I miss Andriod and can't leave iOS- Tales of a flip flopper

I probably need a dual boot phone so I can choose the OS that I like at the moment.   As a way of background I've had both major smartphone platform in the past 3 years and several blackberries prior to that. I used the EVO for 15 months and the 3G iphone for 2 years prior.   With the introduction of the iPhone 4s last week a moved back to iOS for a while to see what's changed.   Peter Rojas had a great post the other day on why he doesn't use an iphone and summed it up best by saying there's a reason they call it personal technology.   So just like Peter, how I use my phone might be different than how you do and thus what's important to me won't be important to you.

The tl;dr version is best summed up from this comic 

http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/tech-fun/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/iphonandroiddifference.png

Now here are my thoughts.  

Touch - iOS feels just like liquid under your fingers.  I can't describe it but both the accuracy of the touch and scrolling is just better for me.  Winner: iOS

Widgets-  I loved this about Android, there were widgets for everything but most importantly I used a widget called Pure Calendar that would show me an agenda view in 3 lines for upcoming days.   iOS 5 does a little better with notifications than it used to but nothing beats a widget for this.  Winner: android

Notifications:  The new iOS notifications are almost exactly stolen from android however they have improved upon them.  Now I can see things like sender, subject, and what the notification is about.   Android had something called "ongoing" notifications for things like music that was running currently that I liked but the amount of info available in iOS notifications is just better now.  Another thing that android accels  is infinite configuring of notifications, make the light blink, vibrate, don't notify all app configurable infinite ways it seems. Winner: iOS

Camera: It's impossible to know how every camera performs but the 4s 8megapixel takes much better pics than my EVO and the gallery is much faster and easier to navigate than the EVO andriod  Winner: iOS

Google integration: This might seem like a loaded, item but if you depend on google services like gmail, google voice and google suggest, it's just better on android as you'd expect  Winner: Android 

Physical aspects:  Android comes in about every size you can imagine.   Big screens are a plus for me.  It's the hardest thing about going back to an iPhone for me.  I miss a 4.3" screen.   You can have a physical keyboard if you want.  Some of the phones are heavier and some are lighter than the iphone.   All that said there's something that just feels "right" about the iphone.  It's got a great build quality, the glass and metal make it very nice to hold in your hand.   TIE

Apps:  The apple app store is just better, there's better apps and the apps have more polish.  I don't know if android is just more difficult because it's so flexible, the amazon app store is better than the native android marketplace, but without question, the experience, the apps and all things third party are better in apple's app store.  The only plus to andriod  is I can install whatever I want where apple has a tight control on their apps so you as a user can only install what apple has approved.   Winner: iOS

Multitasking: Android by a landslide.  iOS has some fast app switching things but with android I can leave one task to run or download, switch to another and know it's going to finish.  Switching is better on Android too, just hold down the home button and your last 8 apps show up to switch too.   Winner android

Battery:   Unknown but with Android it varied  A LOT day to day, and varies a lot person to person, device to device.  I'll know more in a few days but Android probably gets a nod here to having a replaceable battery in most units.  My experience with the EVO was really bad though in the until the last format.  Edge: android

Sceenshots:  I have no idea why google hasn't added this and it frustrated me at least once I week that I couldn't do it without rooting the phone.  Winner iOS

Reliability:  FOR ME, iOS is just better, I hardly ever have to reboot.  There were times I was rebooting at least once a day on android.  I formated my phone 3 times in the 15 months I had it due to lockups, battery issues, etc.   The one thing (first world problem) that drove me crazy was bluetooth.  I have bluetooth in my car and if I was connected to wifi and left my garage the bluetooth would disconnect.  I also couldn't use my address book in my car, it was a small thing but was a big pain almost every day.    Apple has a small number of devices and controls what can run and when on the device so it makes sense it would provide a little more reliability: Winner iOS

Storage:  Well the great thing about android phone is that most of the time you can buy a cheap SD card to expand your storage vs paying outrageous prices for apple's memory.   The downside is you have to manage what's installed on your SD card.  Apps can be installed on your SD card but many times I got a low disk space warning because I only had 512mb on the phone and many apps have to run in phone storage. So managing the disk space was annoying.  With iOS I don't have to manage it.  I have 16GB to use anyway I want.  TIE

