in my opinion ‘yes’. i have been a user of smartphone since 2004, and i have my fair share of gripes about windows mobile and symbian OS. i have since given up on both OS. my last was samsung i780 before switching to iOS in 2008. for the last two and half years, i was an iPhone user – from 3G to 3GS – until 2 weeks ago i decided to give Android a shot and see for myself what’s the hype about.

i have been using the Google Nexus One running on manually updated Android 2.2 aka Froyo for the last 2 weeks. so how was it? here’s my verdict: i can’t wait to get my hands on iPhone 4 from my local telco. i have listed the pros and cons in my earlier posting, now i got more to add. Apple will likely to dominate the smartphone market. iPhone has changed everything. being both a hardware and software company certainly brings about advantages when designing and producing the smartphone, or any products for that matter. being both a hardware and software company means both hardware and software can have much better integration. it eliminates or at the very least, minimize the issues between hardware and OS. productivity-wise, the software (the OS) will be more efficient as they only need to ‘talk’ to a single hardware designing company. it is better for software developer to develop for a single product (iPhone) which enables them to concentrate in making it better, rather than having to split their resources to develop for different manufacturers and different models. end result for Apple is a more stable product.

Apple has garnered much talks by controlling the distribution of iphone (itouch and ipad) apps. some critics disapproved of such control which curbed their freedom to develop. well, after using Nexus One for 2 weeks, i am beginning to appreciate Apple’s apps store and it’s intentions. android market does not have as many apps and variety compared to Apple’s apps store. i think it will not be as big as the apps store in anytime soon. why? there are simply too many models of android-based smartphone with varying screen resolution and possibly, proprietry UI features. it’s not going to be easy for developer to iron out bugs for all models in the market. on top of that, newer OS version is not readily available to all models in existing market which makes apps update a daunting task. very often then not, you will see comments such as ‘this apps doesn’t work on xx model’ on the android market. rather than commenting on the actual quality or usefulness of the apps, like usually you will see in the apps store. developers will likely to shy away from developing for such market, especially if its for monetary purpose. on top of that, there are several ‘independent’ markets sprouting out for android and these ‘independent’ markets even spammed the comments section of some apps in official Android Market to draw people to their sites. to me that’s definitely very unprofessional and unorganized. nobody ensure quality in the android market.

any tom, dick and harry can submit an app. i’d be hesitatant in buying paid apps on the official Android Market because i am not sure of its reliability in terms of credit card information handling. don’t get me wrong, i am not out to thrash android. android is a great OS. but perhaps, Google should design and manufacture their own hardware, and maybe have some control over the apps. i do have fun with the Froyo. it is fun and rather intuitive but it also reminds me of windows mobile. all i need is a straight forward phone. i don’t want to navigate through pages and pages just to reach a basic setting. nowadays, we all have too many things to learn and to do, it will be nice to simplify things a little. Google are you listening? 🙂

posted via AndroBlog on Google Nexus One (Android 2.2)