Why is it easier to make a great Twitter client for Apple’s iPhone than for Google Android phones like the new Verizon DROID? After Robert Scoble wrote a typically impassioned post entitled The Droid fails AS A PRODUCT when compared to Palm Pre and iPhone, and used Twitter clients as an example, Thomas Marban of Android’s premiere Twitter client, Twidroid, responded:

one of the main reasons why UIs are unequally inferior are not only the way you build apps (open vs. closed hw/sw system) and the SDK itself but also marginal to non-existing UI standards, no ready-made drag & drop UI items, variations in carrier- & device firmware, hard- & software input, screen sizes, international customizations, modded phones, rooted phones and last but not least completely different expectations among users and the linux’ish target group itself. in a nutshell: beautiful mess. obviously, all these reasons eat up a huge pile of time that one could better spend with improving UX and polishing the interface. those who started early with android development have learned and are still learning it the hard way, just like they did with win 3.1 back in the days.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball, in Lots of Excuses comments:

That doesn’t sound like someone who plans to ever ship something of the caliber of Tweetie, Birdfeed, or Twitterrific. From what I’ve seen of Twidroid, it’s not even as good as Craig Hockenberry’s original version of Twitterrific for iPhone, which was written as a jailbreak app before the iPhone officially supported third-party software. If Android hardware diversity is already a problem for third-party developers, it’s only going to get worse.

This also highlights the advantages Apple has given iPhone developers. Not only is the iPhone based on OS X, but the development tools are based on Xcode and Interface Builder, and while not as many developers are likely already familiar with Cocoa touch as, say, developers might be with Android’s language(s) (or web developers may be for the Palm Pre), existing Mac developers can make those tools sing. And, given the SDK Apple provided, even new developers get a huge head start in terms of functions and user interface elements.

Sure, that means there’s a lower barrier of entry to creating poor iPhone apps, but it also means great developers aren’t wasting their time re-inventing UI wheels, or fighting the OS to do right by their apps. They investing that time in making great apps.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Why It’s Easier to Make a Great Twitter Client for iPhone than for Android

Verizon’s Motorola DROID, launched November 6, 2009, wasted no time taking it to Apple’s iPhone 3GS, starting with a pre-emptive iDon’t TV commercial that mixed unflattering fact and fiction to appeal to geeks and general consumers alike. Many have now hailed it as the best competition to the iPhone to date, and the first flagship device to match it. Are they right?

If you’re interested in either an iPhone 3GS or DROID, here are some points to consider:

Network: AT&T vs. Verizon

Many would say pick your network before you pick your device, but sometimes we love a device so much we’ll put up with limited or even lousy networks. However, it’s important to remember that Verizon has better 3G coverage than AT&T. CDMA/EVDO (the technology Verizon uses) simply has greater range, and there are so many millions of data-hungry iPhones on AT&T that their GSM/HSPA towers can get overwhelmed (especially New York and San Francisco). So, yes, you will get more bars in more places with Verizon.

On the flip side, AT&T’s GSM/HSPA network is the same standard used in almost all of the rest of the world. This means that you can use your iPhone when you travel (though you’ll pay a premium for the privilege) on carriers from the US to Canada to Europe to Australia to… you get the idea. Verizon’s CDMA/EVDO network, on the other hand, might roam in Canada, but that’s it. If you go DROID, you’re not taking it with you.

Lastly, AT&T’s GSM/HSPA can handle simultaneous voice and data, so you can talk on the phone while surfing the web, emailing, or using apps over 3G. Verizon’s CDMA/EVDO can’t do that. If you’re on the phone, you’re off the 3G internet. Wi-Fi can make up for this if available, but if you’re on the road you’re out of luck — and yes, that includes Google Maps Navigation for anything but cached data. (That is, if you have an AT&T 3G connection to work with, remember our first point above).

So if network matters to you — and it should! — figure out the best carrier for where you live, work, and travel, and that will help you figure out the device, be it iPhone or DROID.

