. In my opinion it’s still not as confusing as the myriad of different options that you get with Android…which is both a blessing to some and a curse to others. To me it’s a curse. I’ve always found that less options breed more creativity in me. I know that sounds paradoxical, but it works for me. 

Again developing for both I have to agree with this completely. The Android OS is going the path of J2ME & Windows Mobile/CE - different screen sizes, different features on the device, different versions. I have a brand new Sony Ericsson X10, yet it is running OS v1.6 - wtf?! For developers this makes development more about checking compatibility across this multitude of options, giving you less time to focus on being creative and innovative.