Downloads: Better on andriod in every way.  I never had to worry if I was connected to wifi to do something like with iOS.  Download whole system updates over 3G, podcasts, audio books, ANYTHING.   I hate getting the message in iOS this is too big for cell data. Winner: android

Sharing: iOS touted with version 5 they had deep twitter integration.  That doesn't even compare to android's share button.  With android any app could tapp into the share function, email, evernote, facebook, twitter, g+ and every obscure social site you can think of.  All sharable from almost anywhere.  Winner Android

Cloud: iOS brought us iCloud.  It can store backups of my phone, apps, calendar, documents, photos and just about anything.   After formatting my Android phone 3 times, I can't tell you how frustrating it was to have to reload most everything and the marketplace only seemed to keep track of my purchased apps not my free ones.   It just wasn't seemless and you'd think that it would be.   However google based things worked pretty well, contacts, calendar, email.  Also the auto upload of pictures to G+ was a great cloud feature  Winner: iOS

Voice: Android has had voice actions for a long time.  Given I have a long commute I would use it a lot.   I  was amazed how good it was the first time I used it.   You could give it simple commands like "send text to" "search for" and of course speech to text.   Siri is just better though.  I can ask it questions and it will talk back to me.  Add to that iOS's new location based reminders and it's a pretty powerful combo.  I think it still has a ways to go since I have to think about what I can ask it but, the fact it reads things back to me and has more action items than google voice puts it in the lead for me Winner: iOS

It looks like the score on these things is 8 vs 6 which is why I have such a hard time picking a platform.  My wife might take this phone from me in March and give me a chance to reconsider platforms as google releases their answers to iOS 5 and the 4s.

Feed the Borg, start talking to your phone

I remember being promised my computer would understand me since I was a kid.   The first software I really remember testing for this  "speech recognition" was called voice type dictation from IBM.  It required a Pentium 90Mhz computer.  What do I remember about it?  My boss tried to show someone in the office and he said "This is an example of voice type dictation."  The computer promptly placed on the screen the text "I'm going on a boy's pike vacation".  Laughter ensued and an inside joke was born .   Many other attempts were made including our CEO who heard the dragon naturally speaking software combined with a digital recorder could replace his admin assistant and insisted I order one right away.  As you can imagine soon after he threw it into my office, claimed it was useless and another attempt at getting my computer to understand me was lost. With every try the promise of software makers were that if we only had X fast processor it would get better.  It never did.  

Enter goog-411. Goog-411 was a free service launched in 2007 to offer a free directory look-up service from your phone, eliminating the need for a costly information call to get a number.  Why did google do this?  To gather voice samples.  Data was the key, not only processing power.  This was the holy grail of speech recognition.  By gathering samples of people's voice and then having the user select the correct listing Google gathered endless data points. Google used that data then to launch their own voice products including andriod actions and promptly discontinued goog-411 3 years later. 

Talking into your smartphone via these apps has yielded a real leap in the ability for my computer to finally understand me.  Now we have Siri, apple's new personal assistant.  Siri not only promises to understand what I say but also translate that into actions.  It seems almost too good to be true. What's the weather today?  How do I get home?  What are the markets doing today?   Not only that but Siri will translate your words into emails and text messages.   


With every word spoken into your android or iPhone you give the system one more data point to understand you better the next time.   Over and Over, all around the world by using data points people are making these systems better.   The cloud + mobile phones have brought in a few years what couldn't be done in the previous decades. Acceleration will happen exponentially with millions of people with accents, lisps, and different pronunciations will feed the system making it better for each of us. 


My question will be how much will I need to think about what I can ask these systems?  When will I be able to say "Siri what's my daughter's grades?"  "How much money is in my account less what bills I have left to pay this month?",  "What were our sales this month?"  Being able to send a text message or get the weather is great. However, I'm looking for the friction to reach zero.  In order for voice recognition to become mainstream it's got to be able to answer almost anything I can ask it, having to consider what I can and can't say to my phone probably means other than if I'm driving I won't use it.   IF however I can ask it anything, and the barrier is low enough then voice systems can really make my life easier and help me get things done.  I real personal assistant.  I'm sure that our phones will teach us to speak to it just as it learns what we are saying.  My hope is that by feeding these systems more data and adding API's soon I'll be able to not even worry if my phone understands me.