Why There Is No iPhone Killer.

Recently a couple of us here at iSource have decided to take a detour from our normal path and (temporarily) leave the iOS fold. With the iPhone 4 a bit long in the tooth if you bought it on launch day and a rumored new iPhone coming soon, the time seemed right to see how green the grass is on the other side of the fence. Truth be told I’ve felt that I might be missing out on something for a while now. I mean millions of Android users can’t be all wrong right? And Windows Phone 7 keeps building hype towards ‘Mango‘ and all the newness it offers. So, with a heavy heart and a slightly lighter wallet (after a trip to eBay) I departed from my iOS brethren and bought an HTC HD7S.

Now, before we go any further I completely subscribe to the concept of to each their own. I personally don’t care if you prefer a Sony, HTC, Samsung, Nokia or cheap Chinese knockoff. I am an Apple fan as evidenced by the Macbook I’m typing this on, the iPad charging next to it and the now sold iPhone 4 I had somewhere in NY. My wife carries a 3GS and my daughter uses a (quite aging) iPod Touch 1st Gen. I’m not here to bash your chosen platform or start any flame wars. I am however going to try and explain why in my mind iOS is winning the hearts and minds of many, and while this experiment has been fun I’ll be back to iOS when the new phone launches without pause.

Hardware:

First let’s start with what I consider to be a fairly weak argument overall because, again to each their own when it comes to the device you hold in your hand. There’s some great phones out there with out a doubt. But, I’ve yet to come across anything that has the build quality and solidity of an iPhone 4. Take the newest Galaxy “superphone”. Mostly plastic. The HTC HD7S I hold in my hand isn’t any better and frankly feels cheap with its big gap on the back and super thin battery cover. The upcoming HTC Titan looks to fare a bit better as at least it has a metal unibody construction, but still doesn’t look like it took a lot of design effort to produce. A vast majority of the major players are just simply taking their standard designs, updating the internal hardware and pumping out the units. Apple produces (on average) one iPhone model per year. That product is the culmination of months and months of planning, designing and tweaking. Look at the upcoming HTC Radar and compare it to the HTC Trophy. This is like the exclamation point on what I’m talking about. Same phone, new name, no effort. And yes, there was the Apple 3G / 3GS which were identical. Until you actually used the device and realized that the effort of the prior year all went into the internals of the phone. The outside remained the same, but the inside went from a sports sedan to a muscle car. The Radar/Trophy upgrades? Mango (Microsoft did that work) and the camera (again someone else did the work). HTC did very little. Samsung really isn’t doing much more in the design area. If you need any evidence of that… I present to you their power adapter.

Operating System:
You know as well as I do this comes down to preference. I’ve been using Honeycomb on a Dell Streak 7 for the past few weeks and I like it. It’s not perfect, but it got a lot of things right. However it feels like Linux. Not a smooth, sexy  KDE interface, but a sharp edged, industrial, spruced up Gnome interface. It just doesn’t feel right for me. For some Honeycomb is exactly what they were looking for and that’s great, but for me it’s just Linux without the satisfaction of knowing you built everything yourself from source.

Windows Phone 7 (while I’m still adjusting to it) feels a heck of a lot better than Android to me. If anything it’s less flashy than Honeycomb but that’s what makes it shine. It’s minimalistic and very subdued. Compared to Honeycomb it’s like walking into Moby’s home when you were just at the home of 50 Cent. Moby’s home is minimalistic. 50’s is anything but. The problem for me with Android is it just becomes overload. There’s so much going on with the settings, screens, and possibilities to configure that you lose sight of the fact that you’re there to do something else. I’ve spent more time fiddling with Honeycomb to get things how I want them then I have actually accomplishing the task I set out to do. WP7 is the exact opposite. There’s nothing to do. You can set the colors for your tiles, change your ringtones and your wallpaper. End of list.

One thing WP7 is getting right and that’s live tiles. Live tiles are what Apple should have put into iOS to begin with. Just like they’ve copied notifications, I hope they wake up to the live tile concept because it completely changes how you interact with the device. I can’t explain it – it’s something you have to experience. Once you do, you’ll hate everything about iOS’ and Android’s static icon concept. Honeycomb is a close second here with widgets. I love looking at the home screen and seeing my email, calendar and other details all in one place. WP7 is cleaner, but the widgets are definitely more powerful.

Overall WP7 feels like a smartphone for beginners. Android the OS for geeks and tweakers. iOS is the middle ground. Lots of missing power but just enough to make it worthwhile.

In all my futzing with different mobile devices and the OS’ that come with them, I’ve determined the one thing that makes all the difference in the world when it comes to beating Apple and their iPhone is the app ecosystem. Let’s take a look at Android to start with. Yes, they have a ton of good apps, but how do you get them? Take a search through the Google Android Market and you’re likely to find everything but what you’re actually looking for. In many cases you’re better off using an app or a website to find the app, then clicking one of their deep links to actually get it. I’m not sure what the problem is on Google’s side – but for a search company their marketplace app search is garbage. Take a look at this search for LogMeIn:

One search, two of the same app, two different prices. And WTF does Angry Birds have to do with LogMeIn? Better yet why is it that Angry Birds comes up in a search for damned near everything? Are they paying for placement?  So, assuming you did finally get that app you’re looking for, you’re then stuck finding out there’s a good chance it doesn’t work on your phone/tablet (cough cough Netflix COUGH). Amazon is doing a good job with their marketplace, but many times they don’t have an app that the google marketplace does. And when they do have that app and so does Google … well then you’re stuck either not buying anything from Amazon or later when you want to re-install have do the receipt search from hell to try and determine where you bought the app from so you don’t get charged again. Finally – all you folks with an Android tablet – Why isn’t there a single decent handwritten note application? Every one I tried is terrible. Either there’s no zoom function, no line smoothing or zero in the way of organization in the app. I’ve got a handful for my iPad that are all excellent, yet I can’t find one worth while for Honeycomb.

Windows Phone 7 apps are a joke. And by joke I mean one of those jokes nobody laughs at on a late night show. Picture one of Jay Leno’s many awkward moments in front of the audience when a skit bombs. That’s the state of Windows Phone 7 apps. Scrolling performance is terrible in the major platform apps (Twitter and Facebook). Loading new tweets or wall stories in both apps is agonizingly slow (WiFi and 3G) and once they’re loaded the performance is like scrolling through an all flash website on your Windows PC when the CPU is maxed out at 100%. And yes – I’m on Mango – but NoDo was a NoGo too. Selection of apps is another problem. Go take a look.Don’t worry we’ll wait because it’ll only take a second.

Try finding your favorite games from iOS. Almost none of them are there. Even better try finding a decent non-game app you like. For me there’s nothing even close to Air Video, Gas Cubby, GoodReader, Pocket Informant, Reeder, Wonderful Days… and the list goes on and on. The scariest part of the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem is they’ve managed to lose even the developers who were die hard Windows Mobile devs. These guys should have been first in line with apps that defined the platform but try finding Pocket Informant or anything from Mastersoft. It’s a ghost town. A few EA games and the standards (Shazam, Adobe, Yahoo, etc) but the list is short. Hell Microsoft owns Skype and it’s nowhere to be found. Way to support your own platform! I’ve been running WP7 for a week now, and I’ve bought one application. One. That application is called Rowi and the reason I bought it was because it’s the only twitter app I could find that didn’t reload all the tweets and start again at the top. But even that app is a far cry from even the most basic iOS twitter app when it comes to features and design. And don’t get me started on prices. Most devs charge on average a couple bucks more for a WP7 game as they do for an iOS game.  Less performance for more money… sounds like a good plan for failure.

The long and the short of it is there’s two EXCELLENT mobile operating systems out there that can easily compete with iOS. Android and Windows Phone 7 both have amazing qualities when it comes to what the OS is capable of and how it works for you. I’m absolutely in love with the basics in WP7 like live tiles, pivot, lock screen information…  Android’s widgets, tweakability and notifications are killer. But what neither of them have is an ecosystem that provides you with damned near every app you could imagine, with a high production value at a reasonable cost and a simple, make it easy as breathing purchasing system. There’s just no buy in from the people who matter most – and that’s the top level developers who are making Apple a mint right now. Look, I’ll be the first to tell you that iOS on the whole is mediocre at best. But the break out indie developers and the big players have put all their weight behind it, making it into a powerhouse. Until someone else comes along and manages to pull it all together like Apple has done – there won’t be an iPhone killer.