Android

Apple screwed up when they made the iPhone proprietary so that other companies could not it on their phones. Google then came along and made Android, which does much the same thing, but uses an open architecture so that others can develop for it. For this reason only, Apple will begin to fall to the side in the cell phone market. They did the same thing with computers. The Mac is a great computer, but only Apple can make it. That is a large reason why Windows has so much more of the market. If Apple had made its OS available on other platforms, it might have a larger share. Learn from your mistakes Apple!

Since Android is an open architecture, it has a lot of advantages and disadvantages. Lets look at the biggest pros and cons for an open phone OS. First, any manufacturer can make a phone that runs on Android. This is both good and bad. The reason for keeping things proprietary is that you have control and you know that it is all going to run properly. PCs often have problems. Windows cannot control every machine that uses its OS and therefore does not always run properly. On the plus side, there are more manufacturers and therefor more options. The same is true for Android. There are more phone choices for Android as Samsung and HTC fight for supremacy in the market and others, such as Motorola are making strong options as well.

Second, there are more software options. With an open architecture, more people can program for the phone without buying expensive programming suites. This means that more software is out there. The good of this is there are more options. The bad is that a lot of it is rubbish. For instance, I was looking for something that would tell me where the closest fee free atm was. I found something, but it was not very well laid out. I then downloaded a couple of other programs. The others were just different faces on the first program. No added functionality at all. What a waste. Some software does not run properly, or only runs on some phones. However, there is a lot of great software out there that runs properly (at least for me). As more programmers come on board and get to know the language, there will be even more software options. There will be more good software and more rubbish, just like in the Windows world.

With an open architecture, I am sure that Android will continue to grow stronger and stronger. Before we know it, iPhone will have just a small share of the market, like Apple does with computers. iPhone might even be the better phone with the better OS, but with a proprietary architecture fewer people with program for it and people will gravitate toward the phone system with the most choices.

I've never been a fan of web on a cell phone. I had it for a month several years back. It was cool, but was just a toy, nothing more. The screen was so small you could not do any real surfing on it. You couldn't hook it up to a computer, so you could surf from there. Why pay $20/month to have Internet in a screen so small it would be useless?

My opinion is beginning to change. My main problem with web on the phone is that a) the screens are too small and b) you can't connect them to a computer. Android is changing the latter and there are now phones with bigger screens.

The screens are still small. I'm with Sprint and my Rumor 2 has a tiny screen, less than 2 inches on the diagonal. Well, Sprint/Nextel now has 4 phones with Android on them, the HTC Evo having the largest screen at 4.3 inches. This is still small, but when I checked out shabamdevelopment on it, I could just read the site. When I pinched to zoom in, I could read better.

I also played with the Samsung Moment. It's 3.2 inch display palled next to the Evo and I could not read the site until I zoomed in, but I could see using it for surfing. Samsung is releasing a new 4G phone they are calling the Epic very soon. This phone will have a 4inch display, with a pull out keyboard. These larger displays may well make these a valid replacement for a PDA.

My other complaint that you can't hook it into a computer is also voided now. It used to be that you had to get an extra devise to get a connection on your laptop through the cell carrier. There's an app for that. Sprint can't stop you from hooking your Android phone up to your laptop and getting Internet. So, now for the normal Internet fee, you can have Internet on your phone and laptop wherever you are! I think it is worth it.