I'm running an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S Android phone with programming utilities and a custom UI, and it only cost me the equivalent of 450 USD. In France, it's 150 USD with a contract commitment in France. It comes with up to 16GB of internal memory, that is the flash memory plus the internal SD card. And I said internal, because the phone has an external SD card slot that allows for up to 32GB in micro-SD cards since Android 2.2 aka Froyo.
The iPhone goes up to 16GB of flash memory for 300USD on contract, and at 650USD unlocked. It doesn't have any memory extension slots.
Now, for the app market. On iPhone, even to go grab a free app, you have to log into an Apple account, and even after that, they will ask you for a credit card. Developers are often discouraged because they need to pay a shitton of charges, licenses and sign a lot of papers from Apple, and even give them 30% of their revenue generated by app sales. Even after that, Apple is free to remove your app from the store, copy your idea/code, and put it back on the store as their own, without you being able to do anything about it.
The Android Market never asked me to sign up for any kind of accounts. Day one, I downloaded a bunch of free apps, and used my Google account to comment and rate them. Then, I downloaded more apps, and discovered how large the market is.
The competition on the market is incredible: thousands independent developers trying to gain the most ground on several fields, even if it means competing against the masters such as Mozilla or Opera in the market for mobile web browsers. Currently, the Dolphin Web Browser is arguably the best: regularly updated, and offers a wide-range of plugins from either the Dolphin devs themselves or third-party developers.
Such competition forces developers to deliver regular updates and high-quality programs to avoid losing their userbase to their competitors, which is all the better for customers.
There are three eBook readers on Android I know about so far: Aldiko, Google Books, and Amazon Kindle, which are all working together to deliver the best user experience.
Apple is just too restrictive and protective of their platform. Paying so much for the iPhone is just preposterous for what it delivers.
bluepilot said:
I have an iphone, I am not very good with technology so I like the iphone because it is easy to use. I think that the android is a much better buy though.
I love my iphone because messaging is so easy but apart from that it is nothing special. I think you are paying more for the convenience of being able to use the internet whenever you want more than anything else. But is some places and at certain times of the day the service can be so slow that it is not really worth.
I fell out of love with my iphone a bit because i dropped it down the toilet then had to shell out some cash for out-of-warrenty repairs.
But right now, I think I will go back to a more traditional phone when this contract is up. Smart phones are okay in all but sometimes it is nice just to have a more simple life.
Using the internet wherever and whenever you want is called 3G, and 4G. Android, Blackberry and Windows Phones do that, too.
And the convenience of being an easy-to-use phone is just what every single Apple product is about: easy-to-use, but for people who don't know what they're doing when there's a lot more to do (like programming, maintenance, updates, etc).
), always have the internet in your pocket, a mobile gaming device on you, and there literally is an app for everything.
