My inbox is in pain. Almost immediately after I hit the publish button on last week’s iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid Smartphone Showdown, a torrential blast of comments and questions has been barraging just about every communication inlet I’ve got. Phone calls. Twitter DMs. Lots, and lots, and lots of emails. Across the board, it all seems to indicate one thing: people want more. We hear you.
There are a number of worthwhile topics I simply didn’t get a chance to touch on, and a few observations I’ve made since that are worth mentioning. For those, may we present: Round 2.
Before we start, I should say: these aren’t all details everyone will care about, by any means. Some of them are quite important; others are downright nitpicky. I highly recommend that you read Round 1 before you read this – it covers many of the major topics, from aesthetics and keyboards to browsers and user interfaces. Also — and I might regret saying this later — feel free to use the comments section down below to ask any lingering questions you may have. I don’t have nearly enough time to test every last minutia – but if you’re curious and I’m able, I’ll add a bit to the post about it.
Foreword: While we are expanding upon the things mentioned in Round 1, the overall conclusion remains the same. To summarize where we left off last time: both the iPhone and the Droid are absolutely incredible for their own reasons, and both have far too many merits for one to truly “defeat” the other. How happy you are with either depends largely on who you are.
With that said, lets begin.
Screens, Part 2 – the Sunlight Test:
As stated in Round 1, the Droid screen demolishes anything we’ve seen in a US smartphone to date – including the iPhone. While the iPhone’s 3.5″, 480×320 will more than satisfy anyone but the pickiest gadgeteers, the Droid’s 3.7″ 854×480 screen is, to resort to an incredibly cheesy cliche, a thing of beauty.
However, there is one place it falls very, very short: under direct sunlight. It is not alone in this, however – the iPhone, too, fails this test miserably. Both handsets essentially go blank under direct sunlight, even with the backlight cranked all the way up. I’m about as suntanned as Casper’s backside in the middle of winter, so it’s not too big of a deal for me – but for anyone who does, you know, go outside, know that you’ll probably need to turn in such a way so as to shade your handset just to make it usable when the sun’s on high.
Winner: Neither.
Ringer Volumes:
![Screen shot 2009-11-05 at [ November 5 ] 8.09.47 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-05-at-November-5-8.09.47-PM.png "Screen shot 2009-11-05 at [ November 5 ] 8.09.47 PM")
I always carry my phone in my pants pocket and rely primarily on the vibration to alert my concert-deafened ears of incoming calls. After Round 1, we got lots and lots of requests from people who carry their handset in purses/backpacks, and thus rely on it’s ability to sing.
To be completely candid: We do not have a scientific way of testing this. To be completely candid for 99% of other gadget blogs, neither do they. Our completely unscientific test involved putting each handset exactly 5 feet from a microphone with the speaker in roughly the same place, recording their default ringtones into Audacity, and then comparing overall loudness. I also tested it by putting it in a backpack and pretending my ears were sensitive enough to unquestionably decide.
Winner: Droid, in both tests. Its default ring appears to be about at least 30% louder at its peaks than any of the iPhone ringtones we tried, and it was audibly louder in my bag.
Camera:
We weren’t ready to make a final decision with the Droid camera in Round 1, considering that we’d only taken a handful of pictures. We’ve taken a bunch more since, and our final verdict: it’s average at its best, and terrible at worst.
Droid photos are on the left, with iPhone 3GS photos on the right:
The main issue is with the auto-focusing system, primarily because it just doesn’t work. More times than I care to count, I’ve seen the Droid auto-focus, lock on as clear as day for about half a second, and then immediately blur. This happens at short range, at long range, at medium range.. it’s just really, really bad at focusing. This can presumably be fixed in a software update, so all hope is not lost.
The one strength the Droid has over the iPhone in the camera department is its flash – but it’s probably not all you’d hoped for. It’ll up the quality of your drunken bar shots a bit, but the vignette effect caused by the LED flash is almost unbearable for anything else.
Android 2.0’s camera user interface is a bit more messy than the iPhones, but it also offers up considerably more: flash settings, white balance, color effects, etc. They tucked all that stuff into a slide out drawer that .. doesn’t like to slide. Pro-tip: Tap the drawer, don’t slide it. It’ll work a bit better.
Winner: The iPhone, if only because it focuses when I ask it to.
Video Quality:
I shot the same video on both phones whilst holding the two phones as closely together as I could without blocking either phones lens.
Droid:
iPhone:
How is it as a phone?:
There are a number of points to touch on on this matter, so we’ll break it down thusly:
- Call Quality: We got a surprising number of questions about this. Turns out, people wanted to know how well this phone served as, you know, a phone. We’ll keep this one simple: The Droid, in combination with Verizon’s network, is an absolutely shining example of how call quality should be. Both the earpiece and the speakerphone go all the way up to 11 without fidelity failures.
To compare sound quality, we called a handful of people back-to-back. The Droid’s incoming sound quality was noticeably better in each call, to the point that we thought we were doing something wrong. I switched locations and tried again on a different iPhone (note: a 3G, rather than a 3GS) – same story. The Droid’s incoming call quality is simply superb.
The difference in outgoing sound quality wasn’t nearly as clear cut. One of our callers thought we’d just called back on the same phone. Four of the five callers thought we sounded better on the Droid when we were in a semi-loud environment (by that, we mean a crowded coffee shop – not a construction site), but only one felt they noticed a difference when we were in a more standard environment.
Winner: Droid, because it completely floors the iPhone on incoming voice quality.
- Visual Voicemail: We hate, hate, hate the traditional voice mail system around these parts, so Visual Voicemail is a plus. The iPhone does it out of the box – the Droid doesn’t. You can pay Verizon $2.99 a month for the feature — which is a crock of nonsense — or use Google Voice, for free. I’ll probably have to argue with my TechCrunch colleagues about this for the rest of the night, but Google Voice isn’t enough. It’s a great alternative, but it’s just that: an alternative. At this point, the Droid (and all smartphones) should do this, for free, out of the box.
Winner: iPhone.
- Phone Interface: The phone interfaces on both are very, very similar. You’ve got the Keypad/Phone, Call Logs/Recent, Contacts, and Favorites on both, and the aforementioned Visual Voicemail on the iPhone (which we won’t count against the Droid here, as we counted it separately above). These interfaces are so damned similar, we were just about to tie it, but…
Winner: Droid. The default contacts system on the Android 2.0 is outstanding. It pulls everything from Facebook, constantly syncs profile photos to contacts, and shows Google Chat online status. It’s polish, but it’s polish we appreciate.
- Carrier Signal: I live in an interesting area of California when it comes to testing phones. We’re mostly blanketed in 3G on both AT&T and Verizon, but we don’t have a big enough population that it ever strains either network. I don’t see the same dropped call rate my iPhone-carrying colleagues in the Bay Area and New York see – in fact, I rarely drop a call. However, I do regularly see my iPhone’s signal go from full to empty in distances of a few feet. At the top of my entryway, for example, I’ve got full 3G and can make a call – if I take two steps down, I lose everything (including EDGE) and calls fail immediately.
I’ve only been testing Verizon’s network for a week now while I’ve been on AT&T for two years, so to directly compare my experiences would be unfair. I can say, however, that I’ve yet to find any dead zones — and trust me, I’ve looked — and the spots where my iPhone fails, the Droid has no problem. It’s two entirely different networks (and radio technologies), so this is to be expected – but I must say that, at least for little nook of Central California, I’m mighty impressed by the coverage. Winner: Unable to fairly determine; while the Droid hasn’t shown any faults yet, it’s going up against 2 years of AT&T experience.
- Multi-tasking while talking on the phone: Background processing is one of Android’s much touted strengths, but in the case of the Verizon Droid (or any other CDMA phone), it has one fault: you can’t make a call and use the data connection at the same time. On a call with your sweet one and need to look up the address of the restaurant you’re meeting at tonight? If you’ve got a WiFi connection, you’re golden – but if you’re relying on 3G, you’ll get a big ol’ error alert. It’s not an issue that comes up for me a whole lot, but it’s something we hear VZW customers rant about on the regular.
However, it’s worth nothing: if WiFi is available, Droid is definitely the superior multi-tasker. Even if you don’t have a need to pop into a specific app, being able to check all of your incoming notifications at a glance is incredibly helpful.
Winner: If WiFi isn’t available, iPhone. If it is, Droid.
Start-up time:
We got more than a few e-mails about this, so for good ol’ comparison’s sake:
- iPhone 3GS: 30.2 seconds
- Motorola DROID: 38.6 seconds.
This was measured by recording both on video, starting each phone from a completely powered down state, and then determining the time based off the videos. Both handsets have e-mail configured, a few dozen apps, and plenty of usage on them.
Winner: iPhone, by a bit over 8 seconds.
Notifications:
Background notifications are like a godsend for iPhone users and developers alike – but it’s still a tacked on solution. Apple didn’t really go about developing the iPhone OS with the idea that such things would be necessary, and so the solution isn’t optimal. You get a maximum of one at a time, and they’re fired at you like a baseball to the crotch in an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos.
I absolutely prefer the Android notification system. They’re thrown into a slide-out drawer rather than into your face, and can be pulled out, viewed, and cleared at almost any time. This also lets them throw in reminders, such as Birthday alerts (pulled from Contacts/Facebook) and calendar items.
Android is also the only one of the two that allows you to turn off notifications without diving into the settings, via the fourth icon on the “Power Control” homescreen widget. When you’ve got 5+ apps constantly firing off bleepy-bloopy noises, being able to stifle them with a single click as opposed to four or five is a nice – if very small – touch.
With all that said, Android’s system notification may be a bit much for the lay user. We’re not trying to underestimate the lay user here, but additional layers of complexity tend to.. well, complicate things. If I handed this phone to my mom and asked her to “slide out the notification drawer and check for new emails”, she’d probably respond with “So wait, I open my Google?” It’s no sweat for even a fledgling geek, but it might bewilder anyone who’s new to the smartphone scene for a day or two.
Winner: Android/Droid. Its notification system is a bit more complicated, but far more capable.
The Smudge Test:
Here’s one you don’t see in reviews very often, but it’s important if you actually plan on using the phone. Any phone can be gorgeous when it comes out of the box – but carry it around in your lint-filled, sandy pockets for a few hours, and it’ll look like its seen wars.
I’m not exactly a dirty person. I wash behind my ears and, outside of the days where I get to stay at home in my pajamas, tend to dress well enough. I ..can.. not.. keep my iPhone clean. Specifically the backside. After I lug it around for a full day, it comes back looking like it spent the afternoon in someone’s mouth. It’s inexplicably gunky and covered in fingerprints, to the extent that I’m convinced someone is stealing my iPhone and putting crap all over it. The Droid’s admittedly less exciting matte backside does a far better job of keeping prim and proper, in that I’d gladly hand it to someone without having to rub it across my pant leg first.
