Posted on 01/20/2011 9:58:08 AM PST by artificial intelligence
To the average consumer, the war between iPhone and Android is probably very confusing.
Most people don’t know there’s a difference between a “Droid” and an “Android” phone or why these new phones are so different from what came before.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocunwired.ocregister.com ...
What if I just want a phone? Daughter already has iPod touch with facetalk and has all the music. Seems buying either of them simply duplicates each other technology they have and doubles their costs.
Not to mention, smartphones have huge monthly fees while iPod touch does not.
I even found the app that gives your iPod a phone number – for free.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpBN-BBhcew
How many people have owned/used both?
You may be interested in this thread...
Which is better, a two door coup or an extended cab pickup?
That is exactly the same sort of question.
"Less filling!"
These things can go on forever.
Love the one you’re with.
In this context, the difference between a “Droid” and an “Android phone” is the former is a model model of Android phone whose maker is willing to pay Lucasfilm, Ltd. royalties on its trademarked shortening of the word “android”, or an Android phone being spoken of by someone who doesn’t give a d*mn about state-granted monopolies on the use of words.
Archos has a number of android 2.2 tablets, screen sizes include 2.8, 3.2, 4.3, 7 and 10.
There are lots and lots of android tablets from a whole bunch of manufacturers.
The apples have great screens, they can’t really do more than the android tablets, and in many cases less but the screens are great.
It depends greatly on both personal preference and what android device you are talking about. There are some mediocre android phones out there, but models like the Samsung Galaxy S, and Motorola Droid are more or less on par with the iPhone 4 (a bit better at some things, a bit worse at others) and I think the HTC Evo is slightly, but clearly superior to the iPhone 4.
Android phones offer far more choice of size, keyboards, specifications, etc. iPhones, on the other hand, are a simpler and reliable choice for those who don’t really much about smartphones and have no desire to do hours of research.
In the long run, I think the better android phones will be better than iPhones. With so many manufacturers competing to put out better and more innovative android phones, it will be hard for Apple to keep up.
First state a person’s requirements in a phone, then we can talk about which one is better for that person. Otherwise, these comparisons are a bunch of factoids that in general have little applicability to anyone’s individual purchase.
And so far with the exception of maybe the Samsung, they all suck. Most, especially those from the likes of Archos, are under-powered media players with Android slapped on them, branded as a tablet. I remember one was so bad a reviewer initially didn't even publish the review. When they finally did, it was horrendous, the worst thing they've ever reviewed. The device was pretty much useless in every respect.
In general, it's "you get what you pay for" vs. an iPad. If it costs 1/4 of an iPad's price, then that's what you're going to get.
And what's a 2.8 inch "tablet"? That's like an iPod, and 3.2" is closer to an iPod touch. 4.3" is like one of the larger Android phones. Tablets really don't begin until 7" and up, although arguments could be made for 5".
You don’t by any chance sell NAND flash memory?
Right, I know the arguments about what size screen is a proper tablet size. Certainly 10 inches is a tablet. 2.8 inches not so much. I get all that.
People are fairly uniform is their assessment of the Motorola Xoom as being clearly better than the iPad. That isn’t out yet, it won best of show at CES.
Most who are aware of the Herotab MID816 believe that it is better than the ipad.
Faster processor - 1.2G. The OS is on a removable internal flash card. Up to 64 gigs total storage (apart from any external drive you may have hooked up to. And less than half the price - under $250. Faster, does more, half the price.
Here are some links on this product.
http://www.slatedroid.com/herotab-m816/ - this one is a section of a droid message board all about this particular product. They all think they’ve got a better product than the ipad at half the price. The only problem they’re having is buying one. They’re selling fast, and they’re generic.
That Samsung Arm A8 chip at 1.2 ghz is clearly faster than the ipod, and provides better performance.
Here’s a link to prices of products, mostly tablets, with the Samsung S5PV210 chip -
http://www.dhgate.com/wholesale/S5PV210.html#search
And the Herotab runs Flash great, and the Ipad doesn’t run it at all.
In absolute terms I do realize some of the new tablets have better specs than an iPad, and also have high prices too. But do realize you're comparing them to a product that is almost a year old, an eternity in this market.
