Due to a particularly heated discussion in the comments of the latest article on 24 Ways written by the lovely Sarah Parmenter (link bait all done now, yeah?), and hearing of a particularly awe-inspiring brand new app for the iPhone that goes by the name of Word Lens, it’s sparked me to write about this highly debatable topic.
I’ve been an avid Android fanboy since I first got earshot of it back in 2009. I follow technology news blogs such as Engadget and Gizmodo (which is basically just a 10-minutes-later Engadget recycler) and was constantly in love with how they looked, how they worked, and most importantly – how they were considered to be better than the iPhone.
Let’s cut to the chase here on why I became one of these snobby “I don’t want an iPhone” Android-lover guys. I’m a geek at heart. A true geek. The kind of geek who loved finding out how hackers could hack, who had an unhealthy interest in how programs actually became programs (yes, programs, not apps) and the languages they were written in. The kind of guy who would spend hours upon hours reading about pointless, mundane topics that would serve little to no purpose in life other than being able to say that you know about them instead of studying for my exams or writing up my coursework.
Those kinds of geeks like the best of the best. When the iPhone came out, it wasn’t the best of the best. It did what it was supposed to do, in a very fancy, sexy manner. But it wasn’t the best specification of phone on the market. This is why it wasn’t good enough for me. I’m probably coming across as being a little bit pretentious here, and I guess that’s the one of the points of this article. A lot of the people out there who are still using an Android phone are not using it for the same reasons they might initially have obtained one for.
iPhones up to the 3Gs were of a lower spec (examples to illustrate:- screen resolution, screen quality, processor speed, RAM availability, storage expansion, camera quality), weren’t open, were proprietary. This now is no longer the case. Look at the iPhone 4; it has the best screen resolution on the market, one of the best cameras on the market (and a front-facing camera thrown in), the most user-friendly and consistent UI on the market, the largest app inventory on the market, the most supported web browser on the market… The list could go on. The point I’m trying to make is possibly something Apple already mentioned when they released the damn thing (granted they need to crawl out of their behinds slightly on the ‘bigging ones’ self up’-ness) – “This changes everything. Again.” Because it does! There’s no denying it. What has Android got on the iPhone now? Seriously?
Okay, maybe I’m getting a little carried away with myself. I know Android still has a few one-ups on the iPhone, for things that the iPhone simply will never have, like a full Google Maps suite (by that I mean the fancy-pants turn-by-turn Navigation, I love it), Google Mail and Account sync (it works perfectly for me, since I’m a 6-year-strong everything-Google lover), and of course the thing that every programmer loves – openness.
However, seeing as I never program (and despite having the desire to, I probably never will do either due to wanting to become a master of one trade, not of many), this whole openness thing Google are playing on doesn’t really inspire me to stick with ‘em.
By the time I come to upgrade (March 2012), there’ll undoubtably have been another iPhone been released, and a multitude of swanky new Android devices that’ll have tickled my fancy. But unless Android steps up the game and starts to provide a much more consistent framework in the system menus and inner workings across their entire suite of apps (like Apple has managed to maintain oh-so-well with their strict app building rules and SDKs), then I’ll be moving away from the Android gang. Google Mail and Accounts sync is a small sacrifice to make when I use my mobile phone for pretty much everything else, every day of the year, wherever I am. Apple does it right – simple as, mate.
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