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[hit_ny]

I bought an iPhone because I wanted a true pocket computer platform, and none of the other alternatives were acceptable at the time.  Everything has it's flaws.

Given what you've said about segmentation & android i'm afraid iPhone's still going to be the one to beat for some time to come

Getting back to the topic, how much of a loss is Flash to the 'i' range user ?

[JimH]

In my opinion, the iPhone and the Google Nexus One are on a par now, except that the Android platform is open.

[glynor]

In my opinion, the iPhone and the Google Nexus One are on a par now, except that the Android platform is open.

The Nexus One is good, though the Incredible looks better.  "Naked" Android is still pretty rough around the edges without the Sense UI on-top.  The segmentation issue (described above), lack of consistent quality (eg: the bad multi-touch performance on the Nexus One), and weird limitations (eg: only 512MB of storage for apps on the Nexus One, really?) are the primary problems with Android currently.  All of those problems will be relatively easy to solve in time except the segmentation issue.

Hardware issues aside, I do agree that the platforms are pretty close to par now though.  Each one has some things it is better at than the other, of course (Android has a better email client, a better homescreen, and is more open; iPhone has a better browser, a stronger app environment, and a more polished user experience).  Sense UI helps bring the Android up in the polish department, but it also hurts them in segmentation.

Therein lies the problem though... The Nexus One will now be dated and limited next to the HTC Incredible, and it's 4 months old?

[glynor]

Given what you've said about segmentation & android i'm afraid iPhone's still going to be the one to beat for some time to come

Getting back to the topic, how much of a loss is Flash to the 'i' range user ?

That's pretty much exactly what I'm afraid of... I know I might come off as an Apple defender, but I'm really not.  I try to have a balanced view, but forced to choose I'd absolutely rather see an Android-like model "win".  I do not think we can trust the established cell phone makers to do what is necessary to fix the segmentation problem, though.  To do that, you need a strong player who wants it to be a platform to kick them into line (like Apple did).  Google could be that player, but the whole "open" model of Android prevents them from actually doing anything about it.  No one has any motivation on the Android side to do anything about it.  The handset makers like a segmented market because then you buy new phones "to upgrade" and they get to "differentiate" themselves with UI overlays, Google doesn't care because they just want to track you and sell ads and they can push the handset makers around enough to accommodate their own apps, and the only people who lose are the 3rd party developers and the users.  And, if you think Apple's hardware is locked-down, just wait until you see what Microsoft puts out (based on the Zune, and their "App Store" envy, I can't imagine it'll be that open).

To me, lacking Flash is a mild annoyance at best.  It is way, way, way down on the list of things I'd change about my phone.

[hit_ny]

Google could be that player, but the whole "open" model of Android prevents them from actually doing anything about it.

Exactly, this is the reason. If Google wants Android to run on as many models as possible then apps will have to be developed for the lowest common denominator. So even if some vendors decided they wanted to improve on the UI and make it as good if not better than the iPhone it will mean adding custom extensions so that apps developed for that platform ONLY work on those models.

I do not think we can trust the established cell phone makers to do what is necessary to fix the segmentation problem, though.

Given the above it appears less a quesiton of trust than actual ability. If anyone  creates an iPhone killer they will be accused of breaking the 'open' standard 

To do that, you need a strong player who wants it to be a platform to kick them into line (like Apple did).

And in doing so will create yet another, hmm what is the word here  ?

Not restricted but a platform that is not limited by the lowest common denominator. No more open platform.

No one has any motivation on the Android side to do anything about it..

If Android is to remain open then this is how it will be. What Android offers is a way for many vendors to provide a 'similar' experience without having to reinvent the wheel. What it also means is they can never ever challenge the iPhone.

I'm open to suggestions that can counter that line of thinking

The handset makers like a segmented market because then you buy new phones "to upgrade" and they get to "differentiate" themselves with UI overlays, Google doesn't care because they just want to track you and sell ads and they can push the handset makers around enough to accommodate their own apps, and the only people who lose are the 3rd party developers and the users.

Google is not in the iPhone killing business. If they make it Andorid less open they will end up killing it.

To me, lacking Flash is a mild annoyance at best.  It is way, way, way down on the list of things I'd change about my phone.

Interesting I thought that Jobs messed this one up and limited choice to his users and then tried to pass it off as something else.

He's managed to get tight music execs to sell using his store at a time when no one could and then got them to drop encryption. Apple has had a very long relationship with Adobe, how could he not have resolved this.

