Why I’m a #DroidFan
June 28th, 2010. Published under Android. No Comments.
Its been aaaaaaaages since I have written a blog post. I considered getting back into AudioBoo but lost my voice last week and by the time I got it back yesterday I had lost motivation!
Whats wrong with Apple?
Anyway… I have become increasingly pissed off with the wall that Apple puts around their products and the applications people can build on top of them.
Apple have their very well oiled marketing machine that everyone eats up and gets involved with. For instance, from an average persons persepective the queues at the Apple Stores when a product launches is just because the product is that popular. That may well be the case, but from someone who can see through the marketing you can see what Apple is actually doing… Why serve people so slowly when people have been outside for hours… Oh yeah, to make sure there is a huge fuss made the media! Drives me nuts that people fall for it everytime, wait a day and then go in and there is no queue!!
Instead of making me want to wait for the new iPhone to come out Apple actually made me look at the alternatives. As people who follow me on Twitter will know, I loved the idea of the Google Nexus One and saw myself getting it on Vodafone UK when it came out. I subscribed to the rubbish marketing e-mails to get news of its launch. But after seeing that you have to basically pay £5 a month extra just because it is a nexus one really pissed me off again.
A few people had told be about the HTC Desire and I did plenty of research on it and basically the only difference between the Desire and Nexus One is there is no background noise cancellation microphone on the back. That and the fact you need to rely on HTC to give you Android updates.
HTC Desire baby!
After mulling it over for a few weeks I decided to get the Desire on O2 as I had been on their iPhone simplicity deal with free data. Except thats not exactly how I did it. My Girlfriend Hannah had a really old brick and she had started coming round to the idea that the iPhone might actually be a good phone for her to use. So she upgraded her contract to get the Desire, I still get the simplicity deal, she gets my old iPhone, I get the Desire and I pay the difference in contract prices. All that to get the free “unlimited” data!
Whats so amazing about Android?
Back to Android… AWESOME! What an awesome Operating System. From a developers point of view you can build an app that can replace virtually anything on the phone. Want to make your own keypad? Browser? Home screen? Lock screen? You can! Can you do any of those on apple? NO BLOODY WAY!
I’m currently building my first two apps (kind of in parallel) to get to grips with development but as it uses Java and I did a bit for my degree it is really easy to get going. There is nothing to pay (untill you want to put anything into the market) and you can debug on your device rather than having to pay Apple $100 for the benefit!
Catching up
Although not all the “major brands” have jumped on the bandwagon yet I can imaging lots of them planning it at the moment. The next release of Android is set to have a lot better UI tools and make it easier and simpler to customise the look and feel of the device and apps so that may help the bigger brands get on board easier.
At the moment I can only find one other downside: Apps that stay open and drain battery. But there is a solution… get a tast killer. But just be careful… Don’t kill the clock app as your alarms won’t go off! I found that out the hard way.
Are you a #AppleFan or a #DroidFan? Talk to me in the comments! 