Android vs iPhone

Shadow_Ferret said:

I have an Android. My wife had an Android (actually 2 Droids, and before that 2 Blackberries) and now has an iPhone. Things I've noticed in the week she's had her phone.

Her battery lasts longer than mine. I went into Verizon to discuss my battery. They downloaded this "App Killer." It's this little Android dude that sits on my page and when I touch it, it kills all the apps running. Oddly, I can keep touching it and it keeps killing apps and freeing up memory. This makes me wonder, do these apps keep coming back? Like zombies? They get killed, but then live again?

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There's a lot of flexibility and advantages to the open model of Android, but you're experiencing some of its drawbacks. Google has to support tons of hardware configurations, and still hasn't really managed to optimize the code or get hardware acceleration down like Apple has, so a typical Android device will burn through power quicker than an iPhone. Apple can optimize it's code for a very strict and controlled set of hardware, and make sure everything works just like they want (ideally).

Also, with my Android, the Verizon people tell me that it's best if every couple of days I shut it down by removing the battery. This will clear out any stray apps that won't shut down. Kind of like a PC where you have to do a complete shut-down to clear out all the built up crap.

Do iPhones need app killers? Or is the iPhone OS designed well enough that apps shut down properly and don't leave dirty fingers everywhere (kind of like a Mac OS)?

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No. iOS on the iPhone imposes more strict limitations on what an app can do when multitasking. Both Android and iOS "suspend" apps when you leave them, so that ideally you can return to them where you left off and they don't use processing power until you do. However, Android allows more services that might run in the background and eat up battery life.

iOS's multitasking is limited to a few set tasks that can continue when you close an app such as playing music, finishing downloading a file, or keeping a GPS connection while you're navigating. For most apps, it's easy to tell if they're still doing anything in the background or not, because it'll be something you'd explicitly told it to do. (There are a few exceptions, such as people logging into Skype and forgetting about it, and that eating through battery life.)

Funny, but I've worked on Macs in the past, and although I like their interface, I've never really wanted one. PCs have always worked as well for me, and being poor, it's all we can afford. But in just a short week of being exposed to the iPhone, I'm thinking about iPads and MacBooks and getting myself an iPhone.

So, now I have some questions:

Am I crazy?

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Nah.

The iPhone is damn nice if you just want a phone that works. There's a lot going for Android if you want more flexibility, the ability to customize everything, etc., but if you just want a good smartphone that does what you need it to, get an iPhone. I'd say the one real drawback one might experience is that Google Maps on the iPhone currently doesn't do turn-by-turn navigation like on Android, but there are other apps for that (some free, some paid), and rumors that Apple will be rolling out its own maps solution in the future.

If you don't want to shell out for the current-model iPhone 4S, you can currently get the old iPhone 3GS for free on contract (but only on AT&T), and the iPhone 4 for $99 (Verizon and AT&T). The primary difference is they won't have Siri, and probably won't get software updates as long. (The 4 will surely get iOS 6, I think, but I'm not sure about the 3GS.)

Is there really that much of a difference?

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It sounds like for you there is. There's a lot of variation between Android handsets. Some have better batteries than others. Some come with big, bulky extended batteries. But generally any iPhone will have decent battery life.

There's been some reports of battery problems with the release of iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S, but I haven't noticed any problems with my 4S. Apple recently released a patch iOS 5.0.1 that has addressed most of the issues for other users, so even when things don't work right, they're pretty committed to battery life.

Do Androids run dirtier than iPhones?

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I don't know about "dirtier," but Google has not done as good a job optimizing its code as Apple yet.

They readily admitted Honeycomb was "rushed." I'm not sure about the code in Ice Cream Sandwich.

And why would anyone design something that needs to be deliberately killed (by removing the battery) in order to clear things out?

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Because all software sucks and some people wanted "real" multitasking on their phone.

Android vs. iPhone

Agree with most of what has been previously posted, but I'd add :

(1.) I have an Android phone (a LG Optimus 2) and my experience has been "mixed".

