android vs. iphone, the initial impression

so! my beloved htc desire decided to start shitting itself a few months ago, soon after i got the initial unstable release of 'words with friends'. on prolonged word manipulation it would get really hot and occasionally auto-shutdown and reboot. then it started happening when 3G coverage was spotty and taking a long time to load pages, with the bootup screen vibrating to life up to 10 times before it decided it was cool enough to proceed. in the past couple of weeks any time i used regular low-impact internet for more than 5 to 10 minutes the phone would auto-shutdown and try to reboot. finally yesterday i decided that the situation was untenable and required an intervention, before my warranty expires in august.

so i took it into the shop today and it will take 4-6 weeks (!) to be repaired. i hope to hell they do what needs to be done (replace the motherboard, apparently, according to 3 billion other people on the internet who have the same problem, and literally no other problem with this phone). and so i got a replacement phone for this period.. you guessed it an iphone 3GS. rather than being disappointed i have decided to really try and compare the two operating systems as objectively as possible.

impressions from the first day:

- the iOS is much more like a traditional mobile phone than the mobile computer that i came to regard my desire as. most obvious is the fact that all options are set in the phone's general settings, including importing contacts, notifications. there is no way to manage the settings for a particular program from within it, though this may be different with apps. the android system allows a lot deeper investigation into everything, and when it diverts you to settings to change something it will return you back to where you were! not so with iOS. leaving the impression that the iOS is nothing but a frontend, with many rounded square buttons to be sure, but a frontend nonetheless.

- keyboard - the iOS keyboard doesn't even compare with the old nokia keypads with the multiple characters per key, which is what swype is similar to with longer-hold keys. you have to press another key to toggle between letter/number/symbol keypads. also the spelling/autocorrect is pretty crap, no wonder fuckyouautocorrect.com exists. i much much much prefer tap-the-word-and-a-list-of-alternatives-appears on the android. NOT TO MENTION SWYPE WHICH I CAN NO LONGER LIVE WITHOUT, in which by 'live' i mean 'function at optimum efficiency'. so far on the iphone i haven't figured out how to insert the cursor mid-word to edit text.

- the picture of the clock app means that i have to tap the screen to open a large clock. this is where iOS can't compete - widgets. i like to have my agenda and to-do list open right on the home page, so i don't have to open the programs individually.

- iOS likes to show off that it can change screen orientation by slightly contracting the screen for 0.2 of a second during the process and therefore wasting my time! or it may just be slower. is the iphone 4 faster?

- iOS doesn't seem to have select-all as a function, whereas android has it everywhere that any kind of single or multiple selection can be made.

conclusion: so far i haven't found anything that iOS excels at over android. except that it stays on, but that's more a desire hardware problem than anything android-related. oh right, also probably 'words with friends', damn you.

recommendations from today: android phones could benefit from a physical mute button, a single hardware advantage of the iphone.

STAY TUNED, MORE RIVETING ANALYSIS TO COME!