[TriLUG] Android Phone vs iPhone vs other smartphones

[Christopher L Merrill]

On 3/16/2010 7:53 PM, kwoodie at gmail.com wrote:
> Ok so I am thinking about switching from my blackberry curve to a Android based phone or an
> iPhone.  Which is the best in the eyes of TriLUG?

The droid is a very good _phone_ - I come from a background of Palm phones, which were notable for
their poor phone quality.  The screen is outstanding. The hardware fit and finish is on par with
Apple.  There may be more apps on the iStore, but the Android marketplace is growing steadily. So
far, I've found everything I've needed there. If you're looking for killer games, though, it sounds
like the iPhone gives you more options.

It might help if you said what you actually want to _do_ with the device - we can offer better 
advice if we know what you're looking for.

I'm pretty shocked to hear another poster say that the open-source nature of Android is worthless if
you are not going to build your own binaries from modified sources. I don't get that - I've been a
Linux user for a decade now and have never built from sources. IMO, the open-source advantage of
Android is going to manifest in many ways. We're already seeing a proliferation of Android on a wide
variety of devices - some in non-phone form factors.

It reminds me of the early days of Mac vs DOS/Windows (I had an Apple //+, BTW). Even though it had
a far inferior software product (DOS and early Windows compared to MacOS), the wide variety of
hardware and software, combined with intense competition on hardware performance and pricing showed
that customers place a high value on choice in both hardware and software.  It will be interesting
to see how things play out this time. Many things are different this go-round, but many things are
the same.


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Chris Merrill                           |  Web Performance, Inc.
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