On the one hand, it is an extremely powerful device and I think it will make a great platform for the future -- a very important factor in a smartphone, as I absolutely hate changing cell phones (this is the first change I have made in 10+ years).

As an example of the "cool" factor, it's great to be able to show interested parties my book's Website and also the e-Book version of my novel, displayed right on the phone; there's an immediacy to this that is really exciting.

On the other hand, integration between the phone's hardware and my phone carrier, as well as the carrier's (total lack of) knowledge about same, has been, frankly, awful... they don't know squat. I can put up with the phone's "hiccups" because I only use it casually, but if I were, for example, a salesperson, these problems (for example randomly dropping off the cell network and having to be manually re-sync'ed with it) would quickly become intolerable.

(2.) My experience really illustrates the most important issue with Android, which is simply that you are at the mercy of your phone carrier to make the @#!^&*+ thing work. This is true of the iPhone too, but to a lesser degree, due to Apple's paranoiac brand protection and selectiveness about partners.

What people don't realize about these devices is, they are every bit as powerful (and therefore as complex) as a desktop or laptop PC was, about 4 to 5 years ago. It should be no surprise, therefore, that when you have them being sold and supported by carriers who barely understand how to make the conventional phone network, function, you are bound to have endless integration and support problems. Unfortunately, given the rapid developments in smartphone hardware that have been going on lately, I don't see this issue getting any better, in the near future.

(3.) I could never use an iPhone because I believe in software freedom; Apple's arbitrary, self-serving and censorious attitudes toward what apps are allowed on its device, is a show-stopper for me.

With freedom inevitably comes some additional risk as well as the responsibility to do more of the due diligence regarding the use of, and security for, your endpoint. The trade-off was well worth it for me, although admittedly some of the rest of you may honestly differ on this point.

Cheers

GodOfABF said:

On the one hand, it is an extremely powerful device and I think it will make a great platform for the future -- a very important factor in a smartphone, as I absolutely hate changing cell phones (this is the first change I have made in 10+ years).

As an example of the "cool" factor, it's great to be able to show interested parties my book's Website and also the e-Book version of my novel, displayed right on the phone; there's an immediacy to this that is really exciting.

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To be fair, I think those things could be said of any modern smartphone, iOS, Android, or WP7.

I'll just also add I didn't have any problem activating my iPhone 4S on Verizon, and haven't run into any difficulties yet. I already had most of my contacts on my Mac and iPod, though, so I didn't bother trying to transfer those, so I'm not sure how well that part works.

While I value freedom in software, ultimately I'm more of a pragmatist, and prefer what I feel gives me the best experience for my money. Naturally, everyone's judgment will lead to different conclusions there.

Shadow_Ferret said:

I spent over 3 hours activating my wife's iPhone 4. Why? Because it needs iTunes. Which we had, but the version on my wife's profile wouldn't connect to the internet. So I had to go to my profile, but then I couldn't load the contacts and things because, again, it was my profile and this was her phone.

But that wasn't the iPhone's fault (although needing iTunes to activate your phone is kind of stupid), it was our PC's fault. A problem I still haven't figured out. Why won't her iTunes find the internet but everything else on her profile can?

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iOS 5 (the current software version with which any iPhone will now ship) doesn't require iTunes anymore. You can activate, set up, and update everything right from the phone. I never had to plug in my 4S.

Btw, iOS 5 should be available on iTunes for her iPhone 4. Once updated to it, you won't need to connect to iTunes to do anything anymore, and all future updates are available as delta updates straight to the phone.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Yes. Part of that 3 hours was downloading the newest iTunes, then downloading iOS 5 to her phone.

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Check the box "Sync this iPhone over WiFi" when connected to iTunes and you won't need to connect it again for anything, including transferring music.

Question: How do you get the songs in her iTunes library move to her iPhone? Is that possible? Because it never gave us that option.

