| Android | iPhone | Advantage |
| Battery: Removable and Replaceable Battery replacements easily available in the market and if you are always on the move, you might as well have an additional charged up battery which can help your phone stay alive without waiting to charge | No replacement battery. In fact you cannot even see the battery in this cased smart phone. Any battery issue, you’ll have to send it to Apple and hope that Steve sends it back to you in one piece | Android |
| Apps: This seems to be the major hit among all smart phone users. Android has about 70,000 apps currently | iPhone boasts over 230,000 apps and is growing.. | iPhone |
| Jailbreak: Many Android OS comes with an option to Jailbreak it from its service provider – which is a bliss to foreigners in US. The can take the phone to their home country and switch to a different SP without the hassles of jail breaking on their own | iPhone does not have this feature when you buy it. Jail breaking needs to be done at our own risk and I have heard of many cases where the OS simply didn’t wake up after jailbreak. So its pretty scary business | Android |
| Notifications: System wide notification (non-modal) and other application notifications (like a new mail / new tweet / new SMS) in cascade windows which can be pulled down to see details. | Push notifications and Individual notifications on updates | Android |
| Internal Memory: Limited internal memory. This is a big headache because apart from photos and media content, the default memory is the already limited internal memory. Lots of apps in the internal memory will eventually make your phone less ‘smart’ | Good internal memory and you have choice of different internal memory sizes | iPhone |
| External Memory: Yes. External SD card can be inserted to store photos, media, etc. But from what I have gathered, there has been many reports of corrupted SD card and loss of data / photo / media | No external expandable memory. But no complaints here because the internal memory by itself is huge and good enough. I have not had a single occasion of data / photo loss. | iPhone |
| Dictionary: Google Voice integration and user editable dictionary. Which means more flexibility and ease of use | Artificial Intelligence type dictionary. iPhone learns as you type. So if you have the habit of typing a wrong spelling often, iPhone will learn that word and it is ‘almost’ reset of dictionary to make iPhone forget it. My common mistake is ‘habe’ instead of have and it kills to see that iPhone accepts that! | Android |
| Mail App: Separate Apps for Gmail and other mail. Other mail app is definitely given the second-class treatment. There is limited options with mail editing and other regular stuff with the client mail application. No complaints with respect to Gmail app | Single e-mail app and I must say an efficient one. | iPhone |
| Aesthetics: Visually crippled non-Google apps. The icons seem to be poorly drawn / designed. Its looking unprofessional in many cases (3rd party apps) | Every single application – the $99 app or the free one developed by a small co, all of them looks aesthetically rich and has appealing icons and appearance . For some one like me that first appearance plays 90% role in deciding if I want that app or not | iPhone |
| File Transfer / Sync: Android has the ‘plug and transfer’ feature by which you can transfer files between Android phone and your laptop just as if it were an external storage device | iTunes sync model – just like iPods. This means having a separate sync folder in your laptop and transferring media content to that folder before starting up the sync. | Android |
| Hardware Design / Buttons: If you have an android mobile and have been using it for sometime, you probably have experienced this. The menu and back buttons doesn’t always do the same thing. Their functionalities vary for different apps. Also there is that useless trackball which does mostly nothing as of now | One button – clear function. Menu and back always mean what they imply :) | iPhone |
| Text Editing: Inconsistent text editing options again varying based on the app | Text editing operations (cut,copy and paste) act the same irrespective of the app. I agree Apple has a lot of scope for improvement here.. but still | iPhone |
| Charger: Micro USB charger which is something that is readily available in the market. Any Micro USB wire will do :) | Apple charger – though it is available in the market in abundance, I hate to be dependent only on Stevie for charging the phone | Android |
| OS Upgrade: Non-upgradable OS | iPhone can support at least one major OS Update before Apple launches a non-compatible or higher configuration OS. | iPhone |
Apart from these, there are some common features that work good in both iPhone and Android. They are:
1. Auto suggestion by Google for search – complete as you type option
2. Back ground Apps and Multitasking
3. Google Calendar sync -
For iPhone, configure Google Exchange server in mail
For Androids, login to your Google account to sync
4. Bookmarking Sync -
iPhone - Safari bookmark sync option over MobileMe
Android – Google chrome bookmark sync
These are the facts that I have gathered. Do you think I have missed mentioning any feature of importance or I’m wrong anywhere or if any of the feature has now been made available in iPhone or android. Please drop me a note in comments. I’ll be happy to learn and correct mistakes if any.
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