Hardware: Slab vs. Slider

The iPhone 3GS is all about the singular slab, black and silver and glass, with rounded corners and ultra-slim profile, and only the Apple logo by way of branding. The DROID is in two “licorice and brown-sugar” parts, screen and sliding keyboard, with sharper angles, and Verizon, Motorola, and Google proudly etched all over it. Both are solid; both are well built.

Inside those bodies, the DROID boasts a 3.7-inch WVGA (480×854), 16:9 capacitive touchscreen with a 550 MHz processor, microUSB slot (comes with 16gb microSDHC card), user-changeable 1400 mAh battery (rated at nearly 6 and a half hours of usage time), and 5 megapixel camera with image stabilization, 4x zoom, dual-led Flash, and auto-focus. Oh, and a physical keyboard.

The iPhone is 3.5-inch (320×480) capacitive touchscreen with an undisclosed but snappy processor (600MHz Cortex A8 when investigated), no removable storage but 16GB or 32GB of internal memory, built-in battery with 5-hours of talk time, a 3 megapixel camera with auto-focus, and no physical keyboard.

So, DROID wins the spec battle, but there are a few caveats. Though capacitive and touchscreen, the Verizon DROID doesn’t support multi-touch gestures. Yes, Android 2.0 supports them, yes the DROID’s Euro-counterpart, the Milestone, includes them, yes developers can make apps that implement them, but for some reason, the DROID’s built-in apps don’t let you do things like pinch-to-zoom or multi-touch typing. The iPhone, on the other hand, is a multitouch monster. It’s fully and uniformly supported on every iPhone, in every app.

Though it can use up to a 32GB microUSB card, unless you “root” (hack) the DROID, you can’t store apps on that card. Supposedly due to piracy concerns, Android 2.0 only allows you to install apps on 256MB of internal memory (some developers work around this by installing a small host app, then downloading extra data to the card). Depending on your usage pattern, that may not affect you, of course. But for gamers who want lengthy adventures with tons of textures, or offline navigation with all the localized maps, it could be an annoyance. The iPhone, by contrast, lets you use almost all available space for apps — up to just shy of 32GB on the high-end model.

While the DROID has a 5 megapixel camera, we’ve learned via the megapixel wars on point-and-shoots that size doesn’t matter. Quite often small sensors are cut up far to much, sacrificing quality for quantity. When it comes to the DROID camera, while it’s far from terrible, it’s pictures aren’t as pretty as the iPhone 3GS’. At least not yet. iPhone 3GS is currently auto-focusing better and its software is processing better looking stills.

Lastly, the DROID has a physical keyboard and a virtual keyboard. The iPhone only has a virtual keyboard. Early reviews suggest the DROID physical keyboard is a little flat, a little hard to differentiate one key from another, and a little off-center to accommodate the 5-way control. In other words, it’s no BlackBerry. Likewise, the virtual keyboard is good but not iPhone great. If you care about physical keyboard, however, DROID has one and iPhone doesn’t.

Both have top-of-the-line hardware, with the DROID raising the stakes to tip-top. It’s not what you have, however, but what you do with what you have, and in that regard the scales look pretty well balanced.

Software: iPhone 3.0 vs. Android 2.0

Android is an open-source, Apache-licensed operating system that Google makes available free of charge to device manufacturers who can add their own proprietary “secret sauce” to the mix. So, there’s no single, unified Android platform like there is for iPhone. On the plus side, you get a much greater amount of diversity, hardware and software, then the iPhone. On the minus side, it means what you see on one Android device may not be what you see on another. In terms of the DROID, this means you won’t see HTC’s Sense UI or even Mototola’s own Blur social networking interface. What you do get is Android 2.0 Eclair with Google’s proprietary Push Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Voice, YouTube, and Google Maps (now including the incredible looking Google Maps Navigation) rolled in. If you’re heavily invested in the Google experience, that alone is compelling.