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Pretty much the same way you would with an iPod.

There are two (well, three now) ways. When the iPhone is connected to iTunes, either via cable or WiFi:

1. You can check the box that says "manually manage music and videos," and manually drag and drop music you want to the iPhone. This is simplest in the short term, but gets unwieldy if you have a large, often-changed library.

2. You can hit the "Music" tab at the top and check the box "Sync Music." You can then check any artists, playlists, albums, etc. that you want on the iPhone. Any changes to the artists or playlists, etc., you make in iTunes will automatically be reflected on the iPhone next time you sync it. What I do is keep a master "Mobile Playlist," and always add any songs I want on my iPhone and iPad to it, so they get synced to them.

3. If they're songs you purchased from the iTunes Music Store, you can go to the iTunes app on the iPhone, go to "Purchased" tab, and you can download any of the songs you previously bought onto the iPhone.

Re : Android vs. iPhone

Sounds to me that you have basically traded one set of issues (e.g. hardware / provider / software fragmentation and lack of integration / accountability, in the Android world) for a different set of problems, namely Apple's "walled garden" approach, best exemplified by tying virtually everything to iTunes (which, BTW, absolutely will not reliably work on any version of Linux with which I'm familiar -- in my own case I had to set up an instance of Windows XP under VirtualBox, to get iTunes to grace me with its presence).

The problem with the Apple approach, at least insofar as it is currently implemented, is that even within a monolithic "one hardware manufacturer, same software manufacturer" model like the Apple one, modern software is inherently, fantastically complex (for example Microsoft Word is more than 2 million lines of code).

Thus, just getting the bloody programs to run at all, in the first place, is a far more difficult accomplishment than ordinary users can properly appreciate. (I know what I'm talking about here -- I have worked in development, several times in the past. You have no idea how many things can go wrong, like "how do we avoid hanging the computer, if the user's syncing his iTunes library, and then he decides to pull out the USB cable"? I have seen programs where, literally, 60% of the source code is nothing but this kind of error handling, as the beleaguered programmers try to anticipate every last failure condition that could possibly happen. All of this huge effort is largely invisible to the end user, who "just wants things to work".)

Now, add a proprietary, closed-source deployment model like Apple's, which heavily relies on "DRM" ("Digital Rights Management", e.g. copy protection of digital content) and having the software deliberately crippled so it only properly interacts with "approved" devices (e.g. "real" iPods, iPhones, etc.) and only in a very restricted set of "approved" deployment scenarios (e.g. "you're using 'real' iTunes and not some third-party music playing software, and you're using 'real' Windows or MacOS as opposed to some kind of an emulator") and what you end up doing is making software that is inherently fragile, even less stable and more compatibility-sensitive. This same issue has, of course, plagued copy protection from the first days of its introduction, and for many of the same reasons (what do you mean, I can't read that e-Book on my PC, as well as my e-Reader?)

This approach may work for Apple's bottom line for the time being, but I believe that in the long term, it's not a good (or even acceptable) paradigm for ordinary computer / smartphone users... nor for prospective authors... and Apple only gets away with it, because of very smart marketing, the "cool" factor and a series of historical blunders on the part of its major competitors (notably, Microsoft).

Google certainly hasn't handled the Android situation perfectly : it has left far too much of the integration effort in the hands of disinterested phone carriers, has turned too blind an eye to basic functionality problems (like your "having to pull the battery" issue, one that I'm unfortunately quite familiar with) and has been overly loose in its policing of the Android App Market. In particular, Google has been much too willing to let older Android phones become obsolete, by failing to provide upgrades to the latest versions of the O/S, even if you have a smartphone that was purchased relatively recently.

