My current phone is a HTC Desire running Android. I would like to share the following anecdote as it governed my choice of tablet!
Last year I was in the market for a new mobile device, and after a tiny amount of deliberation I plumbed for the shiny and new iPhone 4. It had just come out, and there was a lot of hype surrounding it. Aside from the hype was a change in way data contracts were structured by the telco’s that meant unlimited data was no longer on offer for the iPhone, however having fallen in love, I did not take flava flav’s advice and I totally believed the hype! I joined the queues and begged for a phone from Orange who after making me sign away my soul finally handed me my shiny new object of my desire. In the following two weeks I had several problems with my new love including the phone dropping calls, and the sensor that was supposed to turn of the touch capabilities during a call not always working and cutting me off.
Unwilling to suffer 18 months of worrying about how I was “holding” a phone, and having been burned by being tied to a crappy handset before, I traded up for the HTC Desire running Android which seemed to be the phone of choice used by my peers.
As a previous iPhone owner and a big fan and the HTC had a lot to live up to. So first looks the HTC as good, not only did it have apps, but also had widgets, functional items that could be added to the UI. Trouble is the HTC comes with pre-installed apps and widgets that not easily be removed which is crappy. Several of the widgets are “faulty” the clock does not stay current and takes a moment to refresh, friend stream does not work and bizarrely Google's OS does not connect seamlessly to their cloud services such as docs, reader, chrome bookmarks etc. I find the interface clunky and ill thought through. Some say this is a lack of familiarity, however the iPhone set the bar for new interfaces exceptionally high, and Android just does not meet this bar.
Despite my rant about the AppStore, I have never been confident enough in the security of the various android stores to make a purchase using my credit card. This is not something I can "put my finger on", I just do not trust it. One thing I would say is that while the concept of “Apps” is a successful one that people seem to enjoy, allowing the ability to find small cheap and simple applications, I am unsure that it should be the only way of purchasing applications, especially “proper” applications. Having been a windows guy since windows existed, I use utility sites like ZDNet and Download.com to discover and download or purchase functional apps as I need them.
Apple really have created something with the iPhone and to me Android seems like a poor imitation. Because of this I decided to swerve the honeycomb tablets that were being launched. This may be something I regret…
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