An Android user tries out the iPhone for a weekend

Overview

I've seen many posts about iPhone users switching to Android with an iPhone-OS mindset, but nearly none the other way.  As an Android user, surrounded by many iPhones, I have long been curious how the iPhone compares.  Is it legitimately a better device, as some of my friends would claim, than any Android phone?

So I decided to conduct an experiment. Last weekend, I borrowed a iPhone 3G and used it the entire weekend, never touching my Sprint HTC Hero. Yes, these are older devices, but all of the to-be-mentioned points apply to both newer Android phones (Droid, Evo, Nexus One, etc.) and the iPhone 3GS.

When judging the respective devices, I will only be considering how my personal usage is affected.  While I am more philosophically supportive of the more open Android, I will not consider this fact.  I will also not consider the phones from a development standpoint.  However, I make no claim to be a "typical user",

Quick note: The iPhone 3G is running iPhone OS 3.1 and the Hero is running Android 2.1 (Eclair).

Sprint HTC Hero and iPhone 3G

The Good

Phone responsiveness

The iPhone dominates in UI performance, experiencing significantly less lag than Android devices.  The most apparent example is in the browser; on Android, visible shudder occurs when scrolling through the page; on the iPhone, scrolling is extremely smooth.  As I used the iPhone, I was amazed at what I had been missing - the ability to easily read while slowly scrolling through the article.

Others have reported this issue on even the Nexus One. Amazingly, Apple solved a problem two years ago that all other phones (including the Evo, Incredible and even the Palm Pre) seem to have. If a phone was my only way of browsing the web, the iPhone would be the clear choice.

Superior market

Even though Android 1.6 brought a large update to the Android market, there is still a ways to go to match the iPhone:

• The iPhone has an update-all ability for all 3rd party apps
• Search results show # of reviews, allowing faster filtering
• The changing top 25 list makes discovering new apps somewhat more interesting.

My only complaint was the lack of Android's 24-hour refund policy; I found myself much less willing to purchase applications on the iPhone.  Oh and the 92 page iTunes agreement I had to agree to before accessing the store was.. amusing.

Call Quality

It might just be a problem with Sprint in Sunnyvale, but talking on the iPhone was significantly more clear than my own phone, especially when indoors.

Completeness of applications

I've only noticed a few iPhone applications that I want, but cannot have on Android.  The bigger advantage of the iPhone is that equivalent apps tend to be a bit more complete and better built.  For instance, the iPhone's Facebook app has more features and, most importantly, is not considered a 3rd-party application in regards to privacy settings (I actually can't see many of my friends' profiles with the Android app due to this issue).  The iPhone's New York Times app is also superior to Android's.

Android's Facebook app

More features on iPhone

Some better default applications

With some default applications, Apple just made better design decisions.  The most memorable is the calendar which shows a day's agenda underneath when selected (Android jumps to a new screen). Other examples: thousands comma-separation in the calculator, pin-dropping in Google maps, and top-level compose button in the email.

The Bad

Email

If smoothness is Android's weak spot, email, especially gmail, is the iPhone's.  The iPhone's mail app lacks conversations. Search seems to only look at download emails and refuses to inspect message bodies.  I found myself having to use Google's web app frequently.

The biggest problem though was the lack of notifications  Unlike Android where I can just look at the phone and know if I have new email (icon in notification bar + blinking LED), I needed to be on the home-screen to see on the iPhone.  Even then, the indicator (# of unread emails) was a poor substitute for someone like me who postpones reading many emails.  Yes, there is a vibrate on new email option, but I found this terribly annoying, especially when the iPhone was just sitting at my computer desk.

Android notification bar is visible globally. Email icon indicates new messages; notification menu tells how many.

iPhone email notification is only present on home screen. It only indicates number of unread messages; no "new message" indicator exists.

Overall, I felt a bit disconnected from the Internet when using the iPhone.