Despite this, what do you think the state of software development would be today, if, for example, Microsoft had, in (say) 1995, been able to dictate whose applications would be "allowed" to run under Windows? (Suppose they had been allowed to say, "you aren't 'allowed' to produce a spreadsheet that competes with Excel, or a word processor that competes with Word"?) What if you weren't allowed to produce a desktop or laptop PC (or any compatible peripherals), unless you were "licensed" by Microsoft to do so? How about Microsoft being able to arbitrarily de-list programs, simply because (cf. the famous "Bobbleheads" App Store fiasco), in the opinion of some faceless, nameless bureaucrat deep within their organization, the application involved "subjects our national leaders to ridicule"?

All of the above restrictions are exactly how Apple does it today with the iPhone and iPad.

Like the song says, "I can't go for that..."

Regards

Shadow_Ferret said:

I went into Verizon to discuss my battery. They downloaded this "App Killer." It's this little Android dude that sits on my page and when I touch it, it kills all the apps running. Oddly, I can keep touching it and it keeps killing apps and freeing up memory. This makes me wonder, do these apps keep coming back? Like zombies? They get killed, but then live again?

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I don't mean to make you paranoid, but are you sure none of these apps are malware? Android malware is up 472% since July. There's fake programmes out there pretending to be Angry Birds or Cut the Rope or whatever that are actually spyware and send info back to base.

One of the upsides of Apple's so-called walled garden is that the chance of downloading a piece of malware is very, very small. (Not zero, as Charlie Miller recently showed, but many times smaller than Android. And Miller had to exploit a bug to do it.)

If it were me, I would consider doing a factory reset of my phone and seeing if the zombie apps problem still remains.

GodOfABF said:

In particular, Google has been much too willing to let older Android phones become obsolete, by failing to provide upgrades to the latest versions of the O/S, even if you have a smartphone that was purchased relatively recently.

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The problem isn't Google. What you're seeing is one of the downsides of open source: once Google releases their code to manufacturers, they have no control over what happens to it. Google has no way to force a manufacturer to upgrade their handsets to the latest version of Android*. It's the job of the manufacturers, in conjunction with the service providers. And it's something they have a terrible history of doing.

(*Theoretically. In reality, Google wields a fair amount of influence over manufacturers, and has both a) forced a manufacturer to stop using a product that competed with Google Maps, and b) admitted that they give certain manufacturers earlier access to upgrades than others.)

Manufacturers have little incentive to push updates once they have your money. In fact, if you get frustrated with the fact that your Android phone is three versions behind and buy another one, that's a win for them.

Cheers.

GodOfABF said:

Sounds to me that you have basically traded one set of issues (e.g. hardware / provider / software fragmentation and lack of integration / accountability, in the Android world) for a different set of problems, namely Apple's "walled garden" approach

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See, for a lot of people the walled garden is actually a virtue. As a user, I'm not really seeing the fragility that you attribute to iOS apps - my experience is that everything works very smoothly - and I like the fact that everything is under one roof rather than fragmented across different app stores and OS versions. It seems to me that wanting Stallman-esque open source computing on what is basically a device for consuming content is sort of missing the point.

iTunes is, of course, absolutely horrid.

This approach may work for Apple's bottom line for the time being, but I believe that in the long term, it's not a good (or even acceptable) paradigm for ordinary computer / smartphone users... nor for prospective authors... and Apple only gets away with it, because of very smart marketing, the "cool" factor and a series of historical blunders on the part of its major competitors (notably, Microsoft).

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I think you need to give Apple some more credit. When they brought in the iPod, MP3 players had little storage, took ages to sync, and had limited battery life. The iPod smashed all those paradigms at once. When they brought in the iPhone, smartphones were bulky great beasts with massive keyboards and 1000 buttons - hybrid PDAs. The iPhone broke the mould, and now smartphones overwhelmingly look like Apple devices. When they brought in the iPad, I was sceptical, but having owned one for a while it's another game-changer - a simply perfect device for consuming certain kinds of content, like TV, comics, and the web. There simply wasn't anything like it at the time.

