Google has just released the too-long-in-coming Chrome for Android browser, and Phil from Android Central wasted no time loading it up on his Galaxy Nexus, and putting it up against an iPhone 4S running Safari, for a classic head-to-head, phono-e-phono, Mobile Nations browser showdown video.

Both browsers are based on WebKit, the project Apple adapted from the old Linux KHTML Konquerer browser and has been sharing back with the open source community ever since. So it’s no surprise both score 100/100 on the Acid3 rendering test. Safari makes use of Apple’s Nitro JavaScript engine, however, while Chrome has Google’s V8 under the hood. That let Chrome edge out Safari in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks.

Safari and iOS in general still offer smoother, more closely-tracked multitouch scrolling, panning, and zooming. (No doubt due to iOS placing priority on interface rendering tasks, while they’re left to fight as equals on Android.)

Interestingly, Chrome, like Safari, offers no support for Adobe’s Flash player, or any other internet plugin.

Chrome is still in beta and only available for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich right now. No doubt the release version will be even better still.

Likewise, Apple isn’t slowing down. With iOS 5.1 on the horizon, Safari will improve as well.

Heck, now that BlackBerry has their new WebKit-based Torch browser, and Microsoft has embraced modern Internet Explorer builds on Windows Phone, it’s getting harder to find a bad browser out there.

Check out the video below for full out web rendering showdown.

Source: Android Central

iOS devices combined — including iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch — may have outsold Android devices combined — including Android phones and tablets — by a narrow margin last quarter. During the Q1 2012 Apple conference call today, Tim Cook pegged the iOS device number at 62 million. Android numbers are harder to come by, but last month Andy Rubin said 700,000 were now being activated a day. Given the prior two months were likely less, the following month perhaps more, it probably works out to 60 or 61 million.

During the same call, Tim Cook also revealed that the Amazon Kindle Fire had no affect on iPad sales, far he can tell. Sprint ultimately paid dearly to get the iPhone on their network in order to remain competitive. Verizon announced their results today, and revealed that slightly more than half of their smartphone sales were iPhones.

Apple has long dominated their competitors in terms of smartphone profit share but recently Android was assumed to have a big lead in market share. I’ve long discounted that, saying it’s irrelevant.

And nothing that was announced today changes that.

Apple released the iPhone 4S last quarter, almost 3 months later than many people anticipated. There was massive pent up demand for the iPhone 4S and it sold gangbusters. But Apple probably isn’t releasing another new iPhone this quarter. Or next. Or the one after that. But there will be new Android phones. Maybe not next quarter, but certainly the one after, running Android 4.0 and likely once again upping the spec fight.

Carriers, who can control Android in ways Apple will never allow them to control iPhones, will push these new devices heavily — like they did the original Droid and a plethora of devices since — and many buyers, geek tweakers and feature-phone replacers alike, will buy them.

The market share trends and figures will change and likely change again.

But they’ll constantly be irrelevant. Because they ultimately don’t matter.

Earlier this month I walked into an Apple Store with scratches on my iPhone 4S screen and walked out 30 min. later with a new iPhone 4S and a stern lecture about taking better care of my gear. And without paying a dime.

Last week Apple released iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and iTunes U, taking the first steps towards mainstreaming digital education.

Just this week, as is almost always the case, I downloaded apps with UI so well designed, UX so thoughtful, they made me smile and delight in using my iPhone and iPad again.

The best devices, the best software, the best service. That’s relevant. As a consumer, that’s what matters. Not Apple’s numbers. Not Google’s numbers. That’s what all companies should be fiercely fighting over. Delighting us. That’s the metric they should all be measured by.

That should be the competition.

While Apple CEO Tim Cook had a lot to say during the Apple Q1 2012 conference call, when asked about 4G LTE, bigger screen, and whether or not the mobile market had become a two-horse race between Android and iOS, Cook played his cards close to his chest.

Cook said he didn’t think the mobile market was like Mac vs. Windows, where despite 20 quarters of consecutive growth, Apple’s share remained in the single digits. In mobile, citing recent metrics reports, Cook said Apple and Google’s Android remained in a tight race. Further, he wouldn’t discount Microsoft either, saying that there was a horse in Redmond that always suits up and always runs, and will keep running.

We’ll ignore how many other horses there are, we just want to be the lead one. 

Cook also managed to skirt question about Apple’s LTE future and larger displays for iPhone, saying that with 37 million iPhones sold last quarter, customers appear happy with the current product.

Personally, we’re just waiting to see what iPhone 5 is packing later this year.

According to Nielsen, the amount of all smartphones running iOS — namely the iPhone — rose from 30% to 37% over the last 3 months, compared to the share of all smartphones running Android OS — namely 8 googlezillion at last official count — rose from 46.3% to 51.7%. The growth came largely at the expense of BlackBerry, which shrank from 14.9% to 6% over the same period.

