• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

"Oh yeah, can your iphone do this?"

Droid_Duhs said:
... good that someone points out its all just a matter of perspective...
Click to expand...

I just want to clarify something. The notion that android is a more functional OS and accommodates greater utility of the phones resources, allowing for a more refined and personalized user experience isnt a matter of perspective. It is as fact as fact can be. Now whether that is appreciated by someone or in line with they are accustomed to, this is a matter of perspective.

That being said a person can use an android phone with as much simplicity and restriction as they use an iPhone. The only difference is that the restriction is optional and self imposed instead of forecefully imposed and discurtiously enforced by every firmware update.

As far as accessories, look at how long iphone has been around for. When android will have been around for even less then that all such indispensable doo-dads will be available.

Look how long it took iPhone to incorperate copy/paste and multitasking. People already forget it took many long awaited years to get to this point. Now look at the rate of maturity of android. You have one car driving at 30mph for 5 years and another driving at 100mph for 2 (btw these are just random-ish numbers for an analogy, no need to try to ascribe real life data or events to them). One may be "ahead" now (app store, accessories, and that's about it...) but this just a white wash of the real facts and rate of progress.
 
IndivisibleP said:
As far as accessories, look at how long iphone has been around for. When android will have been around for even less then that all such indispensable doo-dads will be available.
Click to expand...
Sorry to disagree. But it's not just that iphone has been around for so long, it's also because there are 4 of them... and they are all designed the same way. So manufacturing specialized compatible hardware stuffs is going to be must easier and less costly than manufacturing 4 for Sprint, and another 5 or 6 for Verizon, and however many for tmobile... etc.

So it's economically safe to say that we are not going to ever see a world of specialized compatible hardware hit Android in any way similar to that of the iphone.
 
CriticalCritic said:
Sorry to disagree. But it's not just that iphone has been around for so long, it's also because there are 4 of them... and they are all designed the same way. So manufacturing specialized compatible hardware stuffs is going to be must easier and less costly than manufacturing 4 for Sprint, and another 5 or 6 for Verizon, and however many for tmobile... etc.

So it's economically safe to say that we are not going to ever see a world of specialized compatible hardware hit Android in any way similar to that of the iphone.
Click to expand...

Hmm, that is a good point and I essentially have to agree. But I also think theres not that much difference, at least in principle, between the iphone and android phones in terms of accessory compatibility. I mean the proprietary port on an iphone has never changed, but then again the micro-usb port is also universal across all android phones, at least as far as I know (are there also mini-usb phones?). And we also see that the form factor of iphones does change over time, but at a much much slower rate (at least that was the trend from 3G to 3GS). But even still the cases, docks, case-chargers, etc. continue to have to be modified to accomodate the new form factors, so in principle at least, the difference is not that monumental.

The big difference though in practical life is that the variety of form factors in android hardware will, like you said, make them less easy targets for the variety of accessories seen with iphone. BUt then again I think the consumer demand for iphone propelled the accessory market a million times more than the continuity of form factor. If android phones reach a similar level of demand, there will be no scarcity of accessories, regardless of the variety and form factor. For a factory in china to adjust whatever shape they out put millions and millions of plastic or rubber curves is something I believe they stopped losing sleep over a long time ago. But we'll see. I think it is demand based, more than anything else.
 
Updates over the air instead of always having to hook up your phone to the computer for a program to update it.

Customizable launchers (Launcher Pro, ADW Launcher, etc...)

Customizable lock screens (Widget Locker, GoTo, etc...)

Choice of hardware (instead of just one phone, you have a choice between many.)
 
The biggest problem in comparing the iPhone to an Adroid phone is that there is only one iPhone, but many, many Android phones.

When I say there is one iPhone, I mean there is one model out at a time (not referring to older models)

The iPhone is a closed standard, and NOBODY else is able to play that game. Android is rather open, and anyone can play...so you will have MANY manufacturers making many different models using only the OS as the bond that ties them together.

We cannot speak about Android as absolutely as we can the iPhone. This is because there are so many different phones running Android, and only one iPhone (again, not referring to past generations, only current production models)

It is this very closed standard which makes these comparisons moot IMHO. Don't compare iPhone with Android...you can't. The word iPhone encompasses SOFTWARE and HARDWARE. The word Android only encompasses SOFTWARE.

