A few smartphone notes (or rather, a few app phone notes, as David Pogue calls the latest wave “app phones”):
I have been frustrated with the AT&T network failings, with the most recent issues occurring down at Stanford, where it’s impossible to make a call or use data on football Saturdays. Presumably this is a similar issue to being at Coachella or South by Southwest, where the iPhone has such a high market penetration that it overwhelms AT&T’s cell towers. In addition, Apple’s App Store review and approval process continues to frustrate both end users like me as well as app developers. The Droid has received excellent reviews, the Android platform is open and allows such niceties as superior Gmail access and multitasking, the Droid has a physical keyboard and, perhaps most importantly, it runs on the Verizon network. So I picked up a Droid and decided to test it out for some part of the 30-day return period.
After about ten days, I have returned my Droid. There is much to like about it, and if I was not coming from an iPhone 3GS, I would love the Droid. But in the end, there is one minor failing and one major failing that prevents it from being the home run that would cause me to make it my primary pocket companion.
The minor failing? A miserable physical keyboard. The keys, as they must be on a smartphone, are very tightly packed, but these keys have no almost no vertical differentiation, just a slight doming, and very little key travel. Compare this to the Palm Treos, such as my dear old Treo 650. While those keys existed in an even smaller area, they had nicely domed keys that allowed you to tell when you were on a different key and a key action that provided a satisfying click when you successfully pressed a key. Perhaps such domed keys are more difficult to achieve on a hideaway keyboard because the keyboard must fit within a smaller vertical space, but the T-Mobile G1 (the first Android phone) has a better keyboard than the Droid, so improvement is possible.
The Droid’s keyboard is also too close to the left side of the device (when held with horizontal orientation) and too far away from the right side, so one’s thumbs soon grow tired of the necessary contortions. These location problems stem from the inclusion of a 4-way + button pad on the right side of the keyboard, which slides the keyboard to the left. Given that the Droid has a touch-screen, I’m not sure what function the 4-way pad serves. It doesn’t save much time to toggle a physical button compared to reaching up to the screen with your thumb to select, say, the next text-entry box, and removing it would allow for a much more satisfying keyboard location.
The saving grace for the Droid is a good on-screen keyboard (although not as good as the iPhone’s), but it means that the physical keyboard does not provide an advantage over the iPhone and just adds some bulk–the Droid is a bit thicker than the iPhone.
Can anyone guess the Droid’s major failing? Yep, it is application support from third-party software companies. Despite frustrations with the iPhone App Store, developers have great economic incentive to write software for the iPhone, because Apple’s early-mover status among app phones and the superior hardware and software platform gave it market penetration and momentum. At this point, there are so many iPhones and iPod Touches out there compared to any competing app phone that most developers create an iPhone version, then maybe, maybe they will write an Android or Palm WebOS version. The Mac-centric developers (those coming over from writing actual Mac OS X apps) have both an advantage over other, non-Mac developers in making the transition due to coding familiarity and an affinity for OS X as a coding platform. Take Things, the wonderfully designed and coded task manager on the Mac, unfortunately graced with a less than spectacular name. There is an iPhone version that, as much as possible, shares aesthetic commonalities with the Mac version. How likely are its developers at Cultured Code to make an Android version? Beyond issues of moving to a new development platform for an app phone that they are unlikely to use themselves, there are economic issues of market size and app sell-through rates within markets. It just doesn’t pay as much to develop on non-iPhone platforms, at least at this point.
I found myself time and again using an iPhone app in the last ten days that 1) requires a data connection, thus requiring use as a cell phone (rather than WiFi) and 2) was unavailable on the Android, with neither the actual iPhone app or a comparable substitute offered.
Here’s to the Android succeeding to the extent that it becomes a viable alternative to the iPhone, providing real competition and choice for app phone users. At this point, however, I think there is only one choice, and that is still the iPhone 3GS.
After tasting some of the joys of the Android, such as running apps in the background (something currently prohibited on the iPhone), I decided to take another look at jailbreaking my iPhone. There are a few cool new programs out there for jailbreakers, including an app that tricks programs like Skype and Slingplayer into thinking they are on a WiFi network when they are actually on a 3G cell network. That matters because AT&T has forced those programs to run only on WiFi, presumably to prevent network overload. You can also install a tethering program to let your laptop use your iPhone’s 3G connection–something promised by AT&T for most of this year, but with no signs of delivery yet. (And based on my recent Stanford experience, something that’s unlikely to be realized soon.) The coolest thing, though, is the combination of Backgrounder (free app) and a background windows manager (some free, some pay). These let you designate, on the fly, a program or programs to run in the background until you change that designation, and allow you to easily switch between the running programs. The implementation is very slick and works quite well, with little performance degradation on my iPhone 3GS. Battery life does go down a bit, and performance would be degraded more on a slower iPhone or iPhone 3G, but I’m very satisfied so far.