So now I shall try my hand at reviewing something closer to my heart, or rather something closer to my left thigh as that is where i put my phone in all the time. So for those who do not know me, let me set things a bit more straight. This is going to be a review of the Android OS, and by OS it means that this is not a comparison between iOS and Android and WM7 and its PHONES but rather we are just talking about OS.
Why this distinction? This is because in the iOS, there are simply only a few phones using the iOS but in the case of Android, there are various phones with different specs. So I will try to focus more on the capabilities that I do know of in the Android system and touch less on what I am not entirely clear of. That being said, a comparison of Android and iOS and WM7 will definitely be present because there must always be a reference point. Its just like saying that there must be something bad, for there to exist something good... or you must know how to hate to know how to love, experience true sadness to really be happy all that kinda stuff.
I have been using my Android Nexus 1 phone for nearly 2 years already, and are looking forward to getting the Nexus Prime when it is out. Hence I would say I have pretty good experience with the OS as well as having the knowledge of other phones with the same OS so i do know some of its issues.
OK Enough of the rambling,
Andy says hi
Interface
Home Screens
So here is a picture of the stock homescreens of android as compared to its other friends
So why is this an issue? Basically the home screen is what you will see all the time when you want to utilize your phone, so this is one major issue that we should need to be aware of when you choose your OS as it affects the way you use the phone itself.
Home Screens
So here is a picture of the stock homescreens of android as compared to its other friends
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| WM7 Homescreen |
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| Android Home Screen |
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| iOS Home Screen |
So as can be seen on WM7, the home screen is filled with colorful boxes and the scrolling is entirely vertical. In the case of WM7 i am not sure if the main screen can actually be changed but the bright colors and size of the icons makes it easy to access and read out information. Note that they also have the semblance of widgets but i am not sure how usable they are as compared to android.
For the iOS, the usual statement people use is that it is like a large icon tray where we have icons after icons of all stuff you have on the phone. There is also folders that can help catagorize your icons and it seems like you can have limitless number of screens for all your icons although I think most people will have maybe 5 screens for icons and use folders for the rest. Note that it seems that for jailbroken phones, it is possible to also have the widgets functionality. The bottom row stays there all the time no matter which screen you switch to except the search screen if you scroll to the left.
For the android OS, this is where it gets a bit complicated. This is because depending on the phone you get, there are slight changes to the home screen that you get. The basic idea is still identical in that there are icons and widgets that you can put on the home screen. So being an android user this is where i can elaborate. From the widgets you can put on the home screen you can do many things. For example Blik Calender enables you to have a pictorial representation of your calender and the items you have to do on the home screen itself. Hence in terms of information that you can gather and place on your home screen, it is alot more then just icons. There are some widgets that are more redundant to me such as facebook widget that displays the latest post someone has but for a facebook that has tons of status updates people would find it easier to open the entire application instead. However the option is still there which is the main plus point of the android system.
There are also functional icons that you can place on the homescreen. By functional i mean the icons can directly do something. For example widgetsoid allows me to toggle my wifi, to toggle wifi tethering (i.e net sharing), to turn on my flash, to turn off my screen, or even to directly call someone. All these icons are methods of saving steps. Lets say I want to turn on my wifi in iOS, from what I know, the way the system is structured you at least need to have two steps to turn it of, one to go into the wifi options and another to off it. For android all you need is 1 button press and its done.
Note that for android, depending on which phone you buy, there will be slight differences in the home screen as HTC phones have HTC sense, motorola phones have motoblur, and Samsung has something quite similar looking to iOS home screen with additional widgets functionality. You will have cute things to do on the specific tailored made home screens such as to be able to scroll a full circle ie on the last homescreen page you can scroll one more time to go back to the first one. Or you can pinch to zoom out and see all the home screens at a single moment. You are also able to get your own homescreens such as launcherplus to further diversify and improve your home screen look.
This is one main difference that can help u make the choice between android or iOS.
Multitasking
Another issue i have heard about in the comparison of systems is its ability to multitask. Android is known to have full multitasking capabilities whilst they say that iOS has some kinda pseudo multitask. I have absolutely no clue about what WM7 has so I cannot really comment on this.
