I just got my first Android-powered smartphone last week and have been transitioning my life away from my Palm Centro and iPod Touch–the two devices that kept track of my music, calendar, contacts, email, and so on. Yes, the Centro can do most of those things by itself, but I didn’t have a data plan at the time and could never get it to sync properly with Windows 64-bit. It didn’t have Wifi either, so I needed the iPod in order to get email, web, and more on the go. Annoying to carry multiple devices, but so worth it–especially on trips.

iPhone OS is good. It provides a smooth and intuitive interface, things are easy to use, generally easy to find, and it’s a powerful platform with some excellent multimedia capabilities built in. It really was almost an iPhone–just without the phone and on-the-go data portions, so it’s a pretty accurate comparison. I’ve now explored both types of devices in depth and here’s what I’ve found.

Hardware

This comparison is more about software than hardware, but I just wanted to take a minute to examine the iPhone hardware vs. my Droid Eris.

As far as specs go, the iPhone hasn’t changed a whole lot over it’s three iterations so far. Sure, there have been some additions like a faster CPU, more ram, better sensors, and a radio allowing for faster data transmission (although AT&T’s network doesn’t yet support the new HSDPA+ 7.2 standard). We have yet to see what the next iteration holds, but the differences probably won’t be earth shattering.

My Eris’s screen is a tad smaller than the iPhone’s, but it is far sharper and more vibrant. There’s almost no comparison–even at it’s highest brightness setting, the iPhone just can’t match the beauty of the Droid’s screen. Match it up against the Motorola Droid or the Nexus One, and there really is no comparison. The Android phones blow the iPhone away in resolution and clarity. The Eris has a 528mhz processor and some say it’s a little sluggish. I’ve noticed a slight delay from time to time, but it’s not bad and the Android 2.1 update coming in the next few days may resolve that completely. The Eris has more RAM than the iPhone.

The iPhone has one main button. I know Steve Jobs likes simplicity, but seriously? Sure, the one button does what it needs to do, but I really feel like navigation on the device could be more intuitive with dedicated call buttons or a quick way to jump to MMS or the Phone function itself. I like my Android-device because it has a dedicated “back” button that sends you back to the last place you were. So even if I jump from one app to another, I can immediately go back to the previous app. Pretty slick.

As far as battery life goes, it differs from device to device. Google’s Nexus One has some of the most amazing battery life I’ve seen to date. Comparing my Eris to the iPhone, Apple’s device edges it out just slightly according to specs from their website. The Eris can go 8-10 hours with the standard battery and light-moderate usage.

All in all, I can’t say one device is better than the other. They both work well and provide good feature-sets.

The OS

According to some, the iPhone OS is the gold-standard by which all other phone and OS makers must match, but I tend to disagree. The iPhone OS is one way of interacting, but there are other good ways of using the feature-set of an OS. On a side note, it’ll be interesting to see how Windows Phone 7 stands up against everyone else with it’s completely different interaction philosophy and UI design.

App Navigation

So the iPhone OS looks good and is easy to use, but I see serious oversights by the designers and architects of the system. First, navigating from one app to another is cumbersome. Let’s say I’m reading through a meeting request I just received via email. I’m not sure if I’m free, so I hit home, find the Calendar app, open it, check my schedule, and then hit home again, find Mail, and re-open it. That’s a lot of steps.

With Android, if I’ve recently had my calendar open, I can just switch to it and immediately switch back with maybe two taps. Even if I had to go locate my calendar in the apps menu, it’s incredibly easy to flip back to my email since I just came from there. Perfect example? No, but there have been plenty of times using the iPhone where it’s just driven me nuts how ridiculous it is to have to hit the home screen every time I need to switch apps.

Winner: Android

Notifications

That’s a good workflow example, but here’s another one. On the iPhone, the only way you can tell if you have new emails is if you locate the Mail app and check to see if the “new items” indicator is attached to the icon. If you were reading a book, surfing the web, or updating Facebook, you’d never know unless you exit the app and manually check. The only way to bypass this requirement is to jailbreak your iPhone–something I’d recommend that every iPhone owner should do. It’s completely worth it.

Android makes this process so easy you don’t even have to think. The top section of the screen contains a status bar just like the iPhone, but this bar also updates it’s left-hand corner to show all kinds of notifications. Facebook updates, new emails, new text/pix messages, calendar appointments, and more are all possibilities that might show up. I can then expand the status bar to reveal additional details about the alerts, and if I deem one of them important enough to interrupt whatever I’m doing, I can tap it and open the corresponding app. If I don’t need to see it, I can clear it away just as easily. All without ever leaving the app I’m currently using. This is 2010 and Android knows it. It’s so easy.

