Will the Google Droid Phone Kill the Iphone?

Until the conundrum of full interoperability can be fully solved on handhelds, I don't think so. If you want everything to "work" seamlessly together than you have to go with the fully integrated (Closed) architecture of the iPhone. If you're a sophisticated technologist who likes to tinker who your phone to get it to work (small market slice), then Google may make it in the nearer term.

Other dynamic here is that the big carriers (T, VZ, Voda, etc) don't want to have a single software company become dominant. They want a very fragmented market so they can remain more in the driver's seat about how the intelligence in their network is used. If the Droid OS and apps become too big, they can start breaking up the carriers relevance and make them like today's DSL/broadband carriers - a dumb pipe - like they did with search. Google is just another big bad company looking to dominant like it does in search. People tend to forget we pay for "free" use of Goog search in every product we buy and think they're "different".

Nokia has been trying to break into the apps/software space and buying and buying to do so. Time will tell. They have the wireless market heft globally that no one else does to be the long term winner if they can figure it out.
 
Slightly diff topic- but how do people feel about Google's connectivity vs. Apples?

Meaning, if you had to choose one platform primarily because you felt like you wanted to be the most engaged, and connected technology wise whether it be for work or smart phone apps, or for any other items you use in your daily life- would you choose google or apple?

I ask this because after 13 yrs I just ditched my yahoo account for a gmail one- for this 'connectivity' reason. I am not saying I made the correct choice- but just curious what others here think.
 
i finally got an iphone, and i like it enough. some things are very, very useful.

however, i won't be gettign another one. the integration with itunes is the reason. itunes software really pisses me off. it does not detect duplicates well and if you ever decide to switch to another player (for mp3's) you have to go and find every single mp4 (and it doesn't tell you) that you have bought and convert it into mp3.... and there are even more problems.

i guess for the "it just works" crowd, itunes is probably amazing. for someone who wants control of their data, itunes sucks donkey balls. i got a ps3 for christmas and trying to export my itunes library for import into the ps3 was a difficlut exercise.... and trust me, it wasn't sony's fault.
 
I don't know if the Google phone in this version will kill the iPhone, but I do believe that Android eventually will.

The main reason is that developers are not going to stand by expending millions of dollars on an app that Apple says, "No store for you!" It's too big of a risk with their backwards and draconian selection methods. Instead, they will develop for the rapidly expanding Android market, with no barriers to sell their wares. If Apple agrees to sell it, then great, if not, the developers couldn't give to fucks difference otherwise, because their product is selling in another market.
 
That's why you need people like this:

tom21.jpg


That have people skills and can talk to the engineers.
 
Palm, Palm, Palm, Palm, Palm.

I love watching the Google phone commercials touting all these new things that their phone platform does that Palm's webOS already does.

I do concur that having 2 or 3 or more viable platforms competing makes them all that much better. The new iphone is better because it had to get better because Pre runs multiple live time aps. Good. Let the iphone get better, and the Droid get better, the the Palm get better... etc....
 
Amen, competition is good. I have an HTC Hero, and the only thing I don't love about it is that EA Mobile hasn't seen fit to make Scrabble available on the android platform yet.
 
No, because they aren't the same product.

Apple has created the perfect product for people who want simple, easy to use, always works, little customization. My daughter could find and start Koi Pond at 18 months old. There aren't many people who could pick up an iPhone and not be able to operate it.

What you lose with that is the ability to customize, because customizing creates areas which are not fully controlled. The iPhone, unless its hacked, cannot be customized nearly as much as the Droid or other android phones. Android allows MUCH more flexibility.

You can screw up a Droid. You can download uncontrolled content which fucks it up. You can have multiple apps which are incompatible, you have apps with bugs, etc. But with that ability comes increased ability to make the phone exactly what you want, not what apple wants.

Basically, Apple will always have a large market share because they are great at what they do which is create a very easy to use, unfuckupable, phone. This is great for a large portion of people and this demand may diminish some as the younger, more computer savvy generation grows older, but it won't ever go away. The iPhone works seemlessly, quickly, and is easy to use.

