iPhone vs. Android

A house divided cannot stand.

Well, not really. My household was split along the Droid/iPhone divide for months as we used work provided smart phones of differing heritage.

I spent my work time on the Verizon Droid.

While my wife happily plugged in her AT&T iPhone 3GS.



With my new developer job came a new phone, sort of. I get a stipend to spend on cell phone service, so I get to pick and own the phone. Our personal cell phones, home phone, and internet service is already through AT&T. Since I don't expect to be accepting nearly as many work related calls, I'm thinking about doing both personal and business calls off one device. Hence my provider is preselected.

AT&T gives me the option to go iPhone or Android and each have recent additions to their line ups in the iPhone 4G and Samsung Captivate. I have a dilemma.

I appreciate Apple's choice to provide an end to end solution and apparently developers at large do to. This is pointedly obvious with the iPhone exclusive app "Words with Friends", a Scrabble(tm) clone that would probably be only game on either device I'd purchase if it didn't already come with an Ad driven free version. A larger user base could also help sell any apps I may one day develop. The forward facing camera has potential as well.

However, I appreciate Google's relaxed market rules. The horror stories of iPhone app applications gone awry make me concerned about what might become of my first attempt to do cell phone development. Also I make frequent and extensive use of Google's services, such as Google Voice, which are tightly integrated with Android and sometimes completely unavailable on the iPhone. Unfortunately the Captivate does not include an LED flash, a travesty with a 5 mega-pixel camera.

I was thinking the integration with Google services is going to end up being the killer app for me. The features of the iPhone are enticing, but I don't see myself doing any video conferencing. What I do see myself doing is taking pictures. A missing $10 LED flash is going to drive my purchase of a $200 phone.