The tables turn slightly when you start talking about the front side, though. While the Droid screen does just as good as the iPhone 3GS’ much touted oleophobic screen (in fact, we think the Droid screen might have an oleophobic coating as well), there is a gap around the edge of the screen that is juuuust big enough to pick up random particles of whatever crap you have in your pocket, but not big enough (as with the iPhone) that most of it falls right out.
Winner: Tie. The Droid does a better job of keeping its backside clean, but the iPhone tends to have a neater face.
Media playback:
Considering that Apple spent six years making the iPod prior to launching the iPhone, it’s no surprise that the iPhone’s iPod functionality is damn near flawless. The UI is drop dead simple, and it’s about as pretty as things get before things start getting extraneous. The Android Media player is none of those.
The Droid music playback interface is all over the place, and the design is a sea of black. It’s not unusable by any means, but it lacks any real sign of polish or grace.
The Droid video playback interface.. doesn’t exist. Even in Android 2.0, Android lacks out-of-the-box video support. You can download video apps from the Market, but we’ve yet to find one – be it free or paid – that is really up to snuff. We’d recommend the free Video Player app over anything we’ve seen so far; the interface is very bare bones, but it’ll play 3GPP and H264 videos.
The Winner: iPhone.
App Storage:
Google made a fairly huge mistake in the design of Android, and they haven’t fixed it with Android 2.0. You see, the Droid only has 512 MB of internal memory. This is made okay by the fact that it supports microSD cards up to 32GB, and comes with a 16GB card. But here’s the catch: you can’t use that microSD card for app storage. In fact, you can’t even use all of the 512 MB of internal memory for app storage – you’re limited to 256 MB.
Many Android applications are just 500 KB to 3 Megabytes, so you can squeeze dozens of them into memory without any issue – but that doesn’t mean everything is okay. On the iPhone, applications have free reign over whatever storage space is available on the internal hard drive, opening the door for rich 3d textures and high-fidelity voice/sound files. As a result, many iPhone applications are in the 40-50 megabyte range, with some (such as Myst, or Secret of Monkey Island) reaching up into the hundreds of megabytes.
There is one solution: developers can make the application they host on the marketplace only a few megabytes large, and then have the application download the rest of its media onto the SD card after installation. From a user experience standpoint, however, this is a fairly terrible solution – once you’ve downloaded and installed, it’s time to play.
Google needs to fix this as soon as possible, or its applications will be forever stunted. You can argue that mobile applications shouldn’t need to be hundreds of megabytes large, but I won’t be able to hear you over the awesome voice acting in Monkey Island.
(Note: I am well aware that you can save apps to microSD if you root the Android device. We didn’t count jailbreak-only stuff in Round 1, so we definitely won’t count root-only stuff in Round 2)
Winner: iPhone
Conclusion:
I stand by our original conclusion from Round 1 – heres the important bit:
With Android 2.0, we’ve come to a very difficult crossroad. No longer can we recommend one handset over the other simply by its feature set. At this point, it’s all about the person who will be carrying it. For you, dearest TechCrunch Network reader: Yes, I’d probably recommend the Droid over an iPhone. Would I recommend it for your mother, father, or little sister? Nope. If you want a phone that just works and does damned near everything you could want and don’t mind Apple’s closed garden: by all means, get the iPhone. If you can handle a bit of complexity for the sake of flexibility and don’t mind having to tinker a bit: by all means, get the Droid. At this point, I honestly feel that either choice would make any sane person incredibly happy.
I love my 3GS
Your point being…? (In other words… there is no reason to be a first comment spammer)
What ever the case, the only thing that surprised me in this article was the relatively poor quality of the droid camera and now that google is working on a solution for running apps from sd (it was in the news yesterday) I guess for me droid wins quite well. Good article, thanks.
Don’t be so shocked. Camera firmware is nascent, and it will need refining. For a first release, it looks good, and should improve with updates. Looks like the light metering and focusing are points for improvement.
I love his 3GS too. In other words… I just spammed your response to his spam.
LOLz
Yo Dawg, I herd you like spam.
Yo so we put spam in yo spam so you could be frustrated about spam bein in ya spam dawg
Don’t be a jackass and flame somebody for adding a comment. The person obviously felt that their contribution was to vote on which one the liked better (much like the article did; just in pieces) and you totally belittled and flamed them. Feel big now, you big jerk? You’re apparently just jealous because you weren’t the first.
While I’m not a fan of flaming, when someone adds an asinine comment, it is very correct to flame. As the OP added goddamn nothing to the conversation, flaming would seem appropriate as a means to curtailing further such behavior.
On that note let me say, I fucking loved my original Walkman. Too bad it got jacked outside of Madrid in about ‘83.
STFU!!!! Iphone 3GS rules. Droid is a piece of shit!!!
“Napster Bad!”?
u mad?
I think the droid did good for only being out for what 5 days or so. The 3gs is the 2nd version of the iphone. Correct me if im wrong because i havent spend days destroying the internet discovering everything about the droid but, isn’t the droid an original?
Love my 3GS too. And unless you’re a developer of apps, who cares that apple’s “garden” is closed. Let’s look at other “closed gardens.” Windows (ugh!) 90% market share. OS X – most of the other 10%.
Open Linux <1%
Windows and OS/X are not closed gardens (actually the name is “walled gardens”). You can download apps from any web site. The iPhone is a walled garden because you must buy them only from the Apple store. Customers might end up caring about this if they realize that less walls lead to lower prices. This is true everywhere so it must be true even in the smartphone market.
Well, most apps in the iPhone App Store are already dirt cheap. Too cheap, if you ask me, but obviously the app store wouldn’t have 2 billion downloads if consumers had to pay what some apps were really worth.
I infinitely prefer flexibility over Apple’s supposedly “protected user experience” though. I’m just waiting for a GSM Android phone with balls, and my iPhone 3GS will find itself quite unloved.
Prices are a bad example. Windows Mobile software is horribly expensive. The same type of apps on iPhone cost easily 30 times as much on Windows Mobile.
I agree with scott. It depends on what area you look at in the “walled garden” apple’s apps show you not all area’s have to be expensive.
I don’t have an iPhone although I think I like it. However, I hate Apple closed garden. I tend to keep whatever I have until it dies or almost dies. Apple does not let me replace the battery in an iPhone and that’s the end of the deal for me.
A replacement battery is $30. Only $15 if you do it yourself.
@ Dan
You do not understand the term “walled garden”. Maybe if you knew what you were talking about, you’d care.
Just because you don’t develop apps doesn’t mean you won’t be affected. For example, I never can remember to un-silence my phone after work, or re-silence it in the morning, leading to a slew of missed calls while my phone sits silenced in my purse by the front door, or embarrassingly ringing while I am at work. So I thought it’d be awesome to have an app where you can schedule when your phone is silent or not. I researched it online a bit – and you can’t get it on the iphone without jailbreaking it because the iphone refuses to let apps have access to the ringer for ‘their own protection’ against apps that may change it without your knowing. Android – already has a free app that does this. And even if they didn’t I would at least have hope someone may, or could do it myself without paying for the SDK. It’s MY phone, let me put what I want on it!
I love my 3G but still the Droid does have some features I’ve been missing. Mostly a real keyboard.
Shame the droid’s camera looks worse than iPhone.
Tough decision. I will probably wait until my contract expires before making a real decision but the droid is definitely tempting me away!
I thought I would have the same opinion about missing a keyboard on my iphone but instantly changed my mind after trying out the droid’s. i think i’ve been so used to the light touch of typing on a screen that actually pushing down on a key now takes far more effort and i felt clumsy. i did much better using the screen keyboard on both the droid and eris. definitely check it out because it certainly made the droid feel a little more bulky having this physical keyboard.
I luv my iPhone too.
I also luv my new VW Beetle convertible!
Wow.. the Droid’s contacts syncing (photos included) with Facebook is a very nice feature!
Although one that could easily be ported to the iPhone for sure.
Good review!
Assuming, of course, that you want all of your Facebook contacts on your phone, or that Facebook is your primary address book.
For those of us who don’t live on Facebook, however…
I just bought a droid today and did the facebook import thing. I didn’t want all of my facebook contacts brought into my phone, and there is an option on the importation to only import contacts from facebook who are already in your contact list on the phone. It worked great. It had several different import options, so it’s pretty neat.
Blackberry & iPhone do this as well and have since the latest release of Facebook Mobile several months ago.
But it’s definitely not default.
The Blackberry/Facebook integration is a little clunky (just my opinion). Of course I’m a disgruntled Storm user.
whilst i am buying a droid…… this facebook photo syncing function was already available on my 3 years old win mo 8525 with the spb shell function.
Hi
I’m pretty sure theres an app for syncing facebook photos and birthdays to the iphone address book. I dont remember the name of it, though, since I switched from iphone (3G) to HTC Hero in August.
How do you like the HTC Hero?
Love it. I have always been a fan of open source. As I loved the iPhone itself, I hated how limited it was. This weekend I have tried 5-6 different ROMs on my hero. Couldnt do that on the iPhone. :)
I miss a few apps from the appstore, but thats the only things I miss too. I think the web browser is fantastic, Spotify fills my music needs and video playback is almost just as good as on the iphone.
The only thing that is a lot worse on the hero is games. It is definetely not a gaming console, but that was not important to me.
Nice follow up but two points:
a) It looks like you smudged the crap out of the lens on the droid before taking the test pics. It can’t possibly be that un-uniformily smudgy for real can it?
b) Multitasking – Are you serious? How can the iphone be the winner when it can’t even multitask. You’re going to get flamed a lot more by the time people are done with this article
b) While chatting on the phone. On the iPhone you can view maps over 3g (but not edge) while chatting. On the Droid, you lose the carrier data connection while chatting, so you can’t view maps unless you have a wifi connection.
as far as the “smudging” on the lens, that’s what you get when you cram 5 MP onto a tiny, tiny digital camera CCD or CMOS sensor. Sometimes, fewer pixels actually give you a clearer image.
as far as multitasking goes, it just plain does not affect most people. The only noticeable multitasking shortcomings on the iPhone are streaming audio. (and to me, that’s a big one. I LOVE Pandora) On the droid, to switch from one app to the other, you still have to cycle back to the home screen. So, on the iPhone and the Droid the process is the same, the difference being the iPhone closes the previous app before swapping, the Droid leaves it running. You only notice the previous app closes if it’s streaming audio, in my experience. Everything else is solved with Push Notifications.
Now, the iPhone needs to wrangle all those Push Notifications into a nice, organized lock screen that aggregates the notices.
The Droid is a solid phone, I really like it in my limited experience with it. I’m an iPhone user, but I love to see other companies pushing the limits of mobile computing. More choices and innovation keep everyone on their toes!
To be completely honest, I have a jailbroken 3GS, and I do use Backgrounder to run Pandora and Google Voice, and use another app that aggregates all my Push Notifications to my lock screen, so I’m not really missing anything. Except good cellular coverage, of course.
Of course, when I get a phone call in the car, I can still access Google Maps. Try that on Verizon!
Good points, but you don’t per se need to go to the home screen with android. Holding the home key down shows the 6 most recently used apps, so you can effectively ‘alt-tab’.
you haven’t fully learned the ins-n-outs of android.