Task Switching
When I use my phone, I switch task a lot.  I'll jump from the browser to an RSS reader to Google Finance to Twitter to Gmail to My Tracks to whatever frequently.  On the iPhone, the only way to switch tasks is to go home and select a different app.  Due to both 3rd party apps being killed on exiting and also the unnecessarily close/open animations, switching programs on the iPhone is significantly slower.  I felt quite tied down by this  restriction.

Sadly, the iPhone lacks such a menu.

Customizability

Android offers theoretically more flexibility by allowing applications to leverage background processing and event setting.  An application can even replace the default dialer, homescreen, and input method.  But does this affect end-user experience? My answer is a yes.

The most obvious example is Swype a custom IME (keyboard) for Android where you swype words on a keyboard to write.  I have been using its beta for a long time and had forgotten what it was like to type on a keyboard.   After using the iPhone, I remembered: it kinda sucks.  It isn't that I'm that much faster with Swype (about 10%); it is just much more comfortable and far faster when only one hand is available.

I lost several other applications due to the lack of customization:  Timerrific (switch off ringer at certain times of day), Where's my Droid? (rings and locates phone when lost), and background RSS syncing come to mind.

Autorotation

In theory, this is a cool feature.  However, a decent amount of my phone usage occurs while lying on the side of my head on a couch or bed.  Auto-rotation causes the phone to flip into landscape mode, exactly what I don't want when my eyes are rotated 90 degrees above the horizontal.  For some inexplicable reason, there is no setting on the iPhone.  I found myself unable to use the phone in my preferred resting position.

Notification System
As mentioned earlier, the iPhone lacks Android's centralized notifications.  Notifications only occur via pop-ups, which I find annoying when I am doing something else on the phone. (I want to know when I get an sms; I might want to wait 30 seconds before I actually deal with it).

I want to know this, but did it need to block my view?

Linux Support

As a Linux user, I was hit hard in two places: setup and transferring audio.

Setup

After signing up to use the app store on the iPhone, I received an email confirmation:

 Please click the link below to verify your account, then sign in to the iTunes Store using your new Apple ID and the password you created when you set up your account.

https://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/verifyAccountEmail

Easy enough I thought.  But the link is not the expected click and be done.  Instead, I am told:

Well, I'm on a PC for sure.  But while I fit the "Windows Hardware" requirements, I miserably fail the "Windows Software" ones:

(Apple's labeling has always intrigued me: somehow every personal computer is a Windows one and their own line of personal computers are not "PCs").

iTunesSetup.exe failed miserably with Wine, so I had to reboot into an OS I hadn't used in months, spend 30 minutes downloading and installing a 90 MB file, just to gain access to a market on my phone.  Yes, it was only a one-time hit, but it was quite annoying.

Syncing:

Once a week I download podcasts, use audacity to speed them up by 60% and push them to my phone. On Android this is pretty easy, as one can just mount the sd card and do these operations automatically with scripts.

Sadly there is no way to mount the iPhone's media (other than its pictures).  On Kubuntu 9.10 (supposedly things work better on 10.04), there is seemingly no way to access the media (even iFuse failed for me). I imagine I could live with this once a week issue, but if I transferred media any more frequently, this would be a game-ender.

Cost

While the phones are compatible in base cost, phone service is more expensive on ATT than Sprint.  As an example, with the 450 minutes plan, Sprint is $75 and ATT is $92.  Not only is ATT's plan $400 pricier (over the contract), but it offers less: no unlimited texts or unlimited to any mobile phone minutes.

Summary
The iPhone certainly has its strengths.  With what it offers, it delivers the smoothest (though not necessarily best) mobile UI I have ever used.

However, I found that it didn't offer enough; its poor email, task switching notification system, customizability, auto-rotation, Linux integration, etc.did not make up for what it did better. Jail-breaking may fix a few of these issues, but I haven't been able to test non-vanilla devices.

When the time comes to get the next-generation of phones, I will be sticking with the Android platform.