Going through the different replies here, it would appear he made a business decison, this i can accept, his justifications for it however do make one think what Jim said in the first post   

[HTPC4ME]

i dont understand what this segmentation is your talking about? could you elaborate please

[glynor]

i dont understand what this segmentation is your talking about? could you elaborate please

This guy explained it from a Developer's perspective fairly well here: http://www.zath.co.uk/problem-with-android-version-hardware-segmentation/

I think he glossed over (though did mention) the larger problem from a user's perspective, which is versioning segmentation.  A perfect example:

1. If you bought the HTC Dream (the Google G1) which was released on October 22, 2008, you are still stuck on Android 1.6.  To move to a newer version, you have to buy a new phone.  This was true even while you were still almost certainly under contract with your provider, so buying a new phone wasn't a simple matter, even if you wanted to.
2. If you bought the Apple iPhone 3G, which was released a few months earlier on July 11, 2008, you can be (and usually are) running the current iPhone OS 3.1.3, and will still get a free and immediate update to 4.0 when it ships.  You might not always get all the new features, but you get bug fixes, improvements to the browser, Application compatibility, and all the other stuff.

With Android, when Google releases a new version you have to wait for your handset maker to convert the new OS to work on their phone, and wait for your provider to decide to bless the release, and then finally you might be able to get it.  In practice, this has been extremely slow, and often never actually happens (despite promises to the contrary).  The handset makers and cell phone providers would both absolutely rather just sell you a new phone, so they have no "motivation" to actually do all that work for no monetary gain.

Another perfect example is the Motorola Droid.  It was released on November 6, 2009 and came with Android 2.0.  Just two months later, the Nexus One came out on January 5, 2010 with Android 2.1 (which had substantial improvements to some core applications).  Motorola Droid users didn't get the update to 2.1 until late March 2010.  In fact, after the Nexus One came out with Android 2.1, there were still phones being released that were limited to Android 2.0.  Who knows what will happen when FroYo (the next-gen Android release) comes out!

Not only is this a frustrating pain for end-users, it is an absolute nightmare to developers.  So, if you're writing your code, do you write it for Android 2.1?  Android 2.0?  Android 1.6?  Or for the still-not-insignificant set of users on Android 1.5?  And that's not even considering hardware support.  With a wide variety of screen resolutions, CPU speeds, GPU capabilities, button-sets, and everything else... How can you be expected to write an app that will work for everyone's device?  You can't unless (a) you write a different version for each and every device you want to support separately, or (b) you write only to the lowest-common-denominator, which means all the apps are limited to what the HTC Dream could do (hint: not much).

[HTPC4ME]

awww ok i get it.. it's like my phone then the hd2.. there's been a lot of debate if windows will allow for us to upgrade to 7 when it comes out, and many are saying no. 

yeah thats another plus for the iphone.

one thing i think i may have though is the ability to do rom updates as i mentioned earlier. so MAYBE other "COOKS" will find a way for us to upgrade to 7... but still they shouldnt have to!

[newsposter]

I think that Google tried (as they do with all of their software) to dump beta-code on the market with the first-gen Android phones.  Problem is that people actually paid a lot of money for those first gen phones and are stuck at Android v1.6.

The open development community would have none of that (gotta-have-it consumers notwithstanding) which in turn led Google to fork Android off of the main Linux dev trees.  INitially, the dev community said that they were fine with that and for a short while we got a lot of third-party dev activity which rapidly took us to Android v2.1

But now that Android is finally out of beta (v2 and newer) Google, having seen a huge slowdown of third-party code check-in activity, is actively trying to merge Android back into the main Linux dev trees.  Open-source devs tend to get bored quickly.  Writing for Android as a forked distro and having little of their code being transferred to other distros isn't really what a lot of devs want to do.  They want to see their code everywhere.  A forked Android is a dead-end.

I personally hope that Google is successful with their merge work.  Google does so much in secret that forcing their largest consumer platform back into an active community dev and audit environment might give the rest of the world an opportunity to look further into the candy factory that is Google.

[Daydream]

So, should we hold our breath and wait for 2.2/Froyo/whatever cookie-cutter name it'll have, to see if the segmentation issue is addressed (Android core separated from the apps)? What rumors did I miss?

[zxsix]

This is my one disappointment with Android.  all of the hoopla about open source had me thinking that we would be easy able to download and install firmware right from a google site and not b at the mercy of waiting for the cell phone companies to make it available...or not.

[glynor]

Oh look... The DROID Eris owners are just now finally getting Android 2.1 tonight.  Well, if you're one of the lucky 1000 people they chose via who-knows-what-method, then you get it.  Otherwise, you get to wait some more.

[Mr ChriZ]

If I was to go out and buy an Android phone tomorrow, which one should I buy?
 

(Only major requirements are it mustn't be too chunky!  )

[JimH]

I have the Google Nexus One and like it a lot.  If I were to buy another one today, I'd look at the HTC Incredible.

