I’ll preface this by saying before this review, I’ve hardly laid hands on an Android device, let alone considered throwing my iPhone aside to completely delve into the OS and see if I could actually survive without my iPhone.  In my time with an Android device, the short answer would be that Android would be a perfectly passable everyday phone.  But would I make the switch and ditch my iPhone 4? Hit the jump to find out as well as see tons of videos and a gallery chock full of comparison pics!

Coming to the decision to give Android a try was the easy part.  Then came the tricky part, picking an actual Android device.  With the iPhone it’s simple, the best model is typically the newest model, and with Apple’s current product cycle, there’s only 1 a year to choose from.  Along with that, in the US you have one carrier choice, AT&T.  (Unless of course you want to unlock and use an iPhone on T-Mobile sans 3G.)  I decided the easiest solution would be to stick to AT&T and check out their Android selection.  This proved to be an easier decision on AT&T opposed to other carriers such as Verizon, which carries an abundance of Android powered devices.  My choices were between the HTC Aria and the Samsung Captivate.  Both of which run Android OS version 2.1.  I’ve never been a huge fan of HTC hardware, so I went with the Captivate, and I’m glad I did.

Hardware

YouTube Link

The most obvious thing about a phone, and the first thing you notice is the physical design.  Both of these phones are built extremely well.  When comparing specifically the iPhone 4 and the Captivate, both feel solid in your hand.  The back of the Captivate is a brushed metal with glossy bands on the top and the bottom while the iPhone 4 is a solid slab of glass on the back.  To me, the back of the iPhone 4 may look better, but in everyday use, I somehow feel more comfortable setting the Captivate down on a bare surface naked and not worrying whether or not it’s going to scratch.  One of my only peeves with Apple products are hairline scratches.  The plastic backs of the iPhone 3G and 3GS held up well as far as the white version went.  The black version was a fingerprint magnet and you could see any tiny imperfection.  The iPhone 4 in black holds up better in my experience than the previous models as far as blemishes, but the fingerprints still madden me.  As far as feel, the iPhone 4 still feels more solid in my hand than the Captivate.

The Camera

Both phones sport a 5MP camera.  Neither have too many options.  I’m making this short because in all honesty, I didn’t see too much of a difference.  The iPhone 4 pictures appear to be a tiny bit warmer than the Captivate’s, but besides that and the lack of a flash on the Captivate, they were about even.  I find myself not using the flash on the iPhone 4 unless it’s extremely dark and I’m forced to.  It seems to make everything look washed out in my opinion, so I avoid it whenever I can.

Compatibility

When you use a smartphone, you really have to choose a phone that suits your needs.  What do you do everyday? What are you going to use the device for?  For me, I look for a solid e-mail app, an awesome calendar app, social networking support (and more importantly, the choices you have when it comes to networking applications).  After that comes entertainment value.  And before anything else comes system compatibility.

I remember back before the iPhone when I used Blackberrys and we had to keep a PC laying around solely so I could back up my Berrys and be able to upgrade to the latest leaked OS, as well as sync my content.  Eventually 3rd parties picked up the slack for RIM, but it still wasn’t the most ideal solution.  Eventually RIM came out with a Mac client, but it was too little too late in my opinion.

I was hoping this wouldn’t be the case with Android.  But alas, I could not find an easy way to get my contacts and media on the Captivate.  I eventually asked some trusty folks on Twitter.  Instead of taking several hard routes, I created a new Gmail address and imported my contacts to that address for wireless sync.  Workable but not the most convenient method.  For media, several people recommended DoubleTwist.  It got the job done, but it was somewhat maddening that I had to go through a few different processes just to get content onto the device.  There are also programs like Missing Sync that work well, but a $40 price tag just to have better sync with Mac is somewhat ridiculous.  I understand that several years ago Mac users were a niche group and less than 2% market share.  This is by no means the case anymore, so software manufacturers need to stop leaving out Mac users.  By now, we should have compatibility right out of the gate.

With my iPhone 4, I sync to iTunes and I’m done.  I’m also a MobileMe user so I’ve never had to worry about that content being lost when switching from iPhone to iPhone.  I also found no easy way to get my iCal events onto my Android device.  To me, if I wanted to use the phone in the way I intend, it almost forces you to use not only Gmail but GCal as well.  Since I am a Mac user, the iPhone 4 obviously wins hands down as far as compatibility goes.

Battery Life

We all know iPhones don’t have the best battery life in the world, and I’m not sure about other Android devices, but the Captivate battery life was a little disappointing to me.  I’m a pretty heavy user and receive a lot of e-mails (Rene is an e-mailing machine) and I found it hard to make it through a whole day.  My iPhone 3GS typically stayed on the charger while I was at work just for simplicity’s sake and so I didn’t have to worry about a dead battery, but my iPhone 4 seems to get much better battery life and I don’t worry about it quite as much.  With the Captivate, I found myself wishing I invested in a second charger to take to work and ended up carrying the cable back and forth after 2 days of it being dead by the time I left work for the day.  I’m sure part of that is thanks to the screen.  It’s a sacrifice you’ll have to make if you want 4” of AMOLED goodness I suppose.

Applications

YouTube Link

This is one area I enjoyed exploring.  The Android Marketplace really DOES have tons of apps.  No, they don’t have the same ridiculous number Apple has, but I disagree with Apple’s representation of apps.  When I look at the number of apps a platform has, I want to know how many “quality” apps that platform has.  Leave out all the junk and apps that should have never been approved in the first place, and I’d say the iTunes app store has less than 40,000 quality apps.

I was pleasantly surprised with the selection Android users have.  Any type of app I could possibly want, I have at least 3 choices or more, which in most situations are more than sufficient.  The only area I saw a pretty poor selection in was Twitter clients.  This is probably just me though.  I have more Twitter clients on my iPhone than you can shake a stick at.  And I switch between them – frequently.  I’m flaky when it comes to Twitter clients and I get bored. For any normal person, Android’s growing selection would accommodate most non-mutants just fine.

Now let’s talk native applications.  Google put a lot of thought into basic everyday apps like the phone and texting app.  I absolutely love how you can swipe left and right in your contacts to call or message someone.  That’s ingenious and a really quick way to interact with your contacts.  I’m not sure if these features are unique to Android OS 2.1 or not, but they’re pretty frak’n sweet.  Clicking on someone’s picture within their contact card also gives you additional ways you can interact with that person.  The message app is also very easy to use and overall, I really enjoyed the interface of all the core apps.  The only thing I really did not care for was all the trial and bloatware that comes pre-installed on the device.  I spent 30 minutes clearing out junk before I actually dug into the marketplace and loaded the phone up with things I actually wanted.  This reminds me of the shiver that runs down my spine when you boot up a new PC and see a desktop loaded with nothing but crap.  Hey, maybe Best Buy can start offering Android optimization services as another form of highway robbery. (You can thank me later for the idea Best Buy, just know I’ll be expecting my royalty check every month.)

Once all the bloatware was thrown into a fiery hole of despair, you are left with a 4” canvas of AMOLED goodness to tweak and customize until your heart’s content.  And that leads me to my main focus of this article…..

Android OS vs iOS

YouTube Link

The OS is probably the single most important factor when choosing a phone.  In my experience, I’ve found things about Android that I really like, and then things that I really don’t like.

The main screen on Android OS is pretty much a blank canvas for you to do what you will with.  You can drop icons and reorder them just like you would on the iPhone, but you can also create widgets and customize until your heart’s content.  This is one area Apple really has fallen behind.  My biggest gripe with iOS is the lack of a decent notification system.  In that area, Android wins by a landslide.

The Android OS also gives you a few choices when it comes to keyboards.  I was pretty excited to get to try out Swype.  While it seems to be pretty quick, it still has its quirks.  No matter what keyboard I chose, I found myself lagging behind how quickly I can type on my iPhone.  But to be fair, I have been typing on an iPhone keyboard for over 3 years now.

Android offers a lot of cool gestures and shortcuts in general I wish Apple would take a closer look at.  But there’s also certain things that seem to be overdone.  It seemed I spent a good amount of time figuring out alerts and sounds, as well as configuring general settings.  It seemed a little overwhelming that I could pick alerts for every little thing.  The option is nice but the settings panel is a little confusing.  Sometimes I felt like I didn’t really know what settings I was changing, I had to experiment.  It reminded me somewhat of the 80 billion alerts Blackberry users are presented with.  To me, it was a little overkill.

Conclusion

All in all, I’m glad I decided to give Android a try.  My honest opinion is that it’s a platform that’s got a ridiculous amount of potential.  I think the ideas are all there, but the implementation isn’t quite there yet.  My iPhone does what I want it to do seamlessly (and I know being a Mac user gives me a leg up on PC users in some cases), but either way – the iPhone is so dead easy to use.  I’m basing my conclusions off of iOS 4.  If I were comparing previous releases of iOS to Android, that would be a much tougher decision.  Even though I’m sticking with my iPhone, Android is definitely a platform to keep a close eye on.  And here’s to hoping Apple will step up their game too when it comes to iOS 5 and beyond.  Even though I may be staying on the iPhone side of the fence, I now have a new respect for the platform as well as its users.  Just as I prefer my platform, I can see why tons of power users would choose Android as well.