Among recent smartphone purchasers, Apple jumped from 25.1% last quarter to 44.5% while Android slowed from 61.6% to 46.9% and BlackBerry slid from 7.7% to 4.5%.

Given the tremendous success of the iPhone 4S last quarter, which ended prior to the launch of the next-generation Android 4.0 devices, and saw RIM still stuck in the great desert of the QNX/BB10 platform transition, the numbers aren’t surprising. Once we get deeper into Apple’s typical year-long product cycle, and new Android 4.0 devices start hitting the market in earnest, the figure will almost certainly change again.

However, that Apple continues to have the most popular single phones on the market, and a phenomenally disproportionate profit share, should perhaps be an indicator that better, more nuanced, and more contextual analysis are needed from metrics companies.

Source: Nielsen via Android Central

Noted iPhone Jailbreak developer Grant Paul, better known as chpwn, has started the ICS Paper Cuts blog to share his thoughts on user interface and user experience inconsistencies in Google’s latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich.

Android Central‘s Jerry Hildenbrand has responded, agreeing with some of Paul’s complaints and calling him out on others, and Paul has now responded to Hildenbrand’s response as well. It’s a great discussion and an important one and hopefully we’ll see more like it across sites and platforms. UI and UX are iterative processes and criticism is the fuel that feeds iteration.

Consistency is something I’ve harped on as well, both here on TiPb and on the Iterate podcast.

While iOS has more than it’s fair share of UI eccentricities — stitched leather and felt come immediately to mind — it has by and large provided a more consistent experience than Android to date. The same type of control is typically in the same approximate place from one Apple app to another, and many — though certainly not all — iOS designers take pains and pride in following the same conventions. Like chopping wood, or reading repetitive words, it causes the chrome to disappear and interactions to become near frictionless.

Google has stepped up their design game across the board over the last year, but it remains challenged by legacy apps and interface elements, and a culture that traditionally places engineering ahead of design.

2012 represents a new opportunity for both platforms, however, with iOS 6 and Android Jellybean (Jujube? Jaffa cake? Jawbreaker?) on the horizon. Let’s see what they can do.

Meanwhile check out the discussion via the links below.

Source: ICS Paper Cuts, Android Central response, ICS Paper Cuts reponse

Fairly or unfairly, Google’s Android often gets knocked for having a lagging or stuttering user interface when compared to Apple’s iOS on iPhone and iPad. TiPb’s previously guessed that this stemmed from very early architectural decisions made by Apple, who had a full screen, multi-touch UI — albeit it a highly limited one — in mind from the outset, as opposed to Google who originally had Android set up as a BlackBerry, Windows Mobile Standard, and Nokia competitor that had no need for high performance, sophisticated UI rendering.

That might turn out to be pretty much the case. In response to a Google+ post about hardware acceleration by Android engineer Dianne Hackborn, ex-Google intern Andrew Munn breaks down why Android’s way of handling graphics and event processing hinders the OS from offering users a more fluid, lag-free UI.

Android UI will never be completely smooth because of the design constraints I discussed at the beginning:

• UI rendering occurs on the main thread of an app
• UI rendering has normal priority

The iPhone changed things by introducing a dedicated thread with high priority for handling UI rendering, redirecting all power (CPU and GPU) to handling UI element rendering in realtime based on touch input. The result? Smooth-as-butter UI elements, transitions and animations as soon as you touch the screen — even on older hardware when paired with the latest iOS 5 software. The drawback: everything else, from app downloads to content rendering will pause so the UI can keep that high frame rate, high quality redraw pace.

Munn does disclose that he was only an intern with Google’s Android team and never actually got his hands on the raw Android source code, so this could be taken as supposition.

Indeed, our own resident Mobile Nations Android guru, Jerry Hildenbrand from Android Central says there might be a bit more to it:

The way it stands now, as long as you have free resources to run multiple UI threads [in Android] the UI is amazingly smooth — easily as smooth as the iPhone or WP7 phones. Problem is that nobody sets resource management up in a way to keep them free. A simple customization to the linux lowmemkiller kernel parameter fixes it, at the expense of huge memory hogs like Facebook or HTC applications. One day, when we have Octocore 12NM Cpu’s, DDR3 RAM, and huge batteries this way will prove better. For now, you have to hack at it.

So Android can be set up to prioritize UI, if that’s what’s wanted, but it’s not automatic like iOS. That might annoy user experience snobs, like our friends on the Iterate podcast but it might be a fine tradeoff for those with other priorities, like the big screens, different skins, and high customizability that Android’s design does allow.

Hit the source for a full technical breakdown.

