I'm a few months in to my experiment of shifting from 3 generations of iPhones to a new Android mobile device. I admit it felt a little odd when the iPhone 4 came out to not be racing to the nearest Apple store to get my hands on the latest version but after all of the follow on issues with both hardware and software, I guess I'm feeling less left out and maybe a little relieved. I'm a gadget addict and as anyone who knows me would attest very fond of Apple devices (although not as thrilled about Apple's culture of uber-control, censorship, and arrogance) so moving away from the iPhone was no small decision. In fact I've endured progressively worse service from the AT&T monopoly much longer than I should have just because I loved the iPhone as a mobile computing platform. But no more AT&T bashing in this post, I've done that enough already and its starting to feel like playing tee ball, it's just to easy a target to make it worth the effort, the network is terrible, they have coverage without band-width and are useless to make voice calls or get data services in any major US market, and that's that.
Switching to an Android device was much easier than I thought it might be and I had a couple of safety nets in place to get my Apple app fix, a wifi iPad and an iPod Touch. Those two devices combined with my Verizon Mifi card have actually ended up being much more useful to me than the iPhone was anyway...all the apps and none of the network problems. I use lots of iPhone apps, that's one of the things I loved about it so having a way to use them going forward was an important thing.
I was worried that the Android platform wouldn't have enough apps to meet my mobile needs. I've been pleasantly surprised though by the breadth of apps and the depth of functionality available. I will admit that in some cases the iPhone app is a bit more elegant but in most cases the issue was that the app UI is different between the two platforms, not the functionality itself. After some experimentation I'm using many Android apps interchangeably with the apps on my iPod or iPad. My favorite Android apps include: Facebook, Seesmic, Evernote (which I use across all my platforms, iPad, MacBook, iPod Touch and Android), Foursquare, Kindle (again, suncs across iPad, iPod and Android), K-9 Mail, Fandango, Skype, IM+, Remember the Milk (syncs across all devices too), Advanced Task Killer Free (a must for preserving battery life), IMDb, Taxi Magic, Yelp and an assortment of public transportation apps by city (San Francisco, Boston, NYC - I was concerned on this one but have been in great shape, I use these apps almost daily when I'm in San Francisco). The one missing app for me is Newsgator's Netnewswire, I miss having a good RSS reader that syncs across all my devices (I use it on MacBook, iPad and iPod but there's not an Android app). If I could find a replacement cross platform app with good Twitter integration I'd switch but for now I haven't found it.
I am on the HTC Incredible platform by the way, and am overall very happy with it. I did have one problem that took some investigation to work out, I had to hard boot the phone twice, which means that I had to re-set up the phone, not a fun experience although the Google integration with contacts and mail along with the Facebook integration made it much easier. The problem manifest itself as a low storage alert that eventually gets so bad you can't send text or email. It's an incorrect alert, I had plenty of space on both the phone and the SD card so was very perplexed. Eventually the phone locked up and would not complete a boot cycle. I had no choice but to do the hard boot procedure and start over. I did it the first time but unfortunately the same problem came back after a few weeks. I did some online research and found that the HTC mail app that comes with the phone has a issue (maybe a memory leak?) and that if you don't use the app the problem goes away. I tried it and not only has the problem not manifest itself again but my battery life has increased by 2-3X. I'm using Google's Gmail app for my Gmail account and K-9 for my MobileMe email now and don't miss the HTC app at all.
As far as other features I find the Incredible very usable. The touch keyboard is fine, I'm not using a 3rd party keyboard app. I do like the ability to load widgets and app shortcuts on the multiple "home" screens and flip between them. The multi-tasking is very useful although you do have to manage it to keep battery life optimized. Having constantly updating widgets for Facebook, Twitter, weather, calendar, Remember the Milk to do list, and Foursquare is an improvement over the iPhone. The notifications are also much less intrusive but no less useful on the Incredible.
So overall I'm very happy. The Incredible combined with Verizon's excellent network is a very good phone and Android has evolved into a viable competitor to the iPhone as a mobile computing platform. Both the iPhone and the Android OS have good and bad points, as should be expected, but they both provide an excellent mobile experience. Add to that the ability to make high quality voice calls and get data services almost anywhere and I'd say the Android phones on Verizon have an edge at this point from sheer usability. Would I say that if I didn't have an iPad and iPod Touch, I'm not sure? I do just carry the Incredible at times but mostly have one of the other devices handy with my mifi card. Part of that stems from the RSS reader issue, something I use every day and mostly all day long (after all, a part of my value as an analyst is to stay well informed and I depend on my RSS feeds to do that). Anyway, that's the update, I'd love to hear some stories from others who have switched...
