![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penkAfter leaving my last job, my iPhone account with AT&T is going to get transferred back to me, and knowing how AT&T does these things, I betcha dimes for dollars they'll want to re-up the contract.
I checked with AT&T, and I can terminate the contract now for $102, leaving me open to go elsewhere or else-phone.
The pros and cons are high on both sides. My biggest reasons for jumping to another platform (at least for a while) is that I feel that I'm getting too blindsided by the Apple kool-aid. I can't even think of things I can't do on my iPhone, mostly because i've never been exposed to a smartphone platform (excluding PalmOS) that I can use for comparison.
Getting down to brass tacks, here's how I see the pros and cons of switching from iPhone to android...
iPhone pros:
* Solid, stable, well known
* Well supported in the industry
* AppleCare
* "Just plain works" - at least for mail
* Apple Appstore + iTunes store
iPhone cons:
* "Apple Kool-Aid"
* Bluetooth support is abysmal
* Locked in functionality - Can't go beyond what Apple says I can do without Jailbreaking, which has it's own not insubstantial risks
* Calendar syncing is still a nightmare [*]
* I can't write apps for it
* No expansion capability - storage is fixed
* iTunes is a horrible horrible nightmare
* Tethering is very very limited (and costs extra? Huh?)
Android pros (specifically thinking of the HTC Evo 4g or 3d)
* Modern platform that has very high performance hardware available
* Large format screen
* Open development platform
* I can develop for it
* Calendar syncing 'just plain works'
* "Not Apple" - gives me a perspective on the industry I feel I need.
* If switching to Sprint, FINALLY support for tethering and mobile hotspots!
* SD Slot in most phones. User expandability!
* Music management is an exercise for the user - ability to do 'what works'
Android cons
* No end to end support, no matter what happens support, ala Applecare and the Apple store
* Android is not as polished and clean as iOS. Serious yak-shaving potential
* Would likely mean switching carriers to Sprint - fear of the unknown coverage maps
* Limited support for some apps (Netflix comes to mind)
I think in the end, the Sprint change would be a net gain in cost (AT&T and Verizon are much more expensive, from what I've seen).
Lastly - which phone? :) I like the HTC Evo 4G - the kickstand is awesome. But the current model seems to be the 3D - I have no interest in the 3D aspect of the platform, but the dual-core CPU would be awfully nice. I don't want a 'slider' (ala, integrated keyboard). I'm okay typing on the screen.
So, what do folks think?
ETA[*] -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
qwrrty's link to using CalDAV on a new link seems to have cleared the calendar syncing problem. I'm irritated that I 'sorta' had things working, and it was silently failing, and switching it all up has 'fixed' it. I don't know what the problem was to begin with! But thanks Tim. :)
I checked with AT&T, and I can terminate the contract now for $102, leaving me open to go elsewhere or else-phone.
The pros and cons are high on both sides. My biggest reasons for jumping to another platform (at least for a while) is that I feel that I'm getting too blindsided by the Apple kool-aid. I can't even think of things I can't do on my iPhone, mostly because i've never been exposed to a smartphone platform (excluding PalmOS) that I can use for comparison.
Getting down to brass tacks, here's how I see the pros and cons of switching from iPhone to android...
iPhone pros:
* Solid, stable, well known
* Well supported in the industry
* AppleCare
* "Just plain works" - at least for mail
* Apple Appstore + iTunes store
iPhone cons:
* "Apple Kool-Aid"
* Bluetooth support is abysmal
* Locked in functionality - Can't go beyond what Apple says I can do without Jailbreaking, which has it's own not insubstantial risks
* Calendar syncing is still a nightmare [*]
* I can't write apps for it
* No expansion capability - storage is fixed
* iTunes is a horrible horrible nightmare
* Tethering is very very limited (and costs extra? Huh?)
Android pros (specifically thinking of the HTC Evo 4g or 3d)
* Modern platform that has very high performance hardware available
* Large format screen
* Open development platform
* I can develop for it
* Calendar syncing 'just plain works'
* "Not Apple" - gives me a perspective on the industry I feel I need.
* If switching to Sprint, FINALLY support for tethering and mobile hotspots!
* SD Slot in most phones. User expandability!
* Music management is an exercise for the user - ability to do 'what works'
Android cons
* No end to end support, no matter what happens support, ala Applecare and the Apple store
* Android is not as polished and clean as iOS. Serious yak-shaving potential
* Would likely mean switching carriers to Sprint - fear of the unknown coverage maps
* Limited support for some apps (Netflix comes to mind)
I think in the end, the Sprint change would be a net gain in cost (AT&T and Verizon are much more expensive, from what I've seen).
Lastly - which phone? :) I like the HTC Evo 4G - the kickstand is awesome. But the current model seems to be the 3D - I have no interest in the 3D aspect of the platform, but the dual-core CPU would be awfully nice. I don't want a 'slider' (ala, integrated keyboard). I'm okay typing on the screen.
So, what do folks think?
ETA[*] -
qwrrty's link to using CalDAV on a new link seems to have cleared the calendar syncing problem. I'm irritated that I 'sorta' had things working, and it was silently failing, and switching it all up has 'fixed' it. I don't know what the problem was to begin with! But thanks Tim. :)
My droid experience
Date: 2011-06-28 08:53 pm (UTC)I have not found anything that I could not get support for from the Verizon store that sold me my Droid. As in I take the phone to them and say "it doesn't work" or "it stopped doing Foo" and they take it and fix it. Often no questions asked and for no charge.
My experience of the OS is that it is stable (even when I do hinky things on it like bypass certain safety features so I can install a pre-market version of Flash). As for "well-known" the last few rounds of market surveys show droids outselling iPhones and closing on Crackberries.
On the downside, I have found that there are a number of apps that are iPhone only. That number shrinks monthly (see market share above) but Apple's store is a paypaypay model so companies develop there first. Droid apps often have to be better than free competitors so they get developed second. On the other hand if you find a problem with a Droid app you can write to the app developer and he can get you a bugfix directly without having to go through Apple's cumbersome release cycle.
I have had no luck tethering either an iPhone or a droid. That's probably my fault - millions of people manage to make it work but my Droid does not want to talk to any laptop I've tried to tether it to. I really would like to use it as a cellular modem when I'm traveling, but that's more hassle than it ought to be.
All that said, I got the Droid mostly for political reasons, and because I'm heavily invested in the Googleborg cloud already. Having my email and calendar and contacts and shared documents and photos all Just Work the instant I turned on my phone was an unmitigated joy.