An[Droid] vs iPhone
Now that the Android 2.1 Update was release for the Droid I can finally post my thoughts about the pros and cons of the Droid vs the iPhone (my previous phone).
Pros (for the Droid):
I totally dig Android and the Droid itself. I still think I will look at other phones, including the forthcoming iPhone. But I won't be considering a new phone until next January, so who knows what new features will be introduced then! I still think that Palm's WebOS could have been a huge winner. And RIM is not counting itself out yet, with its new OS. So if anything, I'm excited to see what comes out next!
Pros (for the Droid):
- Keyboard/Input The Droid has a physical keyboard. This to me is a pro. I love having the option. Others might not care. The keyboard was stiff and hard to type on at first, but after a few weeks of use the keys started breaking in and now I am much better at typing on it now. I can now type on the phone without having to look at the keys, something I could never do on a virtual keyboard. The stock virtual keyboard, however, is not as good as the iPhone virtual keyboard. This however, was corrected by the purchase of a replacement keyboard called SmartKeyboard Pro--it is equivalent or even better than the iPhone keyboard with many ways to customize its behavior. The autocomplete system for Android is better than the iPhone as well. It can learn (and forget) words much easier than on the iPhone.
- Led - different colors/Notifications The Droid has a multi-color LED light on the front that allows you to see if there are any notifications that need to be tended to. And many apps will allow you to customize various aspects of the LED such as what color and how fast or slow to blink. So, if it's something important, for example, I can have the LED blink fast orange. The notification system in general is much better than the iPhone, which currently only has one kind--In your face "popup" type of notifications. Android is much "gentler" with its notifications, allowing you to see that they are there by glancing at the top left corner of the display. With a quick swipe, you can view the notifications and clear all or select individual ones to act on. With the iPhone, I was continually having to turn it on and unlock it to see if I had email or any other kind of notification.
- Google nav Google Navigation is a great included GPS nav system. Google Maps completely rock on this device. Navigation runs in the background - of course you have to use the car charger since you'll drain down your battery fast when you're using GPS services.
- Better alarm clock The alarm clock is marginally better. I can at least set the snooze time. I can also clear a snoozed alarm from the notification bar.
- Better Calendaring The calendar functions are better with the stock Android calendar. That is not saying much, as the iPhone's version of iCal totally sucks. But at least on Android I can snooze calendar reminders, and set more than 2 reminders. I still wish you could select exactly how much to snooze the calendar item for like you can in prett much any other calendar program (I could do it on my TREO!). I also like the ability to edit multiple Google Calendars and have everything sync up. That all being said, I still miss DateBk from my Treo. That was the king of calendaring programs. And I'm sure Blackberry does a better job than Android or iPhone.
- The "cloud" "just works" Speaking of calendars, those and contacts sync just fine with my Google account online. I'm a bit leery of keeping my contacts/calendar items in the cloud, but I do sync them back to iCal on my Mac and that gets backed up, so I'm kinda-sorta covered that way. "Mobile ME" never worked as seamlessly for me.
- Flexible sms I've since gone back to the Stock SMS program, but it's nice that there are very good replacements out there, such as Handcent SMS--which I think is a fantastic program. Being able to customize notification behavior based on contact is killer. I stopped using Handcent since they started putting ads in the program (I'd gladly buy a paid version). In the meantime, I use the Stock SMS with an excellent program called Ringo Pro which allows me to customize my alerts/sounds for both SMS and voice calls.
- Camera The camera on the Droid is not the best in the world, but I think that is the case with most mobile phone cameras. But at least there is a (very bad) flash on it that allows me to at least take some really bad photos of me and my friends if we happen to be in a place such as a dark bar, or pretty much any inside location. The iPhone would usually fail at taking any kind of photos inside. Taking movies is pretty decent. I can also take videos in dark places if I turn the flash light on before I start the recording.
- Verizon I have had nothing but SOLID cell phone service since I switched from AT&T. My apartment is in a cell phone "dead zone" for some reason, and all of my AT&T phones have had trouble receiving calls there. No problems with Verizon. The signal is still not the best, but at least it rings 100% of the time when people call. When I'm walking around I have no problems with signal or dropped calls.
- Background apps/Supported Multitasking This is something that the iPhone will catch up on soon, but it's been in Android from the start--Apps can do things in the background. And for the most part, I've had no problem. Running apps like Pandora or Rhapsody in the background works like a dream. I will admit that some applications don't seem to be written properly and will sometimes "misbehave" and not stop using services like GPS. I have resorted to using a task killer to get these "rogue" programs to stop. And I avoid using programs that exhibit that kind of behavior.
