@Yossarian
If the beauty of Android is that you can choose from all sorts of apps (software) and multiple manufacturers (hardware), then my issues with Android should be valid Android issues. The carrier argument matters less, especially here in Canada, where the iPhone is available on Bell, Virgin, Rogers, Telus, etc.

@Anders
I’m saying Android is too open and too spread out for me to enjoy. I believe you when you say that each of my bullet points can be addressed, but I think it takes too much effort to regain what I consider to be pretty basic functionality. I didn’t just sit with stock either – I did try a number of different keyboards out, and I searched both the market and places like Android Forums for gems.
As for list of issues I posted: they aren’t just iPhone-centric features. I’m pretty sure I’ve used basic mp3 players that lower volume automatically when earphones are plugged in, and volume sliders existed even back in the WinMo days as part of the OS. I tried not to write “the iPhone is better because of x and y”, but that Android seems to require a lot of huffing it around the Internet to achieve the functionality I’m used to on other platforms i’ve used.

all the things that you state below can be done with android, what you have to do of course is go find the app that does it. Is it as good as an iphone out of the box would be more inline with the arguments below. What does make it “open” is the fact that you can go and get these apps that change lots of functionality of the phone, letting you customize it. With the iphone what you see is what you get. Which of course is the best thing for 90% of the user base that dont want to change things and just have as much available from the day they open the box.

“plugging your earphones into the device doesn’t automatically lower the volume (OW)
there doesn’t seem to be an easily accessible volume slider
no quick or easy access to apostrophes while typing with the default (Sony Ericsson) keyboard
default task manager, accessed with two taps of the home button, only shows eight most recently used apps
no way to easily scroll to the top of a given window; no way to get to the bottom, but iOS can’t do that either
no default rotation lock
no screenshots by default; you have to hope an app supports your device, find a way to root your device, or install the Android SDK and take pictures while tethered
no in-app browsers means links from other apps open within the browser; this slows it down after about a day or two and the back button doesn’t consistently bring you back to your app of origin”

My issues in two days.
– Rebooted by itself randomly without me touching it? Being an iPhone user I am not use to this severe level crashing. (it happens but not this bad)
– Battery life – Even though I can replace the battery I will not buy an extra battery… phone take about three minutes to boot anyway. Struggle to last a day.
– Turn of Wifi before mobile hotspot can be enabled
– Cannot pinch to zoom Gmail !? if you scroll the UI breaks?
– Muti-tasking is not worth it – I run a Task Manager app more than any other app. Managed to lock the phone up more than once with to many open apps.
– Bluetooth Audio – iPhone simply puts out a line out audio stream over BT where as the Android runs it through its own internal amp. Which requires manual setting every time connecting. Well that is if you can connect, for some reason pairing has gone wrong. And cannot get it working.
– Try making a call over the Bluetooth handset… while driving you need to be able to select which app you want to use to do the dialling. I am sure there is a setting for this somewhere, however very unrefined.
– Double tap on a web page – It zooms almost to infinity!?!? Really miss the zoom to article text. (thought it can do it, not on the atrix)
– Podcasting, even though you can download them on the go its a manual process. Each subscription need to be added separately…

I will keep at it. Maybe I am just forgetting this is what being a geek is all about, to have a phone that you can fix and tinker with.

secondly. quite a huge number of android phones support rooting.

so you can get rid of the bad stuff from the skin and keep the stuff which DOES benefit you(which obviously varies on the person). THAT is the golden gem of Android, extreme customization.

people just get ‘open-source’ mixed up with ‘customization’ – whether or not the know the difference, they pretty much always mean the latter.

@Joe
ha! just saw a post about that today. Know nothing about Android malware, though.

@Earl
Agreed that Sense could have made a difference in terms of the day-to-day experience, but I still don’t think it would have mattered to Android Market offerings, etc. You also touch upon one of the points I made: that it’s really tough to talk about Android because it seems to be so different depending who you talk to, what device a person is using, and what version they’re running.

A Nexus S seems like the *best* way to really get at the core of the Android experience and judge it first-hand without anybody mucking it up, but how much does that really matter when the Nexus S is just one out of two official Google phones…and all of the rest are branded and skinned?

If skins are done really well, they could be a real strength for Android, but right now they just seem like a problem and muddle discussions by making it harder for people to stay on the same page.

@JG

Very interesting feedback! I think I can understand and even agree with most of what you’re saying, except for the point about late adoption features (iOS) not appealing to geeks. I think there are geeks who like knowing about and playing with bleeding edge stuff, but don’t necessarily want to live with that tech all the time. Android is definitely far ahead in terms of the idea of customization, but in my limited experience, it doesn’t seem *that* far ahead. iOS users still seem to get a lot of the best power features (wi-fi tethering, wi-fi syncing, etc.) while picking fruit off of the walled garden.

Early Adoption features appeal to geeks but not mainstream users

Late Adoption features appeal to mainstream but not geek users.

The market itself is in Late Adoption for both computing devices and cell phones. This is what Apple means by “Post-PC”: Late Adoption of one technology is the prime entry point for Early Adoption of a successor technology which they believe is iOS-like devices.

Ergo, while what geeks loving Android/WindowsMobile say about their platforms are technical and literally correct **for their own market segment** (these phones are better *for them*), they are not the majority market for either technology type of device any more and thus for manufacturers and for popular demand and market success, they are the wrong market to take as a standard for success or features and thus irrelevant.

This is why Android and Windows Mobile using companies have completely and repeatedly been missing the market. They don’t understand these innovate/technology/market dynamics at all.

Every technology from electron tubes to transistors to transistors to ICs, or from mechanical/analog computers to mainframes to minis to micros, have gone through this transition dynamic.

It’s just that most current geeks have never experience such a transition in their lifetimes so they don’t know the signs and indications when they appear in front of them. In fact, most are not really “early adopters” at all even though they imagine that they are.

I hardly know people who own Android devices altho they are very popular. But from what I’ve read there’s nothing that would make me want to switch.