Like Aaron said, Home button gives you the 6 most recently used apps.
also, pressing back a few times, works too.
ie: browser, msg notification, msg app, back, browser,
or you are writing a msg, need an address in your contacts?
msging app, send key, dialer opens, contact tab, find your contact, copy the address, press back (back to msging app).
the back button is your friend
And the home button on the iPhone serves as the exact same funtion. As stated in the review, unless you are streaming music, multitasking an app is moot in comparison. If they load up, or is an icon already loaded, you still have to press the back button, or home button (depending on the device) to launch or “move” to the app (in the example to get an address) — remember, all the built in apps on the iPhone do multitask, including the phone app on 3g. Mirosoft even eluded to this on one of their technical briefs of the new Windows 7 task bar, since launching apps are so fast, it really doesn’t matter if you have a list of active apps or non active apps, clicking on the icon either opens the app or launches it into memory, almost as fast.
I stand corrected. I’m using a jailbroken 3GS, so I get the same home button action of recent apps. And to be fair, saying “hitting the back button a few times” sounds like a lot of clicks, but it’s no different than hitting the home button and swiping to a new page a couple times.
My big issue is hardware, not software. To wake up my iPhone, I can do it in one motion, with one hand, without looking. Pull from pocket, push giant home button, and swipe just above home button. It’s unlocked before it reaches my view. The Droid has a tiny, recessed power button, and the unlock swipe is kinda arbitrary in the middle of the screen. Did anyone at Mororola ever try to turn this thing on with one hand??
What’s the difference. I hit home and press a button on my Iphone and you do the same on Droid. With such limited storage for apps, you’ll be lucky to get 6 real apps on there. I am way beyond 512MB of apps on my 3GS. It’s ironic that they have so many more pixels and their apps will have so many fewer in their graphics.
When talking about the apps on Droid, what do you mean when you say you can save apps to the micro sd card if you root the android device?
It means, if you “hack” the device by putting an altered version of Android on it, these “hackers” have altered it so apps can be stored and run on the SD card.
it is a really lame limitation of Android in theory, but in reality it’s not a big deal. Excluding games, there are very few apps over 1MB, so you’ll never really run out of room unless you’re insane. If you love playing games on your iPhone though – I never really did, I prefer a real controller or keyboard vs touch/motion controls – then it could be. But as the article mentioned, developers are able to store the media parts of a game (sound/graphics) on the SD card, just not the executable.
I currently have 630MB of apps on my iPhone. I’d be screwed on a Droid. Granted, a lot of that is probably app data instead of the app itself, but I’d still be over the 256 limit even if half of that 630 is data.
Executables are typically less than 1 MB, so your 630 MB of apps is probably 90% data, in which case, you’d have plenty of space in your internal memory for even more apps.
AccuTerra alone is 216MB. Map data, but it’s integral to the app actually working. And that’s not including extra maps you can download.
Droid seems to fail for high res map apps, or well anything high res.
Wrong, the same app for android would be altered so the map data is seperate from the app and saved on the sd card. The AccuTerra app would still be 1MB or less. Admittedly this probably needs to be changed so people will quit complaining, its a simple hack as many people are already running it on rooted phones, but they may actually come back and say no. They may want it that way.
I may or may not be typical as an iPhone user, but I personally have 1.3 GB of App data currently on my device. So if the limit is 256 (or even the 512) MB then that would severely limit how and what I use my phone for.
I feel like an app whore, I have almost 7 gigs of apps. I think the biggest ones are Navigon, and Jibbigo (real time speech translator).
You have to understand, the app executable in android sets on internal memory, actual app data like map info and databases sit on the sd card which can be upgraded to whatever size you want.
Actually darkfluid, you’re wrong. Let me tell you know.
If the program wasn’t /developed/ that way then what you’re saying is completely wrong. It CAN be done that way, but the program may not have been. You can make self-contained executables and a lot of people do.
“There is one solution: developers can make the application they host on the marketplace only a few megabytes large, and then have the application download the rest of its media onto the SD card after installation.” to quote from the article exactly. But as it points out, this is not user-friendly, especially if you’re storing things on multiple SD cards.
Pull out your batter, put in a new SD card, play a game. Oh wait, I no longer have my music cause my game is stored on the other SD card. Oh, so I have to have all my SD cards have all my music and then have random other information on it. This is NOT user friendly.
I really like what I see but I think the droid has some issues that I can’t get over based on the ton of reviews I read. Browsing seems to be much faster over wifi on the iPhone, the keyboard makes to phone to heavy. Though I’m perfectly content with my phone (3Gs) I love the fact that Android phones are finally with buying.
Personally I think the upcoming Eris would my personal choice, but I’m just hoping that this will force apple to cone out with some new software enhancements for the iPhone to keep customers coming. When will you guys review the Eris. That looks might sexy.
On mutitasking: Why would I be using a data connection when I have Google Maps? Just saying. I’m on Android 1.6 and I’m sure that Android beats the pants off of an iPhone on multitasking. I can’t even use my iPhone for more than a few hours without being overwhelmed by it’s multitasking shortcomings.
I think you should redo your multitasking scenario to something along these lines: Play a game, receive email, open email, open link inside email, receive call, receive text, end call, respond to text, press back button, finish reading article on link, press back button, delete email, press back button again and continue playing your game where you left off. If your iPhone can do that, I’d be amazed because mine can’t. One of the things I hate most about the iPhone after using Android is that I have to go Home to continue doing anything.
And there is a free visual voicemail app in the market called PhoneFusion. I used it way back, but now T-Mobile has their own so I use that. So, in reality, there is no real need to pay extra for that service on Verizon.
Er, you need a data connection to use Google Maps.
Then that’s a Verizon shortcoming because T-mobile does it differently. (And why I would never choose Verizon.)
P.S. If I were your girlfriend and you were surfing the net whilst talking to me on the phone, I’d knock you out. Only I am allowed to discreetly do such things.
It is a Verizon shortcoming. The carrier frequency doesn’t allow for simultaneous voice and data connection. So you can’t use any app that accesses the internet while you’re on a call.
Simultaneous Voice and Data is a really nice feature. I can’t say that I use it daily, but when you need to use it you are glad you have it. I have a BB Bold on ATT and love this feature of 3G.
Just last night I was talking to my parents who just got back from a long trip. A friend called and rather than put my mom on hold in the middle of her story, I switched to Blackberry Messenger and sent a quick note to my friend explaining the situation.
Other times I use it to look up an address of a restaurant while on the phone with a friend.
Again, I am not sure this is a deal breaker, but if VZW can’t do simultaneous Voice and Data it certainly gives me some pause in my intention to switch to VZW.
Agreed, big problem for me, that’s why I’m on tmobile and really can’t convince myself to move from a GSM carrier. I use google and other apps constantly while I’m on a voice call.
I agree with your idea of a multi-tasking test. It should all be timed too.
One thing I like to do on my smart phone is switch apps a lot. One second I’m tweeting, next I want to share a link by email from a web page then back to twitter again then read my email, write a text etc etc back and forth. If I tried doing that on an iphone I’d have to shoot myself.
Believe it or not productivity is important.
You might need to shoot yourself then.
iPhone runs all of these guys in the background:
iPod, Safari, Email, Phone, Messages, Maps, Clock/Stopwatch/Timer, Calendar.. pretty much most of the native apps. Did I mention iPod?
In you scenario, any decent Twitter client on the iPhone would have in-app Safari, in-app email, and arguably the best implementation of Cut/Copy/Paste on any platform. The thing is, all of these are very standardized features of the 3.0 SDK so really apps can have them built in easily.
As pointed out in other replies the iPhone does multi-task many native apps. Being able to be on a call & surf the web is quite important. I do it all the time.
The only multi-tasking feature I truly want is to be able to reply to an IM or SMS when I’m in another app. I already get the notification, and I hope that feature comes out real soon. The droids multi-tasking seems to keep apps open but since the 3Gs is so blazing fast it probably would take you the same time to go between apps on the iPhone compared to the droid.
If you have only used a 1st gen or 3G phone you can’t compare it to the 3Gs. It is unbelievably fast.
Google Maps IS a data connection. It pulls the maps over-the-air.
Jesus fucking christ, can you not read?
While I would like to see full multitasking on the Iphone, it’s a minimal issue. The Iphone does multitask on the most important features. I listen to tunes while doing other things. It keeps my calls connected while I do other things. My email and text messages come and go as I do other things. How often are you interacting with one app while another is doing something other than waiting for you to select it. Well-designed Iphone apps don’t just close when you select another. Most of the ones I use, give me the option to very easily pick up where I left off when I return and I don’t have them eating up memory and CPU while I’m doing other things.
I can’t go without my iPhone. I just hope they can reduce my monthly fees.
Tmobile now $49.95 for unlimited. It’s just a matter of time.
Is it not possible to unlock your SIM card? I mean, they both use GSM frequencies.
T-Mobile USA uses a strange 3G GSM frequency. Unlocked iPhones on T-Mobile only work on slow EDGE.
You forgot one category:: Apps
iPhone __ 100K apps in an app store.
Droid __ ?
iPhone wins, and (at least for now) everything else in your list pales in comparison in terms of purchase decisions.
@iboy
Rofl? What’s left after you remove 40K Fart Apps, and the other 50K Fart Lite Apps.
The iphone app store is a joke that would’ve been crushed if it supported a Flash VM – oh wait, that would mean competition – something Apple sucks at.
there is a lot of crap on the App Store, to be sure. But, there is a lot of good stuff there, too. To say that 90,000 of the apps are crap is slapping all of those developers in the face. Way to go.
And as a web developer myself, I can proudly (and accurately) say FLASH IS BLOATED CRAP. It was great years ago, but with CSS3 and HTML5, h264 over HTTP, and all the new web standards, there is little use for Flash. If you want to do a punch-the-monkey ad for erectile dysfunction, then you need Flash. If you want an overly simple game or overly complicated navigation, you need Flash. Otherwise, try jumping into the 21st century and using an OPEN standard.
It’s funny that you use Flash, a closed and vengefully litigated proprietary system to argue that Apple hates competition.
By god, you’d give an aspirin a headache. Flash still has many uses, particularly when developing webapps with Flex. There are a ton of things Flash can do that all your over-hyped open standards can’t do (or do well), such as animation and other forms of art.
Try making Pandora with CSS3, HTML5, h264 over HTTP. Try finding an IDE like Flash or FlexBuilder that helps you create comparable dynamic and interactive web experiences using your open standards. The truth of the matter is, there are still many uses out there for Flash, and it is going nowhere.
Adobe has been quite good at shooting itself in the foot. I’d be happy to see Flash on the iPhone if it didn’t crash all the time as in my Mac.
Flash has a unique opportunity at the moment. All they have to do is delvicer a tight version 10. Tight on every platform.
There are good uses and not. Can’t say that I miss it, but I don’t blame that on Apple.
Jimmy, men are talking.