Source: Dianne Hackborn, Andrew Munn

According to 9to5Google, the reason Google Wallet is nowhere to be found on the upcoming Android Samsung Galaxy Nexus is because… wait for it… Verizon has blocked it. That’s worth repeating. Google has allowed a carrier to prevent users from having a Google app on a platform marketed as being open, on a device meant to be the very flagship, the beacon of that openness.

If this story turns out to be accurate, it wouldn’t be the first time Google has caved to Verizon. They’ve turned their backs on the net neutrality principles they previously held dear, for Verizon. They’ve betrayed their users by allowing crapware to be indelibly pre-installed on Android, for Verizon and other carrier partners. They even allowed the delay of Galaxy Nexus in the country in which they’re headquartered, more than likely for Verizon.

And none of that would be a problem, none of it would even be noteworthy except that Google has used openness — complete openness — time and again as a weapon against Apple — a way to turn users away from iOS and rally them to Android. And now, as then, it’s deliberately misleading at best and a flat out lie at worst. It’s said in a way that suggests it’s better for end users when it’s not. It’s said in a way that suggests it puts control in the end user’s hands when it doesn’t. It puts in back in the carrier’s hands. It’s better for the carriers.

With the corruption of the Nexus line, it’s not even “openy” any more. It’s less than openy.

If you use Android rather than iOS because you like a choice of hardware form factors, or prefer the deep integration of Google services, or its UI better fits the way your brain works, or you just flat out think it’s better on any or many levels, that’s fantastic. If you use Android for philosophical reasons and a fundamental belief in it being nobler and more open, you’ve been bamboozled. Again.

Update 1: Google has confirmed that Verizon asked for Google Wallet to be excluded from the Galaxy Nexus [CNet]

Update 2: Verizon says they’re not blocking Google Wallet, they’re just not letting it on the Galaxy Nexus. Wait, what? [Android Central]

Source: 9to5 Google via Android Central

Rather than just throwing up a quick “#BREAKSCLUSIVE: Cluzee brings Siri to Android!” post, Android Central‘s Phil Nickinson actually took the time to test out the new virtual assistant, and while it shows potential, it doesn’t yet show anywhere near Siri‘s polish on the iPhone 4S.

• It’s not quick to launch
• It’s crash prone
• It’s still struggling to parse voice
• It’s not quick to respond

Apple’s had more than their share of downtime even in Siri’s current, carefully caveated “beta” state, but inarguably they’ve gotten the basics right.

The one nice things about Cluzee, however, is that rather than simply being dismissive in monotone corporate-speak the way Google and Microsoft officials have been, they’re recognizing the future of this technology and making a play for it. Maybe they’ll nail it in a future update, maybe not, but they’re trying. Let’s see if Jellybean/Klondike Bar and Tango/Apollo follow suit.

Source: Android Central

Phil Nickinson from Android Central has put the iPhone 4S vs. Galaxy Nexus head-to-head in an epic comparison, complete with videos, pictures, uncanny insight, and everything else you’d expect from a Mobile Nations showdown.

The bottom line seems to be, if you want a bigger screen (4.65 inches), a removable battery, NFC, an LTE option (if Verizon actually releases the darn thing before iPhone 5 gets announced next year!), and a more customizable, Google-centric system, go with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

If you want a smaller screen (3.5-inches), a better camera (huge 8mp, photon-friendly sensor), the Siri virtual assistant, the still overall better quality App Store apps and more robust iPhone accessory ecosystem, and the more user-friendly, Apple and iTunes-centric system, go with iPhone 4S.

If you’re simply stunned and amazed that we have two such incredible devices on the market these days, with more on the way, then join the club. For more:

• Full Galaxy Nexus review
• Full iPhone 4S review

Source: Android Central

Interesting new ad/tactic from Samsung, painting those devoted Apple users who line up from the iPhone 4S as fanboy hipster sheep whose faces are stuck to the blogs — reading about battery life issues and lack of design changes — until a giant-screened, 4G powered, Galaxy S II tears them away.

Also interesting that Samsung only focuses on the size of the screen and speed of the radio — and not at all about the Android operating system that runs it.

Make anyone want to dump their new iPhone for a Galaxy S II?

Source: YouTube via Daring Fireball

Alex Dobie over at Android Central has put together a complete review of the Galaxy Nexus, Google’s third superphone and the second by Samsung. While the internet often jokes about “another day, another baddest Android phone on the planet”, the Galaxy Nexus seems intent on taking that crown and holding it for more than just a few weeks this time. What does that mean for Apple and the iPhone 4S?