[zxsix]

HTC incredible or Motorola Droid if you want a physical keyboard.

[glynor]

HTC incredible or Motorola Droid if you want a physical keyboard.

Agreed about the Incredible.

The physical keyboard on the Motorola Droid is pretty much universally reviled.  Many people, even those that are hardware keyboard zealots, say they'd rather have no hardware keyboard than one that bad.  The Droid also has some screen quality and touchscreen responsiveness issues, which were not fixed by the 2.1 update.

If it were me?  I'd wait if at all possible.  There's a coming deluge of phones in the June/July timeframe, and many of them will be superior to the Incredible.  Of the current crop, the Incredible is absolutely the best one available.  Anandtech did a nice review a week or so ago: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3710/the-htc-droid-incredible-review-clearly-better-than-the-nexus-one/

[bwaldron]

The physical keyboard on the Motorola Droid is pretty much universally reviled.  Many people, even those that are hardware keyboard zealots, say they'd rather have no hardware keyboard than one that bad.  The Droid also has some screen quality and touchscreen responsiveness issues, which were not fixed by the 2.1 update.

Many do say that. I'm not one of them, though. The Droid keyboard is not the best, but I find it usable enough (granted, I have relatively small fingers). I haven't had any issues with the touchscreen, before or after 2.1. And I find the build quality on the Droid to be better than the Incredible. I also am not a big fan of the Sense interface, nor of the color fidelity on the (otherwise beautiful) OLED screen.

But both are very nice phones, and I could live happily with either. On balance, if I didn't want the physical keyboard, I probably would go with the Incredible.

[glynor]

Yeah.  I'm not a fan of the over-hyped OLED as well.  Horrible color accuracy, and terrible glare problems.

When I tested the Droid for a week, I definitely had issues with the touchscreen sensitivity.  However, perhaps if you've never used an iPhone full time and gotten used to how sensitive it is, then it wouldn't ever bother you.  Using the Droid screen (and the Nexus One, to a lesser degree), felt very sluggish and inaccurate to me.  It made me feel fatfingered compared to the iPhone.  My testing on it was pre-2.1, but my friends down in IT told me it really wasn't any better after the update (which is confirmed in many reviews I've read).

The Incredible is supposedly much better in this regard, though I haven't tested it myself.  The Incredible also is apparently much more optimized for the hardware, and the UI doesn't "feel" anywhere near as sluggish as the Droid or Nexus One (which bothered me in my testing).  This is probably some impact of Sense, and some impact of just general HTC optimization of Android 2.1.  I think the Sense UI is actually quite nice compared to vanilla Android (it covers up a lot of the lacking polish in 2.1).  However, it also creates further segmentation problems.  If I was going to buy an Android device, I'd probably try to avoid Sense just for this reason.

Those little UI lack of polish in Android (even with Sense, though it really helps a bit) just bothers me.  Like not being able to copy/paste from email for some reason (which is 90% of what I want copy/paste for, really)... Often the experience is just inconsistent.  Things just don't always work the same way across different apps on the device, and you can't always count on features to work everywhere.

[bwaldron]

However, perhaps if you've never used an iPhone full time and gotten used to how sensitive it is, then it wouldn't ever bother you.  

Well, before I dumped all my Apple equipment, I used an iPod Touch for several hours per day...so I was used to it. Honestly, though, I don't see a major difference -- certainly not one that is bothersome to me (though I will grant a slight edge to the Touch in that regard).

Based solely on GUI "fit and finish," Apple is still ahead -- and the Droid does have some rough edges remaining. But the gap is much narrower than it was with the G1, and I made the choice to stop using Apple products. Though I do admire their hardware design, I deplore their business practices and finally reached my own breaking point with the company. I don't feel that I have lost any major functionality (in fact have gained some) and don't regret my choice. But that's just me 

[JustinChase]

If I was to go out and buy an Android phone tomorrow, which one should I buy?
 

(Only major requirements are it mustn't be too chunky!  )

I bought the HTC EVO when it was released, and I couldn't be happier with it.  The devs over at XDA already have full root, many custom ROM's and a (nearly) fully working port of Android 2.2 (Froyo) for the device.

Granted, you have to be willing to do a bit of work to get yours rooted and updated to the new ROM's, but there are many guides and it's not that hard.

However, the stock phone works a treat, and I *almost* NEVER experience any lag in doing anything with this device.

for what it's worth.

[JimH]

Engadget had a preview of the Motorola Droid X today.   It looks interesting.

[swinster]

what about the the Cisco Android tablet. At 7" possibly the ideal size for a remote?

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterprise/359089/cisco-tablet-targets-teleconferencing-execs