I don’t want to derail my GQ thread into IMHO so i’ll post this here. I’ve been searching about on Google going through lists of ‘Top 10 Android apps you can’t get from Apple’ etc. etc. but they are all quite old and i’m pretty sure all the apps now have counterparts for the iPhone.
The Android store is growing rapidly but I think the iPhone store is generally regarded to be of better quality. Are there any great apps you can get on Android that the iPhone either can’t run or Apple have not allowed to be available?
does it matter? Really? I have a Droid Incredible, and the only concern I had was if I could get apps I wanted on it. I don’t give a shit if I can get them in the Android market but not in the Apple app store.
I saw an article about this recently. The gist was: not really. Or rather, the Android has some built in features and apps (such as the google navigation app) that are really cool and can’t be gotten (and in some cases can’t be reasonably duplicated) in the iTunes store. But as far as apps that don’t come preinstalled on the phone, no, the iTunes store (apparently) meets or exceeds anything in the Android market, especially in gaming.
It clearly doesn’t matter to you but it might to other people. I have an old iPhone and if there were really cool or useful apps on an Android phone that I can’t get I might think about switching when I decide to upgrade.
Not so much directly an app but a feature, but the ability to customize the way my phone looks is really cool. Here are just a few ways that some people have customized Android phones:
Unlike the iPhone, you don’t need to ‘jailbreak’ (called rooting on Android) to change icons or whatnot. You can also add “widgets” to the homescreen (the clock, weather, wifi thing, the battery status in the lower left, and all those grey buttons on the second one are widgets.) They allow easy access to settings, information, etc…
Can you get old console game emulators on the iPhone, such as for SNES, Genesis and NES? I even believe there is a Sega Dreamcast emulator in the works for Android phones. Are those available on the iPhone?
EasyMoney. It helps to keep track of my expenses; I can set a budget for different category per month, and see how much I have spent on each category. Does the iPhone has anything like this?
This is the crux of my query, the apps available on a smartphone are a strong consideration when looking to upgrade. The approval method Apple employs ensures a reasonably high quality level but you run the risk of them acting as a nanny-state and blocking access to things you would like to use ‘in your own best interests’.
I’m not sure what Google Sky does but the iPhone has a nifty app called Star Walk that uses GPS, compass and the accelerometer so you point the phone at the stars and it identifies them for you, you can also step through time to see how the sky will change.
I don’t think the iPhone has any emulators for old consoles, probably licencing issues but it does a wealth of fantastic games that are superior to the old console in every way excepting nostalgia value (which is only fun for a while I find).
Financial apps are thick on the ground, lots of financial planning/budgeting apps to choose from but I haven’t used any of them personally so I can’t comment on how good they are. I’m beyond the help of a mere app when it comes to money!
The level of customization is a big selling point for me on the Android, not even being able to change your SMS tone on the iPhone is beyond ridiculous. Some of those desktops look like the myspace pages of teenage girls but some of them are very cool.
From the other thread it sounds like things are settling down in Android OS development so holding off for a while might work out best, especially since the handsets using Android don’t really match up to the iPhone at the moment. Once the Android OS is ‘finalised’ and the handsets are stronger it will be the logical choice I think.
I’m not a big fan of emulators on touchscreen phones because of poor control issues (I kind of miss my old Blackjack II’s NES emulator since that had a thumbpad), but there’s a Commodore 64 emulator for iPhone.
There are several models of Android phones that have physical keyboards, which make them good for emulation.
And the emulators are right there in the marketplace! No need to root!
I even went so far as to get the game gripper, a little plastic overlay you place over your keyboard that has a real D-pad and buttons in the right spot. It makes it a lot easier to play NES games with it.
I’m an Android fanatic with a good friend who is an iPhone fanatic. We razz on each other all the time about this or that app that one of us can get on his phone but the other can’t.
But essentially, although there are a lot of neat apps that you can get on one of the phones that you can’t get on the other, there’s inevitably a moral equivalent to that app available on the other phone. They both have lots of neat stuff available on them.