The iPhone doesn’t offer as much Google goodness — certainly and controversially not Google Voice for example, and not Navigation (yet?) either. It does offer some, however, including push Gmail, Calendar, and Contacts via GoogleSync, and built-in Google Maps and YouTube. By contrast, the iPhone has tons of Apple’s very best software, and Android/DROID has absolutely none of that. For prime example, no awesome iPod app and everything that goes with it. The iPhone also supports MobileMe, which might be meaningless unless you’re a multiple Mac user who lives on iDisk, Mac Sync, and Back-to-my-Mac.

Apps: iPhone App Store vs. Android Market

Apps are the current killer-app. Sounds funny, but from “app for that” commercials down to blogs keeping running tally of which platform has how many (100,000+ for iPhone vs. 10,000-ish for Android if you’re curious), arguably nothing is supposed to matter more to consumers right now.

To be fair, not all those iPhone apps are what we’d call high quality. Apple’s mature, well polished Xcode and Cocoa touch development environment and iPhone SDK makes it easier to build iPhone apps — maybe too easy at times. By the same token, not all the Android apps are exactly golden either.

DROID’s advantage is that Google offers a more open development environment, meaning they don’t moderate their marketplace the way Apple does the App Store. Developers are free to make and upload pretty much anything they want, and only if there is a complaint will Google investigate and potentially remove it. Also, developers can provide “side loading”, or apps that can be installed outside the market. This may appeal more to pro-level or geekier users, but it should be a consideration for everybody.

Apple only allows apps that Apple approves into the App Store (and limits side-loading to 100 “ad-hoc” seats, or custom Enterprise deployment). While this should theoretically make for a “safer” environment, the capricious nature of what’s accepted and what’s rejected really just makes it more frustrating. Again, for geeks. Most users, however, will never notice this. With 100,000 apps, chance are you’ll find what you want and never notice what makes all the bloggers crazy. It’s just not a consumer issue.

What’s more noticeable is that DROID allows you to multitask all of its apps, built-in and 3rd party alike. You can keep apps open and running in the background, and with the press of a button, bring a 6-way app selector up for easy switching. If you want to run Pandora Radio while surfing the web or navigating a trip (as long as you don’t take a phone call), or keep your Instant Message app open all the time, this may be a big deal to you.

Apple’s iPhone only lets the built-in apps like Mail, SMS, Phone, iPod, etc. run in the background. So, you can listen to music on your iPhone, or streaming via Safari or iTunes, while you use most other apps (even the phone), but you can’t do likewise with a 3rd party app such as Pandora. The iPhone does implement “push notification” to alert you to activity in Instant Message clients and other apps. It works in most cases, but lacks Android’s more sophisticated notification management as well.

So — and it’s a theme that will come up over and over again — Android offers the potential for more kinds of apps and more ways to get them, but the iPhone’s controlled environment currently offers a greater quantity of apps, and among them many higher quality, highly polished 3rd party apps.

Ecosystem: Cloud vs. Cloud+

Google has virtually become the internet and their range of services from search to Gmail to Google Calendar to Google Voice… we’re not going to list them all again but suffice it to say if there’s a web-based service Google isn’t currently offering they’re planning it — or planning to buy it. And all of those will, as mentioned above, work first and best on Android and DROID.

On the other hand, as mentioned, the iPhone supports most of those services and supports them good enough for many users. In addition, it plugs into Apple’s cloud and client based iTunes ecosystem. It can’t match Google on pure cloud, but it offers local sync many users still want and need. And just like Google works best on Android, iTunes and Apple works — and just works — best on the iPhone, that includes all the music and media, the Mac and Apple TV, and all the accessories that years of iPod dominance have made so popular.

If you love the freedom of a wireless world filled with free Google services, you can go all in with DROID. If you want most of that, and are heavily invested in iTunes and Apple, then iPhone might be a better fit.

Media: iPod vs. ??

The iPhone is, according to Apple, the best iPod they’ve ever made, and if you’re interested in a media-equipped phone, that’s hard to ignore. As we just discussed, the iPhone enjoys incredibly easy and increasingly robust sync with iTunes, and the massive music, movie, TV, podcast, and other content the iTunes store provides. And that’s not even counting your existing iTunes content, if you’ve already ripped your CDs, DVDs, and other media into iTunes-supported format.