Oh yeah, delusional men – Ivan. But hey, anyone who actually believes there are 40k fart apps are really delusional, really! Matter they are men or not. I suppose you could use the same argument (but opposite intentions) for Windows vs Mac? Most delusional men, like you Ivan, assume the Mac doesn’t have enough broad spectrum of applications to have a good choice of fit for the individual looking; Windows, with BILLIONS of apps, is a better choice, because well, you have a better chance of getting the best-fit app – you know, out of the 40K word processor apps out there… On Mac, you’d only get to choose from about 28 word processors. Great logic huh? Anyway, what I’m trying to say is Ivan, you’re delusional.
Ivan, “men” don’t use “rofl”. That’s for teenage girls.
Your “Fart App theory” is garbage. And the one (inaccurate) point people like you continuously bring up to knock something that frightens you. This debate has raged ad nauseam, so I wont expend too much energy detailing every facet. But, as an iPhone developer I can give you some real easy to understand points as to why it’s my platform of choice. 1) I develop one version of my app for one version of a beautifully designed OS that runs on one version of beautifully designed hardware. 2) The 2 months (snicker) I may wait for my app to get approved by Apple is logically offset by the extra 2 months it will take to program various versions of my app in order to satisfy every possible hardware feature, and UI iteration that might emerge in the Android arena. 3) Approval process aside, Apples distribution system is years ahead of anything anybody else has to offer. Not just from a user end, but the infrastructure set up on the back end to handle the heavy lifting for me once my product is done.
In my case, Jimmy is wrong. I don’t take it as a slap in the face when people like you say ignorant shit. I treat you the same way I do Republican Tea Baggers who speak out of the side of their ass simply to be heard… I don’t really care. The iPhone OS, and the hardware it runs on are beautifully executed. I know it hurts. But deal with it, because attempting to argue otherwise makes you sound silly.
And in case you were wondering… YES. I am using big words in an attempt to make myself appear more intellectually adept than I actually am. In fact, I dictated this entire comment while typing, in a British accent.
Most of your concerns are addressed with good programming and good code, which is something you should be doing anyway. Customized UI themes, hardware variations, and OS updates are all good things if done right, they give the user choice and allows the platform to progress. What’s important is that abstractions are properly respected, contracts for libraries and APIs are maintained, and developers are notified of changes that break backward compatibility. It is then the developer’s job to make sure their apps work across these variations, which isn’t hard to do if the platform properly abstracts away those variations.
Google is doing its part to make sure the platform is robust and well-designed. For instance any device that can tap into the Android Market is required to meet a set of hardware specifications, such as the inclusion of a trackball/dpad. Google is responsible for making sure that a common baseline exists for devices using Android Market apps and variations between then are hidden under abstractions. The app developer makes sure their code is well-designed and general enough to run across these devices. And the consumer gets to choose which hardware they want and what their UI looks like.
And 80% or more of those apps are never used or are junk. I don’t see how everything else pales in comparison as a purchasing decision. People seem to forget – you’re buying a PHONE. The top purchasing decisions should be carrier and call quality.
No you are buying a mobile computer. Users of such devices typically use them for voice < 10% of the time.
Yeah, I buy it because it’s a portable computer. Phone is just a bonus really. I talk on my cell phone average less than 100 minutes per month, but I use browser/email and other internet stuff like nobody’s business.
I agree with Aaron and Sean. I use my smartphone for web surfing/email 90% of the time and talk less than 100 minutes a month.
It’s already been said, but if I don’t count SMS, I probably use the phone features < 10% of the time.
Wes, you’re so wrong that I’m going to add to the pile of people that have already told you.
People who think the voice portion is the most important feature, AREN’T BUYING SMART PHONES.
Actually, a very large number of those apps are stand-alone books. Certainly not crap, but they do run up the app count in a way that’s not indicative of the number of “real” apps.
The number of apps in the iPhone app store is a stupid and irrelevant argument. There’s a lot of garbage in there. I’d wager less than 1,000 apps are “solid gold” apps.
However, these “solid gold” apps certainly do have more polish than their Android counter parts. That is valid argument – the quality of the apps. Quantity, however, doesn’t mean shit.
But – it’s not like the Android apps aren’t usable. With time, as Android adoption sky rockets – and it will, mark my word – the apps will improve a ton.
Which Android? The Droid? Or the Hero? Or…
As each company builds it’s own phones with varying screens, buttons, and other hardware, not to mention their own interfaces, I doubt that there’s going to be a single Android marketplace.
This is not a problem at all: http://phandroid.com/2009/10/20/fake-steve-the-issue-with-android-rebuttal/
The “a lot of the apps in the app store are garbage” argument is a red herring. I could arbitrarily make up a percentage of apps in the android store that are garbage too.
Even if the quality of android apps was 5 times better than that of iPhone apps (a likely laughable conclusion) there would STILL be more quality iPhone apps.
The problem is the apps are limited in space due to the storage issue. How are they supposed to improve in graphical/audio quality when they have to keep skimping because of that platform limitation?
If 90% of app in the app store are crap (probably true) that still leaves them with 10,000 good ones. I’m certain that that 90% of the 10,000 Droid apps are crap as well, leaving them with 1,000 good ones. That’s still 10 times as many on the Iphone and the resources of the quality developers are all going to Iphone.
I wonder if regular OSes (OSX and Win 7) start getting compared based on number of apps available.
What Apple has done here is quite smart (not as developer) they have introduced single channel for application unlike traditional model where in you download app from any site and install. Just imagine MS dictating what can installed and what not yes it will clear up all the junk but I dont think i want an OS which does that and if mobile computing has a future and then all your productivity apps will be paying apple . For instance Adobe paying in windows for everytime some one buys CS3. IMO it is sinister but then I look a jail broken phones and smile.
Did you even read Round 1? It says in big letters ROUND 2 on the first picture. Maybe you should read the first post before criticizing him on what he left out. Dumbfuck.
Most of the Apps in the Istore are crap. So that’s no big deal.
You know I read your round #1 and you mentioned twice that you had issue with the smudge test on the iPhone. As yours is black, I have a white one and I’ve been really happy with how the back stays clean and the front screen wipes with ease. I no longer use a protector as I did with my 1st gen iPhone.
One item for your FYI, as you upgrade/replace an iPhone, its usefulness still continues as an iPod.
The lack of visual voice mail truly sucks. It’s one of the iphone features that I love. What’s clear to me that while this merely “ties” the iphone 3gs, the next generation of Android phones will eclipse whatever apple has available around then.
I can’t wait till my contract is up.
Thanks for the extended review.
So a company on the verge of death, The company I never thought would release something so damn awesome is the one to release a DAMN NEARF iphone killer?
Not only a company on the verge of death, but one that invented (or in some helped invent) the cell phone as we know it today. Motorola came out with very advanced phones in the past, they seem to ride the wave too long before making the next one, I hope they learned from the Startac and Razor days the awesome phones they make, need constant updating DURING their successes, not after they become obsolete.
This plot line, and cast of characters (Physical Keyboard, processor, multi-task, etc.) reads eerily similar similar to the Pre… no?
Nice to see a phone and an OS that will push the iPhone to do some more innovating.. I think the iPhone is a better overall device from everything I’ve read, but there are some things it really is missing (as noted in the article) that they might now bring to the table with some decent competition in the space.
That and getting off the AT&T exclusivity deal… :)
Agreed. I am happy to see the competition. Hopefully, Android will implement more of WebKit, and get some decent visual development frameworks ala the shiny thing from Cupertino.
After my experiences with Apple, I am simply happy to be able to consider other options.
Android does come with a video player out of the box (since 1.5). It’s part of the Gallery application, alongside the photos. It’s pretty basic and won’t change your verdict in that area but at least it saves some hassle from having to download a separate video playback app.
On Notifications, I think the iPhone does have a feature that Droid doesn’t. From what I understand, iPhone notifications are pushed out through the SMS system, so any app developer that is willing to incur the costs of having a SMS delivery service can have instant push updates for their apps. I don’t think Android has a way to wake up applications from SMS notifications, so Android notifications are based on apps running in the background and periodically polling for updates, which is not instant and may consume more power.
iPhone push notifications do not use SMS. They use Apple’s IP based – FREE – system. No cost to anyone (except the customer if they’re over your data allowance).
I see, I stand corrected. But my point about the cost to the app developer still stands. I wasn’t referring to costs that Apple or AT&T might charge for a developer to send out those notifications, but simply the cost of operating a server that interfaces with whatever service that sends out the notifications. Whether it’s SMS like I mistakenly thought or Apple’s data service, the app developer needs to operate some kind of online server to interface with the delivery service in order to send out push notifications.
Of course this is true of Android apps as well if Android allows apps to maintain persistent connections in the background for push notifications. But I’m not sure if Android allows that. Perhaps someone who knows more about Android could let me know.
Technically, the part from AT&T to the iPhone, is an SMS control message (free, and “hidden”); but the part from the app developers server to Apple’s and from Apple to AT&T’s gateway is not.
Except for the fact that AT&T forces you to get an unlimited data plan.
Android does have a way to trigger apps from SMS push. This is how the mobiledefense android app works. If your phone goes missing you activate recovery mode on the md website…they send an SMS and your phone starts posting GPS/location details back to the website.
So it does it.
Mobile Defense runs in the background at all times. They claim it has an insignificant effect on battery life, but I’d like to see that verified by a third party before I’d believe it.
wow. just wow. the syncophants and fanboie (plural) no longer surprise me.
but no app storage on the SD on android? fer reals?
i am really, really looking forward to WM 7.
good choice of music going with cunninlynguists on the android phone. the underground so profound
Glad someone noticed that. Outstanding album.
i live for hiphop. hit me up on slsknet [\/]rDoja
video playback on droid is located in the gallery. it does exist.
It amazes me that the Apple-haters (hello it’s a company, not a religion!) say the Droid is better because in the future it will have more apps, in the future new releases of Android will be better and so on.
In the future, there will be a new iPhone, which – wait for it – will be better than the the current iPhone. Droid looks good, but it doesn’t have the polish of an iPhone. 3 years of polishing, with 1 1/2 year of Google copying is no comparison. It’s going up against something 1/2 way through it’s lifecycle. As an iPhone owner I welcome the competition, at least Apple has something to compete with!
As an “Apple-hater” I can categorically say that no one says the Droid is better because of future features.
People say the Droid is a better phone because:
It has a better screen
It has a real keyboard
It has a user-replaceable battery
It has better call quality
It has better email
It has better GPS
It has better integration with Google services
It has better social network integration
it is on a better network
It isn’t locked into Apple’s walled garden
Those are all things it does out of the box, not future features.
The Apple Devote (hello it’s a company, not a religion!) response is to say “but it doesn’t have as good an experience, and it isn’t as well designed, and the materials aren’t as high quality, and the advertising isn’t as hip, and it isn’t as sexy, and it is for tech nerds, not the rest of us.”
Different people want different things out of a phone.
Let me start by saying that the Droid is a nice-looking phone and I love the competition. But thes points are very subjective.
