I decided a couple months ago that I was going to finally take the plunge and get a smart phone. I used them a long time ago when I worked at Microsoft on their Windows CE device. But it was big and didn’t have a lot of features that I cared about back then, so never bought one. Then the popularity of the iPhone caught my attention. But since I have a computer everywhere I go, I figured I didn’t really need one. But more recently, the GPS enabled applications started getting press, android started getting popular, friends started getting them, and I noticed people were making money on apps so I decided I needed one.
But which platform should I choose? At first I thought that since I use a lot of Google products, I should go with Android. But iPhone gets high ratings, is more mature, has more apps and I know more people that have them. I heard that iPhone is tied to iTunes so I downloaded iTunes and gave it a spin. Unfortunately it couldn’t play most of my music since I have mostly wma format music. That reminded me of the reasons I like Windows, you can find software to run anything on it for a lower cost. And I expect Android to be more like Windows.
So after all my reading and testing I came up with the following criteria for people to make their own decision:
Choose the iPhone if:
- you like apple
- you like macs
- you like itunes
- you don’t use computer’s much
- you just want simplicity
- you don’t mind spending a little more
Choose the Android if:
- you like windows
- you like google
- you like gmail
- you like flash
- you like widgets
- you like to customize things
- you want speed (4G only on android right now)
I compared a lot of other criteria, screen size, resolution, battery life, etc. But the above criteria I think are the most important. I got Verizon’s Samsung Charge Android and it’s great, but I’ll bet I would have liked the iPhone as well.