That’s an interesting question. The two devices are in some ways a study in contrasts. iPhone 4S retains a 3.5-inch 960×640 Retina display while the Galaxy Nexus is a huge 4.3-inches, 1280×720 PenTile monster. iPhone 4S has one of the best cameras to ever grace a mobile device while Galaxy Nexus’ shooter is decidedly un-great. iPhone 4S has Siri, the intelligent voice-control assistant, and Galaxy Nexus has Face unlock and Android Beam. iPhone nailed user experience out the gate and has been slowly adding functionality over the years while Google has jam-packd Android with features but had a harder time nailing usability and consistency. But these are both mature, stable, enjoyable devices now with large enough App Stores and Markets to fit almost anyone’s needs.

Galaxy Nexus doesn’t seem quite the leap forward the Nexus One was, but certainly a far greater leap than the Nexus S delivered. Mobile Nations will put it head-to-head against the iPhone 4S soon enough, but for now check out Alex’s review and let us know what you think — tempted much?

Source: Android Central

Marc Edwards of Bjango has put together a nerd-ily in-depth look at how different screen sizes — original vs. Retina display on iOS, new vs. old Android displays, and Windows 8 Metro standards — challenge designers who strive for pixel perfection in their work.

As you can see, scaling to any size other than exactly double is detrimental to the accuracy of how your original design is represented on screen. The asset scales of 140% and 180% required for Windows 8 Metro hit their target less than 25% of the time. Android’s 150% scale lands on a neat pixel boundary half the time.

I’ve discussed the tradeoffs before when rumors claimed Apple was going to release an “HD” but not 2x Retina display iPad 2. Marc takes it far further however, with charts, spreadsheets, and examples of what exactly all these different screen sizes do to the integrity of the design.

At the end of the day, would someone moving up from a feature phone to an Android or Windows 8 phone notice or care about blurry pixel grids? Many probably won’t. I still think Apple does, however, which is why we’ll either get the same size screen on an iPad 3, or a Retina display, and nothing in between.

Hit the link below for Marc’s full rundown, and stay tuned for the next episode of the Iterate podcast where he goes over his findings.

Source: Bjango

Former Apple board member and current Google Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, has denied that Android is a “stolen product”, charges levied by the late Steve Jobs in his biography.

“I’ve decided not to comment on what’s been written on a book after his death. Steve is a fantastic human being and someone who I miss very dearly. As a general comment, I think most people would agree that Google is a great innovator and I would also point out that the Android effort started before the iPhone effort,” Schmidt said.

Apple announced the original iPhone in January 2007, saying it had taken 2.5 years of work. That places iPhone development (or iPad/iPhone development as it started off as Safari Pad) somewhere around July 2004. Schmidt joined Apple’s board in late August, 2006.

Android was founded in 2003 by Andy Rubin, formerly of Danger (who made Sidekick, which was subsequently bought by Microsoft, and abandoned as the Kin) Google purchased Android in 2005 and showed it off for the first time in November, 2007.

The huge however in all this — and something everyone but Eric Schmidt and Google seems to remember, and point out whenever they fail to remember it — Android was originally designed to look like and compete with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile Standard. It was a front-facing QWERTY device with none of the full screen, multitouch, app-centric trappings… until iPhone came around.

Just like Apple and iPhone built on what came before with Palm and Treo, Google and Android built on what Apple brought to market. Google was smart enough to buy Android in 2005 and skate to where that mobile puck was absolutely going to be by 2010.

Whether Schmidt — who reportedly recused himself from Apple board discussions about the iPhone and was deliberately kept in the dark about the iPad — engaged in questionable ethics to get that positioning, that fast, and whether or not Google and their ODM partners violated any Apple intellectual property to implement it is a question for the courts and the bank accounts to decide.

Jobs was obvious livid at his perceived betrayal by Google, no doubt informed by his relationship with Microsoft over GUI interfaces on computers in the 1990s, and his desire to go “thermonuclear” highlights those feelings. While Schmidt and Google aren’t (yet) involved in direct litigation with Apple, their ODM partners are, so he’s presenting the facts as best suits their, and perhaps one days his, case. Apple is doing likewise.

But it remains that, absent iPhone, all our Droid and Galaxy and Nexus loving friends would be typing — not tapping — their their little thumbs off on tiny tictac keyboards to this day. Much like, without Google, all us iOS users would be searching Alta Vista and complaining about it over Yahoo! mail…

Source: Reuters

Phil from Android Central put the brand new (and currently pulled for bug fixes) Gmail for iPhone and iPad app on an iPhone 4 and iPad 2 running iOS 5 against the Gmail app on a Samsung Nexus S running Gingerbread and a Galaxy Tab 10.1 running Honeycomb.

It’s easy to see Google took the easy way out with Gmail for iOS, going for a tragically thin native wrapper around the similar-old web content. Maybe they’re still limited by the iOS SDK, maybe they want to keep Android as the premiere Gmail experience (and who could blame them?), maybe it’s a hormone thing, or maybe they just want to prove Facebook isn’t the only rich, powerful web company that can’t release a stable iOS app, who knows?

