In May, Meredith and I took the plunge and bought Androids. The Nexus One to be exact. It’s a shame Google’s business model of selling unlocked phones on the web didn’t fly.
Since many have asked, “Why Android?” Here’s why.
1. Integration with Google. When I bought the device, I turned it on, punched in my google username and password and a few seconds later all my stuff was there. Email, contacts, calendar. There’s a deep integration here and if you use a lot of Google apps like I do, you’ll appreciate this. Everything syncs automatically in the cloud.
2. Voice to text. Any field that is editable on the Android can be modified using your voice. If I want to send a text message to my sister, I speak the contents of the text message and in real-time Google transcribes my voice to text. I verify the text, (it’s highly accurate), push send and I’m on my way. This works anywhere there’s 3G or Wifi (which is everywhere except when I’m on a plane).
4. Tethering. The phone can be turned into a mini wifi hotspot. It takes 2 clicks and I’m sharing my 3G connection. This is especially helpful if Meredith and I are traveling in the car and need web access for the laptop/iPad or I’m at an airport without free wifi and want to do something on my laptop/iPad.
5. Open. The platform is much more open than others meaning you can do nerdy things and write your own apps etc… This is more a personal preference.
6. Apps & Corporate Freedom. My old ‘smart’ phone was on another platform with loads of corporate security. I had to get special permission to download the Bible and most of today’s most useful apps aren’t always accessible on that platform. With Android, there are 1000s of apps that help me accomplish the business of life and I have control over what gets on my phone. I’ll write about my favorites another day.
7. A 4 mega-pixel camera. This really changes your work flow. Instead of writing a todo to reimburse something, I just take a picture of the receipt. Recently, on an international trip I could take photos and instantly share them with my friends and family back home.
Many of these things aren’t necessarily unique to the Android, but ones I think Android does well. As you can tell, I’m a fan.
doublederivativeca 
Hm….so i thoght i’d buy an iphone..now i’m back to being indecisive. You’ll have 3 days to convert me! 😉 See you at Christmas….
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I’d go with android, there’s a lot more choice for how you want your phone to look and feel, rather than only one choice. you also get things like flash for browsing the web. The android app store has well over 100 000 apps to choose from, with ~70% being free compared to iphones 30%. the market is also more open not banning apps for obscure reasons.
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Good point cs student.
Thanks for pointing out the flash advantage as well.
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