The difference between the multi tasking is that on the Android system the applications are able to function in the background. iOS multitasking seems to put the application in some kind of pause state i.e nothing else is moving and the application does not do anything. To be clear this does not apply to the music playing functionality and both systems can play music while simultaneously doing something else.
But taking a step back, for a phone that has so limited screen space, what is multi task really needed for that pseudo multitask cannot do. For all intents and purposes, iOS already has push notifications that allow some apps to inform you should anything has happened even without the app being active such as the whatsapp notifications. The only thing that I would figure there is a slight need for true multi task is if I have the sudden urge to search many sites at one time on my phone and all the sites can be loading while i am replying to a message. What more, there are actually some apps for androids that you cannot switch from without causing it to close. This is of course an issue of the developer itself but the fact remains that multi tasking abilities very much depends on whether the app developer knows how to make it work.
So to put it simply, android has multi tasking but apps make it seem like they do not have the function, whilst iOS doesnt have true multi tasking but their developers are able to make it seem like they have the function.
To be honest however, multi tasking should not really be the driving factor that determines whether you choose one OS or the other because I hardly see myself and any other lay person having the need for the function when all you can really see is one screen at a time anyway.
Notifications
Note that this is an issue only as far as iOS is still in the 4th iteration. Apparently with iOS5 the notification will be pretty similar to android's notification having a bar on the top of the screen.
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| Notification bar |
Currently the situation is that one is able to pull down the notification bar for android to read and see what has transpired in the phone. But when you are playing games, you cannot really reply in the first place unless you press on the message and switch to the message screen. So really the notification bar is just there to notify but its not really that functional nor does it add anything new when you compare iOS to android.
So this is how the bar looks like as it is being dragged down, so it basically just gives extra information on the status of the phone. It might be useful if you have an email while u have an sms while u have a facebook update while you are downloading something while you have a whatsapp message while you have another email on your gmail account.
So that is how much this should be a deciding factor between the OS.
I.E its not really a big deal especially since iOS will have the same thing and it might even be improved soon enough.
That's really all that i can think of with regards to the interface for now as the other functions are pretty similar across the board.
Usability
Reliance on computers
Now when we talk about usability we talk about how we bring out the full potential of the phones. One deciding factor that made me desire android more then iOS was because of the lack of need or reliance on itunes.
I am a person who doesnt see the need to compile everything together and keep syncing with my phone. The way i do this is rather by copy and pasting the whole chunk here and there like a normal file drag and drop and the advantage is that I don't need a computer to do all the syncing stuff, and also I can have my own independent library of music on two different devices. However its said that iOS might be moving away from its reliance on computers but i am not really sure what they mean by that.
So this is probably a question of whether you are willing to install itunes on your computer and do some handphone management stuff on the computer or you prefer both devices to stay relatively seperate. This is entirely a personal choice as there are android people who do have itunes if you didnt notice from the notification bar on top.
Since both OS can have itunes so the only time when this would have an impact on your decision is if you DO NOT want itunes, then you will be pushed towards the android camp.
Phone usability
As I said earlier in the introduction, android comes in many shapes and sizes literally. The rumored Nexus prime has been said to have anywhere between 4.3 to 4.5 screen size. Note that screen size doesnt necessarily mean phone size as there will be hardware buttons taken off to keep the phone size down according to the rumors of the next android update which is Ice Cream Sandwich.
Aside from that, android phones may also come with hardware keyboards, or even playing keyboards like the xperia play.
Applications
This is the point where iOS becomes a major contender for android and rightly so. WM7 is merely a very tiny player in this field but it would face similar problems to android as they cater to various phones.
iOS does have the highest repertoire of applications and I do believe that there are certain applications that are exclusive to iOS as android developers have not ported or came out with anything similar. Hence if you are looking for a phone for a specific app, be sure to do the research to see whether the market itself has the app in the first place because it is not guaranteed that every app on iOS will appear on Android and vice versa.
iOS takes the cake in this arena simply because they have a bigger game market as well as bigger number of apps in general.
Developers also tend towards iOS in the first place as it is simply that much more marketable and easier to develop. Here is a graph just because i am an engineer and statistics are important.
