If there’s one thing that’s nice about Apple’s cable it’s that it’s the same cable used on any Apple device for the last 10 years or so. If you’ve bought more than one ipod, ipad, or iphone over the years you probably have spares around. My wife and I had 2 different blackberry models with 2 different cables required, which is particularly stupid. My android devices requre their own cables. 6 Apple devices, same cable.
I’ve used a Blackberry (Tour), an Android (HTC Eris), and an iPhone (4). The android was good but there’s nothing it did that I wish the iphone could do. Plus I could never bother to get all my itunes purchases playable on the android or blackberry, so I always had to have an ipod around and the iphone relieves me of having to do that. I loved typing on the blackberry and the camera was astonishingly good but the trackball sucked.
I have an HTC Droid Incredible, and I highly recommend it. It boggles my mind that iphone users can’t do things as simple as change their battery or insert a microSD card, and iphone app programmers are restricted by what types of apps Apple will allow them to make.
The iphone does have more apps available, but I can count on one hand the number of iphone apps that I wish ran on android that don’t. (And I say that as someone who loves playing games).
On the other hand, I don’t own a mac, so maybe there’s some sort of cool iphone/mac integration thing that I don’t know about. And my taste in apps isn’t your taste in apps, so there’s that to consider.
Far as I can tell, if you can’t live without iTunes, you’re gonna need an iPhone. Personally, I’m fairly happy with access to Amazon’s MP3 selection, and I listen to more audiobooks than music anyway, so Audible’s Android app works perfectly for me.
And there is some stuff for the iPhone you just won’t get for the Android, mostly purely due to market share. But so far as I can tell none of it’s integral.
And iPhone doesn’t have Tasker. Tasker is a tweaker’s dream.
Blackberries are the dinosaur of smart phones. You can expect that the company will be purchased by Apple or an Android competitor any time now. If you want to buy the last one and find that your support runs out, go ahead.
I am boggled by the idea of worrying about virus protection for my phone. We all have things we’re boggled by.
But yes, if you’re the type of user that requires your phone to accept a microSD card, you should go with an Android phone. (Look, I’ll be honest, I don’t even really know what a microSD card is or why you would want to insert one in your phone, so I’m definitely not the target market here.)
Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I was attacking iphone users.
A microSD card is a memory card you can stick in most (all?) android-based phones to increase the memory. So, for example, my phone has an 8GB harddrive, but I can add anywhere from 2 to 32 additional gigs to it by buying a microsd card and inserting it in a slot next to the battery. With an iphone, you can’t do that. You buy one with a specific harddrive size, and that’s all the memory you will ever have on the phone. And that’s fine for many users. My issue is that Apple has a tendency to be a control freak. They intentionally limit the things you can do with their products. (In addition to not being able to insert a memory card, you also can’t buy a new battery unless you go to an apple store and let them install it for you, and you can’t use apps that weren’t approved by Apple).
I have an iPhone because I am on AT&T and the last time I researched it, the Android options on AT&T suck. I am on AT&T because I require a GSM phone because I occasionally am out of the country on business.
There are a few Android phones that don’t have MicroSD card slots…the Nexus 1 and Nexus S, for example (which is a shame, because they are the only phones that run vanilla Android, ie the pure OS that google releases without any of the manufacturer or carrier add-ons I talked about earlier.)
And technically it’s not a harddrive in the phone, it’s solid state memory, generally just called the ‘internal memory’.
And it is possible to buy a third-party iPhone battery and install it yourself…I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are really good at taking apart and putting back together small electronics…though it looks like from some youtube videos I’ve seen, it’s about ten times easier on the iPhone 4 than it was on the original, 3G, and 3GS.
AT&T used to (well, I guess still does) have the worst Android selection, but it does have a few good ones now. I think the Motorola Atrix is generally considered the best one they have. The Samsung Galaxy S II should be released soon, and (in theory) Samsung fixed a lot of the issues that plagued the first Galaxy S line (the Samsing Infuse might be good, I don’t recall hearing much about it one way or the other). And I want to say HTC recently released a pretty good phone for AT&T, too.
Yeah, my AT&T-using coworker came in to work today minus her old Blackberry and with a new HTC Inspire. That thing is big! She’s having a bit of an issue adjusting to it from her tiny BBerry.
Like I said upthread, I’ve been using my iPhone 4 (32 GB model) a lot for just over a year, and I haven’t seen any problems with the battery life. I suspect I’ll get a new model before it becomes an issue.
Slight nitpick, the Nexus One does have a MicroSD slot. I currently have 32 GB of music, TV, and movies loaded onto mine.
If you like to tinker and aren’t a complete Apple or ITunes devotee, I’d strongly recommended getting an Android phone. The ability to customize the phone, from different widgets to completely different roms, just makes it the perfect phone for me. (Also, I completely agree with Bosstone that Taskeris a tweaker’s wet dream).
I’m going to avoid the “which is better” part of this, but a few technical points:
As a cell phone designer, internal non-volatile memory tends to refer to the onboard flash parts - typically raw NAND, managed NAND, or eMMC these days. The micro SD card is considered external, or removable.
[QUOTE=hajario]
I have an iPhone because I am on AT&T and the last time I researched it, the Android options on AT&T suck. I am on AT&T because I require a GSM phone because I occasionally am out of the country on business.
[/QUOTE]
Many Verizon products are considered world phones, and have a SIM card slot to support GSM when international. Do you carry the same SIM card when you travel, or do you get a local one?
-D/a
The same card. I don’t have to do a thing. I just turn on the phone when I get off of the airplane and it works. It is a lot more expensive though. I think that there is a way to get a local SIM card a get cheaper service.
When I purchased my G1 I was on T Mobile. However our family changes to AT&T. When we made the switch I found an “unlock” code on the internet, slipped in the AT&T sim card and everything worked. YMMV, but it can be done.
Yes. It’s all tied to your google account, and you can use that google account on any number of devices and use all the apps you’ve paid for, just the one time, on all those devices.
Any thoughts on a windows 7 phone? I just picked up a Samsung Focus with WP7 and this thing is great. I love the live tiles and the integration with skydrive, zune and xbox live. It’s not for everyone, but I think it’s worth a look. I’ve been running the Mango RTM.
I have little faith in Microsoft’s ability/willingness to keep it alive long enough to matter. I imagine it’d be like a Zune phone, heavily marketed for a while and then left to die if (when) it fails to catch up to Android and iOS. That’s not to say it’s objectively a bad phone, but one whose lifespan seems decidedly… uncertain. It currently has less than 2% market share and I don’t see that increasing much unless miracles happen.
It doesn’t help that Microsoft broke backward compatibility with Windows Mobile and then arrived to the game late with a weak entrance. If WP7 had arrived before Android, it probably would’ve been a strong contender. It seems stillborn and unlikely to ever catch up, now. It helps that Nokia is producing them, but that still seems like a desperate, last-ditch effort that might end up drowning Nokia too.
I think they are going to stick this one out Xbox style. They are trying for the whole integration thing PC ,Console, phone. When Windows 8 comes out it’s going to be even more. For me this works great as my Live,Zune and PC and phone items are all under one profile. Easy access from most anywhere from Skydrive, all my music and shows available on phone, console and PC. Though like you said they have a tough climb to go.