You have to compare individual Android phones with the iPhone, not the entire Android family. That's not a fair comparison.
 
Droid_Duhs said:
tommy- he also mentioned the 1 platform vs multiple platforms that you ignored.
Click to expand...

okay I'll respond to that as well - sure, it's easier for developers to make an app that's only going to be used on one phone... but what about the consumer?

We want a choice of whether or not to have a keyboard, what screen size we want, what screen technology we want, etc.

I would much rather have a variety of different phones to choose from compared to one phone that apps look a little more polished on. But that's just my opinion. No one phone is a perfect fit for everyone. Maybe iphone is right up your alley, but not mine.
 
when only 'most of the apps' work on any one platform, though... how much choice do you have when handcent is buggy on your Evo vs a great app for the Incredible (that's an example, handcent doesn't necessarily work better on Evo than Incredible
 
If_Only_VZW_had_iPhones said:
when only 'most of the apps' work on any one platform, though... how much choice do you have when handcent is buggy on your Evo vs a great app for the Incredible (that's an example, handcent doesn't necessarily work better on Evo than Incredible
Click to expand...

You missed it on that one.
"most of the apps on any one platform" needs to be qualified by stating that the only reasons one will not work on another is that they are
1) made for an updated OS version and is not compatible with an outdated un-updated version of the OS.
2) the hardware is outdated and will run an app at substandard level (however, the iPhone has this problem)
3) the dev temporarily hasn't fully rounded out the app yet (a natural occurrence on an open platform, we get stuff faster but not in a "finalized" form.

So then we are just confronted with the #1 point that... Well first let me ask, can the original iPhone run all of the newest apps? Blah, doesn't matter, obsoletion is a natural part of technology, so it's not even worth an argument IMO.
 
CriticalCritic said:
So then we are just confronted with the #1 point that... Well first let me ask, can the original iPhone run all of the newest apps? Blah, doesn't matter, obsoletion is a natural part of technology, so it's not even worth an argument IMO.
Click to expand...

That is part of it though. People complain about the different versions of Android out there. Phones have 1.5 all the way up to 2.2 right now, but how many of them are new or current phones? Most of the current phones are running 2.1 or 2.2 and I can't think of too many apps out there that don't work on these two versions. If people are going to make comparisons and talk about a division in Android then they have to consider that the iPhone or any other smartphone faces the same division really. The first iPhone can't run many of the apps that are being developed for the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4 now. The Torch running Blackberries OS6 can run applications that a 8300 Curve running 4.5 could never attempt. It is the same problem. The chief difference is that Android is advancing faster than most other smartphones. Why people insist on marking this advancement as a negative, I'll never understand. It would probably have taken any other company 5 times longer to get to where Google has Android now.

BTW, to stay on topic:

-Offer free turn by turn navigation natively on the device.
-Expandable storage
-Flash
-Flash on Camera
-Physical keyboard on some devices
-WIDGETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
If_Only_VZW_had_iPhones said:
when only 'most of the apps' work on any one platform, though... how much choice do you have when handcent is buggy on your Evo vs a great app for the Incredible (that's an example, handcent doesn't necessarily work better on Evo than Incredible
Click to expand...

One thing I would like to point out is that no one would be advocating the iphone as a worthy competitor with androids functionality if we were talking about strictly un-jailbroken iphones. That simply is not possible. And as far as the point above, when we talk about an iphones capabilities (in the context of making it comparable to an android phone) we are inherently talking about doing it through Cydia.

Now if your contention is that multiple versions of the android OS are in circulation at one time and not all apps are supported, then I must bring to your attention that an un-ignorable portion (to say the least) of the words iphones users use jailbroken devices and frequently end up relying heavily on previous firmwares because they are either already j-breakable or are just more stable, or their particular generation is only j-breakable with that firmware, etc. This ends up making a more frayed and unsupported platform than Android presently is even with all its various stages.

If I have to choose between downloading a possibly unrefined app for my android phone and then easily deleting it a few minutes later if it doesnt run properly, not to mention not risking freezing or bricking my phone in the process
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom