The day has finally arrived! Along has come the Nexus One: a contender for my smartphone affections, eclipsing the iPhone 3GS.
Back in 2007, after over a decade of using, working on and playing with computers of all kinds, and plenty of toiling with various Windows versions, I made the plunge headlong into the world of Mac OS. If I really have to boil it down, the key reasons were few and simple: Mac OS is stable, it’s efficient and it’s beautiful. I’ve never since looked back upon my years of using Windows as my primary OS and felt even an once of regret. It’s now the 3 year anniversary of my conversion and my trusty Macbook Pro w/ 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo (upon which I type this article) is still running like a champ, with only about $100 in total upgrades and maintenance since. My techie heart loves this computer – and I don’t know how I ever lived without it!
It was a natural progression for me that in my recent technological conversion I’d begin an interest in the Apple iPhone. I mean, if Apple could have really made a phone half as innovative and high performance as their Mac series then it’d have to be one Palm- or Windows Mobile-butt-kickin’ device! In the early summer of 2007, my wife and I were living in Jacksonville, Florida where, conveniently for me, Apple had one of it’s gorgeous Apple Stores. During the week of the debut there was a seemingly endless line of people streaming from door of the Apple utopia down around the pedestrian mall block. As excited as I was about the iPhone, I wasn’t ready financially to buy an iPhone nor add another $20 to my calling plan. I was going to have to settle for a free t-shirt, which I lined up for and received with joy. I still wear it from time to time.
Now let’s fast forward two more years. It’s June 2009, I’m living in Nampa, Idaho and I’m now a smart phone owner. At the time, I had a cherry-red Blackberry Curve 8310. Though it could never sport 3G speeds, I had grown dependent upon it’s ability to instantly deliver my email, chat without limit with my friends in So Cal on BBM and settle trivia disputes with dead-on accuracy. It was to be the third year in a row that Apple was going to rock the phone world with a groundbreaking iPhone release. 2007 had been the original iPhone, 2008 saw the advent of the iPhone 3G. And now, in the year that I was eligible for an upgrade, and just before monetary gift-bearing birthday cards would grace my mailbox, Apple and AT&T were going to release their third and greatest iPhone models to date: the 3GS, sporting 16 and 32 GB of onboard storage, a faster processor and an expected longer life battery. All things considered, I decided this was the year I would jump on board and Oh Boy did I! In July 2009 I got my first iPhone.
It’s fair to say iPhone 3GS has been a great phone, perhaps one of the best models ever made. In a lot of ways it has certainly blazed trails and innovated its way to inspiring an ever-increasing worldwide hunger for high tech smart phones. With that said, after 9 months of owning one, I have to say that it’s just not cutting if for me. I own much of that sentiment to the fact that I’ve been working for Verizon and specializing in Motorola Droid demonstrations since December 2009. Having the iPhone 3GS in my left pocket and the Droid in my right has given me all the opportunity necessary to realize that Android, in my humble opinion, is a far superior phone operating system to even iPhone 3.1.2.
In articles to follow shortly, I will elaborate further on how I came to this realization. Before I conclude this article, I will tell you that my 3GS is currently on eBay with roughly two days to go, 17 bids bringing the auction to over $500 already and I can’t wait to get this thing into a box to who knows where so I can click that glorious ‘Get Your Phone’ button at the Nexus One ordering site. The following are 5 of the reasons are why, in no particular order, that I am jumping ship from the iPhone to climb onto the megayacht of Google Android:
- Android natively runs Google Voice – a free service that has become a staple in my business communications. Apple has thumbed its nose at it.
- Android is at the very least semi-open source. The iPhone OS is severely locked down with proprietary controls.
- Google releases regular and desirable updates over the air for their phones, each time releasing more features.
- The Nexus One can, and is allow to, multitask as it boasts a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, almost twice as fast as its iPhone counterpart.
- Android phones pretty much let you do whatever you want to do – from customization to carrier work-around apps, not prevent you from realizing is full potential.
Please check back for future articles on this topic! Thanks for reading.