I'm a nerd. I love to program, design, and tinker with things. Growing up my mom used to tell the story of the time she came home to find a 5 year old version me on the floor of her bedroom, surrounded by hundreds of tiny pieces and screws which once made up her typewriter. I also tend to get bored easily, so saying sayonara to my iPhone 3G and jumping on the Android bandwagon back earlier this year was a welcomed change. After a couple of months i've had time to fully indulge in the Android experience. How does it stand up to one of the greatest inventions of our decade? Don't get me wrong, I love my new Android toy, but it's lightyears behind the iPhone.
I'm a mac guy. I made the switch in 2007 a short while after Apple ditched PowerPC, and haven't looked back since. I bought my first iPhone a couple of days after the 3G came out in the summer 2008. I loved it! It was everything in one single package, an iPod, a great phone, and a way to stay connected to the internet no matter where I was. They really weren't kidding when they said that the iPhone was a pocket computer.
Flash forward to October 2009, and I'm an Apple Retail employee standing in a T-Mobile store in downtown Honolulu, throwing down a hundred and fifty bucks for a MyTouch 3G. I played with it for about 15 minutes and was sold. It was fresh and new, it had working 3G (i'll explain later), and the people behind the counter were wearing pink! Sure, it wasn't as gui-licious as anything you'd see from Apple, but remember I was bored with my iPhone. I walked out of the store with phone in hand, eyes suction cupped to the screen, navigating back to my office by the cracks in the sidewalk hoping not to run into anyone.
First Impressions
Playing with the phone in the store was one thing, but using it in person was a whole different experience. My iPhone had already de-activated, so I was relying completely on the Android phone. There is a dedicated hardware back button to escape out of various places, and a dedicated hardware menu button to bring up many of the onscreen menus you see by default on the iPhone. Aside from the home button, the last hardware "shortcut" button is the search button. This confused me at first, as it does a lot more than search. Want to enter a URL in your browser? Hit the search button. More on the browser later, as that's one of the worst apps on Android.
One of the first things that I really appreciated was the terrific Gmail integration. I use Google Apps and was very happy to have the same Gmail experience in a native application on my phone. Threaded messaging, labels, and the lot. Your contacts are also sync'd with Google, so unlike the iPhone which requires a $99 a year MobileMe plan to sync to the "cloud", my phone was doing that right out of the box. Luckily all my contacts were already sync'd with my Gmail account, so my phone already sync'd full address book before I left the store. Migrating from the iPhone in this regard is pretty simple, there are a couple of ways to import your Address book into Google.
Hardware wise, I already described all of the front-facing shortcut buttons, but there is also a trackball, rocker switch for volume on the side (like the iPhone) an LED notification light, and a usb port on the bottom. I really miss the hardware vibrate switch from my iPhone, as I would keep it on vibrate 99% of the time and switch it to normal before heading to sleep. I also miss the auxiliary headphone headphone jack. The MyTouch (aka, HTC Magic) has a dingleberry that you plug into the usb port on the bottom to use headphones. The hardware LED is a very handy little feature which blinks different colors for different reasons. For example (and many of these are user customizable) emails on my phone activate the green LED, while SMS messages blink red, and Twitter/Facebook replies blink blue.
Comparing Apples to Oranges
A lot of people say things like "Android sucks compared to the iPhone." It's very hard to compare the two on a basic level. The iPhone is a platform, with a single piece of hardware (well, if you want to get really technical, 3), a single operating system, and one puppetmaster behind the scenes controlling it all. I would describe Android as more of a framework, with a growing number of devices and OS modifications.
Android suffers from the classic "too many chefs in the kitchen" dilemma. There are hundreds of devices with different screen sizes, processors, speeds, capacities, and external button configurations. The different carriers are getting a hold of various versions of the Android core, modifying it to an inch of its life, and tossing it onto these devices. Motorola put out the Cliq on T-Mobile, running Android 1.5 (Cupcake) with it's own "Blur" OS enhancements. Just a few days later, Verizon releases the Motorola Droid which is running a version of Android that no other handset has seen yet, version 2.0.
Another example is in the case of HTC, the company that released the first Android phone, and the same company that makes the MyTouch in my pocket. They've been hard at work on their own custom interface modifications, called Sense (click for a sweet video). Sense is more than just a coat of paint, it's a series of widgets and applications that makes the overall Android experience ten times better than on a "Google" branded Android phone. I can't get any of that on my phone, so I'm stuck with what T-Mobile puts out. Sort of.
The Underground Android Community
I've done what thousands of underground Android users have also done to their phones, I've rooted it and flashed my own operating system. What's rooting? It's essentially equivalent to jailbreaking an iPhone. You gain root access and can write any OS ROM to the phone, such as CyanogenMod, the ROM I am running right now. Without this hack, I'd have tossed my phone in a ditch months ago and checked into a hospital from insanity. The base Android software is so lacking in comparison. I'd highly recommend rooting and replacing your Android handsets firmware if you're a hacker.
One of the many things you get with a custom ROM, aside from increased speed in many cases, is the opportunity to use the HTC keyboard from their Sense phones. The Hero, Droid Eris (from Verizon) and many other HTC phones have a custom keyboard (referred to as HTC_IME in the community) that is much better than the one that the Android base comes with. Without it, i'd have killed myself by now.