That being said, the basics apps are all over there and for android users you can get some of these apps for free, i.e angry birds is ad supported, or the other kinda free (if you know what i mean). For iphone users you have to jail break first in order to turn non-free games into free games risking your warranty and your phone to viruses and permanent destruction.
Flash
This is one main factor that android users always throw around and rightly so. In today's day we use our phone for mobile surfing pretty often and whats surfing without flash? Even though there is talk of the internet one day not needing flash, this is something that will take time to really come to fruition and I believe that in the next two years flash will still be pretty prevalent.
Flash is used for flash games and for flash videos or streaming. Note that NOT ALL videos can be played EVEN with flash and to my knowledge, many flash games are unplayable even with flash!
So you should probably ask yourself if this is a deciding factor based on whether you like to see videos on your phone as compared to on a computer. Youtube works fine on both iOS and androids for the uninformed and iOS also does have applications that emulate flash but they do have some issues.
Longevity
In the long run, BOTH these OSes seem to be able to hold on to their market share reasonably well and there is no worry that support will suddenly disappear for the OS like what happened to webOS. WM7 remains to be tested but till now I havent really found someone who fancied WM7 over the other two OSes.
However a special point to note is that iOS releases updates for their phones system yearly if i am not mistaken, while android has a faster cycle of releasing the stock OS updates. However, not all android phones will get the stock OS updates and although google has asked manufactures to ensure that all phones tries to get two OS updates before the end of their life cycle, they really have no control over this, Also even then, the updates will always come to stock android first and only be funneled to specific phones months later. So if you really want to keep up to date, you should consider stock android or researching the company and seeing how fast they take to bring up their own updates.
That being said, it is also fair to say that you wont die if you dont get your update. As far as gingerbread is, there is not really alot of new important additions that you must have or you feel very much cheated as compared to the earlier updates from eclair to froyo that included drastic performace updates. Just a update for those not aware is that the next iteration to ice cream sandwich will introduce the 4 main keys that we have on every android on the touch screen itself. This is the reason for the larger screen size as the hardware keys can be removed already. An advantage i can think about is that your effective screen size will become bigger and hence if you see shows on it you can actually have a bigger screen for your viewing pleasure. Same for playing games and the like. Doesn't Andy look tasty now?
Cost
Now on to cost. Basically all the OS are ABSOLUTELY FREE! You merely have to pay for your phone and it comes with a free OS to boot.
That being said, iphones have always hovered around the expensive range of about 1000 SGD for the phone alone.
Android phones however can be found in the ultra cheap range, all the way up to the more expensive then iphone range.
A word of advice though, if you really want to buy a android phone that lasts for 2 years i.e the lifespan of a normal mobile plan, you have to get a mid range and above android phone. Low range android phones have many problems of compatibility with apps and it might turn out to be a very frustrating experience for someone. For example you might want to play a game that requires multi touch only to realise that your phone only has a pseudo multi touch.... (Poor Nexxie 1). Fortunately Nexxie is already nearly 2 years old so a upgrade is at hand. But like i said, if you want a phone to last you the 2 years, you have to get a high end one. My Nexus 1 was almost iphone 3g price when I got it at at least it is still relevant today, but i seen people who bought just slightly cheaper android phones that are not very viable in the games department today. Hence only consider low end android phones if you just want to call and sms and do light internet surfing.
For other users that are deciding between iphone and android, dont expect to get a phone similar in ability to iphone without paying about the iphone range of pricing. Either way, at least android has a choice so you can pay the price you feel that it is worth anyway.
SUMMARY
Hence to summarize, the ratings are given in comparison to iOS and Android and my personal opinion.
Android
Interface : 4.5 (lost a 0.5 due to too many different types of interfacing)
Usability : 4 (Not entirely easy to use to those not tech savvy)
Applications : 4 (Fine applications, just need to be bigger)
Longevity : 4.5 (With google behind the driver seat and a huge market share, its not going anywhere)
Cost : 4.5 (Good choices in price range, you get what you paid for)
Overall : 4.3 (A very good OS, still has room to improve, as long as you researched and are sure what you want, you will not regret the decision)
Just for fun, based on what i know, this is what iOS will get
iOS
Interface : 4 (No Widgets for information)
Usability : 4.5 (Very easy to use with no stablity issues that i know of)
Applications : 4.5 (Many Many applications but still no flash)
Longevity : 4.5 (Apple is pretty rich now, even with a leadership change the fanbase is there)
Cost : 3.5 (There is only one price range and its not cheap)
Overall : 4.2 (Obviously the points were skewed so android will win, it is a android review after all, but tell me if my points were not true)
To end, please comment and tell me should i have made any mistakes as i follow the news of android and only slightly on the apple side.