Hopefully Google takes this as an opportunity to learn and gives their massive iPhone and iPad wielding user base a new Gmail app worthy of the name. And of Google.

Source: Android Central

Michael Degusta from the understatement did a tremendous job putting together a breakdown on iPhone vs. Android phone device update and support history. [Click/tap on the thumbnail above to go to his site and see it in full.]

Just as LTE-support, user-changeable batteries, different form factors, etc. are legitimate points of consideration when it comes to choosing beteen iPhone 4S and the various Android phones, so is vendor support and their history of OS updates. Not just for consumers, but for developers as well.

Even if you upgrade your phone every year, it will influence your ability to repurpose an old device, hand it down, or sell it.

Check out Degusta’s full chart and highly detailed post via the link below.

Source: the understatement

According to the latest excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Steve Jobs, HTC’s introduction of what Apple considered iPhone-like innovations made Jobs “livid” and were equated with “grand theft”.

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

Jobs reportedly told then Google CEO and former Apple board member, Eric Schmidt:

“I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.”

The issue is still unresolved and Apple has filed high profile patent infringement suits against a variety of Android ODM’s, including HTC, Motorola, and Samsung.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is available for pre-order now, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we got more fiery – and marketable — excerpts as the release draws near.

• iBooks link
• Amazon link

Source: AP

Busy day in tech yesterday, with Android Central running a never-ending live blog, covering everything from the new Motorola RAZR to the Galaxy Nexus, to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). If there’s a common hardware thread to be had, it’s that Android continues to spit out phones that are big, thin, and as wedged as an iPhone 5 rumor. The Galaxy Nexus in fact, with a 4.65 inch screen looks big enough for me to hollow out and use as an iPhone 4S case. Pretty much top-tier components all around, including innovative features like NFC beam for content sharing and facial recognition-based unlocking. The camera seems strangely weak, however, and Super AMOLED while bright and beautiful still doesn’t seem as well balanced as LED.

As to RAZR, where’s the flip? My old RAZR flipped. Just saying…

ICS seems to deliver on the promise of merging phone-bound Gingerbread to tablet-bound Honeycomb, creating a consistent UI that scales across the vast range of Android device sizes. It looks like they finally let Matias Duarte — the designer of webOS who went over to Google — loose to interesting effect. There’s a new font, which clones Helvetica better than Microsoft’s Arial ever did, and now looks very close the iPhone’s current Helvetica Neue. It’s also decidedly un-skeuomorphic, with flat, untextured regions that are deliberately unlike iOS. (We’ll talk more about that on the next Iterate. The lack of clear differentiation between smaller screen phone and larger screen tablet apps could be either brilliant or baffling. We’ll have to see.

Meanwhile over at BlackBerry DevCon 11, CrackBerry sat through the longest. Presentation. Ever. Seriously, it had an intermission. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis hosted most of it, almost like Regis Filbin doing a gadget segment, but the technology they showed off was really impressive. Everything from the new QNX-based BBX operating system to the Torch-powered HTML5 engine to the TAT-driven new Cascade UI and framework elements show that while RIM did fall behind, they’re investing heavily in getting ahead. The developer story remains a little overwhelming — yes, there can be too many options — but the focus on results seems better. Much of this will make it’s way into BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0. Sadly, no new BBX superphones were so much as previewed. Yet.

With iOS 5 and iPhone 4S here, the competition isn’t giving Apple any breathing room, and a ton of new devices are already hurtling towards us like a fleet of Star Destroyers.

Check out all the Android and BlackBerry coverage and then jump back here and tell us if any of it tempts you away from iOS.

Apple had their big Let’s talk iPhone event a couple of weeks ago and have now released [iOS 5](http://www.imore.com/iOS 5) and iCloud, and launched the iPhone 4S — now it’s RIM’s and Google’s turn.

Kevin and Adam from CrackBerry.com are live at BlackBerry Dev Con 2011, hoping to get their keyboard-crunching hands on a next generation BBX (QNX) based superphone and Playbook OS 2.0.

• Full BlackBerry Dev Con 2011 coverage

Phil and the gang over at Android Central are waiting for the big Ice Cream Sandwich and Galaxy Nexus (Prime) reveal from Google and Samsung tonight.

• Full Ice Cream Sandwich and Galaxy Nexus coverage

Keep an eye on both, then run — don’t walk! — back here and tell us how you think they compete with iOS 5, iCloud, and iPhone 4S. Did they raise the stakes?

Android Central has their full Motorola DROID BIONIC review up and if you’re trying to decide on a Verizon smartphone, suddenly you have something new to consider — iPhone 4 or DROID BIONIC, which should you get? Sure everyone is waiting on iPhone 5 this fall, but until Apple announces it, it doesn’t exist, and by the time it ships there’ll likely be a couple dozen more Android phones on the market to compete with it. As of right now, today, if you’re looking to get a new smartphone on Verizon and you just can’t wait, iPhone 4 and DROID BIONIC are the choice you have in front of you. So let’s help you decide.