That last part is just as important, however. Not all media is supported by iTunes, and so it’s not all supported by the iPhone. If you’ve built up a collection of Xvid, DivX, MKV, OGG Vorbis, etc. content (all from legitimate sources, of course), the iPhone won’t play them unless and until you convert them to MP3/AAC or H.264 MP4. And that can be a hassle.

Now, Android’s built in music player is… anemic, and its movie player even more so, but given their open environment if there’s a format they don’t play, there’s a good chance you can find an app that will play it (or that one will be developed). It might not be as slick or elegant as the iPhone’s iPod player, but if you need to play those formats, does it really matter?

User-Experience: Design vs. Engineering

There’s no simpler way to put it, Google is an engineering company while Apple is a design company. The DROID was constructed to meet a set of features. The iPhone was crafted to meet the exacting tastes and incredible demands of one Steve Jobs. That might sound funny, but it’s the difference between something that sounded usable in the schematics, and something that just works in the real world.

Android 2.0 is no doubt leaps and bounds ahead of Android 1.x (which famously presented users with a Google Search box and flashing cursor when no keyboard was present with which to enter any input), as DROID hardware is ahead of the original T-Mobile G1. It will even recognize desk and driving docks and become “finger friendlier” on contact.

Notwithstanding the lack of multitouch mentioned above, however, there’s a reason why even the original iPhone revolutionized the smartphone space long before the App Store showed up — it’s interface is pure usability. From 2 year old to octogenarian, it’s intuitive and consistent, and you can never underestimate the importance of — or difficulty in achieving — both of those.

Again, many consumers may not care. Good enough is often good enough.

Conclusion: Which One Should You Buy?

If you have to have Verizon, don’t need to travel internationally, love you a physical keyboard, want everything Google has to offer, are a spec-fiend, chronic multi-tasker, and want a device that’s arguably more complex but also arguably more flexible, this — cliche warning — might just be the DROID you’re looking for.

If AT&T and international GSM compatibility is your priority, you consider virtual keyboards to be the future, are invested in the Apple/iTunes ecosystem, want those 100,000 apps unlimited by storage concerns, are a multitouch fanatic, want to talk while you surf 3G, and want a device that arguably is controlled and compromised but is also arguably the most usable on the planet, the iPhone 3GS could be what you want.

Try both. Try the Palm Pre as well while you’re at it. Take them home if you can and use each for a while. Return the one(s) that doesn’t suit you and enjoy the one that does. And just remember — the smartphone space is evolving rapidly again. You can bet both Google and Apple are both hard at work on the next, even better version(s) of their devices.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone vs. DROID: Which One Should You Buy?

Did Verizon and Motorola forget to include a few things in their iDon’t attack ads, like iDon’t render web pages as slowly or badly, iDon’t arbitrarily restrict the amount of apps users can install to 256MB, iDon’t fail to implement multi-touch, and iDon’t have a worse user experience.

We can’t blame them, of course. They were focusing on the iPhone’s weaknesses, as the geekier among us (nitpickers included!) would have to admit, and not the Droid’s. It was their ad, and fair enough.

However, for those considering the Droid vs. an iPhone, we should lay all the cards on the table. Sure the iPhone lacks a physical keyboard (that irks some users, pleases others), doesn’t have Google Maps Navigation (yet), doesn’t match all the specs, and has issues with App Store approvals (though that doesn’t effect most users). But what about the Droid?

(And no, we don’t mean that horrible devil-red eye graphic that’s kind of the opposite of “not evil” and makes that incessant “DRRROOOOOOIIDDD” chime pretty much indistinguishable from “REDRUM!”)

First, in the perfunctory Browser Battles, it turns out the almost two month old iPhone 3.1 Safari is still king of the mobile mountain, according to MobileCrunch:

On the popular web-standards test known as Acid3, the iPhone scores a 100/100 while the Droid caps out at 93/100. [...] Once you’ve grown accustomed to pinch-zooming, the level of accuracy provided by tap-zooming alone simply doesn’t cut it. [...] The iPhone browser is also considerably faster, with page loads completing anywhere from 15-30% more quickly with both handsets on WiFi.

