KTChong said ... I am weighting between getting an iPhone and an Android phone in the U.S. I am looking for opinions and experiences of previous iPhone users who switched over to Android.
1. Why did you switch? I still have my iphone, I get to use several phones due to a piece of my job being evaluating them for my company. I have the Nexus One, HTC HD2 and I also have a Droid. One thing that could take me away from my iPhone is the Verizon network. I'm sick of dropping calls on AT&T's network and so are many of our users. I have two Senior Execs who have dropped iPhones for the Droid due to this issue.
2. Are you glad that you switched, or do you regret it? Now, I haven't completely switched, since I still have the iPhone and the Nexus. To be honest I'm pretty much torn between the two phones.
3. What are the advantages of iPhone over Android? The advantages include the users interface and the keyboard. The touch screen also seems to be better overall, it react better to touch. The biggest advantage is the onscreen keyboard it just works so much better. I'm not sure if it is the fact that it has multitouch, or what, but I can type much faster on the iPhone and my typing is more correct more of the time. I can get ahead of the Droid easily and also the nexus one if I try to type quickly. I make more typing mistakes on the android phones.
4. What are the advantages of Android over iPhone? With the nexus one its the feel and build of the phone. I don't think the Droid has an advantage over the iPhone although its probably the 3rd best smartphone on the market, with the Nexus being 2 and the iPhone is still number 1. The flexibility of android with configuration is a big advantage with Android, as is multitasking. I had to jailbreak my iphone to get those advantages and with that the iPhone then ends up with some of Android other problem. Force Closes. I've had more forced closes on the Droid Eris than on the Droid, and more on the Droid than the Nexus one, but they all crap out much more than a Jailbroken iPhone and a stock iPhone almost never craps out. So I still prefer the iPhone, but Android is new and is much further along in its evolution than the iPhone was one year out from release. Android will close the gap I believe. Exchange email and calendaring is also integrated much better on the iPhone. The out of the box Exchange connectivity on Android is really bad, you either need HTCs Sense UI on top, or a 3rd party email client like Moxier or Touchdown, to even get close. You also can't do remote wipe if you are a corporate type without Moxier or Touchdown on Android, the iPhone provides this out of the box.
5. How would you recommend an iPhone vs. an Android phone to other people? If you are a techie, then you will probably like Android better. it has more controllable features, also if you don't like AT&T, you don't have a choice, you need to go to Android. Another option for a techie would be to jailbreak your iPhone, lots of things to tweak after doing that. However, if you are a normal user the best phone with the most features is still an iPhone.
Now, if they put multitouch on the Nexus One throughout, including the keyboard, and they make the keyboard work as well as the iPhone... put full exchange activesync integration on board...fix the fact that most entry boxes (like the area to enter a email text) are little boxes and don't utilize the full screen, then you might get me switching fully to a Nexus One.
If AT&T doesn't fix their network soon (which I doubt), I might just switch when the Nexus One on Verizon comes out and live with the Android issues until Google, HTC or a custom ROM gets them all fixed!
It's going to be an interesting next year in the Mobile space!
