I have an iPhone 4 and my girlfriend has a Blackberry (work) and a Desire S (personal).
The Blackberry is simply an awful device. It's like using a phone from the dark ages.
The iPhone might not have every feature or every trick, but what it DOES have just works, works intuitively and doesn't require a degree to make it work.
The Android looks quite nice, but I'm not used to the layout enough to know if I like it.
The open source, everything allowed bit is meaningless to me. If I had an Android, I'd have the same (equivalent) apps on it and use it in the same way for the same things. I just don't get that argument.
Probably the only things I miss on the iPhone are being able to Bluetooth images/videos to other devices, and the lack of a memory card slot. Most other gripes (not complaints, just gripes really) look like they'll be sorted in iOS5.
But too early to tell whether I like/prefer/dislike/hate/love Android yet.
IMHO, the biggest difference between Android and iPhones is that the latter was marketed as a lifestyle product, while the former is marketed for technology savvy customers. But at the end of the day, both are quite similar in what they can and cannot do.
iPhones are alright, Android phones are alright, Blackberries are going the way of the dinosaur from what I've seen recently.
The nice thing about iPhone is if you use other Apple devices the whole ecosystem operates in a very slick way, so long as you like the Apple way of doing things.
The nice thing about Android is you get more freedom to make the phone work the way you want, and you get a large choice of phones.
I can understand the appeal of the iPhone for Mac users but I think the HTC Desire is a better phone than the iPhone 4. I use a Mac for 90% of my computing now but I still prefer Android phones.
biggest problem with the iphone is the ui is something from last century
true you get something very similar on android once you open the applications menu but the desktop itself is miles ahead
Nah, that goes for everybody using their phone for more than making phone calls. If you stand somewhere in public fondling your touchscreen you'll look like an idiot no matter what brand of phone you're using.
And they're now trying to shoehorn in all the more intuitive features from Android, while retaining their over-simplified (or 'elegant' if you're an Apple fanboy) UI, and the thing is starting to look a bit un-intuitive and unwieldy.
TBH though Apple have made a lot of money out of seemingly 'elegant' interfaces that were in actual fact just lacking features or stupid.
I think if Google fix their Market, and manage to control some of the fragmentation issues they're having with different devices and developers, they are likely to steal the majority of the phone market away from Apple over the next year or two. Android phones are already outselling iPhones something like three to one.
I have a Blackberry Bold 9780 and would recommend it over the Torch because due to the Torch's touch screen the slide-out keypad is smaller and not as easy to use as the Bold 9780's. Other than that I guess they're pretty much the same.
We have 3 phones, $20/month. I don't know how people with multiple phones, especially when everyone has a smartphones, can afford it. 3 smart phones for us would run $180/month!
The UK has one of the cheapest phone markets in the world. I pay £35pm for an iPhone 4 (which was £40 upfront) with 1200 mins / unlimited texts / 750MB data for 18 months.
I'm guessing a similar plan in the US would be ~$70+ and even then it would have lower limits.
Yup, I'm talking more than one phone. For me, I need a phone for myself, wifey, and oldest daughter. Wifey and I would like iPhones. I have only 2 services available, cheapest is $99 Family plan for 700 minutes and unlimited text. Add 3rd phone for $10. The first 2 phones are iPhones, so there is $30 each for data. $170.
smart phones aren't " smart " anymore and it annoys me, i bought another nokia n97 sealed in the box for 45 euro today, deal or what ??
suck it iphone 3g/3gs owners...
( my previous one lost its menu button after a long night of drinking... Strangely the seemingly weak screen never broke, no real issues to report and doesn't drink your Data like other OS's do; seriously.... why do you think service providers are giving such good deals ?? )
It's strange, because the only thing I can think of that Android can do better than iOS is get viruses. From the official Android marketplace nonetheless. Everything else iOS just shitstomps.
Also, sweet.. Flash games.. When there's thousands of fantastic apps on the App Store, without the battery sucking, ram hogging, CPU thrashing cluster**** that is Flash (like FFS. It makes an i7 with a decent AMD card sound like a ****ing Airbus is ready to take off!)
I guess you have a point there. Flash is evil and shouldn't be used at all, and my phone's constantly downloading viruses MADE BY GOOGLE INC. THEMSELVES...
I contemplate what you said while I read news, keep up to date on facebook and twitter and check my calendar all on my phone's homescreen, thanks to widgets. Perhaps I go out on a small journey with my free, preinstalled ready to use turn-by-turn navigation.
And even while driving, i can use all of my phones functions hands free, simply by talking to it. And should I use my laptop while out, I might simply tether my phone's 3g over wifi to it, so I can be online with a real PC should my phone not suffice.
But still, I suppose the iPhone is by far the superior product, that shitstomps all the features it shares, and that are not available on the android market (which has 200.000 apps atm, out of which 57% are free of charge, as opposed to the humungous amount of 300.000 apps on the iPhone appstore, out of which 28% are free...)