Second, we all know the Android Market doesn’t have as many apps as the App Store, but maybe that’s a good thing since Android 2.0 still doesn’t fix its app space limitation, leaving Droid with a paltry 256MB for apps according to AndroidandMe.com:

Google does not support installing apps to the SD card (and likely never will), so developers are limited in what they can create. [...] For most applications, we want a small file size to limit the download times. When it comes to 3D games though, we need a ton of space for all the high-res textures, audio, and video. [...] Have you seen all the awesome iPhone and iPod Touch games? Hardly any of them would fit on an Android phone.

This problem, of course, also plagues the Palm webOS and BlackBerry platforms. NokiaExpert and ZDNet’s Matt Miller’s been told it’s a security issue, but does that matter to end users when iPhone’s can go up to (almost) 32GB?

Third, if you’re a fan of the iPhone and iPod touch’s (and Magic Mouse’s!) multi-touch, don’t think the Droid will have your fingers covered. According to Engadget:

As you have probably heard (or guessed), there’s no multitouch on this device. That’s clearly an issue with Android 2.0 and choices that Google is making about user interface

Fourth, the user interface, while definitely an improvement — and maybe even a refreshing change for some — still doesn’t rise to level of usability as the iPhone. Like MobileCrunch (and every other review we’ve seen), we’ve given our iPhones to toddlers and they’ve been able to use them well.

That’s still Apple’s killer app. And that’s likely why, even after going all in on Droid and throwing BlackBerry under the bus (even canceling their BOGO!), Verizon still wants the iPhone…

[Thanks to Tom for the app limit tip!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Verizon Droid iDoesn’t Beat iPhone on Browser, Apps, Multi-touch or User Interface

More big news for Android — and no, not just HTC finally going 3.5mm with the headphone jacks — but Sony Ericsson’s new “Rachel” Android device and it’s UI.

Hot on the heels of the HTC Hero’s Sense UI, it’s again showing the power and flexibility of Google’s other OS.

Is that model, separating hardware and software development, finally going to pay off in the mobile space? And, ironically, will it be Google rather than Microsoft who realizes it first?

[Android Central via BGR]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

The Competition: Sony Ericsson Android UI

Once again validating Dieter’s iPhone 3GS vs. Palm Pre web rendering smackdown, MacRumors reports on Medialets‘ latest Sunspider Javascript tests pitting the iPhone 3GS against the iPhone 3G (both on 3.0 and 2.2.1), Palm Pre, and Google Android G1.

As MacRumors points out, not only is iPhone 3GS’ clear, current speed advantage impressive, but the 3x improvement iPhone 3.0 gives the iPhone 3G is most impressive as well.

Bill Gates’ “power of software” indeed…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Confirmed Again! iPhone 3GS Beats Pants Off iPhone 3G, Android, Palm Pre at Javascript

Zara from M0bileChic sent in this video, comparing the Apple iPhone against the BlackBerry Storm and Google Android G1. It’s fun, it’s fair, and we can’t let the CrackBerry.com commenters get the last word in so let her — and us — know what you think.

And if you’re hungry for more smartphone vs. smartphone action, check out our last Smartphone Experts Round Robin, where we looked not only at our own iPhone 3G and the Android G1, but the BlackBerry Bold, Palm Treo Pro, and HTC Fuze.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Friday Fun Video: iPhone vs. Storm. vs. G1

Apple decides which apps get approved for the iPhone/iPod touch App Store, provides little to no transparency on the process, prevents certain things like turn-by-turn GPS outright in the SDK agreement, and — though they’ve yet to use them — maintains black lists for GPS and malware that could remove any LocationServices or entire applications from iPhones everywhere. For this, and more, Apple has earned quite a bit of criticism — and rightly so in many cases.

What if Apple went further, however. They sell officially unlocked iPhones in several regions, like Hong Kong. They also have a program that grants developers tethering abilities for testing. What if, one day, people with unlocked or developer iPhones woke up to find the Paid section of the App Store gone. What would the community reaction be? What should it be?