Reliance on computers
Now when we talk about usability we talk about how we bring out the full potential of the phones. One deciding factor that made me desire android more then iOS was because of the lack of need or reliance on itunes.
I am a person who doesnt see the need to compile everything together and keep syncing with my phone. The way i do this is rather by copy and pasting the whole chunk here and there like a normal file drag and drop and the advantage is that I don't need a computer to do all the syncing stuff, and also I can have my own independent library of music on two different devices. However its said that iOS might be moving away from its reliance on computers but i am not really sure what they mean by that.
So this is probably a question of whether you are willing to install itunes on your computer and do some handphone management stuff on the computer or you prefer both devices to stay relatively seperate. This is entirely a personal choice as there are android people who do have itunes if you didnt notice from the notification bar on top.
Since both OS can have itunes so the only time when this would have an impact on your decision is if you DO NOT want itunes, then you will be pushed towards the android camp.
Phone usability
As I said earlier in the introduction, android comes in many shapes and sizes literally. The rumored Nexus prime has been said to have anywhere between 4.3 to 4.5 screen size. Note that screen size doesnt necessarily mean phone size as there will be hardware buttons taken off to keep the phone size down according to the rumors of the next android update which is Ice Cream Sandwich.
Aside from that, android phones may also come with hardware keyboards, or even playing keyboards like the xperia play.
So its all pretty attractive? Well idealistically it is. First of all the xperia play advertises itself as a phone that allows you to see the full screen while you play games as you dont need to use the on screen keyboard that is required on iphones or touch screen phones in general. However, I myself find the repertoire of games for xperia really lacking and a normal hardware keyboard can actually be key binded to give approximately the same experience. Either way this is just an issue of choice and at least android gives a bit of choice.
Another point about phone usability is that because of android homescreen and widgets, not everyone is able to utilize it to the fullest potential and you can often see android phones with nothing but icons aka iphonish look.
Stability
Now this one might be a bit of a issue for some, as android phones due to its many makes and models tend to have quite a few instances of failing and rebooting. There are also complications with many of its applications that can only be solved by always having the latest phone which is not cheap in the first place.
Issues range from video call problems to keyboard issues that sometimes might need time for a developer to fix properly. This is unlike the iOS obviously because they control the phone hardware itself.
Some other issues are like lag for games or complete unplayability. For example my phone runs angry birds fine but my little bro's mini x10 sony Ericsson lags by playing angry birds due to the lack of optimization on the developers part. (Playing on such a small screen is also quite painful to me)
Hence for people with some tech knowledge finding support and ways to solve this problem is possible, but for the layman buyers they might be saddened to know that not every game can be played by every phone.
This is the point where iOS becomes a major contender for android and rightly so. WM7 is merely a very tiny player in this field but it would face similar problems to android as they cater to various phones.
iOS does have the highest repertoire of applications and I do believe that there are certain applications that are exclusive to iOS as android developers have not ported or came out with anything similar. Hence if you are looking for a phone for a specific app, be sure to do the research to see whether the market itself has the app in the first place because it is not guaranteed that every app on iOS will appear on Android and vice versa.
iOS takes the cake in this arena simply because they have a bigger game market as well as bigger number of apps in general.
Developers also tend towards iOS in the first place as it is simply that much more marketable and easier to develop. Here is a graph just because i am an engineer and statistics are important.
Flash
This is one main factor that android users always throw around and rightly so. In today's day we use our phone for mobile surfing pretty often and whats surfing without flash? Even though there is talk of the internet one day not needing flash, this is something that will take time to really come to fruition and I believe that in the next two years flash will still be pretty prevalent.
Flash is used for flash games and for flash videos or streaming. Note that NOT ALL videos can be played EVEN with flash and to my knowledge, many flash games are unplayable even with flash!
