personal tobias

I’ve been walking around with two devices for a while now. Not all the time but often I would have my Nokia N95 8GB with me, together with an iPod Touch. But now I have an HTC Desire.

I’d use the Nokia for phone calls, but also some mobile web browsing such as Google Reader or a mobile web Twitter client. I’ve never installed many applications on it. It almost seemed Nokia didn’t want you to install anything on it, that’s how hard they made it. And the launch of their Ovi app store only made it a little better. I still really like the company Nokia, they are the complete opposite of Apple with their openness and anti-hype way of communicating (which may be part of their Scandinavian nature but perhaps also a little damaging to their PR). In the end I was not a big fan of their products anymore. Even the N97 which looked like Nokia’s answer to the iPhone failed to deliver with a certain confusing difficulty to it’s menus and unfortunate trade offs such as the resistive screen.

I carried around the iPod Touch for consuming news via newspaper apps or watching video podcasts. It’s obviously very user friendly, but sometimes a little frustrating in what Steve Jobs doesn’t allow you to do (and that’s how it feels when you can’t do things like multitasking or installing another media player). I just read Apple did allow the Opera browser to the app store, but just the fact that everyone was holding their breath for that and the arbitrariness because other browser have been disallowed says it all.

Now the Android operating system which is inside my new phone (think of it as the Windows or Mac OS inside the phone, while it’s actually based on Linux) is like a marriage of the Nokia and the iPod Touch. It’s versatile, but user friendly. There are more things to figure out than with an iPhone which makes it more customizable, but also less easy to use. When you give it to someone less computer savvy (I call this the girlfriend test) she will pick up and figure out the iPhone a lot faster than the Android phone.

HTC Desire keyboard installed on a Nexus One

The hardware of the HTC Desire is practically the best there is with a fast processor and amazing screen. Only the camera could be a little better (I’ve never been blown away by a camera phone, although the camera in the Nokia was very good) and the internal memory could have been more especially since that is the only place to store apps. Music, photos and videos can be placed on a memory card. I also think the on screen keyboard is the best I’ve used. I’m typing this on it right now.

One major difference between the iPhone and Android phones is the app store of course. Apple has a huge advantage with their ever increasing collection of apps. Usually this causes so called network effects (the more apps there are, the more interesting the product becomes, the more users it will get, the more apps there will be developed, etc) which at a certain moment are very hard to duplicate or substitute for a competitor. The fact that the same app store can be used on many different Android models is a very smart way to overcome this problem, I think. This causes the user base to grow, which stimulates aforementioned cycle. Already almost 80% of iPhone developers have stated they are planning an Android app.

So I’m very optimistic about the Android platform and can’t wait to see what to future hold for these two rivals, because I think it’s clear these will become the two dominant players.

If you like the post, please share it using the bar below on Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook or others. Subscribe to my feed to stay updated of the posts. Join the Facebook community below or the Google or TwitterRemote communities in the sidebar. Don’t hesitate to comment ;-)