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

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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

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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

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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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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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Google’s YouTube has deployed a significant update to their mobile site, m.youtube.com. As is typical with Google’s web apps, it works well and looks even better. Here’s their hit list:

It’s really fast. The user interface incorporates larger, more touch-friendly elements, making it easier to access videos on the go. It incorporates the features and functionality you’ve come to expect from the .com site, like search query suggestions, the options to create playlists, the ability to designate “favorite,” “like” or “unlike” videos directly from your device. As we make improvements to Youtube.com, you’ll see them quickly follow on our mobile site, unlike native apps which are not updated as frequently.

Sure, iPhone has a built-in YouTube app but it gets its updates only a few times a year when iOS gets updated. Theoretically, m.youtube.com will get updates any time YouTube feels like it, hopefully as fast as the main YouTube site. And hey, who doesn’t like options?

Video after the break.

YouTube significantly updates mobile site for iPhone 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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Google has remotely wiped two apps from Android users’ phones, which is something Apple has always had the ability to do with iOS, but has so far never done.

For all the crazy stories about App Store rejections, and the well-deserved criticism Apple faces for some of them, to their credit they’ve never reached out and yanked an app off a users’ phone. Amazon famously deleted Orwell books from Kindle libraries, and now Google has killed Android apps, and maybe one day Apple will find a reason to do likewise (malware comes to mind) but today, they’re the ones who haven’t.

Irony aside, Google’s been very open about the reasons for going all “power word kill” on the apps:

Recently, we became aware of two free applications built by a security researcher for research purposes. These applications intentionally misrepresented their purpose in order to encourage user downloads, but they were not designed to be used maliciously, and did not have permission to access private data — or system resources beyond permission.INTERNET. As the applications were practically useless, most users uninstalled the applications shortly after downloading them.

After the researcher voluntarily removed these applications from Android Market, we decided to exercise our remote application removal feature on the remaining installed copies to complete the cleanup.

The remote application removal feature is one of many security controls Android possesses to help protect users from malicious applications. In case of an emergency, a dangerous application could be removed from active circulation in a rapid and scalable manner to prevent further exposure to users. While we hope to not have to use it, we know that we have the capability to take swift action on behalf of users’ safety when needed.

Again, Apple may decide they have to do likewise one day, so it’s an important reminder to anyone with a managed app or content store — iPhone, Android, Kindle, maybe Palm someday as well.

Does this concern you, or do you trust platform providers to only use the big red ban button when it’s to protect you? Or do you think users should have the choice — a big scary prompt button saying “malicious app detected – delete now/cancel at own risk”?

[Android Developers Blog via Android Central]

Google remote kills 2 Android apps from user phones is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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If you’re in the United States of America and have been waiting on a Google Voice invite, wait no longer — Google has just opened up the service to everyone! (They’ve even got the nifty infographic above to show you how happy they are about it).

If you’re not in the US, yeah, sorry, sux0rs for you. Like Google Navigation, they’ll probably start rolling it out, slowly, to a few places, one day, maybe. (Not that anyone is bitter).

If you’re a long time user or just signed up, let us know what you think of the Google Voice service — even if you’re limited to the Google web app (or Black Swan) on the iPhone.

Video after the break.

[Google Voice blog]

Google Voice now open to everyone (in the US) is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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iPhone 4 with its 960×640 retina display, easy-peasy FaceTime video calling, high quality 5 megapixel, back-illuminated camera that shoots 720p 30fps video, and the silky smoothness of iOS 4 convincing you to switch from Google’s Android to Apple’s newest handset? Worried about moving over your personal data like contacts, finding apps, getting used to the differences? Wondering where to get help?

Relax. You’re in the the right place. Follow along after the break for everything you need to know (more properly, everything the TiPb iPhone Forums have taught us) about switching from Android to iPhone 4 and iOS 4.

(And yes, we’ll have BlackBerry, webOS, and Windows Mobile switcher guides up later this week as well).

Android to iPhone – or there and back again

Maybe you used to have an iPhone but after several months the luster wore off and Google’s relentless march of new devices — Droid, Nexus One, Incredible, Evo 4G, Droid 2, Droid x… stop us any time! — got you itching to try life on the Android side, and now you’re back? Maybe the previous lack of multitasking made you wait until now to try iPhone for the first time? It doesn’t matter. The past is the past and this is about the future — your future with iPhone 4 and iOS 4. This is about getting you from Android to 100mph on the iPhone as fast as possible.

