Phone: Samsung Nexus S
Carrier: Rogers

I just had to write a post about this. I have heard the theoretical arguments for so long that I wanted to give the practical. Instead of discussing what feature gaps there are between the two, which is exactly how everyone else approaches, I am going to discuss the usefulness of the differentiating android features as well as the things that annoy me since I am coming from iPhone.

Why “Open” is useful:
- It lets you customize the crap out of stuff.
- Download whatever you want, at your own risk. No parents watching over you.

Why “Curated” is useful:
- Way easier path to find things. iTunes, App Store.
- Better protection from rogue apps. I noticed that I wasn’t paying attention to the services that apps were using when I installed them on android. I am sure I am not the only one.

Differentiating features for Android and how they play in my day-to-day:
Flash - Doesn’t play at all. Haven’t even installed it yet.
Widgets - Meh, interesting and fun. Not useful. Why is there no gmail widget from Google?
“Open” - Since I a tech savvy I enjoyed the fact that I could download custom apps like swype off-market. But I can feel the danger of the system immediately. I would never recommend non-technical people to do this kind of thing.
Device Choice - This was nice. For $99 I got a relatively new Nexus S whereas 279 would have bought me the 1+ year old iPhone 4. This ultimately was my buying decision criteria.
Google integration - This is spotty and I might say dreadful. Android and Chrome don’t sync bookmarks. Tell me that doesn’t look like an internal battle between the organizations. Sure Calendar, Mail, and Contacts sync but that isn’t different than the iPhone.
“Real” multitasking - I don’t know how people stand behind this “feature.” It is just another thing that the user has to track and maintain. I would actually say that this is deficiency. People don’t want to manage things, believe me I work in the management software business. Application state should be automatically managed. Rogers recommended to download an app like Juicedefender which does the management for you, seems like Google missed a feature that people need.
Switchable keyboard - I use swype now. Swype itself could be better, but the potential is great.
Built in Navigation - Very useful. I want to buy a dock to take better advantage of this.
Extra hardware buttons (Back, Menu, Search) - I am still having a hard time switching my brain from the iPhone way of doing things. Menu button I think is just bad design.

Things that bug the crap out of me about android:
Mac integration - Doesn’t work out of the box with iTunes or iPhoto. Very painful… very very painful. iPhoto especially.
Hands free calling - Anyone who claims that what android “offers” in the way of voice dialing is any good is just smoking something wacky. Every phone I have used ever (feature phone, BB, or iPhone) has done this better.
Browser - Doesn’t respond to taps appropriately. Doesn’t provide appropriate feedback to the user that something is happening (or not happening). I am constantly tapping, re-tapping, hitting the back button, then tapping again.

Thanks for reading.