That Samsung Arm A8 chip at 1.2 ghz is clearly faster than the ipod, and provides better performance.
Try to avoid thinking in pure GHz. Especially in portable applications, that's not always a good thing. A 1 GHz processor handles normal uses quite well, although dual-core could make things more fluid without hurting battery life so much. More important would be the other items on the silicon to hardware-accelerate graphics and video. That Samsung Hummingbird is a good example, with PowerVR 540 graphics, quite a bit more powerful than Apple's A4, although the A4 does have a dedicated video decoder, which means it can play HD video while using very little battery.
Nobody's sure what's coming in the next iPad, but all the cameras and stuff are a given, plus a new SoC with a dual-core processor and a much more capable GPU. It looks like most high-end phones this year will get dual-core processors. So what's interesting to me is that the likely GPU can be programmed just like a desktop GPU. Given that OS X has such functionality built-in, it's likely iOS also does/will. So even if the CPU isn't ultra-high GHz, developers could have the option to leverage the GPU to vastly speed up various code -- on a phone! Sweeet.
Also, for performance, Android itself is a choke point. For now at least, it composites the interface in software, very slow. This probably so that older devices without GPUs can run it, but for some strange reason, compositing in hardware with elegant fallback wasn't implemented. Some Android implementations may have gotten around this, but it's pretty hard for a consumer to know which ones, and most won't even know to ask about it. Apple does have the advantage here in that they know exactly what hardware their OS will be running on, and they can optimize the OS for it.
Apple’s strength has always been consistancy, and this is no exception. When you buy a new Iphone, you know exactly what you’re getting in terms of storage, power, application compatibility and OS. There are however dozens of androids on the market with a lot of different specs. Not all android apps will run well on all androids.
The OS experience will also differ from android to android. There are still some androids on the market running android 1.6, a lot still running 2.1, and only a few that run 2.2 well. On top of that, manufacturers tweak the OS. HTC droids for example run HTC sense on top of the OS, which gives them added functionality, but also means you can’t seamlessly move from one to the other without understanding the differences.
Apple folks will never admit it, but when it comes to power the Iphone is actually no match for the high end androids like the Incredible, Mytouch 4G, HTC Evo, HTC Desire, Samsung Galaxy S, etc. The problem is that the average consumer can’t tell the difference between one android and another.
Most who are aware of the Herotab MID816 believe that it is better than the ipad.
It saves on price by having a far inferior screen, resistive instead of capacitive, and smaller at that. Plus you get to buy expanded memory, it only comes with 4 GB.
Faster processor - 1.2G. The OS is on a removable internal flash card.
Interesting about this Samsung S5PC210 processor in it. I've never heard of it. Do you have a source for specs on this specific SoC? Also expect lower battery life with this processor. I see 6 hours listed, probably the usual wishful thinking best-case at that.
And the Herotab runs Flash great, and the Ipad doesn’t run it at all.
That's hard to believe. I haven't seen one positive review of Flash on Android, glitches, battery hogging and incompatibility abound. The problem with Flash is that it is not made for mobile, touch devices. It's a desktop technology that's trying to be squeezed into handhelds. The saddest part I've seen is a call for Flash developers to re-tool their works to be friendly to touch and mobile. But if we're going to do that, might as well move off of Flash altogether.
The A4 in the iPhone has in general higher performance than the Qualcomm Snapdragon in the HTC Incredible, Desire, Evo and myTouch. So they are no match for the iPhone. The major performance-related difference between a Galaxy S and iPhone is the Samsung Hummingbird processor in the Galaxy has a faster GPU. Otherwise, they are almost the same chip, except that Apple adds hardware video decoding to increase battery life during video playback.
Phones that dwarf the current iPhone in power are coming this year, especially dual-core phones. But then Apple is coming out with a faster chip too. I doubt they spent $400 million on chip design firms in the last few years for nothing. One of those firms designed that Samsung Hummingbird.
The AMOLED display on my Samsung GalaxyS “Fascinate” is the best I have seen anywhere, on anything. I refer to brightness, clarity, and color saturation. Obviously, it’s smaller than my computer monitors or TV.
Hah! ... Wasn’t very subtle was I...
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