So while I was home for Christmas, my little brother was showing off his new Motorola Droid from Verizon. Initially, it was just a cool new gadget to me. A friend of mine had told me that the Droid was chunky, and he was definitely right. I personally preferred the form factor of my sister-in-law’s Droid Eris (minus the trackball.)
What was impressive about the Droid, and is now causing me a considerable amount of gadget envy, was the OS. The Droid runs Android OS 2.0. Now, visually speaking, it’s not as sleek as iPhone OS (even vs. iPhone 1.0). But when it comes to functionality, customizability, and expandability, iPhone 3.1 doesn’t seem like the clear winner it once was. I’ve tried other smartphones (played with BBs, WM Treo, and a Palm Treo, and had a Centro a for a while) and what I’ve always loved about the iPhone is the user experience. I know that sounds like an Apple sales pitch, but it’s true. It was the best mobile web browsing experience out there, until I saw Android.
Android works great for browsing the web, it only lacks multi-touch (which is very nice, but you can live without.) However, there is more to a smartphone than just web browsing. No one wants to be limited to just the basics of phone, MMS, email and web anymore. We want a computer that fits in our pocket. The iPhone has the App store and that’s great. There’s an app for that! But Android and Google is willing to do what Apple is not, give away the keys to the OS kingdom. Android is open-source and anyone can distribute applications for the phone from anywhere! How cool is that? For a developer like me, it means I could make all the apps I want on my phone and not have to pay anybody to use my own products. It also means that Android is a free world to play in and the sky is the limit for creativity (not an Apple imposed ceiling.)
This might sound like I’m an Apple-hater. To be honest, I’m a Mac-fanboy and I love(d) my iPhone 3g. I’m planning to buy the Mac tablet when its released and I’m actually writing on my MacBook Air. So what is it I envy? The openness of it all. I started learning how to program for the iPhone. I became proficient enough to write a simple app for version 2.0. See the post here. The problem was that to justify spending more time, I had to be willing to pay $1oo to join the Apple Developers program. More than that, I needed to keep slogging through Objective-C, which is a rather complex (and a tad outdated) language. It became too much of a hurdle to build the types of simple productivity apps I would want. Apparently, Android apps are written in Java and can be pushed to a phone using completely free software. Sweet!
So what it comes down to is that I want an Android phone. But what about the inevitable iPhone 2010? A huge unknown for me. I love(d) my 3G, but unless that next gen iPhone has something radically new, I think I wouldn’t miss it. And what are the offerings on AT&T, my current carrier? Sadly, nothing. Rumors are flying that a Motorola Android phone for AT&T will be announced at CES 2010 next week. It doesn’t sound like a bleeding edge device, but it would give me a taste for Android. Maybe I should just jump ship now and get a Droid, but then I might regret my choice in June.
SO, what is a tech junkie supposed to do? Apparently, suffer a little envy and bide his time…..
January 11th, 2010 at 1:10 PM
just to clear a point you made about multi-touch. it is fully supported on the Droid and Droid Eris.. the Eris has it built in due to the HTC Sense UI that comes pre-installed on the phone.. the Droid actually has the support completely built in but lacks the software capability.. but with a different browser app or a different picture app you can use multitouch.. and if that is not good enough for you.. you can root your phone and enable it..
January 11th, 2010 at 6:35 PM
You’re right that multi-touch is available in the HTC Sense UI, but for (I’m guessing) multiple reasons, that functionality is is intentionally disabled in the vanilla releases of Android. Though knowing the capability is possible is good, I still can’t use it without modifying the Android install (ie rooting the phone.) Not a deal breaker, but it’s not for everyone. If it were, they would make it available in the settings.
February 13th, 2010 at 12:27 PM
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