It has a better screen
It has more pixels, but no storage for developers to store higher quality graphics
It has a real keyboard
That’s not a real keyboard, it’s just a physical version of the virtual one. Who needs that? I’ve already heard of two of them breaking off.
It has a user-replaceable battery
I use my Iphone constantly and I have never had my battery go dead. Why would I want to lug a replacement around. I did that with my old cells and hated it.
It has better call quality
That depends a lot on your coverage area, but is probably true in a lot of areas. However, I have no trouble hearing or being heard on my Iphone.
It has better email
Are you kidding? It’s a joke.
It has better GPS
I laugh because most of the people I know who own a GPS with voice features, have never used it. I use one maybe once or twice a year and I have over 1,000,000 miles traveled in the last 7 years. A quick glance at Google maps and I’m good to go.
It has better integration with Google services
Who cares?
It has better social network integration
A. That’s not true B. Get a real life
it is on a better network
Slightly better network, lousy company for everything else. They make AT&T look good.
It isn’t locked into Apple’s walled garden
That walled garden has it’s drawbacks, but my apps don’t crash and lock up my phone. I don’t worry about viruses, I have 100,000 inexpensive apps to choose from, and a phone that can actually hold them.
But I thank Moto for pushing Apple to improve their product and I wish Droid users good luck. Enjoy!
Your responses, if anything, are even more subjective. You falsely assume that everyone has the same preferences as you. Not to mention plenty of misinformation.
“It has more pixels, but no storage for developers to store higher quality graphics”
It comes with a 16GB microSD card, where apps can store high res images, audio, 3D models, game levels, textures, what have you. Android is perfectly capable of allowing apps to store all this data on the microSD card.
“I use my Iphone constantly and I have never had my battery go dead. Why would I want to lug a replacement around. I did that with my old cells and hated it.”
Just because you don’t need it doesn’t mean other people don’t.
“It has better email
Are you kidding? It’s a joke.”
Android has the best Gmail client out there. You might not use it, but other people do.
“I laugh because most of the people I know who own a GPS with voice features, have never used it. I use one maybe once or twice a year and I have over 1,000,000 miles traveled in the last 7 years. A quick glance at Google maps and I’m good to go.”
Most of the people you know does not equal everyone.
“It has better integration with Google services
Who cares?”
Plenty of people care. You don’t speak for them.
“That walled garden has it’s drawbacks, but my apps don’t crash and lock up my phone. I don’t worry about viruses, I have 100,000 inexpensive apps to choose from, and a phone that can actually hold them.”
Android apps don’t lock up the phone either, the process manager is capable of closing any nonresponsive apps. Android users don’t worry about viruses either. See my point above about being able to hold apps.
Oh by, the Apple Defense Team is out in full force today. Here we go:
“It has more pixels, but no storage for developers to store higher quality graphics”
No, it has more pixels, lower power consumption, better color depth, and is made with more advanced technology in every respect. The screen is better in every measurable way. Oddly enough, they don’t happen to measure screens by storage space. Just watch, when Apple finally catches up with Sony and Motorola on OLED screen technology, you and all the other apple mavens will be running around screaming about how anything that isn’t OLED is crap. You just aren’t there yet, because the home office hasn’t sent you the talking point.
“That’s not a real keyboard, it’s just a physical version of the virtual one. Who needs that? I’ve already heard of two of them breaking off.”
I seriously hope that either English is not your first language, or that this is some sort of newspeak joke. The very definition of “virtual” is that which is not real. A real keyboard would be a real keyboard. Those who don’t have a real keyboard, simulate it with a virtual keyboard. As far as you “hearing” about two keyboards breaking off, that would probably be something you heard from the same voices in your head that say that real things aren’t real, but just physical versions of virtual things.
“I use my Iphone constantly and I have never had my battery go dead. Why would I want to lug a replacement around. I did that with my old cells and hated it.”
Some of us spend more than a few hours a day away from a power plug, and are in good enough shape that the extra half an ounce a battery might weigh isn’t really noticeable, much less something you have to “lug around.” Hell some of us even like to go for days at a time without plugging our phone in. Having two batteries, I can always have one charging, while I’m using the other one, and never have to plug my phone in. But of course you love your iPhone, so you have no need for choice or options.
“It has better call quality
That depends a lot on your coverage area, but is probably true in a lot of areas. However, I have no trouble hearing or being heard on my Iphone.”
No, actually it doesn’t depend on your coverage at all. That would be down where I said it is on a better network. It has a better mic, and a better speaker, and thus both ends of the call sound better. I don’t really care if you are willing to muddle through with inferior call quality, that doesn’t change that it is superior.
“It has better email
Are you kidding? It’s a joke.”
Unless by “it” you mean email on the iPhone, then no, it isn’t a joke. The iPhone easily has the worst email client of anything on the market. It is worse than BlackBerry, worse than Android, worse than Palm, and even worse than Windows Mobile. Poor sorting, poor organization, poor everything. It can’t even begin to compete with a real mail client like Gmail or the BlackBerry.
“It has better GPS
I laugh because most of the people I know who own a GPS with voice features, have never used it. I use one maybe once or twice a year and I have over 1,000,000 miles traveled in the last 7 years. A quick glance at Google maps and I’m good to go.”
Wow, I had no idea that the airlines used your personal GPS to find where they are going! What does how many miles of travel you’ve booked have to do with anything? I just got back from Japan, I didn’t have to look up directions to tell the plane how to get there! As far as not needing a GPS, because you have Google Maps, did you stop to think for a second about the fact that the GPS app on the Droid is, being a phone running a Google OS, just the newest, best, version of Google Maps?
“It has better integration with Google services
Who cares?”
Exponentially more people than have MobileMe accounts.
“It has better social network integration
A. That’s not true B. Get a real life”
A. Oh, I’m sorry, did they add a new feature I hadn’t heard about that lets the iPhone populate the address book with contacts from social networks, complete with pictures? Oh, they didn’t? Oh then I guess I still stand behind that one. B. Oh yeah, you are really the person to be telling anyone that, as you sit here coming up with the most ridiculous rationalizations I have ever seen, to defend a fucking phone.
“Slightly better network, lousy company for everything else. They make AT&T look good.”
No, no not really. By any metric you can name, Verizon is better than AT&T by a fair margin. More customers, better coverage, clearer calls, fewer dropped calls, higher customer retention, better data bandwidth. I don’t know what metric you are using (aside from that AT&T must be wonderful, because they have the iPhone), but AT&T is a pretty awful network. It would be one thing if they had great customer service or rates like T-Mobile, or could roam on Verizon’s network like Sprint, but actually AT&T is just kind of suck in every way.
“That walled garden has it’s drawbacks, but my apps don’t crash and lock up my phone. I don’t worry about viruses, I have 100,000 inexpensive apps to choose from, and a phone that can actually hold them.”
Really, your going to go for the compulsive stereotypical Machead virus and crashes thing, even though it doesn’t make even the slightest bit of sense in this context? Ok, maybe you just got confused, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and help you out here. We aren’t talking about Win95, we are talking about a portable Linux that runs apps in a sandboxed virtual machine. Nothing you just said has anything to do with Android, try again, and maybe this time you could pick a different cliche, like “unbelievable user experience,” or how it “just works,” or maybe the tried and true “it’s for the rest of us!”
I don’t think you know what it means by “walled garden”. You’re saying it doesn’t lock up your phone and whatnot. By “walled garden” people mean you can only get apps from the App Store and Apple has all control on what goes on in the App Store.
So true, by the way, Henry Blackman. Ive got a 3GS and it is absolutely spectacular. The user interface is fast and clean. Droid has potential competition with Apple, but at the moment, there is not much comparison. The fact that the iPhone has almost no buttons tears the Droid in half. Android needs to improve its playback feature, and many more things in order to get in line with the 3GS… Nice review, anyway!
“The fact that the iPhone has almost no buttons tears the Droid in half.”
Buttons are not evil, anyone who tells you otherwise is just spreading Jobsian FUD.
THE MEMORY IS NOT AN ISSUE. I have a 400MB app in the iPhone store and it takes just as long to install on iPhone as it does in Android.
On Android there is a small starter app that downloads the large database in the background and notifies you when it’s done. The iPhone won’t notify when the apps installed so your just wrong about this being a terrible solution.
By memory he means storage. You only have 256MB of space to download an app on Droid, so essentially you couldn’t download that app in the first place.
Still you are not understanding, the starter app is saved on the 256MB internal space, the rest of the app files and the database is saved to the SD card. I thought he was perfectly clear in the article about this, I wish he hadn’t even put his personal opinions about the problem, should they fix it sure….will you notice….no. You could own the phone for a year and never notice that 90% of your app data is on the android SD card and you never knew it.
@carter; have you not been paying attention?
Overall I’m really happy with what the Google bros have pulled off. It will light a fire under Apple and give devs more leverage. The Android marketplace needs a lot more polish as does the camera, media play, etc. It will happen. Remember all the issues with iPhone 1.0 and edge?
what about coolness factor? I’m sure iphone is the clear winner. Maybe Droid is a winner with geeks though.
Around campus everywhere you turn someone is holding an iPhone/iPod Touch, it’s nowhere near cool anymore. It’s much more cool to see something unique.
I’m pretty sure you just defined that the iPhone IS cool. Being unique is counter-culture. Sometimes that’s cool, but not automatically.
Ubiquity isn’t cool either. Something that is cool may become ubiquitous, but once it becomes so it ceases to be cool. Such is the nature of the coolness, it is a transient thing. Like most people I thought iPhones are very cool a year or more ago. But now that half the people I see has one it’s cool no longer. That doesn’t mean iPhones won’t be cool ever again. If Apple releases a new, very different iPhone (rather than just an updated device, which while nice, does not seem distinct from the previous ones), it may be cool. This was the case some years ago when plain white iPods were ubiquitous, and Apple then released the black video iPod, which many people I know and I thought was very cool.
Test Drive Google Android on your PC. http://www.zjtechlive.com/test-drive-google-android-os-on-microsoft-windows/
it’s not really fair to compare til they’re on same network. both verizon iphone? how would droid sales do?
It’s really hard to make a choice, anyway I heard a lot of good things about Droid and i’m quite surprised reading this post !! Brilliant test !!
The only firm “winner” in this review is actually a loser. The Droid’s photos, to a photographer (which I am) are crap. The colours are muddy, they look smudged, and by comparison to the iPhone’s photos next door, they look just plain unattractive
I would not even take the Droid out of my pocket to take a photo. It’s not worth the trouble.
Oh come on, as one photographer to another, they are both crap! The iPhone over-saturates in the reds, and everything looks like it was handheld at 1/20 second shutter speed, and the Droid looks like everything is desaturated, and it can’t find focus on anything.
Any photographer would do better with a disposable box camera and a cheap film scanner.
