iOS & Android

Warning, there's very little videogame content in the following post. Just tech toys. There, you've been warned.

The only thing that I really wanted for Christmas this year was a new iPod. Of course, I was a bit more detailed than that on the link I sent my wife. I knew I wanted a refurbished 3rd generation 64Gb iPod touch (with a compass in the stock) since I have a lot of music and didn't care about a camera or higher resolution screen. I weighed several options over the last couple of months to come up with this, even considering sacrificing music storage for the convenience of only carrying one device, in a phone/music player. I've used an Android phone for a couple years now, and have messed with several different models, so I'm pretty familiar with the little green robot. But music is not something that Android does well at all, and I've always been impressed with the software and hardware on my click-wheel iPod.

Other than a bit of time with my wife's iPad, I hadn't really had much experience with iOS. Really, I can rarely ever pry that thing out of her hands because she's usually glued to Words With Friends and her Dragon Tattoo books on the Kindle app. I thought it might be kind of neat to write down a few impressions of iOS Vs. Android now that I've played with both.

iOS pros:

several apps that appear on both platforms are better here (ESPN scorecenter, FB, Twitter)

Official Twitter app rules (instant notifications, timeline postion saved, multiple accounts)

keyboard accuracy

touchscreen accuracy

iPod (much better music player and easily syncs with my > 100 iTunes playlists)

market and innovation leader (# apps in the market, interoperability with more sites/products, apps to Apple App store first)

more and better games (previously mentioned Words w/ Friends and Fruit Ninja are my favorites)

WiFi and sleep mode work perfectly together to give you an "instant on" internet device

"magical" (Heh, not really, but the UI is consistently easy to use and pleasing)

Android pros:

Notification system

Latitude & maps integration

Google integration

Best version of gmail

Reader app

Free navigation

replacement keyboards

replacement launchers

Back button (I hate that iOS has to use screen space at the top left to accomplish the same thing)

larger screens

choose your hardware

higher chance of finding a free app in the Android market than Apple app store

So this isn't mean to be an end all comparison post over which phone OS is better, and I'll probably be looking for a newer, faster Android in the next few months. Let me know if I've missed anything or have any questions. I could talk for hours about this stuff.