Moving over contacts, calendars, and email

Here’s the good news: if you’re using Android chances are you’re using Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts for your personal information, and those all work really well on the iPhone. You can set them up either as an Exchange account (which uses Google Sync’s ActiveSync license) to push everything straight from the mothership to your iPhone.

Since iOS 4 can handle multiple ActiveSync accounts, that’s the way we recommend you go. Just tap the Settings icon on the Home Screen, tap Mail, Contacts, and Calendars, choose Exchange, and enter your credentials. Google even has a help page [link] if you’re not sure just what exactly to put where.

About the only things you’ll miss — and we miss them too — is a more Gmail-like mail app. iPhone Mail is a great IMAP client but Gmail does things their own way, with threads and labels and stars. You’ll get threads, but the other two just aren’t there.

If it bothers you enough, you can load up gmail.com right in the Safari web browser. Google makes the best web apps in the business and they work great in Safari (which shares the same WebKit root as Google’s own Chrome). Once you’ve logged in to Gmail, Safari will ask you to cache a few megs of mail on your iPhone — HTML5 and SQLite power! — and then you’re good to go.

On the off chance you don’t like ActiveSync you can hit the handy Gmail button instead in Mail Settings and go the IMAP route. If you don’t even use Gmail, you can setup MobileMe (Apple’s expensive push service), Exchange, or pretty much any POP3 or IMAP service you have via the Other button.

What to do about Google Voice and Google Navigation

YouTube, Google-powered Maps, and Google search are built right into the iPhone. Enjoy. Google Voice and Google Navigation… those are harder to replace.

If you’re not in the US, you probably don’t have to worry about Google Voice since it’s not international yet, and Google Navigation is just starting to spread so you may not have to worry about that either. If you are in the US and are a big Google Voice and Google Navigation user, here’s where things get sticky — Apple hasn’t allowed Google Voice into the App Store and Google hasn’t made Google Navigation for the iPhone yet.

It’s like when mom and dad fight and the kids suffer, right? There’s a couple alternatives you can check out for each, though none are ideal — and most aren’t free.

For Google Voice you can use Google’s own web app. It’s pretty good, though obviously more limited than a native app would be. There are also 3rd party Google Voice web apps like Black Swan and rival services like Line2.

For Google Navigation, you have the previously mentioned, though much more limited Google Maps built in. It lacks turn by turn and voice directions but is free and useful in a pinch. There are a variety of cheap and/or crowd-sourced navigation apps as well. The cheap ones are a mixed bag. The crowd-sourced ones make us worry that Stephen Colbert’s viewers will one day move the Empire State Building to the Cleve just for lulz (joking!), but they’re worth checking out. Motion X GPS Drive is $0.99 right now, for example [iTunes]. If you prefer to navigate with the big boys, you can also find everything from TeleNav’s online maps in AT&T and Rogers Navigator to NAVIGON’s on-board maps in MobileNavigator, to TomTom which owns their own maps. They’re all great — but they come at a price.

And in iOS 4, navigation, VoIP, and — yes — streaming music Pandora or Slacker-style can all multitask away blissfully in the background.

Finding other apps (and games).

Sure Apple doesn’t allow endless keyboards, task killers, and pinup girls into the App Store, but there are 200,000 apps anyway and almost certainly any big ticket ones you’ve come to rely on in the Android Market are there, ready and waiting for download. There are also tons of games, from the casual farmers to full-on 3D shooters. TiPb reviews several a week and we’ve got a whole iPhone Apps and Games Forum ready to help you out as well.

Root meet Jailbreak

Forget the words root and ROM. Remember the words Jailbreak and Cydia. Okay, iPhone 4 probably won’t be Jailbroken (root jail broken open to allow side-loading of unsigned apps — if you don’t know what that means, skip this section) on launch day but it probably will eventually, maybe even soon. If you’re a diehard tweaker and customizer, you’ll want to keep your eyes peeled to our Jailbreak coverage, and more importantly — our Jailbreak Help Forum, and Jailbreak Apps, Games, and Themes Forum.

Say farewell to fracture

Seriously, you don’t have to worry much if at all about versions and hardware compatibility any more. With very few exception, iPhone apps past, present, and future will just work on your iPhone 4. Sure the screen is bigger but it’s exactly 4 times bigger at the same physical size so existing (pre-iOS 4) apps will look the same and new (post iOS 4) apps will, frankly, blow your eyeballs out the back of your head.

Apple is all about user experience and they’re doing a lot of abstraction behind the scenes to make sure things look great in front of them. Enjoy.

