iPhone or Droid Incredible? In other words, is AT&T really so bad? - Page 11

According to Engadget, the 24-hour return policy on the Android Market is gone.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/11/android-market-update-streamlines-content-nukes-tabs-dismantle/

 

That's unfortunate, since it's a feature I'd hoped Apple would be forced, by competitive pressures, to adopt.

Its really the location you are in with ATT phones as well as other phones.  I live in NYC and i rarely have problems with dropped calls.

I've recently experienced some of ATTs suckitide: no signal along some stretches of the highway, and bad signal in central Indiana (where immtold Verizon is perfect). Ah well.


My dad has a new HTC android phone on Verizon. I spent a few minutes with it tonight. So, my demo with the original Droid left me with a loathing of Android. I was a terrible piece of hardware with cruelly unusable software. In sharp contrast, this current Android phone was immediately usable, easy to get around and had some nice features. I still prefer my iPhone, but now I would feel comfortable recommending an Android phone to someone who can't or won't get an iPhone.

In particular, the use of different screens to show recent emails, SMS messages, and clock in addition to the apps was interesting. I like the consistency and was of use of the iPhones app-centric screens, but I see real value in a quick view of status and messages from home screens. I'd like to Apple take inspiration from that.

I didnt understand the home, back, scroll-ball buttons. But if I "lived" in an android phone, I'm sure they would become apparent.

We all can. But we'd likely give different answers

I think the iPhone is better. The reviews I read, the pundits I trust all agree that the iPhone remains the best designed -hardware and software- phone. The entire system is better conceived, better designed, better implemented. And it costs the same or less than any other smartphone. But that's me. My biases are well know around here . Some here will agree; some will disagree.

So let me reframe the question. What matters more to you: best carrier, best phone, or best price? If carrier, get your preferred Android phone on Verizon. Otherwise, buy an iPhone 4 on AT&T. And if cost trumps all, get a free-with-contract smartphone on Sprint or T-Mobile.

And if you want the best Android phone, you want to buy the flavor of the month. I think the incredible is outdated by android standards and you should get the latest, a Nexus S or Galaxy or Droid Pro, I think.

And of course: spend some time in the store playing with the phones. Look at what your friends have.

Happy shopping!

A different tack on fragmentation by one of the usual suspects:

http://www.marco.org/2730711751

 

I agree with this more than I did his post yesterday.

I think that also relates to the paradox of choice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More_Is_Less

 

That doesn't speak to whether people will or won't buy Android phones, but implies that the overall Android phone shopping and purchasing process will be less pleasant and satisfying than shopping for an iPhone. (And I can say that this effect had a strong influence on my purchase of an iPod, and helped push me to switch to Apple computer, and also plays into buying an iPhone.)

The contrarian viewpoint:

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/12/the-verizon-iphone-is-too-late.html

Contra-Contrarian Viewpoint ;)

http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/lyons_too_late

 

They both have insights but they both ignore important aspects of the arguments.

 

I think the key thing that everyone knows but also ignores is the split between "Android", the free OS from Google, and Android phones from manufacturers trying to make a buck.

 

Dan Lyons is probably right that if the iPhone had been on Verizon in 2010, or earlier, Android's mass market acceptance would have been slowed. But I don't believe it would have been stopped. Manufacturers would have looked for something to compete with Apple and Android would have provided a good option and phones would have been sold, and they would gain market acceptance.

 

Gruber is right about understanding Apple as "perfectionist" rather than "control freak". Many people like good design and are willing to pay for it; and in the case of the iPhone best design cost no more than lousy design since all these smartphones and BlackBerrys cost the same with subsidy and phone contract.

 

And he's right about this making Apple a profitable manufacturer of phones; but this elides the point of Android's popularity, which is Dan Lyon's point. Google doesn't care if Motorola or HTC or Samsung make a cent; all that matters is that Android is ubiquitous. And there are enough people who e.g. value a 4.5" screen that's readable to a 50-yr old man over a 3.5" Retina Display, that all those variations on mediocrely designed Android phones will find buyers and sell zillions: just like in the PC market.

 

In then end: they're both right and they're both glossing over interesting and important aspects of the marketplace for smartphones.

Unrelated: my coworker I traveled with has a new Droid X on Verizon. Since he was driving, I spent a few minutes playing with his Google Maps on his X.