Google, whose “don’t be evil” motto has been downgraded by management in recent years, is lauded for the openness of their Android Market (even though they’re known to have a kill switch of their ownl — to do otherwise would be irresponsible), yet our friends over at Android Central woke to find themselves in just such a situation this week. Paid apps. Gone.

We’re told it’s because of piracy concerns, that Google thinks developer units of the G1 make it easier for people to steal paid apps. Jeffdc5 on Twitter let us know developer G1 handsets could store apps on the SD memory card in addition to the on-device memory of the regular units, which could make them more pirate-able. However, we’ve seen that the iPhone — with no external memory — can have apps pirated as well, so is that readon enough? It smacks of the same “treat your customers as thieves” thinking that created DRM music, Microsoft Genuine Advantage, Sony rootkits, and Adobe invading our boot sectors…

Apple has already removed DRM from iTunes music, and has now removed product keys from boxed versions of iLife 09 and iWork 09 as well. It seems to be working out none too badly for them.

Openness is definitely A Good Thing. Maybe trust in your user base should be as well?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

What if Apple Killed Paid Apps for Unlocked/Developer iPhones? Google Android Did!

Our pal Casey over at Android Central, launching off the latest ruminations of GigaOm Malik, on the relative advantages and disadvantages of open source vs. proprietary software models, as straw-man’d into the current tech darlings from Google and Apple: the Android and the iPhone, says:

We can’t deny that the iPhone is wildly successful in spite of (or because of?) their closed, proprietary nature. It’s essentially the dilemma that iPhone users have been trying to find the balance to–the iPhone’s closed nature creates a clean, seamless and synergetic user experience but it often comes at the expense of the freedom of choice. You have to trust Apple enough to play nice and take a leap of faith with the direction of the iPhone.

And the GigaOm-ster sums up:

The reality is that openness is just an attribute -– it’s not an outcome, and customers buy outcomes. They want the entire solution and they want it to work predictability. Only a tiny minority actually cares about how or why it works. It’s little wonder, then, that the two device families that have won the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of consumers, developers and service providers alike (i.e., BlackBerry and iPhone) are the most deeply integrated from a hardware, software and service layer perspective.

Our take? Depends on your baggage. Are you coming at it as a philosophically determined developer or tech pundit who wants to tinker, toggle, and/or get all Stallman/Jobs on it? Or are you the mom of such an individual, someone who thinks FOSS is what you use to clean between your teeth and OS X must be on late night cable for pre-verts? They just want the most basic real-world functionality to work (i.e. make calls, show off baby pics, and play the latest episode of Murder She Wrote (heh)).

Personally, I’ll take the best of both, thank you very much. Let them continue to propel each other ever-forward to the benefit of consumers like us. (And like the Androids, bless their trackball+touchscreen+keyboarded little central robotic cores!)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Android vs. iPhone, Open vs. Closed, Love vs. Chocolate…

Apple is set to announce their Q1 results at 5pm EST (2pm PST) and TiPb will bring you any and all iPhone related news that comes of it. In the meantime, analysts are saying that regardless of how well (or poorly?) the iPhone did during the holiday quarter, it did better than the Android G1. Quotes Apple Insider:

Based on polls of recent cellphone buyers, the analyst firm believes T-Mobile USA may have sold upwards of 300,000 of its touchscreen G1 handsets from launch in late October through to the end of 2008. In contrast, even Morgan Stanley’s prediction of about 1.75 million iPhone 3G units sold through AT&T is about 5.9 times greater than what T-Mobile is believed to have managed.

(Note: That’s the US T-Mobile, not the German T-Mobile which is busy boosting iPhone sales with heavy discounts.) Are the analysts right? Is this comparing international Apples to domestic Oranges… er… G1s? We’ll have to wait in see. Regardless of what the iPhone sells, Bullish Cross (via Daring Fireball) reminds us:

Apple’s use of subscription-based accounting for iPhone revenue has significantly hurt its share price — casual investors who are only looking at Apple’s GAAP results don’t realize how much revenue they’ve deferred.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Did the iPhone Outsell the Google Android G1 by 6 to 1?