Say hello to iTunes

A mixed blessing if ever there was one, iTunes runs okay on Mac, kludgy on Windows, but is the local sync client required to activate your iPhone 4 and to transfer large media and document files from your computer to your phone.

You can do a lot of things OTA (over the air), including syncing all your personal data via ActiveSync (including Google Sync) or MobileMe, download apps, and buy or rent iTunes music, TV shows, movies, podcasts, etc. (20MB or under over 3G, any size over Wi-Fi). You can find apps that let you access your Google Docs, DropBox, Box.net, and other online storage. You can even convert and stream content on the fly with apps like AirSharing [iTunes]. But at some point, be it to install a software update like iOS 4.1 (probably due this fall) or backup your data, you’re going to need to plug in to iTunes. So 2007, we know. If it’s any consolation, Apple should release iTunes.com at some point…

Say WTH to interruptive notifications and lack of widgets

For all the huge usability advantages iOS 4 has over Android 2.2 — and make no mistake they really are huge — notifications and widgets are sorely lacking.

You get one notification popup at a time that you have to view or close before you can resume what you were doing (or about to do) and once you close it — or another notification pops up on top of it — it’s gone forever.

Likewise, aside from the orientation lock and music controls in the fast app switcher UI, there’s not widgets. None for the lock screen, none for the home screen.

Hopefully Apple will fix these omissions in a future update. (Because we know Google’s planning on fixing the usability.)

More Android to iPhone help and information

If you haven’t already, check out our complete iOS 4 feature walkthrough. There’s an incredible amount of stuff in iOS 4 and you can save yourself some serious time cribbing off of us.

If you need help, or have a story to share, check out TiPb’s iPhone forum — we’ve got a special switching from Android to iPhone 4 thread going just for you!

And if we forgot anything or just plain got something wrong, let us know and we’ll add it or fix it.

Switching from Android to iPhone 4? Here’s what you need to know is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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The entire world is drunk on the World Cup fever. Google also joins the World Cup fever and has tweaked its search result for the FIFA world cup. If you are using Google search on your iPhone, simply search “world cup” and Google will bring you the schedule for the upcoming matches.

You can also use other search terms to get more information for a particular group or team.

To search for information of a specific group, just type in “group fifa”. Say, you are looking for schedule or results of Group C, just search “group c fifa” and you’re presented with the information directly.

Google also allows you to search for a particular team. Simply key in “fifa england“. Google instantly brings you the latest result, upcoming matches and the overall points in its group.

Other than using Google to search for world cup information, you can also install the ESPN 2010 World Cup App on your iPhone to keep informed about the World Cup.

Enjoy the World Cup! If you find any other search terms that brings you more interesting results, please leave comment and share with us.

Google used their Android 2.2 Froyo launch today to bring the fight squarely to Apple and Steve Jobs, saying in essence they created Android because they feared a future where one man (Steve Jobs) and one company (Apple) controlled the mobile space.

Now I’m not going to call that cake a lie (because it’s technically a chilled desert this time), but let’s be clear — Google created Android because they feared any future where any company — be it Apple, Microsoft, or some unforeseen upstart to lock them out of their cash-cow, advertising. (FYI – That’s why Microsoft built Bing and why Apple is making iAds: so that one company — Google — doesn’t control online advertising).

That’s smart business. But to claim any form of benevolence or greater-than-thou community spirit is disingenuous-to-insulting. Google, like Apple or Adobe is as open as suits them and as proprietary as their revenue generation demands. As much as Apple controls the iPhone, as much as Adobe owns Flash, Google’s crown jewel of advertising is theirs and theirs alone. AdWords isn’t open source.

So they can make fun of Apple curating the App Store, or that at any one time any of a dozen high-end Androids can perform certain tasks well, or that they can put Flash on a phone but not Silverlight or ActiveX, or poke at iTunes not yet being cloud-based. But they can’t and don’t talk about the Android Market’s enormous selection of keyboards, fess up to the battery problems as a platform issue, come to grips with the inconsistent user experience, deal with the reality that is recent devices have unclear and fragmented OS paths, and acknowledge those users burned severely by the still immature cloud who want local solution options as well.

Google pushed out a lot of tech this week. A scary, wonderful, crazy, beautiful amount of tech I don’t think we’ve seen in such volume in such a short time before. It will be challenge enough for them to realize most of it, much less all of it. It’s just plain gutsy.

Even gutsier was poking Apple before the much better spoken Steve Jobs takes the much bigger stage at WWDC 2010 to announce the much more attention getting 4th generation iPhone.

[Android Central]

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