This was actually a comment to a Robert Scoble Buzz thread discussing pros and cons of Androids and iPhones. The comment got way too long and well, it looked like it fits being a blog entry.

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My perspective on using the Android isn’t really so much of a comparison, mainly because I’ve never actually owned an iPhone before. But I still like, even love, the HTC G1/Dream that I first bought and the Nexus One that replaced it.

When I first got my G1, I thought it was the ugliest, nay, fugliest phone ever. But I chose it still because, being my first touchscreen phone, I wanted a physical QWERTY keyboard to help me ease into the new environment. Back then, Android didn’t even have a soft keyboard yet (Android 1.0). I used it and was happy with it for a while. Didn’t like some quirks, such as the limitation on only one GMail account to sync with and the fact that I had to flip out the keyboard to do the simplest of typing tasks.

The Cupcake (Android 1.5) came out and I got my soft keyboard. I found myself enjoying the keyboard very much but didn’t like the fact that Cupcake made my G1 (with its severe hardware limitations) run as slow as molasses. After reading around, I realized that 3rd parties were actually taking the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) source code and releasing their own home-brewed rooted releases. So I selected the most popular 3rd party (CyanogenMod), read up on a couple of tutorials, rooted the phone and installed CyanogenMod. And then the world started opening up.

Immediately off the bat, I got tethering and A2DP, plus CyanogenMod’s speed screamed on my G1. And we got our Donut (Android 1.6) upgrade earlier than any one else waiting for official OTA updates too. When Google Navigation was introduced, it was locked to everyone but those using it in USA, but some cool dude by the name of Brut hacked it into supporting the rest of the world. That was really nice and enabled me to enjoy the full benefits of Android without having to be in the states. But at the back of my head, I was always thinking “this is nice, but I wouldn’t recommend it to my non-techie friends; I really wouldn’t want to end up being their tech support for this”.

However, at the same time, there is one thing that I would point out as an Android, even at this time: the fact that an Android phone is a complete peer to the PC and not a slave to it in any way. The iPhone is a peer in most aspects, but for major work such as upgrading of the OS, I believe you still need hook it up to a PC with iTunes installed. Unfortunately, this is a no-go for me as I’m a Linux user and iTunes is not available for that platform. With Android, I download the update (whether OTA if you’re not rooted or as a zip file if you are) and flash it with no necessity for it to be hooked up to a PC whatsoever. My experience with Apple devices is limited to the iPod that I bought for my girlfriend, and for every OS update thus far, I’ve had to hook it up to iTunes.

Then, the Eclair (Android 2.0 and 2.1) devices came out. By that time, I felt comfortable enough with the soft keyboard so I ordered the Nexus One instead of the Motorola Milestone (the GSM version of the Droid). And when I got my Nexus One, that’s when something “magical” (as Jobs likes to put it) happened. I merely switched off my G1, switched on the Nexus One, signed in to my Google account and:

1. My contacts were populated
2. My mails were populated
3. My calendar was populated
4. All the applications I was using on my G1 were installed automatically

It took all of 5 minutes for the migration from one Android phone to another. No need for any hooking up to a PC, backup software or anything! Really, I could do this all day long. No matter what phone you’re using, you have to admit that this is really one heckuva cool feature.

Now that leads to one double-edged sword of using any Android phone: you need to buy into Google’s vision of the cloud if you’re going to derive the best of the platform. This means that you need to have a Google account, use their mail services, their calendar for your organizational work etc etc. I have a friend who insisted that his smartphone must sync from his MS Outlook and not from any server-side service. He got a Milestone and to date, he’s still complaining that the included software to sync to Outlook isn’t working very well. I sympathize, but I don’t think he should have gotten an Android phone in the first place. The desktop sync software was probably developed by Motorola themselves and I can hardly expect the manufacturer of a phone with a shelf life of less than 2 years to do a good job of it compared to the core developer of the OS whose aim is to make the best OS it can in the long run.

But Google just isn’t interested in making the phone a slave to the desktop. In their vision, the desktop and your phone are peers, and both of them are slaves to the cloud. Google’s cloud, to be specific. Now, whether you buy into that vision or not is a personal decision. I made mine.

Now, back to the Nexus One. By this time, I had found a community of Android users in Kuala Lumpur. And get this, over half of them are not particularly tech-inclined. Most of them just like playing their games (there isn’t many of them, but the size is growing), switching home screen launcher apps to see which fits their usage profile better, using it to increase their productivity and getting around town with Navigation.

Personally, I’m constantly watching out for the day when Android becomes full-featured enough to satisfy my needs without having to root the device. As l33t as I feel by having a rooted phone, I’m very conscious of its downsides (would you pass your rooted Android phone to a toddler to play around with? I did, and I had to restore the bloody phone after he managed to wipe out half my system apps). Froyo (Android 2.2) made a couple of long strides towards this end. I love the inbuilt tethering, and as soon as they sort out the installation of applications on the SD card, we’re really almost there.

And more importantly, I can do all this and enjoy using my Android phone without having to put down any iPhone user. You can enjoy your phone, I’m definitely loving mine.

Oh, and do note that I’m ignoring all carrier-related factors in my evaluation. I don’t live in the states, and the fact that stateside users have to factor in carrier concerns when choosing a phone is just an indictment of how screwed up your telco industry is and that’s unrelated to the phone. Over here in Malaysia and Singapore (and probably many other countries as well), we choose our phones and network separately. Telco contracts in exchange for subsidies are available, but mostly optional. Life is just so much better for it.

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