- Launch Screen/Widgets Android allows widgets on the launch screens to allow more interactive content there. My first purchase from the Android Market was Beautiful Widgets, which is a collection of widgets for Android. The best of the collection is a combined clock, time/date, and weather widget. I have widgets for my music players, system settings (like airplane mode and brightness). It's a really cool feature. Another cool feature (that the iPhone is catching up on soon) is that Android allows you to create folders so you can move apps into them to help you organize and declutter your launch screens. The Droid has a default 3 launch screens (in addition to the app "drawer") but I have found an excellent replacement called Helix Launcher that allows you to have up to 7 screens.
- Easier to switch between Apps Android allows you to switch from one app to another without going to the home screen if it's one of the last 6 apps launched. This makes it much easier to go back to the app you were using when you check a notification or quickly send a text message.
- Still find new things every day Since it's such an open system, the apps are continually being updated and new features are always being added. And with the OS itself, I'm still discovering things I didn't know. The community is very rich and involved, with plenty of hackers customizing ROMs and such to make it better and better. I haven't tried any of these hacked ROMS but it's cool that there are people that are interested in doing this. I did jailbreak my iPhone (mainly for multitasking and to customize the lockscreen), but so far I really haven't needed to "root" my Droid.
- 1 year contract Verizon allowed me to pay a bit extra and sign a 1 year contract. This is perfect for me since I tend to outgrow phones after about a year or so. And it will be easier for me to switch carriers if I so choose to. For some insane reason, AT&T doesn't offer 1-year pricing on their phones. If I DID go back to AT&T (possibly for the next iPhone), I would probably buy it for the full non-contract price. I can't stand 2 year contracts on mobile phones!
- Cut/paste is better on iphone Cut & Paste in Android is unevenly implemented and simply doesn't work in places where it should. There are several ways to do it depending on where you are and sometimes it involves the trackpad. On the iPhone it is consistent, and well implemented. It took FOREVER to get it, but I think they did it right.
- Facebook app incomplete This is not the Droid's or Android's fault, but still, the Facebook app pales in comparison to what iPhone users have. They JUST added inbox functionality but I still use the mobile/touch websites for a lot of my Facebook activity. It IS nice that Facebook is integrated with SMS and Contacts though.
- No emoji You can't receive any texts that contain emoji from AT&T. I'm not sure why this is, but many of my iPhone users will sometimes throw in an emoji symbol and I will not get that message. And there's currently no way for me to send emoji messages, even to other Verizon users. I thought this was kind of a big deal at first, but now I don't really care.
- Media player sucks The whole media situation on Android sucks. It pales in comparison to what the iPhone gives you out of the box. This is the #1 thing I miss about having an iPhone. Syncing music is kludgy at best. 3rd party apps attempt to make things better, but I've had no luck with them. I tried DoubleTwist and it didn't work very well with iTunes playlists. MarkSpace's Missing Sync for Android seems to be the best - I will probably buy that to better manage my music on the Droid. The one good thing about the Droid is that someone can send me a zip file of music files and I can unzip them and play them in file order - without having to deal with iTunes. The headset clicker only works to pause and play the music player. I miss the double and triple click of the iPhone. But a cool thing that does work is that 3rd party apps will sometimes have clicker support (for example, you can pause music in Pandora with the headset clicker). There is a app called Droid shuffle that makes the clicker work about 80% of the time and even adds double/triple click support, but sometimes the service just craps out and then no amount of clicking controls your music. On the iPod/iPhone it worked flawlessly. And finally, there's no gapless playback on the Droid. The iPod itself lacked this feature for a long time. But this is 2010 and ALL music players should be able to handle this. I know I'm being picky about this but there's nothing more annoying than hearing a gap between songs that are suppposed to be seamless.
- Can't view animated gifs This is an annoyance with the Android web browser. The developers insist it has something to do with the low amount of memory available to the program. I still think it's a cop out since again, this is something my TREO did back in the 90s. :)
Cons
And, here are the Cons...
I totally dig Android and the Droid itself. I still think I will look at other phones, including the forthcoming iPhone. But I won't be considering a new phone until next January, so who knows what new features will be introduced then! I still think that Palm's WebOS could have been a huge winner. And RIM is not counting itself out yet, with its new OS. So if anything, I'm excited to see what comes out next!