General Consultant Discussion

Interesting take about IOS 6. I have to agree. Although I love the ipad, IOS really is clunky in a way. Given the explosion in apps, using it still reminds me of Windows 3.1 with tiles everywhere and poor multitasking-from a performance and navigation standpoint

This is a little unfair because Matt uses ""third party available"" on several comparisons for ICS. Overall I agree with his assessment. There are several areas where I think that Android is materially weaker: 1. Location services -- the use of GPS is hit or miss on a device by device basis. If you use Foursquare on Android you'll know what I mean. More often than not on Android I wait for an eternity to get a location lock. This just does not happen on iOS. 2. Background Apps --- I have to give iOS the nod for more elegant (and stable) background processing. Whether it's true multi-tasking I don't much care. 3. Voice control - This is mostly crude third party stuff (aka - your quality may vary). I'm not overly pleased with Siri but I do think it's better than the user experience on Android. I'd say Android really blows away iOS on the notifications and on the Gmail interface. Most other comparisons and I judge Android cruder.

I have to agree on GPS. I don't think its Android's fault, just that of certain devices. I know somebody with a Droid Razr and it gets a lock extremely quickly. My Galaxy SII is painful. Sometimes I have to turn it off and on, and then it gets a lock. I think its a Samsung issue. Not sure how IOS is more elegent on background. Only certiain API's (those that apple dictate) run in the background switching between apps with the clunky slider after double pressing the home button is akward. ICS is much slicker with its palm like multitasking UI. I agree that Voice is crude, but this new free app, Dragon Go! from Dragon Dictations is very siri like and better in some ways. That being said, it is technically 3rd party like some of your other fair arguments. I just hate how closed the IOS system is. The inability to get to the file system, no expandable/removable storage/battery, the inability to substitute superior keyboard or browser options etc.

Agreed. While I dislike the closed iOS and Apple's walled garden -- I do like that the overall experience on iOS is to my mind more stable (less crashing) and more polished. There are obvious exceptions -- and I run both platforms just about equally. Android also does indeed have fragmentation despite Matt trying to play it down as essentially ""better choice"".

The HUGE issue with Android is that generally you are stuck with the OS the phone came with. You will never get upgraded while with Apple even older phones get upgraded to the latest OS. I have the Galaxy S II but I doubt if I will ever see ICS. Mark the GPS on my S II is terrible also. I have to do a battery pull first to use it. On my old HTC EVO it was never a problem.

Good point on upgrades - my pet peeve too - though I think ICS is rolling out for SGS2 as we speak.

Agree on upgrades. If you buy a Nexus, you get Apple like update speeds, but not on other devices. Samsung is notorious for really slow OS upgrades. With my 1 year cycle I get with sprint, I'm usually getting a new phone before an OS update is made available for my old one. ANybody see any reviews on the SIII and whether the GPS is usable? However, with devices like the HTC One X and Galaxy SIII, the iphone is REALLY looking quite puny. That 3.5"" screen is pathetic in terms of real estate. The other game changer for me on Android vs. IOS is the the way Android reflows text to fit your zoom. In IOS, if you zoom on content, say on a web page (and with that screen you need to do alot of that unless you have 15-15 vision) the text gets bigger but you have to scroll left to right to left again to read a column because the text doesn't flow into the width of the current zoom level.