Don’t get me wrong. The iPhone is a great device and if someone asks me advice on which phone to buy I usually recommend the iPhone or (if battery life is an issue) a good old indestructable Nokia. And this coming from a big Android fanboy! Why? The iPhone is the best smartphone if you want to have a good experience and don’t care too much about tweaking and restrictions. I compare it with a golden cage: it’s great but you’re locked inside. And because of this reason the Android phones will (eventually) beat the iPhone. Here are my main reasons:

• The hardware and software are not sold seperately. Remember why Microsoft kicked Apple’s ass when it came to the Operating System battle? Microsoft made Windows available to every PC. Any PC manufacturer could pre-install Windows on their machines. As a result the OS was very widespread very fast. Apple just couldn’t keep up because if you bought an Apple computer you also bought the Mac OS. This decision nearly killed Apple. The same is happening with the iPhone. If you like the phone but hate the software you are screwed. You don’t have an option! Deal with it. Android is becoming availble rapidly on many phones. It is not restricted to one phone.  The Android market share is growing very fast and it seems history is repeating.
• Steve Jobs is watching you(r apps). Apple (and I even think Steve Jobs personally) checks every app before it becomes available in the App store. This means they can censor anything they don’t like. Such apps as Skype, Google Voice or any number of apps. As an App developer you have to invest a lot of time and money into developing an App for the iPhone in hope the Apple Dictators will approve. Android works like a democracy. Anyone can add an App to the market and the people who try the Apps can rate them. Bad apps get low ratings so they will filter out eventually.

This being said Android has a long way to go. It looks a bit clunky and doesn’t have the WOW factor you get when you play with the iPhone. You have to tweak a lot to get a good experience. And with all the different Android versions circulating it’s hard to keep up (for users and developers). Hopefully Android will be improved and have this issues resolved quickly so it can start being the number one mobile Operating System.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 25th, 2010 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Android. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.