The Reviews of the Android G1 Phone on T-Mobile are out and the verdicts are generally as follows: Partly Cloudy¹, but forecasting big things to come. We’re not going to try to hit every point just yet, but there’s one point where this “Sidekick for Grownups” has what appears to be a real advantage over everybody else: dead-simple cloud setup.

So compared to the iPhone, just how good is the setup on the G1? The answer is: Depends on whether or not you’re a Gmail type of person.

Yeah, “depends” isn’t exactly a clear answer, so follow us after the break for a bit more on whether the G1 is PIM Push Paradise compared to MobileMe’s Mechanized Movement of information.

(¹Sorry, could help myself with that pun)

Android vs. iPhone for Gmail Users

Gmail and the G1

With the G1, you simply punch in your Google credentials and wait a few and boom, you have push Gmail, Push Contacts, and Push Calendar. If you’re already a Gmail lover, this is pretty much la creme de la creme. The Gmail client on the G1 is getting very high marks, works just like Gmail on the web, and is generally tops.

Unfortunately, the other two parts of Gmail’s Sync — Contacts and Calendar — aren’t as hot. Engadet notes that what Google does to your contacts is a crime: it mucks them up by first being difficult to work with on their web-based contact manager and mucks them up double-time by automatically adding email addresses of people you’ve sent mail to more than a couple times.

The result (and I know this from personal Google Contacts Syncing experience) is your address book pretty much becomes a hellacious mess. Your only options are to either be eternally vigilant about the state of your contacts or to just let the darn thing go and hope that you can search through it fairly quickly.

The calendar app on the G1 is also getting mixed reviews, as folks are finding it better for viewing than they are for data entry. In this sense, it’s not all that different than the iPhone.

Gmail and the iPhone

We’ll start this with a caveat — we’re not going to count Google’s excellent iPhone-centric web interfaces here, just the native stuff. Although I still think that the G1 won’t stop Google’s iPhone fixation and that means continued iPhone support and improvements, we want to compare (ahem) apples to apples.

Up until the introduction of the G1, the best mobile email client for Gmail has been the iPhone — bar none. Gmail’s famously wonky IMAP rarely gives the iPhone fits (though it certainly does happen from time to time) and the iPhone’s rather clever method of only loading a folder when you enter it (and only loading the most recent 25 at that) mean that it doesn’t suffer from the tragic “All Mail” problem). In all — Gmail on the iPhone is great.

Except, that is, if you’re looking for push email.

Pushing Gmail to the iPhone is basically an invitation to suffering because there are only three email systems that push email to the iPhone: Yahoo!, MobileMe and Exchange. If you want your Gmail pushed, you need to forward a copy of all messages to a Yahoo!, MobileMe or Exchange account and then set that up on your iPhone. There are then nasty hacks to get your “from” address right, but still no good way to deal with folders/labels.

Now — contacts and calendars are also a world of fun. If your stuff lives in Google, you are going to need to find solutions to sync them to your desktop. Once that happens, however, you’re golden as you can set up MobileMe on both PC and Mac to push the info out to your smartphone. It’s not an ideal, direct-push solution, but it works pretty well for most people.

On a Mac, you can sync the address book directly to Google (with the above-mentioned pain) and for Calendar you need to use something like the excellent Spanning Sync software for calendars.

On a PC, check out OggSync for calendars. For Contacts iTunes itself will let you sync to Google.

In both cases, where you really need to start is at our how-to article “ Switching to iPhone: How To Move Your Contacts, Calendar, Email, Bookmarks, and Photos to the iPhone“

So as you can see by the length of this section, if your data lives in Gmail, the G1 is a lot better.