 

I appreciate now the 4.5" screen and understand why Hanson prefers it to the iPhone's 3.5" screen. While the real and perceived resolution is lower, simply making icons on a map larger can make them easier to read; a 4.5" is 65% larger than a 3.5". I don't recall if I commented on this before, but it reinforces something I've had in mind: Apple may lose market to the over-45 market simply because a bigger screen will be easier to read to those with Presbyopia (i.e. when  you need those bifocals). I didn't have enough time with it to get a feel for how pocketable and manageable such a phone is; compared to my iPhone 4 the X. (That said, I still prefer my Retina Display :)

 

Google Maps with integrated Voice Nav is nice. I see this as a big selling feature to the layman. That said, I found it a bit confusing. I tapped the screen and it went into 3D driving mode. I couldn't figure out how to get back to top-down view (my preferred GPS display). No icon, nowhere on the screen would go back to the other view. I finally hit a turny-arrow hard-button and that did it -- unintuitive to me -- but I'm not sure if that stopped the voice nav process.

 

Also, the screen response to gestures (pinch-zoom and drag, particularly) was noticeably worse than the iPhone. The iPhone is fluid, almost anticipatory to my gestures. The Droid X felt clunky, laggy. Not nearly as bad as my Garmin GPS with resistive screen, but lacking that feel of perfection the iPhone gives.

 

The X's speaker is a good deal louder than the iPhone 4's. The iPhone would benefit from such a speaker, particularly when you're using it as a GPS in a car or doing a speaker call in a restaurant.

 

I'd like to play more, but Android 2.2 isn't user hostile like 1.6 was. I couldn't imagine giving my worst enemy an 1.6 Android phone. But these new ones seem easy to recommend if someone can't or won't get an iPhone. And clearly the better choice over a Blackberry for anyone but the most diehard business user or thumb-keyboard typer.

The real point Gruber is totally whiffing on is that people are cheap.  I mean, really cheap.  People ask me about what phone to get all the time, and I am shocked how many people balk at one phone over another for a measly $50.  Now, $50 in and of itself isn't anything to sneeze at -- it's that $50 over 24 months is a hair over $2 a month that separates functional from fantastic.  And that's just $50 -- if you can get an Android phone for $50 or free with a contract, many, many people are going to do that over a $200 iPhone.  Gruber doesn't realize that $200 for a phone is still a luxe purchase in this day and age, and many people don't even take the smartphone plunge because they don't want the added monthly expense of a data plan.  It's not like the Verizon customers on features phones are all going to buy iPhones when they take the plunge because most of them are reluctant to put out the money.  With cost being such an imnportant factor, a free with contract Android phone will win that sale.

Apple doesn't want cheap people as customers just as Lexus, Ferrari and other high end brands don't.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

 

Some people believe that the 'entry level' rungs of products like these have specific deficiencies that only exist to help you justify the next rung up.  =) 

I think an iPhone is much more egalitarian than any of the brands you mention.  And if Apple wasn't trying to expand their market, there's no reason to move to Verizon at all.  The Verizon iPhone is a conspicuous move on Apple's part to solidify and expand their position in the smartphone market.  They don't want the iPhone to end up being a niche product like their PC's.

 

"Apple doesn't want cheap people as customers".  You have read this article, no? 

 

False equivalence is leading to the downfall of civilization. Gruber is more right.

 

 

 

Then there's statistics. The Droid X has a 4.3"-diagonal screen, not 4.5". A 4.5" square is 65% larger in area than a 3.5" square, but neither screen is a square, and they have different aspect ratios. (A 4.3" square is only 51% larger than a 3.5" square. Also, for its listed PPI, the iPhone is closer to 3.54", which drops it below the psychological/rhetorical half-way mark to 48%.) If my math is right, the Droid X screen is about 37% larger in area than the iPhone.

 

But for the relative size of identical UI elements, what matters is the PPI; the larger Droid X also has fewer pixels. In the end, each pixel is 105% larger in area; which in some senses makes things "twice as big", and in some senses not.

According to my math, the Droid X is 34% larger in area. Man, wanna take a shot? 16:9 4.3" vs 4:3 3.5" screen. And do it in your head like Ken and I did.

Hanson: I agree about people being cheap, and Gruber consistently missing that. Even though the phone itself may only be 10% of its 2 yr cost, people see the $200 cost and look to make it cheaper. Yes, Apple pursues profits, and again we have the trouble of separating Android/Google dominating the market while Apple simultaneously dominates the device profits. (to state a possible outcome)

Ken, I'm not arguing false equivalence, I'm stating that both make good points bit both - yes even John Gruber - elides important aspects. In actuality, because of this duality, they may both be right in various degrees. I'll leave I'll leave it to someone else to compute exact percentages of correctitude.

As for screen size, I was going from memory; but your math is wrong too. You can't weave in pixel size to compute area difference. Whether it's 65% or 50% larger, The point stands that the larger screen does make some aspects easier to read for older eyes; I sympathize more with Hanson's previous comments on the matter.

Now if you want to talk about information density and weave in pixel count, you could do worse than re-read my previous posts on the subject from last summer

Gah! IPhone + HTF = horrid grammar & spelling. Apologies if my posts seem incoherent.

 

iPhone is 3:2 (960x640), not 4:3. (iPad is 4:3). And as I mentioned, my calculation is based on the screen actually being 3.54", because that's what it would have to be (at 0.01" precision) to be the listed 326ppi. For marketing, that becomes 3.5". (Imagine the dilemma if it had been 3.55")

 

I'm gonna need a link for that. I agree that larger can be better. But once you throw out a number....  And I specifically limited myself to identical -- not equivalent -- UI elements. For example, if you're using a bitmap for a particular interstate highway symbol, PPI would directly relate to how big it is on different screens -- wouldn't it?

 

Ok, so I was approximate with my screen sizes and calculations (iPhone & posting in airports :). And I may have misunderstood your comment, Ken. So I'll try for exactness here.

 

iPhone 4 has a 3.5" (89 mm) diagonal screen with an aspect ratio of 3:2 so area is 3656 mm^2.

Droid X has a 4.3" (109.2 mm) diagonal screen and an aspect ratio of 1.77 so area is 5089 mm^2.

(For those keeping score at home: Area = Diagonal^2 * Aspect Ratio / (AR^2 + 1)

 

The Droid X's screen is 39% larger.

 

I appreciate more fully Hanson's comments, in a discussion we had last summer, that a 40% increase of display elements--given that they already have pixel count to be sufficiently detailed--are more easily read when 40% larger on e.g. a Droid X than an iPhone 4. I can honestly imagine that about 5 years from now when I have presbyopia, I may well prefer a physically larger screen to a better resolution.

 

Implicit is that there the actual pixel count is already pretty good. Obviously a single pixel 4.5" large is much less useful than a million pixels spanning 3" inches. But I see that some will prefer ~410k pixels in a bigger display than ~614 pixels in a smaller display.

 

As for the information density: starting on the first page of this thread, there's a wandering conversation between Hanson and me about smartphone resolution, "Retina Display", and visual acuity, and how important this stuff is.

 

I think the Retina Display is a Big Freaking Deal, the first display that really is above the visual resolution of most people so text is effectively perfect and easily readable, even at unusually small sizes. 

Yes, the iPhone is 3:2, not 4:3.  The irony is that I had done the correct screen size calculations earlier in this thread.
 

I would say the plethora of >3.5" phones (basically all new Android and the current crop of W7 phones are over 3.5") announced at CES is a good measure!

 

What do I win? 

 

And BTW, AT&T is getting into the monster phone market big time, releasing a 4.3", a 4.1" and an unprecedented 4.5" phone.

As open as they wanna be...

http://thisismynext.com/2011/05/02/verizons-removal-tethering-apps-android-market-shame-fcc-violation/

I was wondering how long the free ride would last. It didn't make sense that iPhone users paid for tethering, but Android users got it for free. They've overlooked the loss of revenue long enough and are making their plans uniform, with Google's help.

 

But it's still a "wink wink nudge nudge" situation, as I understand it: anyone can "sideload" (as I've read) a non-Markeplace app for free tethering. Maybe there's rooting involved. Still this sweep will certainly capture the majority of users. And it seems likely that Verizon, like AT&T, will attempt to identify and bill on-the-sly tetherers.

Quote:

Well the iPhone has always been "wink wink nudge nudge" as well -- a couple of apps allowing free tethering made it through to iTunes and stayed up long enough to probably be downloaded by a million users before they got pulled (one had made it to #1 in the sales ranks before Apple finally reacted).  And for those who were too slow, the iPhone tethering code is available as an open source app -- so anyone who is a developer or knows a developer can go that route.  Note that none of this requires jailbreaking.

 

Thus I think your last sentence is the operative one -- the phone companies will simply start billing those tethering on the sly. It may be something as simple as scanning for a browser user agent that doesn't exist on a smartphone.  Busted.

What I mean by "wink wink" is that Google explicitly endorses these alternative methods for dodging the carriers. Apple seems ever more vigorous in enforcing such policies, even though there are chinks in the armor. I'd guess that if a tethering app appeared in iTunes today, it would be found and pulled much faster than a couple years ago when Apple was still sorting out its policy on the matter.

Interesting thread -- but Apple doesn't ignore the cheap people (even if Gruber does) which is why it sells the $49 iPhone 3GS and the iPod Shuffle.  And Apple tends to keep specs on the iPod Touch low enough (vis-a-vis the iPhone) that they can afford to sell it for less than any possible competitor -- thus the utter lack of iPod Touch competition (you'd think, with Android sweeping the world, someone would have gotten the brilliant idea of a 3.5" WiFi only device -- the reason there isn't is Apple's very low price.)

 

On the Lyons vs. Gruber argument I side firmly with Gruber -- simply because Lyons is being disingenuous -- all the arguments of his sort pretend that other iOS device that are not the iPhone (like the iPad and the iPod Touch) don't exist.  So far iOS has been spanking Android with everything that is not a phone.  Even the much mocked Apple TV absolutely slaughtered Google TV in the marketplace. 

 

For Android to beat iOS, Google would have to convince the best developers to write their apps first/only on Android.  To do so Android would not just have to outsell all iOS devices, they would have to outsell them by such a large margin that developers start making more money from Android sales.  Right now App revenue is something like 10 to 1 in Apple's favor, as iOS users are way more willing to spend money than Android users.  The most prolific app buyers are iPad users, where Android competition is very weak.  The fact that most high-performace video games are written in C (iOS supported) rather than Java (Android's lingua franca) doesn't help.  Android would also have to beat Apple in corporations, and again there is no evidence of it happening.  iOS' more controlled environment is more appealing to IT departments getting weaned off BlackBerry.  In the medical profession iOS was shown to be way on it's way to a 65% market share by a recent survey -- no surprise there, with a large number of highly sophisticated medical apps that are iOS exclusive. 

 

Bottom line, what Lyons predicts just isn't happening just isn't happening. These two well reasoned posts make good reading:

http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/05/01/carnival-barker-edition-show-me-your-ios-licensing-certificate/

http://expletiveinserted.com/2011/04/30/the-emperors-new-network-effects/

 

Where is the Lyons' article? I've read on this topic by Blodget; but nothing recently from Lyons.

I suspect the main reason there hasn't been much in the way of direct Android competitors for the iPod Touch is because Android smartphones have (largely) not been carrier-specific whereas the iPhone was tied to AT&T until of late -- that plus Android hasn't really matured enough for that until the past year or so.  It probably has little to do w/ how good the iPod Touch is or whether it can seriously dominate that market if the Android camp bothered to compete there (w/ recent incarnations).  If the iPhone was available across all major carriers (and can be used w/ nominally priced data plans), then I'd think the iPod Touch market would've been much smaller -- maybe even non-existent like Jobs originally wanted and/or expected.

 

But yes, there actually are small, non-phone Android devices (eg. Archos) out there nowadays though I'm not sure they can really compete all that well w/ Android smartphones anyway, let alone iOS devices.

 

And now that the iPhone is also on Verizon and T-Mo is about to merge w/ AT&T (while the Android competition continues to catch up), you might start seeing the iPod Touch market shrink a whole lot going forward.  Heck, as much as I liked using the iPod (and then iPod Touch) for portable music listening (and the Touch for a few apps, including infrequent web browsing and email access), I've gotten used to using my Blackberry for that instead nowadays -- and I see plenty of folks in the city do likewise as well.  If you're a serious app hound (and/or need more regular web/email access), you're probably gonna want the iPhone or an Android smartphone anyway.  If you're not that, the iPod Touch probably won't have such a huge lead over the alternatives anymore...

 

As for the iPad/tablet market, although Apple still has a very sizeable lead, that lead might not last too long.  It really still remains to be seen what's coming up ahead and how things unfold.  For instance, if rumors of an Amazon Android competitor comes true in the 2nd half of this year, that could certainly turn the tide a good deal.  Certainly, B&N's lower-spec-ed Nook Color running an unassuming flavor of Android seems to be quietly turning some heads even while Moto, Samsung, et al. made all the tablet waves w/ their Honeycomb announcements/launches.  If Amazon can do likewise, but w/ an order of magnitude (or two) greater all-around push, the iPad may not stay on top for long...

 

BTW, I thought iOS uses Objective-C, not regular C.  They have similarities -- and Objective-C is a sort of (non-exclusive) descendent of C -- but they are not the same at all.  I've only had passing experience w/ it (back in the very early NeXT days), but it's probably more like C# for .NET and I would think you'd be in trouble developing for iOS if you still do so as you would in regular C.  In at least some of the most important ways, Objective-C is probably closer to Java (and other OO languages that have some sort of framework support) than to regular C.  And if iOS has some sort of support for regular C, it's probably much like other platforms and is not really recommendable, but is only there for legacy support.

 

RE: the corporate setting, I'm not sure iOS really has much of a lead.  It might impress some corporate big wigs and may have some advantages, but then it also seems to have its fair share of disadvantages (for the corporate setting) as well.  With how things might be developing, maybe RIM's Playbook will end up weathering the storm alright and land on top in the corporate setting.  OR the corporate world will just go neutral and stay away from investing into any one platform at all.  Afterall, is there really anything they need to put on these devices that can't be done in neutral fashion via web apps that run on mobile browsers for instance?  OR if it certain apps work much better locally on the device, it's probably better to use some sort of cross-platform SDK to do that instead since they probably wouldn't be doing anything so intense, demanding and performance-critical as video games that would require more native dev work.  Going neutral w/ cross-platform and/or web-based dev would certainly make more business sense if you ask me.

 

Yeah, the medical field and certain other fields will probably be different, and I can see iOS maintaining a big lead there, if it already has that big lead.

 

_Man_

 

Edited by ManW_TheUncool - 5/3/11 at 3:13pm

Quote:

Actually I was being too generous to Android -- the 2010 App market share numbers are: 

 

 

Android are in fourth place behind Ovi or BlackBerry -- although clearly I expect them to pass those two soon.

 

Man:

Long post -- but I'll just make a couple of points:

 

Obj C is a 100% superset of C -- meaning you could have 100% Ansi C compiling under the Obj C compiler.  In practical terms this means that if you have written you video game engine in C -- and AFAIK most are written in C -- it can run, unmodified, as part of an iOS app.  What you would need of course is Obj C hooks for all iOS API calls -- however, most serious video games are mostly self-contained -- so a large part of the code will be C and will stay C.

(The reason code where performance is paramount are written in C rather than C++ or Obj C or C# or Java is that C gives you far better performance (and in turn Obj C/C++ perform much better than Java as they are true compiled languages vs. and interpreted or JIT "compiled" language).

 

Yes there are some iPod Touch competitors but they remain utter failures in the marketplace (the now dead Zune HD probably had the biggest success).   You are claiming that the iPod Touch will be less successful in the future -- I have seen no evidence of that happening.-- in fact iPod Touch sales have been growing steadily -- it has been devouring iPod market share rather than getting eaten by the iPhone.  The reasons to have one haven't changed -- a pocketable "app computer"/media player without having to pay for expensive cell phone service.  The iPod Touch sells fine in places like France where the iPhone is on every single carrier -- because you may want to give it to your 10 year old, but wouldn't want to give her an iPhone as one example.  Also France is a good example of what happens to Android when the iPhone is on all carriers -- not much of a market share.  I think that everyone is extrapolating the current Android growth to continue apace in the US market -- I think that as the iPhone moves to all US carriers Android market share will stall.  I will say that I don't expect it to drop, but that iPhone/Android will grow at a similar rate eating both dumbphone share (which at this point is under 50% in the US) and BlackBerry share.

 

As to the Playbook (which, sorry, is a joke right now) ruling the corporate world or any other market -- only the future will tell.  My money is on the iPad.  Lets revisit the iPad/Playbook battle in 12 months -- one of us will be right, one will be wrong.  Maybe you'll be right