Well, agreed. However, I strongly prefer the iPhone crap photo over the Droid crap photo (since these are the only two choices I have)
It should be no surprise that cameraphones cannot take good photographs. Apparently the typical production cost of adding a camera to a phone is $4. What kind of a lens do you get for that? And with the slim form factor, the lens has to be of the highest precision, because it is so close to the sensor.
It is actually a miracle that they manage to take recognisable photographs at all.
Owch… that is harsh… and true. Droids cannot focus for crap, but I have been an iPhone fan since the beginning. I prefer the iPhone in everything because… well I just never got the point of Droids, at all.
and thus the author recommends the iPhone for people like you, (ie people who prefer the iPhone)
I’m sure you could use either one of the phones camera for snapping that ‘once in a lifetime’ UFO shot, or an auto-accident evidence photo when yo have nothing else because your $15K Nikon was ejected out of the vehicle into the lake…those types of uses?…instead of NEVER?
Yes, I suppose one could construct a list of bizarre and unusual circumstances in which a cellphone camera would be useful.
My $15K camera travels in a Pelican case, unconditionally guaranteed, and it floats. If fact, it is fully airtight and waterproof. So I could take a photograph of my camera case floating, unharmed, in the lake, with my cellphone camera. That would be interesting.
Does Pelican make an iPhone killer? (grin)
You forgot to mention:
- Syncing with the computer – what I heard the iPhone is the clear winner
- purchase of apps – I visited the android marketplace online – very limited selection, no complete infos, no purchase possible, you have to visit every single developer website
Did you visit the Android Marketplace on an Android phone or on the web? The marketplace on the web does not have the complete catalog, full info with screenshots, or the option to purchase/download. But all that is present on the Marketplace on any Android phone equipped with it. (Strange, I agree.) Paid apps can be charged to Google Checkout and (soon) to carrier billing directly through the Android Marketplace on the phone.
There are two different marketplaces, a web one and phone one? I don’t understand. Why would there be two different views for the same place.
J
It’s not really two different marketplaces, it’s just that the web one is just a showcase for the real marketplace which can only be accessed through an Android phone. I don’t know why it’s this way, I think many people would like to be able to browse the entire catalog from the web rather than their phones. Thankfully third party sites like androlib.com fills the void, but it doesn’t excuse Google from providing it.
http://www.cyrket.com Full store, plus you have to understand that unlike iphone, you can download from anywhere, there is already a competing market. Google doesn’t limit access to the market, that’s why cyrket exists and any other site or app that wants to access or optimize or use the market data as it wishes. Use cyrket and a the barcode scanner if you want to search on the web. Personally, I love the fact I don’t have to use Itunes, which is one of my least favorite apps. I love being able to drag/drop/mount my phone on any os, on anyone’s computer….well anything that can mount a fat32 drive.
Dude don’t post such misinformation. “visit every developer website”? Um….no…you just click what you want in the marketplace and get it done.
I rarely flame people on message boards…but..really…your post is epic fucking dunce.
Well i like Iphone 3GS video performance because video colors are more visible than Droid.
Last week i got a iphone. After using for a week. i notice the function are pretty smooth compare to Motorola models.
care to give me your view on the functions?
Regarding the iPhone’s inability to natively sync with Facebook contacts: dare I say it “There’s an app for that” – it’s called MyPhone+ and it’s excellent…
Nobody bothered to ask, does the droid sync with Macs? Things such as the addressbook and calendar are pretty important.
Android phones don’t sync with a computer at all. They sync to web services, and then you can sync those to your computer. For example, you use Google Calendar and Contacts, then you can sync your computer to those, or just use them in a web browser.
If you do use the default google android addressbook/calendar, at least you can sync your mac addressbook and calendar with the google versions — so you at least have some sort of solution even if it doesn’t sync out of the box.
This is what I do, my life is google centric so take that with a grain of salt. My calendar/mail/contacts exist on google. All are dynamically updated on my phone and mac. OS 10.6 has built in contact/calendar sync with google. I use mail app on apple for this as well. In fact this along with the notification pane is why I chose android over iphone, so much easier to keep things synced with my mac for free.
I have a question about Voice Recognition? Can you respond to txt hands free via Voice Recognition on the Droid?
Thanks…and keep vigilantly stirring the pot ;)
I know that there are apps to read sms to you as voice, I don’t think there is currently one to go the other way, but it seems very trivial…scratch that just found like 4. Unlike iphone android has no problems with apps that completely replace functionality, so there are many ssm/mms and mail replacement apps. There is even a facility in android os for users to permanently assign phone functions to a third party app (such as dialing or sms) so that the built in android apps are replaced.
Wow dude, are you serious? Ever hear of just calling someone? It’s what they did back in the day before EVERYONE WAS TEXTING EACH OTHER. Get a life, man.
Handcent (Free app) allows you to tap on a microphone icon, and speak your sms response. It then types it in for you.
I still take issue with Mr. Kumparak’s conclusions. I can see and handle the Droid for myself, read his review and reach entirely different conclusions. One judgement above the others still troubles me. How can the Droid win the interface war when everything about it is a copy (with some tweaking) of the pioneering Apple iPhone?
This discussion reminds me of the original, 1984 Macintosh release followed nearly two years later by Windows 1.0, which was an incredibly poor product, and in the eyes of many, remains so today. Then and now, only one original computing product with a graphic user interface exists and every other similar product that follows is derivative. The same can be said of touchscreen phones.
Let’s be clear about something: without the iPhone there is no Droid, just as without Motorola’s original 1973 cell phone invention, there is no iPhone. But the iPhone is much more — the first, portable device for all forms of communications. And it alone is destined to be remembered as the first product to radically change the telephone interface — since the invention of the portable cell phone itself.
The Droid’s lack of originality is evident in many features that Mr. Kumparak singles out as better on the new Motorola device. Undoubtedly, Apple will leapfrog these in its next OS update, to be followed by more leapfrogging yet again by Google, as well as by Palm, RIMM and eventually, perhaps Microsoft (sigh, again) and perhaps even Nokia. And so begins a new, generational game of copying everything Apple. Microsoft’s bungled, long-standing efforts aside, it’s far more difficult to create an interface from scratch.
In a review, Mr. Kumparak needs to learn to differentiate between influential, ground-breaking design and me-too features — and to properly acknowledge the influence of the original with each feature.
As for that all-important interface, I also can argue that with the Droid, users must learn TWO separate interfaces (keyboard and touchscreen). In my view, this alone makes the Droid inherently more complicated to use. Before the iPhone, I never owned a “smartphone” with a keyboard (i.e. BlackBerry or Treo) — only simple feature phones (all of which still had hopelessly horrible, button-based interfaces). Consequently, I never developed a bias (or a need) for a hardware keyboard on a phone. So, to me (and perhaps many of the 54 million iPhone and iPod touch owners to date) a hardware keyboard is useless on a cell phone — a flawed concept that should be retired once and for all.
You can wish all you want, but while showing much promise, first-generation Droid and other copy-cat phones simply are not yet in the same class as a third-generation iPhone. When the entire product ecosystem is considered (as it must be), the overall user experience, the software interface, the quality hardware, the versatility delivered with the mind-boggling number of really good applications in the easy-to-use App Store, the camera and iPod functionality, the seamless computer syncing and little things like the availability of thousands of accessories, the iPhone has no equal. And as with Windows, cellular products competing with the iPhone (including the Droid) may never have quite the same fit, form and polish, nor induce the same sense of satisfaction for something “new.”
The iPhone is a true original, designed by an iconic captain of modern American industry. When it’s finally retired, a person’s first iPhone may be worthy of mounting on a shelf to be displayed next to your first Leica camera or that pocket knife handed down from your grandfather.
It may not sound like it, but I am happy for Google, Verizon and especially the legendary Motorola, and glad to see other vendors re-enter the market with more modern products, even if they are heavily influenced by Apple. Clearly, the Droid has the potential to evolve into a really nice phone, as does Google’s Android OS. But Mr. Kumparak compromised his credibility when he allowed his exuberance for the Droid’s promise to infiltrate his thinking and affect his judgement and writing about this first version of the product.
“When it’s finally retired, a person’s first iPhone may be worthy of mounting on a shelf to be displayed next to your first Leica camera”
Dude are you serious with this post?
He is. Of course, if you never owned a Leica, you won’t have a clue as to what he is saying.
um, are you saying a review of a porsche can’t sing the praises of its internal combustion engine without having to defer to the Model T (or whatever the first consumer car was)? you know, since talking on a telephone was an Alexander G Bell innovation, we should probably not talk about how good a phone the Droid or iPhone or any cell phone is as a phone since Bell should get all the credit for figuring out how to transmit sounds over distances.
I have Bell’s head in a jar on my desk, next to a Leica.
Would you put his head in a bell jar?
Model T was such a KIRF, if it wasn’t built by Otto or Daimler it’s not even in contention for a ‘real car’ Everybody else just rode in on their coat tails after they innovated. /sarcasm.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/28/AR2009102804124.html
/\ = written by techcrunch, lol…
“How can the Droid win the interface war when everything about it is a copy (with some tweaking) of the pioneering Apple iPhone?”
“The Droid’s lack of originality is evident in many features that Mr. Kumparak singles out as better on the new Motorola device. Undoubtedly, Apple will leapfrog these in its next OS update, to be followed by more leapfrogging yet again by Google…”
If you read the link I posted above you’ll find Google developed quite a bit of the apps that are integrated into the iphones OS, so is Google copying the iphone or did they get tired of Apple restricting everything and give Apple the middle finger? Apple and Google are not the same buddy buddy companies they once were, so these leaps and bounds you describe about how the interfaces will continue to leapfrog each other are maybe going to be smaller hops for the iphone as now Google is going to be developing software and apps for its own OS instead of dealing with Apple and their restrictive App Store.
I dont know, maybe I’m the only one slightly amused at the thought of some of the core apps integrated into the iphone’s OS being developed by Google and even more amused that Google probably wont be doing any more development for Apple. With the giant that is Google not backing and assisting in programming for the ipod anymore where will Apple get its “uniqueness” from since all Google can do is copy what Apple does…
Apple used the Google Maps backend for stuff in the iPhone but provided a hugely more intuitive front-end, custom-designed for mobile, the likes of which Google had never seen or imagined.
Otherwise, Google didn’t invent any apps for the iPhone. In fact, Google used Webkit for their Chrome browser AFTER Apple selected it for Safari. That article is bogus. Mail, Safari, Contacts, Calendar, etc. were all there before the iPhone and Apple simply customized them for the iPhone.
And if Google maps ever became a “problem” for Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, and a host of other players would probably pay Apple money to get their maps on the iPhone.
“Otherwise, Google didn’t invent any apps for the iPhone. In fact, Google used Webkit for their Chrome browser AFTER Apple selected it for Safari.”
Nope Apple selected kHTML as a base for their own engine which is WebKit. Apple made a fantastic work on WK for years, but now Google contributes a lot to WebKit too and anyway, Webkit is “just” a part of Chrome.
are we now implying that Steve Jobs developed code for KDE? Really? I guess the man really did build everything.