Android offers much more flexibility and appeals to a completely separate user base - there is minimal overlap because people who want customization aren't going to be happy with the iPhone unless they hack it.

I think in a couple of years, you will see much better apps for Android than the iPhone, simply because of the open development and not having restrictions to meet the Apple standard. The standard is great at ensuring the application works seemlessly on the phone, but it is limiting. There will be growing pains with new apps because it has to work across various phones with different versions of the OS and there isn't a centralized, controlled app review like Apple has.

Basically, the iPhone and Android phones fill different needs and appeal to different people. After having my Droid for a little over a month, I am easily bored with my wife's iPhone. You can't do much with it. She likes her iPhone because she wants something easy to use and that works. Customization is not important to her. I tweak settings and test out all sorts of different apps to customize my Droid all the time. I like testing things out and trying things and even emailing developers with bugs and suggestions for improvement. Other people don't want that.

Eventually, I think the success of Android and its applications due to the open platform will require Apple to make some changes; however, they are an innovative company so I don't think that will be a problem. The iPhone will continue to evolve and remain competitive, if not remain as the dominant leader.
 
One thing that will hamper development on the Android OS unless it is changed....you can't download apps to your SD card. They have to go to the onboard memory, and there isn't a lot of it. They are doing this to combat piracy, but they are, IMO, shooting themselves in the foot.
 
It has 512 Mb of on board ROM, part of which is utilized by the OS. I've been reading up on it, and it looks like it will hold about 70 apps at the current time. I fear that as better apps are developed, they will chew up more memory. Songs aren't an issue, because you can store these to your SD Card. It will take up to 16 Gb card, which can hold a shitload of songs. You can also put your custom ringtones (MP3 or .WAV) on the SD card, so that's all good too.
 
I have a ton of apps...they typically run from between 50KB to 1MB. Some are larger, i.e., Handcent SMS is 2.65MB, but the vast majority of them seem to be 300-800 KB.

So even if you averaged 1MB per app, you could have well over a hundred to two hundred. That's a lot of apps. Plus, only the core application needs to be installed on the internal memory, so developers can design the app to use storage on the SD card.

I think the biggest concern is that there are large games on the iPhone that are up to a 100MB, which basically wouldn't work due to storage limitations on an Android phone. If the game is designed correctly, alot of the graphics and sounds good be stored on the SD card, minimizing the impact on internal memory. I don't know how it works specifically, but I would imagine a launcher and a key, core component could remain on the phone, while the entire rest of the application could go on the SD card.

It is still a limitation, although it shouldn't affect 95% of people. By the time it is likely to be an issue in the future I'm guessing it will be time to get a new phone anyways.

For anyone looking to get an iPhone or an Android phone, I'd break it down like this.

Simple, easy to use, straightforward, smooth interface/experience, just work so I don't have to think about it - go iPhone

Buttonpusher, customization, not as smooth an experience, more technical, options, not hasslefree, I don't mind small issues and enjoy the experience of tinkering/modifying - Android (Droid or Nexus1)

My wife's iPhone is smooth and works seemlessly. It bores me because it seems very limiting. I love messing around with the Droid and customizing, trying out new applications, giving feedback to developers, etc) The downside is it isn't nearly as smooth and it seems to lag compared to the iPhone. Hopefully updates will continue to resolve these types of issues.

Much different experiences and it really depends on the personality of the person who is going to use the phone, i.e., iphone for the wife, Droid for me.
 
Android doesn't have most of the features that make linux awesome, but neither did the early ISPs. How many of you can imagine viewing the internet through the narrow window of AOL these days? The point is that Android shows people who did not know about linux what it can do, which then allows them to use real distributions.
 
An SD card (actually a micro SD card for these phones) is a little chip looking thing that you slide into a slot in the phone. It is just storage. The cool thing about the android phones is that after you plug them into your computer with a USB cable, you can just 'mount SD Card' and your PC sees it just like it's another harddrive...very easy to drag and drop songs to it from your PC. The music player on the phone will find them as long as you put them in a folder called 'Music' on the card.
 
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