Unfortunately, less 1% of the world is capable and/or willing to do this to their phone. My mom isn't gonna crack open a Terminal and put her phone into recovery mode to flash a ROM.
More Gripes
Even with a modified version of the Android OS, I still have a ton of gripes. The background process capability of the phone is a double edged sword. It's handy to start streaming Last.fm or Pandora radio and hit the end button to sleep my phone without interruption, or better, switch to another app to surf the web or read email.
That brings me back to the browser. The browser on Android 1.5/1.6 is terrible. One thing that's great about the iPhone is the Safari/Firefox-like bar up top that has URL/Search boxes. Accessible by swiping down with your finger, its super easy to enter a new address or search query. The little X's in the text fields are handy too. Android lacks all of this. Entering a new url requires pressing the menu button and then tapping on Go, or hitting the search button. This is where you can experience most of the sever lag that occurs in the Android interface. Fortunately CyanogenMod gives you
One thing that bothers me more than anything else on this earth is a UI that is unresponsive. Events stack up and after a few seconds all of a sudden you've gone back 3 pages, closed your browser window, and are back at your home screen. Meanwhile the search results you wanted have flown passed you and are now gone. This happens all of the time and it drives me absolutely nuts. I don't mind a slower overall experience, as long as I feel like I am getting somewhere. These are the times that I miss my iPhone.
The other day Lani and I decided to go out for a game of miniature golf. We started our first hole and we both realized that they hadn't given us teeny pencils and scorecards. My first thought is to whip out my phone and simply keep track on a note pad. Unfortunately, the base Android OS doesn't include a basic note taking application. I frown and Lani realizes what's up, pulls out her iPhone (previously mine, now unlocked on T-Mobile) and starts keeping score. This was one of the events that led up to this blog post.
Finally, Android is a second class citizen right now, and will be for a while. Facebook on Android is laughable. Twitter isn't quite Tweetie2, but it's definitely getting there. Twidroid is the de-facto client right now and 3.0 is a terrific release. There are a handful of games, but I'm not much of a gamer anyway. Jewelust is a Bejeweled clone with a slight twist that keeps me pretty busy on the bus.
Where Android Wins, and the iPhone Loses
Although I have quite a few gripes with my phone, there are plenty of reasons why it wins over the iPhone. The first being, I'm not stuck on the AT&T network. I had so many problems with my iPhone on the 3G network that a Genius in Southern California ultimately had me disable 3G "if I didn't need to use high-speed data that often". I was under the impression that if a 3G network couldn't be found the phone would automatically fall back on the Edge network. This was never the case, and with two different phones I'd frequently wake up my phone to the little No Service message. Worse, many times I would have 3G and Safari would give me the dreaded "No Cellular Data Network" message. I'm not sure if I just got a dud with a bad radio or what, because this problem occurred with two separate devices and two separate sims on my account.
I managed to catch the iPhone 3G shenanigans on video, this never once happened with 3G disabled
My bill on T-Mobile is a tad over $60 a month, and gives me unlimited text messages, unlimited web, and 500 minutes. I get unlimited mobile-to-mobile on my network, unlimited nights, and unlimited weekends. Call quality is definitely superior to my iPhone (this might have been an AT&T issue), and my data connection is quicker (Keep in mind I wasn't able to use 3G on my iPhone, it was in force-edge mode).
I can also tether my computer to my phone in a matter of seconds, to get on the internet anywhere. There's a nifty app uniquely named Wireless Tether that turns your phone into a miniature wireless access point. I start up the app and can leave my phone in my pocket, connecting my MacBook Pro via Wifi and surfing immediately.
The camera is a lot nicer than the one on my 3G, but might be just as good as the one on the 3GS. It does video too. Having an SD card in the phone is convenient as well, because all my applications and photos are stored on it.
Sometimes I fear that my battery is slowly being eaten away quicker because of the various things I have running, but background processes are handy. As I mentioned earlier, there are a variety of audio streaming applications that run in the background like Last.fm, Pandora, and Spotify, and let you sleep your phone or do other things. Babbler is a Facebook client (there are quite a few for Android, Bloo is another one) that has nifty background notifications. It's nice to get pokes and friend requests almost as though they were SMS messages.
What's Next
Android has a long way to go, but there are bits and pieces all over the place that show promise. Software developers are fighting different OS modifications and devices, carriers are fighting each other tooth and nail, and hardware makers are in a constant battle for more market share. We're plagued by HTC's Sense UI being a terrific enhancement that's exclusive to certain HTC devices, Android 2.0 only running on Verizon/Motorola's Droid, and devices like the MyTouch running a stinky pile of Android 1.6. Everyone is fighting everyone, and no one is winning except Apple.
I find it ironic that there are people all over the hacker/developer community crying about the state of iPhone development, while I feel like that's exactly what's made the iPhone so ridiculously successful. Apple has control over everything, and everything they put out is amazing. Sure, it doesn't always do everything you want it to do, but everything that it does do is executed impeccably.
HTC has the edge on UI and hardware right now, and a devout following of hackers. Devices like the HTC Hero are truly beautiful, and their Sense UI rivals the experience you get on an iPhone. Motorola has put out two heinous devices this year (the Droid and the Cliq), and hasn't made any significant contributions to the software side of things.
The Android community isn't going to succeed with an open handset alliance, we need a dictator to come in and kick all the chefs out of the kitchen.
