SHOULD YOU SWITCH TO ANDROID FROM IPHONE?
So, should you switch to Android from iPhone? The question perplexed me initially while making the decision but I switched to Android from iPhone and today, I am a proud owner of an Android Phone (2.2 Froyo Edition OS) and very happy since my switch to Android. Having used the iPhone as well, I feel, Android offers you, in terms of capability, as much sky as you can cover, only limited by power of your wings (phone hardware).
Android OS is derived from the open source Linux OS and is custom tailored by Google to suit touch screen smart mobile phones.
Switch To Android Reason #1: Better Customizations
The five android screens are completely customizable and you have more freedom than iPhone towards their customization. See below a screenshot of 4 of the 5 home screens which you can configure with different widgets and application shortcuts. You can also see, in the last screen on the right, that Android handles notifications passively which spares you the trouble to “OK” all notifications which is present in iPhone. You can press, hold and drag down the status bar on the top to expand it which carries different notifications.
Above, you can see the different application widgets and shortcuts placed on various screens. To place a widget or shortcut on a screen, just “press and hold” your finger on an empty space anywhere on the screen and you will get a popup menu from which you can make your selection. There are many many apps available on the Android market for different purposes, some free & some paid, which you can download by browsing to “Market” (“Settings –> Market”) and then installing your app. Once you switch to Android, operating it will become second nature.
Switch To Android Reason #2: Android Apps Freedom
Android Market is full of good apps, mostly free, that you can utilize without any of the shenanigans usually present on the Apple App Store. Below, you can see screenshots of Android Market and its three major sections (apps, games and “my apps”). Once you install apps, you can use the apps and, later on, easily uninstall from “my apps” menu if you need to. Only difference with Apple App Store is that Android Market needs to become little more organized and more secure (Apple scrutinizes each app before putting it on App Store) which is being covered now by Google.
Switch To Android Reason #3: Email, Contacts & Documents Sync
Android supports completely automatic email, contacts and Google Docs syncing with your Google Apps account. If you happen to lose your Android phone, you simply need to enter your Google account details into a new one can make it totally usable like the previous one. You will also be able to edit and save your Google Docs (cloud computing) documents online and everything is completely encrypted. To view Google Docs documents, install the “Documents To Go” app.
With an iPhone, you can only sync with iTunes and that’s about it.
Below, you can see the synchronized email and contacts in first two screens, the android dialer in 3rd screen and a call in progress in 4th screen.
Switch To Android Reason #4: Voice Dial & Dictation Capability
On Android, you can use voice universally for dialing and dictating emails and text messages and pretty much everything else which is very unlike iPhone where you can only use voice commands in a limited manner only to call a contact or adjust your music settings.
Switch To Android Reason #5: Much Faster Web Browsing on Android
In a recent study by a 3rd party software company called Blaze, Google’s Android loaded web pages MUCH faster than Apple’s iPhone, after testing on 45,000 real websites. Android 2.3 was found to be 52 percent faster than iPhone 4.3 and we aren’t even talking about the latest Android Platform (3.0 Honeycomb).
Switch To Android Reason #6: Free Turn-by-Turn GPS Navigation
Google’s free turn-by-turn GPS application is yet to make it to iPhone, and there isn’t anything free and as good for the iPhone although iPhone does have some free google maps inbuilt. The Google Maps navigation is built into Android and is free and completely outshines anything similar on iPhone.
Switch To Android Reason #7: Android Games & Music Catching Up
Android still lags a little in the multimedia experience provided by iTunes on Apple iPhone but it’s catching up very fast with iTunes and there are already ports of all famous games available on the Android App Market.
There are also some very good music apps (Winamp, Songbird, Audiogalaxy, MixZing etc.) available so you would never miss the iPhone music experience unless until you are a phone solely solely for music.
As of 2011, USB tethering and WiFi HotSpot features are present in iPhone 4.3 as well as the Android Phones.
Summary
In short, Android is open source, very progressive and more reliable for an overall end user experience. iPhone 4.3 is also good but proprietary and doesn’t provide much value beyond music and iTunes, whereas you can use Android for secure communication and business applications as well, apart from the vast array of other features it provides.
The best thing is that you can get a Good Android Phone for one-third the price of an iPhone (I recommend Dell XCD35, also called San Francisco ZTE Blade in UK, which has a 480×800 screen resolution) for similar hardware. You may also like to look at features of android phones such as Google Nexus and Acer Metal.
I hope, by now, you see good reasons to switch to Android from iPhone. You may like to read more about good android apps to have and about taking screen captures of your Android phone.
Did you like this article? Please support us by Sharing it: