Alex Stone

I’ll preface this entry by stating that yes, I do own an iPhone. I’ll get into that later. What you need to understand is that I am, for lack of a better title, a huge phone geek. At a recent New Years Eve party, I got genuinely excited to get my hands on a new friend’s Palm Pre simply because I hadn’t seen one outside of a Best Buy or Sprint store. I’m just really into phones. Some dudes like sneakers, while some dudes like sports. I like phones.

That being said, let’s get into it.

When the Motorola Droid came out, I was excited because it meant that we would finally start seeing a slew of Android-based devices on a network that hated the iPhone so much that they would put billions behind promotion of Google’s OS and the hardware that ran it. I mean… the Droid itself is a phone I’d never want to own (even if I was on Verizon - I’d hold out for the Nexus or grab an Eris and wait for an OS upgrade), but Verizon is a huge company that could jettison Android into iPhone territory.

When the Droid launched, I tracked one down to get my hands on it and make a fair assessment to find that everything I thought was true. The OS is great, but hampered by being on a terrible handset. The keyboard is just as awful as you think it would be and the phone itself feels like it was built by two separate teams, one of which wanted to beat the iPhone and the other that wanted to make sure it had a lot of buttons (because in the early 00s, more buttons meant more power on a handset).

When the Nexus launched, and even went up for sale, I was salivating at what Google & HTC had done. It was a seemingly great device that overcame the Droid’s many shortcomings and was available to purchase unlocked. “Great! I want one”, I said.

Then the hands-on reviews came rolling in…

Reports of sluggish UIs, no multitouch (why do phone-makers underestimate how important multi-touch is to a touch-based interface), trackball is completely pointless, unresponsive home buttons (why are their four hard buttons on a touch interface, anyway?), poor quality screen material (just use glass. don’t try to get fancy with your plastic-like material), all but shattered my hope that Android-based phones had finally arrived to take on the iPhone.

I mean… this is Google’s phone. They built this thing with HTC, right? Why aren’t they following the Apple model and building the hardware FOR the software or vice versa?

I’ll still holding out hope that the Nexus 2 or Droid 2 will finally take the right steps to competing with the iPhone.

The Apps!

I wasn’t going to get in to the apps because it’s a silly argument. All the developers that are making the apps you want to use are developing primarily for the iPhone. Even with all the controversy surrounding iPhone development, people still flock to it as the platform to develop for. Why? Because that’s where all of your customers are. As much as Google is touting being open-source and not having restrictions on app distribution, one look through the Android Marketplace and you will see why zero-moderation isn’t the key to success.

There are 5 main apps that I use extremely heavily on my iPhone that I have not found acceptable equivalents for on any other platform. Even the Facebook app can’t be matched on other platforms and it’s the same company putting out the apps.

The following needs to happen if Android-based phones ever hope to get some of that iPhone userbase goodness

• Stop compromising on the handsets! - if you’re gonna make a mobile OS, intended to run on multi-touch platforms with 100% touch interface, stop dealing with phone makers that insist on putting 7 hard buttons on it and limiting you to one finger at a time.
• Clean up & filter the Android Marketplace - as many have suggested to Apple, try to find a happy medium between heavy moderation and open distribution. Maybe allow all apps on the store, but hide them from categories until they are run through some sort of approval process.
• Build some more apps in-house - Sure, Google Goggles is cool, and the new Maps are cool. But how often do people really use that stuff? I have yet to find a mobile Mail client as nice as the iPhone’s Mail app and the Calendar app is amazing (especially once you sync it with your Google Calendars [even syncs your shared Google Calendars!]). When the iPhone first came out, there was no app store, yet people were still going crazy over all the iPhone could do.
• Put out an iPod touch competitor - I read a while back that much of the iPhone’s success was due to users converting from the iPod touch to the iPhone after coming to love Apple’s handheld experience. A Droid-based PDA/media player may be what people need to get from the ‘Droid-curious to ‘Droid-purchasing stages.

I want Android to succeed. I really do. If not to give Apple some realistic competition, but because I like what they’re doing and have been a longtime fan of Google and am genuinely excited to see what they can do in the handheld market.