Thanks to my boss who took tons of excellent hi-res pics for me since I’m too cheap to break down and finally get a DSLR. And a special thanks to @kasperapd as well for lending us some iPhone 4/Evo4G comparison shots (apparently that phone IS rarer than a unicorn!) And as always, we encourage you guys to chime with your comments and thoughts!

iPhone 4 vs Android Captivate is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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I’ve written several times that the “openness” argument made against Apple’s iPhone in general, and by Google against Apple in particular is overblown and often disingenuous. Sure, other smartphones might theoretically be more open at the platform level, but when it comes down to manufacturers and carriers, the end user-facing openness is just not there. We’ve already been through how manufacturers can lock down ROMs, carriers can lock out side-loading and add bloat-ware, and Google themselves can remote kill apps. But we haven’t had real look at just how much of the “completely open” platforms are, you know, completely open.

Enter Robert Werlinger from sibling site PreCentral.net who is at OSCON 2010 and sat in for a talk by Aaron Williamson from the Software Freedom Law center on why open-source doesn’t always mean open on smartphones.

Just how proprietary are the implementations of Android? After examining what isn’t open source and why in contemporary Android phones (and on HTC G1), Williamson set out to see just how open he could make his phone while still maintaining phone functionality. After stripping all of the proprietary software with the exception of the modem firmware and audio routing software, he was left without: A camera, GPS, WIFI, Sensors, 3D , Bluetooth, Market. A surprising lack of functionality in an operating system that is presumably so “open”. Indeed, Android employs a similar licensing structure to MeeGo and Symbian: The Kernel is GPL and everything is Apache 2.0, allowing for proprietary modifications.

Bottom line, on a truly “open” Android device, you can’t even make a phone call. Eric Schmidt’s “completely open” is hyperbole when it comes to end users, even power end users. Robert sums it up nicely:

The biggest problem from an enthusiast standpoint is that folks like Cyanogen will continue to exist in a legal grey area, as members of the “open handset alliance” continue to perpetuate the myth that its platform has anything to do with openness.

Apple’s iOS is based on the open-source, BSD-licensed Mach kernel and network layers wrapped up in a completely proprietary UI and totally closed and controlled app platform. That has advantages and disadvantages and every user — from hax0r girl to soccer dad — will have to decide what better suits their needs.

Any company that thinks they can re-frame the discussion around false “openness” is in for a surprise, however, just as any user switching platforms over philosophy is going to get burned. That’s why philosophy be left out of the discussion and smartphone platforms and their backers compete with each other based on technology. In that arena, Google and their Android partners are catching up fast (even overtaking depending on who you asked). In that arena, Microsoft’s newly reborn, and proprietary Windows Phone 7 is just as interesting as Palm’s extremely open if not open-source, and newly acquired webOS, RIM’s ultra locked down, uber-secure BlackBerry as much competition as Nokia’s slowly opening Symbian.

Don’t believe me? Believe the FSF. Just like cake, “open smartphones” are a lie.

iPhone, Android, and why smartphone openness is a lie is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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HTC’s Eric Lin has responded in statistical fashion to Apple’s iPhone 4 press conference where Steve Jobs showed off a Droid Eris losing singnal when death-gripped:

“Approximately .016% of customers [have complained]. We have had very few complaints about signal or antenna problems on the Eris”.

Which could also just mean there hasn’t been the attention or scrutiny placed on signal strength attenuation in the past, and again it will be open season now with any number of YouTube videos popping up showing everything from the HTC Droid Eris to HTC Droid Incredible to HTC Nexus One succumbing to the death-grip, just like Apple demonstrated.

However, HTC does have the forethought to warn customers not to touch the spot over their antenna (see image, top).

[Pocket-Lint via Android Central, Daring Fireball, Engadget]

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As part of Apple’s iPhone 4 press conference today, CEO Steve Jobs took the opportunity to bring out a BlackBerry Bold 9700, HTC Droid Eric, and Samsung Omnia 2 and highlight each of those devices dropping from 4 to 1 or 0 bars as well.

Jobs also pointed out that the formulae used to calculate and display bars isn’t standardized and everyone works out for themselves how they’re going to do it. (As of iOS 4.0.1 Apple is now using AT&T’s recommended formulae).

Lastly, he pointed out that Apple’s highly visible black bar at the bottom left of the antenna array made the problem spot easier to find on iPhone 4.

[Slashgear, Android Central's response]

Steve Jobs: BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile have antenna problem too is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Phil from Android Central — whom I adore down to his robotic little socks — just loves to torture me by sending over links to stuff like Android-based iPad knock-offs that get a hands-on courtesy of one of his readers.