Winner: Android

Apps

The iPhone has somewhere around 120,000+ apps these days. I doubt if more than 20,000 of those are actually used on a regular basis, but it’s clear that users have a great selection for the most part (except in those cases where Apple rejects perfectly legit apps–but that’s a separate issue). The Facebook app for iPhone is better and more evolved than it’s Android counterpart. Starbucks hasn’t even written an Android application yet. Most big-name banks have made iPhone apps, but not necessarily ones for Android. The iPhone comes out ahead here from this perspective–although I haven’t yet found an app that I absolutely cannot live without. Most of the mainstream iPhone apps have Android siblings and they generally work equally well except in cases similar to the ones noted. Then again, the iPhone app store has been out at least 12 months longer than the Android Marketplace and with 25,000+ applications, Android is quickly catching up.

The place where I find myself once again loving the Android experience is found in one area: multitasking. The Android platform does this so seamlessly it’s almost funny how obvious this feature is to today’s advanced devices. Even Palm’s webOS does superb multitasking at little expense to battery life. I don’t get why Steve Jobs is so resistant to this feature, but it’s definitely something the iPhone needs in order to keep pace with today’s mobile devices. You’re lookin’ a little old and decrepit there, iPhone…

One app (available only on Android) that deserves specific mention is Cnet’s Scan & Shop. This little jewel allows you to scan any barcode using the phone’s camera and immediately find reviews and price comparisons for that particular product. Now, you can price out that elusive LED TV in BestBuy and find expert reviews in addition to better prices. Everyone needs this app.

Winner: Tie, Android edge. The iPhone having 100,000 apps is somewhat irrelevant if I can’t use more than one at a time, but Android needs some more major players.

Network

Do I even need to mention this area? Everyone knows the AT&T network seriously limits the iPhone OS’s abilities. Android has devices across multiple networks making the devices more portable when moving from one network to another (if you are unhappy with your current provider). The multiple-carrier philosophy and openness of Android devices also means that as they continue to grow in popularity, I’ll meet more and more Android users every day. This can only mean good things for Android users.

Winner: Android

Multimedia

I mentioned the fact that my Eris has a much better screen than any iPhone, but it’s multimedia capabilities also one-up the iPhone’s. In addition to playing music and movies in tons of different formats, Android can also play music from services like Pandora, Last.fm, and Lala in the background while I do other things. This is excellent news since I can read ebooks, surf the net, send and receive texts, and comparison shop all without stopping the endless stream of music over Verizon’s robust 3G network. I streamed Pandora all the way home the other day without a hitch.

Winner: Android

Sync, PIM, and Backup

I’m free of iTunes and that alone makes me want to shout for joy. Regardless of my feelings from that angle, Android has some great syncing features. First, it supports push Gmail and DirectPush MS Exchange technology. In addition, it syncs up your Google Calendar, contacts, links your Facebook contacts and profiles (if you so desire), and natively supports many other Google services. Depending on the manufacturer, the phone will also sync to a PC running Outlook.

The iPhone has Exchange support, but for the most part, the honeymoon stops there. Mail is pull-only, although if you’re patient and determined enough, you can partially get some Google services to push to your device. This mechanism is unreliable at best. I had no end to problems with it. Basically, if you have an iPhone, you’d better be prepared to use iTunes or you won’t be able to back up your device or update your device. Major caveat. MobileMe offers a lot of services similar to Google’s, but who seriously wants to pay $99/yr for that?! Google services are free and I’m more than happy to let Android push my data into the cloud.

Winner: Android

Conclusion

The clear winner here is Android–by a wide margin no less. Pretty good for having been released long after the iPhone’s initial offering. Analysts see Android-powered devices taking over the #1 positioned smartphone by 2012 and I fully expect this to be the case. I wouldn’t be surprised if it surpasses all other U.S. smartphone offerings well in advance of this projection. Just as Apple is a niche product in the PC market, so the iPhone is quickly following in it’s footsteps. This really reminds me of the “battle” of old between MacOS and Windows. Apple released MacOS well in advance of Windows, yet Windows still controls 98% of the worldwide PC market. We may not see the exact same plot unfold in the smartphone market, but things are shaping up in that direction already.

iPhone with the early lead…Android closing fast. Better watch it Apple or your face is going to be rubbed in the mud once again…