Advantage: G1

Android vs. iPhone for MobileMe or Exchange Users

MobileMe or Exchange and the G1

Okay, we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: one huge advantage the iPhone has is that while Google loves the iPhone and provides a huge number services for it, the G1 gets nothing in return from Apple. So, in a way, every iPhone user gets the best of both worlds (four worlds if we count Exchange and Yahoo!). That’s a pretty compelling competitive advantage. 

So, if your data lives in MobileMe or Exchange/Outlook and you want to get it onto the G1, things are going to be dicey for awhile. There is no default sync client out yet, though 3rd parties like Funambol are creating ways to sync In the short term, here are your options of you don’t want to just switching everything over to Gmail:

With email you have two choices:

1. Forward to Gmail for Push, but use Android’s IMAP email program (yes, it’s separate from the other email client) to send. You may also be able to use the G1’s Gmail program to send if the Gmail program works with Gmail’s “Send As” feature (we don’t know yet).
2. Just settle for Android’s IMAP email program for both receiving and sending. In this case, you’re giving up push email.

So that’s not ideal. For contacts and calendar, you’re actually going to be in the same boat that iPhone users are in with regard to Gmail — namely finding a way to sync your desktop information up to Google so you can sync it down to the G1.

MobileMe or Exchange and the iPhone

Despite the well-known early issues with MobileMe, everything’s pretty-well shaken out now. You enter in your sync information, you wait a tic, and boom, everything from Email to Contacts to Calendar is sync’d and pushing.

Now, setting up either MobileMe or Exchange on the iPhone isn’t as simple as the one-time process on the G1, but it’s still pretty straightforward. Once again, TiPb has your back:

1. How to Set up Exchange ActiveSync on the iPhone
2. How to set up MobileMe on the iPhone.

Advantage: iPhone

Android vs. iPhone for Everybody Else

What, no push email solution for you? Love Yahoo? Love Hotmail? What’s the over/under in this competition?

Everybody else and the G1

Basically your best options for email are the ones we laid out for MobileMe or Exchange and the G1: Use the G1’s sub-par IMAP email client or forward stuff to Gmail. To sync the other stuff, find a way to sync it from your desktop to Google as described above in the Gmail and the iPhone section.

Here’s the notable thing with the G1, though: since it’s a completely open platform, there’s no reason that Yahoo or Microsoft or, well, or anybody couldn’t create push and sync solutions for the Android Platform. It’s entirely feasible that Yahoo could create a version of Yahoo Go! for Android that would seamlessly sync your email, contacts, and calendar the G1. It hasn’t happened yet, but don’t be surprised when it does. (Though we won’t hold our breath waiting for Apple to develop a MobileMe solution for the G1…)

Everybody else and the iPhone

Here the situation is also not great, but it’s pretty good. Yahoo users can get their email pushed out to the iPhone, everybody else can just set up email manually. Those folks won’t have push, but thankfully the iPhone’s email client is pretty good.

For contacts and calendar, well, you’re either going to have to sync manually via iTunes or buy into MobileMe or Exchange in some way.

We’re going to call this one a Tie with a possible KO in the future if Android sync apps come out. Syncing desktop to Google can be a pain for some whereas the iPhone at least gives you the option of wired sync.

Advantage: Tied (for now)

Conclusion

For Google-lovers, the G1 clearly offers better cloud and sync. For MobileMe and Exchange, the iPhone clearly wins out. If you want the trifecta of Google and Exchange/MobileMe goodness, the iPhone also has that edge. For the rest, it’s a bit of a (ugly) tie, but the way things look platform-wise the G1 has more potential there. In all, the best way Apple can close that potential gap is to open up the iPhone to more syncing solutions from other companies. We’re not holding our breath. We are holding out a little bit of hope, though: if Andoid really does take off, Apple just might feel compelled to respond by opening up their platform.

One last footnote: Why do Apple and Google hate ToDo and Notes? Back when Palm invented the Palm Pilot, Personal Information Management (PIM) was a 4-legged table: Contacts, Calendar, ToDo, and Notes. While we’re more than happy to see that Email has been added to that equation, when are we going to get those forgotten PIM essentials on modern platforms?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Android vs. iPhone: Which Does a Better Job Syncing to the Cloud?