The Big Decision - stick with iPhone or go Android?

[penk]

After 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[*] - 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. :)

Comments

[penk.livejournal.com]

Let me asplain...
* "Not Apple" - gives me a perspective on the industry I feel I need.

Right now I've had experience with only one smartphone platform, and there's a culture in Apple that states "We do things -this way-". I want experience outside that box so I can better determine if what I'm seeing in Apple land makes sense, or if it only make sense because that's "The apple way". Does that help?

* Music management is an exercise for the user - ability to do 'what works'
The only way to manage music on the iPhone is via iTunes. I find iTunes really painful to work with - it has some black-hole functions (another Apple pattern - something that's supposed to do something just... doens't. Because it's not compatable with a corporate deicsion or the like). Android platforms (AFAIK) simply use the phone as a data storage device, putting music in folders. How you manage that is up to you.

[dfjdejulio.livejournal.com]

On the whole "see the non-Apple perspective" thing, that's a big reason why I bought a $250 "Nook Color" and set up a bunch of microSD cards to boot up other versions of Android on it. Now I've *seen* Gingerbread and *seen* Honeycomb, really spent time with them, and the device was cheap and didn't require a contract. Sure, I'm not getting the cellular features or the camera or anything, but I started on iOS via an iPod Touch originally too -- it's still a grounding.

(And a bunch of the "iTunes sucks" and "sync is painful" stuff changes this fall. But, it changes in a way that makes it suck less and be less painful, but *without* giving a ton more direct control to the end-user, so you *might* hate it even more. It'll be an improvement for me. But then, for me, iTunes is better than what Android does -- you *can* manage stuff by hand, so unless you add additional tools, you *have* to.)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Right now I've had experience with only one smartphone platform, and there's a culture in Apple that states "We do things -this way-". I want experience outside that box so I can better determine if what I'm seeing in Apple land makes sense, or if it only make sense because that's "The apple way". Does that help?

Sort of, but I'm going to challenge you on some of those assumptions. In particular, you were a Treo user since back when giants walked the earth, and while the experience may not have been similar to iOS, the Treo was what people meant by "smartphone" for years before Steve Jobs ever dreamed of entering the market. So I don't agree that you've only had experience with only one smartphone platform, just because you haven't played with a Blackberry or a Droid or a Pre.

The music management question could be interesting. My gut says it actually wouldn't be useful for the device to take a completely hands-off attitude to music management. There are too many things that go beyond simple file storage that the playback device should know about: playlists, ratings, number of plays, etc. I'm no fan of the iTunes interface but I do tend to agree that music management does have some implicit structure that should be managed by an application.

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

I want experience outside that box so I can better determine if what I'm seeing in Apple land makes sense, or if it only make sense because that's "The apple way".

I can understand having an abstract interest in "what's good" in smartphone systems, but I don't think that's particularly a good reason to make a personal product choice.

I also fear Sprint's coverage map, although I hear it is better than a few years back. Asking around the MC list might get you good dish about home, at least?