The Android Advantage

The following is adapted from an email conversation I had with my father on the merits of Android and iPhone (I use an Evo, and a 4S every day):

To start with there were a couple issues that I have found difficult to deal with using the iPhone. In addition to the lack of a notification light, the small screen is a big issue when typing, especially since the system refuses to rotate to the landscape keyboard during many common functions. Most notably, this occurs whenever entering your Apple ID password, something that occurs quite often (for example, every time you want to download from the App Store or iTunes). I have long complicated passwords with special characters for security reasons, and this approach is cumbersome to say the least. I find the keyboard itself to be unintuitive as well, the characters on the keys do  not change from capital to lower case which makes it easy to forget what case you are in, especially on case sensitive passwords that are invisible. Also, all special characters are found on a second function page (to put a period at the end of a sentence requires two button presses instead of one). The phone itself strikes me as fragile, being glass on both sides, and small, it would be very easy to drop and break. In fact, my company purchased an Otterbox case to protect my phone. Unfortunately, this negates advantages of the phones small footprint and beautiful aesthetic qualities. My iPhone is now a fat brick with the same footprint and quite a bit more thickness than my Evo without the benefit of the Evo's 4.3” screen. As I mentioned on the phone with you though, I do think that many of these issues would cease to be an impediment to productivity with persistent use.

Also, addressing your concerns about the business and cloud services. Google has jumped into the business space with both feet. They have a very comprehensive set of cloud offerings that, I think, trumps Apple’s initial foray into the space.

Google Apps for Business:

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-bk&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=google%20apps

Even if you choose not to use the business license, most of these apps are already available for free with the Chrome Web Browser. As a private user, I have been using Google Docs (now Drive) for  years now. I’ve found this cloud office suite to be both powerful and lightweight, and since it operates completely from the cloud, and has Android integration, I am never without my data. Google offers great solutions for the use of its cloud services. Integration with Android is assured of course, while the Chrome Internet Browser brings complete access from your PC, Mac, or Linux desktop, and the introduction of the Chromebook laptops have brought cloud computing on the go to a new level. No other company offers such a comprehensive array of cloud based products.

The most compelling consideration for me though, is Google’s attitude toward my data. Google has a very open data liberation policy. No matter what service you use Google believes that the data you store and create within their cloud is your property, and Google pledges to make it easy for you to liberate it from their systems.

Google’s Data Liberation Policy:

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/introducing-dataliberationorg-liberate.html

I know you mentioned that you liked the Photo Stream picture syncing feature of IOS5. This feature is available right now on Android, and features unlimited storage space as well as Picasa’s photo editing features available right in the browser. This comes in the form of the Google+ app, G+ is Google’s new social network built from the ground up with privacy in mind. Having a G+ account brings a lot of features, one of which is “Instant Upload” of your photo’s to the cloud as you take them. There is no requirement to ever share anything on G+, or even to make your profile public, and it offers a lot of benefits for free. And due to Google’s DLP, you never have to worry about getting those photos from Google onto whatever device you may be using (and there is a G+ app for IOS too).

In addition, Google Music is another stellar piece of their cloud portfolio. Google offers 300GB of music storage (approx. 20,000 songs), for free. You can buy music now on the Android market (they also give away 1 free song a day), or you can buy from iTunes, or AmazonMP3, or any other service you wish. Google provides Music Manager, a program that automatically uploads your music to the cloud as soon as it hits your hard drive, regardless of its source. And naturally, Google provides an easy way for you to repatriate or destroy this data as you see fit.

As you can see, I’ve been following the developments in the cloud computing sphere for a while now. I believe this is where all computing is moving, as does Apple and Google. These two are the major players for the time being, and I don’t think you could really go wrong with either one. They will both continue to innovate and add features and functionality to their offerings, but at the moment I believe that Google has the edge, and for me their open policies solidify their argument for their services.

Have a good day.