It took roughly 8 month for Verizon to get the iPhone 4 after AT&T got it in June 2010, but it took Verizon just about as long to get the DROID BIONIC launched after announcing it in January 2011. So one is aging but proven and the other is late to market but chock full of all the latest goodies.

Hardware

iPhone 4 is small, with a 3.5 Retina Display (960×640) screen, stainless steel antenna band, and glass on both sides. It feels as much a work of industrial design art as it does a phone. Solid. Iconic. But did I mention — small? DROID BIONIC is as big as it’s shouty, all caps name implies. It’s got 4.3 inches of pentile display (960×540) in the typically Motorola top notch if top heavy design aesthetic.

Neither iPhone nor DROID BIONIC have front facing cameras worth writing home about — or taking much more than a profile pic or video chat with. On the back iPhone 4 has a 5 megapixel cameras that’s garnered rave reviews for it’s quality, while DROID BIONIC has 8 mega pixels but seems to be a more middling shooter. However, where iPhone 4 tops out at 720p video, DROID BIONIC keeps going all the way to 1080p.

3G vs. 4G

iPhone 4 uses Verizon’s CDMA network for voice and EVDO Rev A network for 3G data. DROID BIONIC uses the same CDMA network for voice but bumps it up huge notch with LTE 4G data. If CDMA Rev A is dial up, LTE is broadband. Not as many areas have LTE 4G as have CDMA Rev A, so if you’re outside the still-expanding LTE zone that might not mean much to you, but if you’re in it — zoom zoom. Enjoy the speed and the simultaneous voice and 4G data that come with it (alas, if you’re on Verizon 3G, you can’t talk and use data at the same time.)

Battery life

iPhone 4 gets phenomenal battery life, typically lasting through a day of moderate use on 3G. LTE demands more power, however, so while DROID BIONIC is better than previous 4G phones when it comes to battery life, it can’t work miracles. What it can do that iPhone 4 can’t is switch batteries out if it has to.

iOS vs. Android

While iOS 5 is just around the corner, we haven’t rounded that corner yet so we can only base this on the current version available, iOS 4 — and Verizon iPhone hasn’t even gotten a version of iOS 4.3.x yet (and it likely won’t, skipping straight to the free iOS 5 update when it’s ready this fall.)

Still, iOS 4 is highly polished, highly functional, and addresses previously lacking features multitasking, folder organization, FaceTime video calls, personal hotspot, and other features. Check out our complete iOS 4 walkthrough for more.

DROID BIONIC is running Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread (and speaking of corners, will likely get the free, next generation Android OS update, Ice Cream Sandwich, when it’s ready later this year) topped off with Motorola’s custom Blur UI layer. (So no stock Android experience; sorry Nexus lovers.)

Still, Gingerbread is powerful, flexible and begins to address issues of consistency and UI polish. See Android Central for more on Gingerbread

Both iOS and Android handle Google services very well, though Android has more of them, including Google Navigation. However, only iOS gets Apple software and services.

Apps vs. Apps

Apple still technically has more apps in the iPhone app store than Google does in the Android Market, but the truth is most of the types of apps you’re likely to want are available for both platforms.

iPhone apps tend to look better and provide a better user experience but Android apps tend to be able to do more and offer more options.

Accessories

iPhone 4 has been on the market approaching 15 months so there’s a ton of accessories available for it (just check out the TiPb Store for a taste of what’s available). Plus it ties into the massive iTunes and Apple ecosystems. Chances are you can find everything from the perfect case to peripherals that will check your blood or fly your toy helicopter.

Because DROID DROID is so new and there are so many different Android phones, you can still find the basics but it will take a while for more accessories to show up and they’ll fade faster when the next big Android phones splashes down in a few weeks (keep and eye on the Android Central store to see what I mean. Then again, it works with Motorola’s laptop-style keyboard and screen terminal, which is very cool.

Conclusion

Here’s what TiPb had to say about iPhone 4 when it launched:

An impressive new design, amazing new display, key features like multitasking, and an attempt to mainstream video calls, along with hundreds of other little improvements combine together to make this a substantial upgrade and clearly the best iPhone ever. (Given the success of previous iPhones, that’s no faint praise).

Here’s what Android Central had to say about the DROID BIONIC:

There are trade-offs. There are caveats. And there’s the fact that, yes, the Droid Bionic was overhyped. But there’s also this fact: The Droid Bionic without question is currently the best LTE-enabled smartphone in Verizon’s stable. How long will it remain on top? We’ll just have to see.

So if you’re in the US and on Verizon, and you need a phone now, today, and are trying to decide between iPhone 4 and DROID BIONIC, which should you get?