So what we’ve got here is a Chinese Android MID. It has four buttons — the home button on the front (like the iPad’s), menu and the volume rocker, and a power button.

It has a pair of speakers, one microphone, one microSD card slot, and one USB port.

The tablet has 1GB of internal storage. Not sure about RAM or ROM. It’s built on Android 1.6. the kernel version is 2.6.29-00236-g4f8dbbb-dirty, and the Build number is 1.7.2. It has no market, but it has an “Apps Store.”

Check out the link below for a photo gallery. Go on, I dare you.

(Hopefully when real Android tablets hit the market they’ll be a little more differentiated than this…)

[Android Central]

Android-based iPad knock-off gets hands-on is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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A bit of a roundup this afternoon as the cell phone inventor Martin Cooper, personal computer inventor Steve Wozniak, and advertising revolutionary Larry Page all give their opinions on iPhone vs. Android.

Martin Cooper went on CNN with this zinger:

“I think that the Android phones are catching up now, and the latest version of the Android phones are every bit as good, if not better, than the iPhone.”

Of course, the accuracy of statements about which is better are inversely proportional to their generality. Don’t tell us which, tell us why.

Apple’s Steve Wozniak on Korea Times offers a little of that:

“It’s difficult to find where things are (on Android phones). More and more, I feel like it is more like (Microsoft’s) Windows in which many different hardware vendors have installed different equipment on the same platform. The (Windows’) platform has to be very neutral and cannot be special. That’s the similar problem Android phones have,” he said.

“When you write an app for Android phones, there are so many platforms to consider. That’s the problem Microsoft was facing with its Windows years ago. People like Apple products because they are always predictable and work.”

Apple does a subset of features very well, but woe to you if you need something outside that subset. Google is currently doing as much as they can, even if all of it isn’t polished yet. Both are moving towards the same goal, just taking very different paths.

As if to highlight that, Google’s Larry Page went so far as to accuse Steve Jobs of distorting reality when it came to Jobs’ charge that Google dropped the gauntlet by deciding to compete with Apple:

“We had been working on Android a very long time, with the notion of producing phones that are Internet-enabled and have good browsers and all that because that did not exist in the marketplace. I think that characterization of us entering after is not really reasonable.”

But it is reasonable to say Android was aimed squarely (pun intended) at Windows Mobile Standard before Apple launched the iPhone, and now look at who’s duking it out full-screen multitouch to full-screen multitouch.

We’ve just gotten a Nexus One running Android 2.2 Froyo here at TiPb HQ and we’re going to put it one-on-one with iPhone 4 and iOS 4. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see, let us know in the comments.

[CNN via Android Central, Korea Times, Fortune, via 9to5Mac]

iPhone vs Android: Cooper, Woz, and Page edition is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Apple iPhone 4 vs Android Evo 4G as expressed by potty-mouthed, poorly animated, digitally voiced, anthropomorphic stuffed animals? Ohecksyeah.

If you’re enjoying the 4th of July holiday in the US, or have a way to keep yourself safe at work outside the US, give these dueling videos a look and enjoy the good-natured iPhone and Android rivalry gone horribly wrong.

(And yeah, the guy who made them works at Best Buy mobile, never mentioned Best Buy in the videos, and still might get fired by the humorless big box — who should be falling all over themselves offering him a job in their creative department.)

Again, NSFW-L, play at your own risk… of amusement. After the break…

[Thanks Anthony!]

iPhone 4 vs Evo 4G – Monday fun videos (NSFW-L) is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a recent interview that they’re not in competition with Apple, even while taking a little shot at the company on whose board of directors he sat during the iPhone’s development.

We don’t have a plan to beat Apple, that’s not how we operate,” Schmidt says. “We’re trying to do something different than Apple and the good news is that Apple is making that very easy.”

“The difference between the Apple model and the Google model is easy to understand – they’re completely different. The Google model is completely open. You can basically take the software – it’s free – you can modify whatever you want, you can add any kind of app, you can build any kind of business model on top of it and you can add any kind of hardware. The Apple model is the inverse.”

Which is poppycock, really.

I’m as invested in Google’s services as I am Apple’s products, but come on. Completely open? Like any company, Google is open in what doesn’t make them money and proprietary as heck in what does. Android is open (under the Apache license, not GPL — which should give the philosophical FOSSies pause) but Google certainly hasn’t opened their search or AdWords platforms. Likewise Apple open sources WebKit (which Google uses for their browser) and OpenCL and Grand Central and FaceTime, but keeps their crown jewels equally closed. So enough already with the open stuff. You give me free services so you can mine my data, I sell my soul to you to use them. Deal. Just don’t insult my intelligence while doing it.