The products have always been their own marketing, have always had their own 'cool factor' because of sheer build and design quality. The blunders by the competition have largely been making incremental improvements to their products instead of the Apple approach, which was to make gadgets that work miles better than the competition, and then sell shedloads of them while everyone scrambles to catch up. They've just solved problems better, consistently (the smartphone keypad thing is a good case in point.)

Despite this, what do you think the state of software development would be today, if, for example, Microsoft had, in (say) 1995, been able to dictate whose applications would be "allowed" to run under Windows? (Suppose they had been allowed to say, "you aren't 'allowed' to produce a spreadsheet that competes with Excel, or a word processor that competes with Word"?) What if you weren't allowed to produce a desktop or laptop PC (or any compatible peripherals), unless you were "licensed" by Microsoft to do so? How about Microsoft being able to arbitrarily de-list programs, simply because (cf. the famous "Bobbleheads" App Store fiasco), in the opinion of some faceless, nameless bureaucrat deep within their organization, the application involved "subjects our national leaders to ridicule"?

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Those are all legit concerns, of course. We'll see how that plays out - more than half the phones sold these days are running Android, so perhaps the same monopoly problems won't show up in quite the same way. I note however that there are competing office programs on iOS, competing music services, competing ebook readers...

Let's just say that I have before unplugged the USB cable mid-sync, fully expecting the world to implode. It didn't. I plugged it back in, and it finished syncing.

So in answer to original poster...

You shouldn't need an app killer for the android phone. On the main home screen, press the menu button and chose settings. go down to applications, there you can turn off, force stop, clear cache and/ or uninstall apps.

The phone providers have the android phones set at all go all the time. So you can adjust things to save some battery life.

On the home screen, press and hold a blank place on the screen to bring up the menu. Choose widgets, bring up the power widget. Adjust brightness, turn off bluetooth, gps and wifi unless you're using them. If you leave the widget up on one of the home screens you can turn these on and off at whim instead of going into settings to turn these off and on.

Open the Market app. Press the menu button and go to My Apps. This will list all the apps downloaded to the system and if they need to be updated. Depending on the phone provider this list may vary. Select each one and uncheck automatic updates. The phone will tell you when you have updates and you can always look in the market app.

Also the "take the battery out every few days" is bunk. Just press and hold the power button to get the off/airport/restart menu and choose restart.

If an app starts up with your Android you don't want running, then go into the app, press the menu button and go to settings, a lot of times you can adjust the start up settings.

Finally, you can always plug it into a computer to charge. The charge/disk drive and tether menu is located in the top pull down menu. Depending on the phone manufacturer the phone may charge while using the drive or tether, My mytouch 4g does.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Georgina, I've had it factory reset a couple times. Once because I had an Android update and everything bogged down. The service rep said that sometimes happens when an app I have installed isn't compatible with the new version and the only way to correct it, since they can't localize which app, is to wipe out the whole phone and start from scratch.

That's another mark against android. Having to start from scratch all the time and reload all my apps.

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Also bullshit.

If you go into the marketplace, press the menu button and choose my apps. 9 times out of 10 the app causing the problem is running a continuous download and the bar will be moving. Press and hold to Force stop then go into your settings and uninstall. Also the apps list in the information for what version of Android they are for.


it sounds like you got a verizon rep who didn't know what they were talking about.

I don't have anything technical to add, just that I love my iPhone. I have had a few annoyances with it, mostly via iTunes (didn't know about the new iOS5 stuff, or the wifi connection!)

I have managed to figure out most the interface on my own, by intuition or by accident (double pressing the home button, press and holding aps to get the option to kill them, accidently swipeing in different areas to get different options, etc). I've had to look some things up, and I looked at a *few* basic tutorials, but nothing like I've had to do for my iMac computer (and yes, I know a Mac is more complicated than an iPhone, but I'm one of those people who don't GET the mac OS after switching last year and don't know why people say it's so intuitive.)

I am so grateful for everything my iPhone does, and with unlimited data am able to use it anywhere, worry free. (could use a few more phone minutes, but that's another issue). I'll never go back to the dark ages.