“The iPhone is a true original, designed by an iconic captain of modern American industry. When it’s finally retired, a person’s first iPhone may be worthy of mounting on a shelf to be displayed next to your first Leica camera or that pocket knife handed down from your grandfather.”
The iPhone is the most exciting thing to happen to the world since Steve Jobs discovered electricity. Jeez, have you people no sense of history? Doesn’t everyone keep old cellphones on display with family heirlooms?
“The iPhone is a true original, designed by an iconic captain of modern American industry.”
An excerpt from the article:
“Multiple sources at Google tell us that in informal discussions with Apple over the last few months Apple expressed dismay at the number of core iPhone apps that are powered by Google. Search, maps, YouTube, and other key popular apps are powered by Google. Other than the browser, Apple has little else to call its own other than the core phone, contacts and calendar features.
So Apple starts to back away from letting Google take over the iPhone with all the best apps by rejecting them. And now we have Google’s response: a big middle finger. If Apple is going to make it hard to get on the iPhone, then Google will stop giving Apple its best apps first and use them to make its own Android platform more appealing.”
It makes me giggle reading your “iphone is a true original” comment when Apple was the one that felt threatened by Google due to the amount of core apps and functions that are powered by Google. Would you love your iphone as much if evertyhing on it that was powered by Google was no longer available?
You know, if you had done the first bit of research, you might have realized that Android (which was a company before Google bought them), was started by Andy Rubin, who’s mobile OS legacy goes all the way back to the Magic Cap OS, which was his first project after he left Apple back in the ’90s. He was also the founder of Danger, who made the Hiptop/Sidekick, and who had the first over the air “app store” in the US market. Work on the Android OS started back in 2004, so it would be a little hard for them to copy Apple, when no one would see the iPhone until three years later!
I’m afraid if anything you have it completely backwards, and Apple is copying the work of one of their own former engineers who went his own way when Apple was too timid from the failure of the Newton to do anything in the mobile space.
You know, if you had done the first bit of research, you might have realized that Android (which was a company before Google bought them), was started by Andy Rubin, who’s mobile OS legacy goes all the way back to the Magic Cap OS, which was his first project after he left Apple back in the ’90s. He was also the founder of Danger, who made the Hiptop/Sidekick, and who had the first over the air “app store” in the US market. Work on the Android OS started back in 2004, so it would be a little hard for them to copy Apple, when no one would see the iPhone until three years later!
I’m afraid if anything you have it completely backwards, and Apple is copying the work of one of their own former engineers who went his own way when Apple was too timid from the failure of the Newton to do anything in the mobile space.
Of course what am I expecting here? It is all to typical for a Machead to shoot off his mouth about how everyone in the world is copying Apple, while remaining stunningly ignorant about the very subject about which he is professing to be an expert.
Apple didn’t copy anything. iPhone was announced in January, 2007and was in users hands that summer, Android wasn’t even announced till November, 2007.
Unless Andy Rubin was sending Steve Jobs Android briefings for 2 or 3 years, your claim is ludicrous.
Apple, unwittingly or not, started putting together the pieces for the iPhone with the original iPod and then the iTunes music store in 2001 which laid the groundwork for mobile consumer hardware, mobile OS and a software ecosystem to tie the whole thing together seamlessly.
Oh wait, I get it, you are one of those ignorant people who didn’t know there was a smartphone market before Apple told you there was one, aren’t you?
I hate to burst your bubble, but there are any number of things Apple copied from about a decade of Symbian, Microsoft, Sony, Palm, Handspring, RIM and Danger devices. You see, this was a growing, thriving market selling tens of millions of devices LONG before Apple entered it. That is the whole reason Apple hasn’t gone after anyone for infringing the “hundreds of patents” they supposedly hold on the iPhone technologies, because they know that they would get crushed by the actual pioneers of the industry, who hold any number of basic patents on all sorts of things present in the iPhone.
For example, Andy Rubin was very publicly doing the rounds singing the praises of the benefits to developers and manufacturers of a centralized app store for a mobile device back in 2001, leading up to the release of the first Danger Hiptop. This was back when iTunes was nothing more than a re-skinned SoundJam, and two years before Apple would add the music store to iTunes. There is no question at all that back in 2001, it was a new business model, that many people questioned, and that got a lot of press. Just because you were ignorant of it until Apple told you about it, doesn’t mean that Apple invented it, and everyone is copying them.
By the same token, the entire concept of a media-centric, Wi-Fi enabled PDA (like the iPod Touch) can be traced all the way back to 2000 with the Sony Clie line, before the original iPod even launched.
Look, face it, you don’t have the first clue what you are talking about, because your only experience with this subject comes straight from Apple PR. You should really either educate yourself (which you won’t do because blind devotion is so much more fun) or stop arguing, because you are just outclassed in this exchange.
I’m surprised no one brought up the Nokia lawsuit? unless i missed it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/technology/companies/23nokia.html
It’s fair to say that android, iPhone, winMo, palm, symbian, and even WebOS were all being developed simultaneously, and still are. WebOS even has several Apple engineers on staff, arguably putting all the stuff into WebOS that they couldn’t put into the iPhone. But to say Apple is “copying the work of it’s own engineer” is ludicrous. As an employee of Apple, everything he invents or engineers as an employee, belongs to Apple. You don’t steal the work of your employees, you purchase it through their paychecks.
I think you missed the part where he is a FORMER Apple engineer, who quit over a decade ago.
You state some valid premises but draw invalid conclusions from them. Indeed the iPhone is a groundbreaking device and the mobile Oses and smartphones that followed it did copy many of its features and design ideas. But does that make the iPhone a better device? The answer is not necessarily. The iPhone indeed “may be worthy of mounting on a shelf to be displayed” while the Droid may not, but that makes the iPhone a better museum piece, and consumers aren’t out to buy museum pieces.
What you fail to understand is that copying is good. If someone makes something good, it is in the consumer’s interest that someone else takes that and improve upon it, and release something better. If the second innovator instead developed everything then the result may not be as good, and if it is as good then it will certainly be more expensive due to the higher development costs. What matters to the person who uses a device is not who did it first, but whose implementation is better and the unique features that each has over the other. And certianly both iPhones and Android phones have innovative features that the other side lacks, if you disagree then it just means you are ignorant about what Android is capable of.
Your other arguments, such as that Android is currently the weaker offering taking into account the entire ecosystem, are valid. But your argument that Android is somehow poorer for copying the innovations made by Apple and the iPhone is nonsensical. Indeed, Android is richer for it, and since it has innovations on top of what it has copied, it stands on its own. iPhone would be richer too if it copies the good and novel features of Android. And this is true in general.
Until Stanza and Guitar Tool Box is available in android I wont be getting it. Those are really my two main apps, and I basically live in stanza its my ebook reader. GTB is a must as it helps me not carry so much junk as well. Also, im sure theyll port over google maps with TBT, it really the only thing I like about it.
I love my 3GS!
Even though you wash behind your ears and everything :) you may want to take a second look at your washing machine or pocket-habits. Because the back of my iPhone 3GS after several months of use, tumbles, drops, skids (and I refuse to use carrying cases or skins) is still glossy and beautiful with only subtle wear. Even though the Droid back may not be as delicate, I find it hard to believe all its crevices and seams will hold up as well over time with lint, crumbs, dirty hands and moisture.
Also – this is totally subjective, but as far as looks go, I don’t think it’s unremarkable that the iPhone is void of extraneous logos and markings. Beyond the glimmering curves versus industrial angles argument – the Droid’s decals (especially as ugly as Verizon’s logo is) very slightly hurt its look. But then again, maybe that would fit into your Angelina versus Halle comparison – tattoos versus glow :)
Droid calendar search: FAIL
Yeah, the funny thing is that for all the people trying to find fault with Android, they always miss the single biggest problem with the OS, which is that you inexplicably can’t search the calendar. It just goes to show how unfamiliar they are with Android that it never gets mentioned in all these exhaustive comparisons to the iPhone. I love Android, but that is a truly epic fail there.
I’ve never once had to search my calendar for an event (at least not through a dedicated search function), but then I only plan 2 to 3 weeks out. I suppose if you juggle a lot of appointments, search would be quite useful. Thanks for pointing out that this is a missing feature.
If you are bad at remembering things like birthdays, it can be a real life (or at least relationship) saver to be able to do a quick search and see when it is. I also liked (back on Palm and WinMo) to use it to remember when I did thing, like the first time I worked for a particular client, or the last time I changed my oil, or things like that.
I just noticed that my iPhone has the ability to search the calendar. Never noticed that before.
Point being that this isn’t a key feature to everyone.
sunlight test:
unless 3gs has different screen than 2g, the iphone is surprisingly legible in direct sunlight, especially text. im not sure the technology behind it but they put some extra layer in or something. im pretty sure the iphone has the best direct sunlight screen legibility of all the phones i’ve ever used.
Yeah I didn’t get that either. I’ve used it in direct sunlight plenty of times and have always been surprised how visible it is under that condition.
Count me confused as well the 3Gs screen works fine in direct sunlight. It’s possible that you have to set it to auto-adjust though.
I’ve used the droid in direct sunlight and it’s comparable to the 3Gs, I guess “usable” is a relative term.
The 3Gs screen is more than just “usable” in direct sunlight. I may not want to watch a movie on it, but otherwise it’s fully capable. It does not “go blank” as the article would suggest. There are picture and videos out there that clearly show how usable the screen is in the noon day sun.
what about idont vs. udont ads :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_P6izLL19s
which phone costs more? not just the phone but the monthly service charge too??
They cost the same.
This is the best way I can think of putting the comparison.
iPhone: A girl who you are proud to take home to your mother, she does everything well and is very consistant. You know where you stand with her.
Droid: She swallows but is rough around the edges.
LOL!
at the end of the day, the iphone divorces you for cheating with the droid and takes half your money… swallows and is rough around the edges, sounds like my kinda gal….
And right on cue, here’s supporting information on the iPhone’s versatility and massive potential from a more even-handed source, id Software’s John Carmack, a successful developer who is “excited” about creating new games for the iPhone, and “less eager” about Android. Besides the elegant interface, Music, Apps (including Gaming) and soon, HD Video, will be differentiators that will set the iPhone apart from all others.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33721096/site/14081545
I love when people compare the iPhone to any other phone. I’m sure the Droid is great but it’s not and iPhone. Are there as many apps for the droid for the iPhone? It’s difficult to compare the iPhone to anything else out there on the market unless you have had one for at least a month. The iPhone has completely change the culture of mobile phones. How many times do you have a conversation with someone and they jokingly say “is there an App for that?” I don’t think they are refering to any other phone but the iPhone when they say that.
I love when people compare the Jesus Phone with anything that Steve Jobs did not create. I’m sure the Droid is great but it’s the work of Satan. You can’t even compare the two until you’ve been indoctrinated into the Cult of Steve. The iPhone has completely revolutionized the universe. How many times do you have a conversation with someone and you jokingly say “there is an app for that” and they look at you like you’re a nerdy, idiotic cultist? I don’t think they have a clue that you’re referring to a phone when you say that.
