Several months ago I wrote about my experiences as a new Android user followed a few months later by my experiences installing custom versions of the OS. Yesterday, Apple finally announced a new iPhone, which is a big speed boost from the iPhone 4, running on essentially the same hardware as the iPad 2. Next week, Google and Samsung are expected to announced the next version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, along with a new Nexus phone. I'll be watching very closely.
After five months with Android, I'm kind of fed up with it. Is it because I'm used to iOS? Very possibly, but I will also assign some blame to the phone itself. The T-Mobile LG G2x turned out to be something of a dud. Even with custom software installed, it still feels considerably slower my iPad with what should be roughly equivalent hardware (dual-core 1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, Tegra 2 GPU). As it turns out, Google has refused to include GPU acceleration in the OS. (That link also explains the benefits.) This may seem like a minor issue, however, two of their competitors in this arena, Apple and Microsoft, included it in their phone OSes, and the difference in smoothness is incredible. The iPhone 4, an 18 month old phone, despite having a single core processor reportedly clocked around 800 MHz, still feels like a faster phone than almost anything with Android barring maybe some of the most recent releases like the Samsung Galaxy S II, and Samsung supposedly includes GPU acceleration in Touchwiz, their custom interface (I believe certain versions of Motorola's Blur have it, as well). It seems like a small issue, but it's a huge difference in usability. A day doesn't go by that my phone seems to miss a tap to its touchscreen or lags when I try to do something or seems to simply freeze for seconds at a time - issues I never had with my two year old iPhone 3GS. That doesn't even get into concerns that aren't about usability, but do show a lack of polish, such as non-smooth zooming, choppiness while scrolling, and so on. It gets really choppy in areas with bad "4G" reception, since it starts to switch between that and 2G which seems to eat a bunch of CPU cycles (and battery). Sure, it can be easily forced to use 2G only, but that's not much of a solution, though it's thankfully rarely a problem (and not one I'm willing to switch providers over). I've also recently been running into an issue of the phone having trouble reconnecting to Google's server after losing connection. This shouldn't be a big deal, except that I use Google Voice for text messaging, and without a connection to Google's servers, I don't have texts. (Well, not explicitly true. I can still send them through T-Mobile, but then I have to use my phone's actual number, which not a lot of people have.)
It's not all bad. Things like home screen widgets are a great feature, and the sheer number of customization options is amazing. I'm going to see what Google has to offer next week, then probably switch phones to something else. I'm really interested in Windows Phone 7, but I'm not sure I want to drop the cash on it. We'll see.