If you want the elegance of iOS and don’t want to fuss around, if you want it to just work, if you want the biggest choice possible of apps and accessories — as long as Apple approves them, if you want to stay in the iTunes ecosystem, and you want it wrapped up in what’s arguably still the most solid, most iconic hardware on the market, get an iPhone 4 and enjoy.

If you want the sheer power of Android and the speed of LTE, if you want the latest, greatest specs on the market — for the moment — if you want to be able to customize without having to hack your phone, and if you want a big phone with big functionality, get the DROID BIONIC.

However, if you can wait, if October isn’t too far away for you, then hold off a few weeks. Apple just change the equation again with iPhone 5, and Verizon may have an even better Android on the market as well.

If you need more help deciding, read TiPb‘s complete Verizon iPhone 4 review, compare it to Android Central‘s full DROID BIONIC review, and if you have any questions, jump into our forums and ask away!

Long title, longer legal filing, but the gist is Apple seems to be claiming Android founder Andy Rubin was working for Apple and reporting to the man who filed for a patent on Apple’s behalf that Apple is now suing HTC for violating in their Android phones. Even longer:

Android and Mr. Rubin’s relevant background does not start, as HTC would like the Commission to believe, with his work at General Magic or Danger in the mid-1990s. In reality, as the evidence revealed at the hearing, Mr. Rubin began his career at Apple in the early 1990s and worked as a low-level engineer specifically reporting to the inventors of the ’263 [realtime API] patent at the exact time their invention was being conceived and developed. [...] It is thus no wonder that the infringing Android platform used the claimed subsystem approach of the ’263 patent that allows for flexibility of design and enables the platform to be “highly customizable and expandable” as HTC touts. [...] While Mr. Rubin’s inspiration for the Android framework may not be directly relevant to the pending petitions for review, that HTC felt compelled to distort this history is illustrative of the liberties it takes in attacking the ALJ’s [initial determination] and the substantial evidence supporting the ALJ’s findings.

FOSS Patents Florian Mueler says that since Rubin works for Google, not HTC, this would be far more meaningful if Apple eventually sues Google directly, or if/when Google’s Motorola purchase goes through.

Google (or a Google subsidiary like [Motorola Mobility) would almost certainly be found to infringe the relevant patent intentionally, and willful infringement would greatly increase Apple's chances of obtaining an injunction as well as triple damages.

Mueler also points out Rubin and co. may have willfully infringed Oracle (formerly Sun) Java patents in Android as well.

Regardless of where you fall on the whole Apple vs. Android and patent system issues, right now it's just more fuel for the legal soap opera.

[FOSS Patents]

Phil from Android Central went and got his geeky little hands on the new Samsung Galaxy S II phones set to hit US carriers soon — and come this fall go up against iPhone 5. And… they’re big. Up to 4.52-inches of big. So big I’m wondering why Samsung didn’t just simplify their branding and call them Galaxy Tab 4.5. (Maybe because Sprint Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch just rolls off the tongue so much more easily?)

They’re super-powerful, with a new Samsung Exynos 1.2GHz dual core processor, super-shiny with Super AMOLED Plus displays, and super thinner than thin, thin. And yes, they’ve got the iOS-inspired TouchWiz UI on top of Gingerbread, so Apple’s lawyers won’t be going hungry any time soon.

• Sprint Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch hands-n
• AT&T Galaxy S II hands-on
• T-Mobile Galaxy S II hands-on

Verizon might be getting an LTE Galaxy S II variant at some point as well.

Check out the video up top, and the rest of the coverage via the links above, and then come back and let me know — anyone think Samsung has a shot at outselling iPhone 5 this holiday quarter?

A Dutch court today issued a European Union-wide injunction against the sale of Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy S II, and Galaxy Ace phones, due to violation of an Apple patent involving swiping between photos in a gallery. The injunction would start taking effect in mid-October (around the time of iPhone 5 release).

However, it sounds like the impact might be mitigated somewhat by Apple’s failure to file all the proper paperwork for their patents in all the proper countries. Also, the court disregarded most of Apple’s other patent claims, focusing their ruling on this one, single area of infringement.

According to FOSS Patents:

Samsung may be able to work around that particular patent without a huge degradation of the usability of its devices because it appears to relate to the way users flip through the pictures in a photo gallery. However, regardless of how Samsung may be able to work around this decision in Europe, it’s a setback for Android, a platform that is at issue in more than 50 lawsuits worldwide. In all likelihood, the winning patent is infringed by Android itself — not the operating system per se, but by one or more of the applications that ship with Android and without which the usefulness of Android would be impaired in one particular area (photo viewing). Apple has now obtained the first enforceable court decision (out of many lawsuits going on around the world) that finds Android to infringe an Apple patent — and there will definitely be many more to come.