Much like the silly Google I/O comments, Google needs to compete on technology, not fake ideology. Android 2.2 sounds smoking hot and Android 3.0 might finally look as good as it works. Compete on that.

(Which, of course, is Google’s plan. It’s the plan they claim they don’t have — the one that had them go from a BlackBerry-esque prototype to an iPhone-like model almost immediately after Macworld 2007.)

They are opposites when it comes to go-to-market strategy, however. Apple is doing the (almost) bottom-to-top solution, lacking only their own carrier. Makes for great, integrated, singular vision. Google is partnering on hardware and implementation. Makes for excellent, diverse, flexible options.

We’re lucky to have both. We’d be luckier if Google just said so straight out.

[Telegraph.co.uk via Android Central]

UPDATE: Why is Android being Apache license important? Because it’s a corporate-centric license. A carrier could take Android and, under Apache, release a completely locked down phone if they want. It makes Android only as open as the company implementing it. That highlights another key difference between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android — Apple is targeting the customer. Google is targeting the carrier/manufacturer. Apple has given carriers as little say in the iPhone as possible. Google’s license gives the carrier complete say if they so choose. For the average consumer, that’s what makes the philosophical argument about “openness” realistically meaningless.

Also, any app is difficult given Google recently remote-killed 2 apps off users phones (something Apple has yet to do). Sure, you could side-load apps, except the Apache license allows AT&T to close that aspect of openness, doesn’t it?

Google CEO: We don’t have a plan to beat Apple is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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The iPhone 4 is packed with a bunch of new impressive features and is surely bound to be a game changer in the era of smartphones. Amongst all the goodies that iPhone 4 offers, I personally think that its gorgeous ‘Retina Display’ stands out. I’ve to admit that I’ve never seen another handset with a beautiful display having such immaculate precision that you can actually see individual pixels on the screen. Well done, Steve & Company – you never cease to surprise us!

So, what is the Retina Display all about? How good is it really? Let’s find out.

Why the name ‘Retina Display? 640 pixels on a 3.5 inch diagonal screen translates to 326 ppi (pixels per inch). The human eye (precisely the retina) is capable of distinguishing around 300 ppi and hence the choice of naming. 

First things first, there’s no other handset which offers a high resolution of 960×640. For several years, desktop computers worked on a resolution of 840×640 and it’s amazing that mobile displays are catching up fast with computers. Just in case you didn’t know, the iPhone 4 quadruples the number of pixels when compared to the iPhone 3GS. If that isn’t enough, the iPhone 4 offers a contrast ratio of 800:1. Talk about competition and the closest ones are two Android phones – Droid (265 ppi) and Nexus One (245 ppi). Not quiet close enough, I’d say. AMOLED or any other display – no other handset matches the picture quality of iPhone 4.

This lethal combination of high resolution and stark contrast ratio ensures that graphics and text look smooth with no visible pixelation, no matter what size they are. To help developers, Apple has introduced the ‘Retina Display’ capability in iOS SDK 4 simulator as well. The new simulator can render images and text at the resolution of both the existing iPhone/iPod touch (320×480) and the new iPhone 4 (640×960). Talk about being developer-friendly and Apple beats every other company hands down.

Wanna know the insider details of how Apple built the Retina Display? Check out these two pictures (Top: iPhone 3GS Bottom: iPhone 4).

You should be able to tell the difference. Not enough? You can further watch the video.

Whoever said that “A picture is worth a thousand words” was surely viewing the picture on the iPhone 4 Retina Display!

[Images and videos via Scobleizer]

It seems Google has slipped in some improvement for Google Docs document viewing via iPhone and iPad (and Android). For quite a while, the only documents that really played nice (at least for me), were spreadsheets. You can now go to docs.google.com on your Android or iOS device and view formats such as .xls, .pdf, .ppt, .doc, and .docx. I didn’t see anything about .pptx though, I guess we’ll have to wait and see on that one. If they’re supporting .docx, not supporting the newer Powerpoint format doesn’t really make sense to me.

The only glitch I seemed to find is that Word documents aren’t that pretty. Some of my old accounting Word attachments were formatted pretty bad. I checked them on the computer and it wasn’t the actual document. That may be something that needs a tweak on Google’s end.

Here’s a quick tip for iPhone users as well. What I actually do is open the Google Mobile App and click Google Docs, it’ll automatically route you to the docs.google.com page in Safari. So you can go that route as well.

Hit the jump for some screens!

[Google Mobile Blog via Android Central]

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