Seriously – the iPhone is a nice phone, but I’d never buy one and personally choose other real smart phones instead (and I have one for free to use any time i want). The biggest accomplishments of the iPhone: bringing gpood design to the forefront of product discussions, giving multi-touch to the masses and breaking the carrier’s walled gardens. Major respect for those. But respect doesn’t mean it’s the right device for everyone.
You really think that if you say “is there an app for that” that people don’t have a clue you are refering to the iPhone? I guess there are many people out there that don’t watch TV so I can understand them not getting it. But FYI (I hope you know what that means, but if you dont it means “For Your Information) ;-) I have owned every smartphone out there since the begining of time. And I guess the problem is they try to by someone other then a phone first. Where the iPhone is a FANTASTIC phone first and the applications come secondary and they are still very good.
I remember getting so tired of rebooting my Treo’s or them locking up, and then I even tried the Windows Mobile devices (which are just Windows CE with a new name so that Microsoft can make you think that it was re-designed from the ground up…NOT) talk about sluggish, and more lock ups.
At least the iphone never locks up because it’s a phone more then a Smartphone. And that’s why I love it. You are correct though it may not be the right phone for EVERYONE, but I can tell you that you don’t have to be a computer geek to use it like you do most of the other SmartPhones out on the market.
Is it just me or does everyone seem to forget the “Phone” part of iPhone? How good is it as a phone (you know, its core function)? Fair to middling at best thanks to Apple’s mercenary lock-in with AT&T
ive tried an android 2.0 phone and and iPhone. Neither are perfected but between the interface, apps, ability, voicemail, small but noticed animations and tweaks, plus iPod and iTunes….I have to say iPhone
Question: LIE much?
HINT: There’s currently only ONE Android 2.0 phone/device – It’s called the Motorola DROID.
The downside of the droid, which is also it’s upside, is it’s killer screen resolution. What are developers to do about that specific resolution? The minute you want to write a game or graphics app you have to port to that resolution or scale everything. Scaling will look like crude, and porting to that resolution will be a pain. That’s what sucks about the droid platform, they are not controlling the hardware so there’s this type of variation which kills compatibility for certain types of apps such as games & graphics. This point Apple kills everything out there (blackberrys! ha, RIM can’t even decide what to do with there dev kits (there’s at least 10 version supporting different phone features that require way too much code forking, and then the hardware capabilities is all over the board). While the iPhone’s changes from the initial device to 3G to 3GS have been welcomed, they’ve kept the same base hardware capabilities, such as display size, runtime memory etc.. Performance improvements welcomed, but the latest product require developers to rethink everything they do… = iPhoneWinner.
Scaling is hardly crude. PC Games have been doing it.. for ever.
A few points:
1. Scaling is only a problem for 2D bitmapped images. 3D textures are scaled anyway. But it would take some effort to make sure 2D games look good across these resolutions.
2. Google does enforce a baseline hardware featureset and specs for a phone to be used with Android Market.
3. Restricting the platform to a single set of hardware is not the best solution to the problem of app compatibility. It’s a poor solution because it limits choice. A better solution, if done right, is to clearly define what’s standard and what’s variable on the underlying hardware, and for the software platform to be flexible and robust enough to handle these variations and abstract away from the applications what could be abstracted, and clearly expose the variations that could not be abstracted away. This can be done with good programming and good code and is what Google seeks to do with Android. Scaling a widget-based UI, for example, is a nonissue for well made UI layouts.
Really, you imagine that taking WVGA into account will be hard? Oh wait, you thought it was just some random resolution, didn’t you? Perhaps what you don’t understand is that they DO control the hardware, at least to the point that every Android device can only be QVGA, HVGA or WVGA. Now clearly you know nothing about software development, but I assure you, there will be no problem for a developer to support those resolutions.
You see, the resolutions are actually a very rational stepping of sizes, not any random size people want to make it. At the smallest you have 240×320 then you go up to 320×480, then you go up to 480×854. That is it. Any developer who can’t take those three resolutions into account is probably a teenager hoping to get rich with his new, really innovative, fart app.
At what point did I say random resolution? At what point did I say it would be hard to handle this resolution? A lot of what is on this hardware is 2d, for now. It has limited resources. Scaling 2d looks like crud on these platforms, period.. I stated it would be a pain to support – you have to take these different resolutions into account for development, graphics, and presentment.
Sure, you can write your app to support multiple resolutions. Go ahead and spend your time handling HVGA,WVGA,QVGA. Enjoy your splintered $.99 app sales across these different hardware variations and hopefully your spent production cost of handling these variations pays off.
Clearly you know nothing about what you are talking about (and missed the point entirely), because if you did, you’d realize that time=$ and I guess if your target rate is low enough, then taking these factors into account on these resource constrained devices in an uncertain market will work out well for you.
On a side note, I’m sure the guys who wrote iFart, or Pocket God, or Stick Wars or any of those other simple apps are laughing all the way to the bank. Take a look at the number of reviews on some of those apps, divide that by ~.002 to ~.005 and now tell me how stupid those simple apps are. I’ll stick with my current success with the iPhone platform. But, thanks for flushing out the kinks with droid ;)
Well, you first mistake is to think that $.99 is a good price for an app. If you had read the Newsweek story on the reality of the Apple App Store, you would find that even the people who had some of those early hits in the App Store, have stopped developing for the iPhone, because they said there is no way to reliably make money on a whimsy economy like that. Go ahead and keep imagining you are going to win the App Store lottery, but the reality is that to actually have any hope of reliably making money out of it, you are going to have to spend enough marketing dollars to easily dwarf any development or support costs.
Secondly, as someone who developed software back in the “old days,” I don’t think I have ever once made a single program that didn’t at least have to support 800×600 and 640×480, and most of them had to support 640×480, 800×600 and 1024×768. If you know what you are doing, it takes something like 10 minutes to produce the assets in all required resolutions, and maybe another 10 minutes to put in the code to detect the resolution to use the proper assets accordingly. That is why you do all your UI designs in vector, instead of slapping something together in Photoshop, so that you can output assets at any resolution you need.
As far as “support” goes, there is no support issue. It in no way changes the support picture at all to support multiple resolutions. I can’t think of a single time on any of the 50 or so applications my team developed, that resolution even came into a support issue.
It is look like a Pro Droid campaign. I feel that the problem with the cellular phones is the carrier. Apple controls all the hardware and the OS. In a long run, Apple still has a advantage. Motorola has a lot of experience doing phones with all operators, but needs to excels Apple in design, innovation and momentum. It just the second year. But, Android, is wide open, and has strong alliance behind. For now I chose the iPhone.
I’m interested to know… does the Droid support external video? Like can you get some kind of cord that lets you plug a VGA cable into it and watch movies on a monitor?
I think the iPhone does but it seems to be a hush-hush part of the API and hard to hack… Is it even supported by Android?
I have an Apple cable that lets me plug into any of my large-screen TVs to watch videos. Is that what you were asking? It plugs into the USB connection to provide power to the phone and splits to go to the TV from the phone.
Don’t know about this, but since anything on your SD card can be accessed as a mountable usb drive (just like a usb stick), you can plug your phone into anything that can mount a fat32 usb drive and play the media directly on it (does ps3 do this?), my dvd player does this, as well as my htpc. No DRM.
You missed one feature: international abilities. Vz only works in Japan (CDMA) as I understand it. ATT works in most the world. That might be a deciding feature.
I totally disagree on looks (pt 1). The iPhone wins hands down.
The internation part is important. I made calls to the US from my boat all over the Med, even 50-100 miles from land. They must have GSM buoys (lol). I even did a conference call from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Never found a place where I couldn’t use my Iphone, even in remote parts of Turkey.
I agree the iPhone wins on looks, but then so does everything else Apple makes. And most people love their products because they work, you get what you pay for. AT&T on the other hand, is their achilles heel. They should’ve had Verizon to make up the other half that AT&T could not–reliability.
Personally…
I’ve long grown tired of the rather ‘feminine aesthetic’ of Apple products, especially the iPhone.
All the ’shiny’ plastic and ‘chromed out’ edges are terribly impractical in real world use, and retain their new(ish) look for a very short time.
The DROID eschews all of this nonsense by utilizing a much more masculine/purposeful design language, and is made of materials that (in practice) wear very well under normal use.
Comparing my iPhone 3GS to my DROID it’s quite apparent that the DROID was honed from much, much tougher stuff (solid metal, rubberized textures) than the bloated-back/plastic-clad Apple product.
As an added bonus, I really appreciate the fact that when I place my DROID on a flat surface it doesn’t constantly rock back and forth like some 1970’s era WEEBLE desperately trying not to fall down.
The iPhone’s obviously a toy/fashion accessory that just happens to (occasionally) make/take phone calls, whereas the DROID is a serious communication device for equally serious users who like having choices:
1. A choice of input method (hard/soft keyboard).
2. A choice of media players (competing with the iPhone’s core apps makes Jobby the Boss very angry).
3. A choice of storage capacity via industry standard microSDHC cards without having to buy an entirely new phone.
4. A choice of browser via any available in the Android Market.
5. A Choice of when to swap out the battery provided a power source isn’t near.
6. A choice of adding media (pics/song/videos) with the software of one’s choosing, or none at all via drag and drop.
7. The option of an actual provider-backed insurance policy in case the worst does happen.
For these and so many other reasons, I’ve switch from iPhone/AT&T to DROID/Verizon, and could not be happier.
Was all ready to buy the Droid until I found out it won’t work in Europe!
Can’t take the phone traveling. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
And very disappointing – it was fun playing with the phone at the store. I’d really like one, but that’s a deal breaker :-(
I am a Verizon customer, I want the IPHONE but hate as many others, ATT’s poor service. If Verizon sold the IPHONE, first they would bring the ATT customers back, and then they would take the market. Its so simple focus on the problem.
I totally agree. If the iPhone was available on the Verizon it would a top seller. The Droid is a nice option for those not willing to compromise our Network’s service.
Used the Droid at the Verizon store yesterday and it seemed very nice — aesthetically very masculine and the bronze touches were well executed. The hard angles, however, were a bit overdone. It makes it look like a knock-off mp3 player or a handheld game console. The iPhone beats it in this respect. There is no mistaking the shape of the iPhone. The Droid could be one of a million other generic devices.
But the real test will simply be the network. Here in Chicago, esp near Wrigley Field and other areas, AT&T has terrible reception, iPhone or not. That’s why I refuse to buy an iPhone until they work out their system problems or at least offer in-home femtocells. At least AT&T has been cutting my monthly bills on my current, old phone because of all the problems.
Damn I would have hoped Verizon would have at least made the Droid service cheaper and more price competitive with AT&T. (Wireless service competition? What’s that???).
Hello, All
Good day.
Droid is the overall winners…
Why, lowest total operating cost and open source and lost of free applications …etc is a creative and best ways for our next gen business model for both users and developments “benefits”.
Your positive sincerely comments please to make our daily lifes better and more efficient…Good luck all…