So you should probably ask yourself if this is a deciding factor based on whether you like to see videos on your phone as compared to on a computer. Youtube works fine on both iOS and androids for the uninformed and iOS also does have applications that emulate flash but they do have some issues.
Longevity
In the long run, BOTH these OSes seem to be able to hold on to their market share reasonably well and there is no worry that support will suddenly disappear for the OS like what happened to webOS. WM7 remains to be tested but till now I havent really found someone who fancied WM7 over the other two OSes.
However a special point to note is that iOS releases updates for their phones system yearly if i am not mistaken, while android has a faster cycle of releasing the stock OS updates. However, not all android phones will get the stock OS updates and although google has asked manufactures to ensure that all phones tries to get two OS updates before the end of their life cycle, they really have no control over this, Also even then, the updates will always come to stock android first and only be funneled to specific phones months later. So if you really want to keep up to date, you should consider stock android or researching the company and seeing how fast they take to bring up their own updates.
That being said, it is also fair to say that you wont die if you dont get your update. As far as gingerbread is, there is not really alot of new important additions that you must have or you feel very much cheated as compared to the earlier updates from eclair to froyo that included drastic performace updates. Just a update for those not aware is that the next iteration to ice cream sandwich will introduce the 4 main keys that we have on every android on the touch screen itself. This is the reason for the larger screen size as the hardware keys can be removed already. An advantage i can think about is that your effective screen size will become bigger and hence if you see shows on it you can actually have a bigger screen for your viewing pleasure. Same for playing games and the like. Doesn't Andy look tasty now?
Heres a site with possible features of ICS. Click me for Ice Cream Sandwich
Cost
Now on to cost. Basically all the OS are ABSOLUTELY FREE! You merely have to pay for your phone and it comes with a free OS to boot.
That being said, iphones have always hovered around the expensive range of about 1000 SGD for the phone alone.
Android phones however can be found in the ultra cheap range, all the way up to the more expensive then iphone range.
A word of advice though, if you really want to buy a android phone that lasts for 2 years i.e the lifespan of a normal mobile plan, you have to get a mid range and above android phone. Low range android phones have many problems of compatibility with apps and it might turn out to be a very frustrating experience for someone. For example you might want to play a game that requires multi touch only to realise that your phone only has a pseudo multi touch.... (Poor Nexxie 1). Fortunately Nexxie is already nearly 2 years old so a upgrade is at hand. But like i said, if you want a phone to last you the 2 years, you have to get a high end one. My Nexus 1 was almost iphone 3g price when I got it at at least it is still relevant today, but i seen people who bought just slightly cheaper android phones that are not very viable in the games department today. Hence only consider low end android phones if you just want to call and sms and do light internet surfing.
For other users that are deciding between iphone and android, dont expect to get a phone similar in ability to iphone without paying about the iphone range of pricing. Either way, at least android has a choice so you can pay the price you feel that it is worth anyway.
SUMMARY
Hence to summarize, the ratings are given in comparison to iOS and Android and my personal opinion.
Android
Interface : 4.5 (lost a 0.5 due to too many different types of interfacing)
Usability : 4 (Not entirely easy to use to those not tech savvy)
Applications : 4 (Fine applications, just need to be bigger)
Longevity : 4.5 (With google behind the driver seat and a huge market share, its not going anywhere)
Cost : 4.5 (Good choices in price range, you get what you paid for)
Overall : 4.3 (A very good OS, still has room to improve, as long as you researched and are sure what you want, you will not regret the decision)
Just for fun, based on what i know, this is what iOS will get
iOS
Interface : 4 (No Widgets for information)
Usability : 4.5 (Very easy to use with no stablity issues that i know of)
Applications : 4.5 (Many Many applications but still no flash)
Longevity : 4.5 (Apple is pretty rich now, even with a leadership change the fanbase is there)
Cost : 3.5 (There is only one price range and its not cheap)
Overall : 4.2 (Obviously the points were skewed so android will win, it is a android review after all, but tell me if my points were not true)
To end, please comment and tell me should i have made any mistakes as i follow the news of android and only slightly on the apple side.
no mistake friend.. android is future!!
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