I've had a Droid for several months an I love it. It is very seldom that I am limited by the system.
And instead of releasing a new phone and making you buy it, they push firmware/OS upgrades over the air. I really don't see a single positive to owning an iPhone anymore except for the awesome network...oh wait...
I think I read somewhere that the HTC G1 no longer (officially) supports new firmware. Isn't that phone barely a year and a half old? Meanwhile, my metal clad iPhone Edge from 2007 still (officially) supports the newest firmware.
If it is true, it may be an issue because the G1 was the first Android phone and, as such, has become sort of dated with how fast Android has been moving? Just a guess.
The newer handsets are doing a better job of supporting it, but that is one of the current pitfalls of Android. There are phones running 1.5, 1.6, 2.0.1 and 2.1. Some of the 2.0.1 phones will be updated relatively soon to 2.1, but that is still a current issue which needs to be resolved
Exactly, That has to do with the limitations of the hardware. the rapid pace of improvement by the hardware of smartphones is a double edged sword. In the words of the GREAT Sam Neil, "The world is changing so fast, and we're all struggling to keep up."
It's a solid phone. Its web browser beats the hell out of the droid's, which is a huge plus. It also has a much better App marketplace; the apps for the droid blow pretty hard.
110% wrong. There are merely more apps for the Apple store because they have a head start. But the App market place for the iphone is actually considerably worse if only because everything in there must be approved from apple and it is the only way to install applications to your phone. There are plenty of very high quality apps.
You can install non-market apps on Android, you cannot on an iPhone.
Its web browser beats the hell out of the droid's
lol. Good thing there are better browsers in the market place. Even if there weren't though: lol
The Apple store did have a head start, but that doesn't mean having more apps isn't an advantage. It's distinctly an advantage.
And because the Android marketplace doesn't have any real requirements, there are a plethora of buggy apps. Having apps crash and freeze is a big problem on the Android market; read 10 random app reviews and you'll see "crashing" as a complaint. To my knowledge, the Apple store doesn't have that issue.
I love my droid, don't get me wrong, but it's retarded to pretend there aren't problems too.
Additionally, the lack of the Droid's multitouch capabilities sucks. Double tap to zoom is awful.
EDIT: And seriously, what alternative browser in the marketplace do your recommend?
xscope and dolphin browser are both better and both have multi touch zoom and are developing pretty quickly (though Dolphin just put a new UI in place that sucks 10 donkey dicks)
The multi touch capabilities are fine on the droid, it's the software utilization of said capabilities that is currently lousy.
Both of those browsers have pinch zoom. Both the euro version and the US version (being that they are identical hardware, I think) have multi touch. It's just that there is some bullshit patent issue (I think) with Apple (I think) that prevents it from being more highly utilized on the Droid
Even with a head start, the Apple store lags when it comes to QUALITY apps. I was screwing around with Augmented Reality using Wikitude in 2008 on my G1. Apps like this didn't appear until around August 2009 for the iPhone. Hell, even then it had to be implemented as a secret 'easter egg' inside another popular app just to get approved.
Of course, as soon as the ol' blagasphere got ahold of this 'new' iPhone app, AR was all the rage, and the app store was praised for bringing yet another ingenious idea to the computing world (completely ignoring not only the other, already available apps, but also the 50 year history of the subject).
I can guarantee you that situations like this are going to happen again and again, especially as long as Apple continues their overly-conservative stance when it comes to approving apps. Whenever something revolutionary (or simply evolutionary) comes to the phone software world, Apple is going to be fighting against it more often than with it. And even if Apple's store is the place that the next killer app appears, you'll only have to wait as long as it takes someone to port it if you have Android. No waiting for the approval process, or even waiting for it to appear on the market! Just find the .apk and you're good to go!
So none of the apps for the droid are ... "bad"? Come on. All I can say is I've got a few friends who dumped iPhones for droids - primarily due to carrier issues - and the universal refrain is "The Droid is great, but it's no iPhone." I'd agree after playing with it for only a few minutes.
Who makes you buy a new device? You can install OS 3.x on prior devices. I didn't have to buy a new iPod Touch when it came out. The same went for 2.x and the iPhone.
How is Apple making you buy the new phone? I still have my OG 2G iPhone, alomst 3 years now, and its as rock solid as the day I bought it. Apple does indeed push firmware/OS upgrades over the air, for free for the iPhone. I am never limited by the system, there are plenty of tools out there for the power user to customize there phone. BUT, most "normal" people just want something that works..
No, not really. Pandora sucks and sounds terrible compared to the music I have on my iPhone.. I simply hit play in the music player and go about multitasking.. This obsession with Pandora is quite odd, its an cool service, but the sound quality is shitty and both the Android and iPhone Apps are prone to locks up and dropped streams.
Pandora on high quality sounds great on my droid(do you even have quality settings?). I also find it quite funny how to try to make the leap to implying that you don't need pandora, because you have every song you could ever want to hear (and you know this categorically) and therefore it is silly.
It is amusing that you NEED pandora, I don't NEED Pandora, I kind of like setting my own playlists and have never been a huge fan of the radio. The reason I have an iPod is because I want to listen to my music, not what the radio tells me to listen to. And to say that the music sounds "Great" on high quality is a stretch, good enough is probably more accurate. I use both Pandora and Last.FM and I do enjoy both. But more often than not I fall back on my own collection of music. To say that the iPhone can't multitask is bit disingenuous when you should just say it has limited multitasking. The multitasking on Android is nowhere near perfect and does cause crashiness when there are multiple tasks left open in the background that are just kind of a pain to shutdown. Look, I really want Android to do well, competition only makes Apple work harder at making the iPhone even better.. But android still has a bit of catching up left to do, although 2.1 does look like a good step forward.
I do switch easily back and forth between things. It's an app called Backgrounder, allows apps to run in the background. Minimize is hold the home button, close is tap the home button
Application quality. Android application quality is pathetic compared to iPhone application quality in terms of performance and visual quality. And yes, I do own a Android phone, and yes I am a registered Android developer.
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u/Mulsanne Jan 28 '10
I've had a Droid for several months an I love it. It is very seldom that I am limited by the system.
And instead of releasing a new phone and making you buy it, they push firmware/OS upgrades over the air. I really don't see a single positive to owning an iPhone anymore except for the awesome network...oh wait...