In other words, the Imperial Fleet might have come out of hyperspace too close to this system, but all sides better prepare for ground assault.

[FOSSPatents]

Anti-virus maker McAfee has released a report saying that iOS devices, including iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch were pretty much unaffected by the growing mobile malware attacks facing platforms like Google’s Android. Jailbroken iOS devices were slightly more vulnerable, having had to deal with 4 variants of the same attack, but still far less than the 44 affecting Android (a 76% increase.)

The difference seems largely explained by how Apple runs their platform — as a closed, closely inspected garden that makes it far more difficult for malicious apps to make it into the App Store and through to consumers. Google, meanwhile, has a far more open ecosystem that allows far more types of apps in the Market, including some that ought not be allowed.

In other words, if you live in the Apple bubble, it might be a bit stuffy but you won’t get rained on. Depending on how much you value mobile security, that might be a tradeoff you’re willing to make.

Note: Anti-virus companies no doubt would love to get more heavily into the mobile market, so read any reports they put out in that context.

[Electronista

Google has just announced that they’re buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in an attempt to supercharge the Android platform. While the move will bring Google into the handset manufacturing business for the first time, potentially setting them up to deliver the same type of unified, integrated experience Apple is famous for, Google maintains they’ll be running Motorola as a separate business. Which raises some important questions:

1. How will the play out for other Android licensees like HTC and Samsung? (Microsoft making the Zune killed the PlaysForSure alliance.)
2. Will all future Nexus-type devices come from Motorola going forward?
3. Will all future Motorola phones run stock Android going forward? (no more Blur.)
4. Is Motorola’s patent portfolio strong enough to provide cover against Microsoft and Apple lawsuits?

Quotes from Larry Page and Sanjay Jha after the break.

[Google PR, Google Blog, Android Central coverage]

Larry Page, CEO of Google, said, “Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”

Sanjay Jha, CEO of Motorola Mobility, said, “This transaction offers significant value for Motorola Mobility’s stockholders and provides compelling new opportunities for our employees, customers, and partners around the world. We have shared a productive partnership with Google to advance the Android platform, and now through this combination we will be able to do even more to innovate and deliver outstanding mobility solutions across our mobile devices and home businesses.”

Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile at Google, said, “We expect that this combination will enable us to break new ground for the Android ecosystem. However, our vision for Android is unchanged and Google remains firmly committed to Android as an open platform and a vibrant open source community. We will continue to work with all of our valued Android partners to develop and distribute innovative Android-powered devices.”

Just to remind us that Google will still be Google — unabashedly hypocritical to the last — Page added the following by way of the Official Google Blog:

We recently explained how companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android. The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to “protect competition and innovation in the open source software community” and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction. Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.

Are “anti-competitive patent attacks” worse than “anti-competitive patent violations”? Google’s a big boy company now, facing regulatory scrutiny and lawsuits over their own practices, including their treatment of rival SkyHook, so how about we can the rhetoric and just make us some great new Googlerola phones, would you please?

UDPATE 1: Google’s ODM partners have responded to the news… in a way that makes us suspect Google snuck into their houses late last night and replaced them all with Android-powered Replicants. [Android Central]

Peter Chou, CEO, HTC:

“We welcome the news of today‘s acquisition, which demonstrates that Google is deeply committed to defending Android, its partners, and the entire ecosystem.”

Bert Nordberg, President & CEO, Sony Ericsson:

“I welcome Google‘s commitment to defending Android and its partners.”

Jong-Seok Park, Ph.D, President & CEO, LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company:

“We welcome Google‘s commitment to defending Android and its partners.”

J.K. Shin, President, Samsung, Mobile Communications Division:

“We welcome today’s news, which demonstrates Google’s deep commitment to defending Android, its partners, and the ecosystem.”

Yeah, like Georgia said, “we welcome our new Motogoog overlords…”

Update 2: GigaOm is reporting that Microsoft wanted to buy Motorola first, to use their patents to further sink Android, which is what brought Google to the table. [GigaOm

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Rene, Seth, and Georgia discuss Apple’s 20 million iPhone quarter, Android vs. iOS activations, Steve Jobs vs. BlackBerry’s Mike Lazaridis, and Lion, and MacBooks and Thunderbolts, oh my! This is iPhone Live!

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During today’s Q3 2011 conference call, Apple Chief Operating Office, Tim Cook was asked about Android activation numbers being higher than Apple iOS numbers. Cook’s response, paraphrased:

Android’s activation numbers are difficult to get our hands around. Apple numbers are from a data sheet, add iPhone, iPad, an approximately 50% iPods sold are iPod touch. Apple sold over 33 million iOS devices. Now over 222 million cumulative devices. [Apple's activation] numbers are very straight forward, transparent, quarterly. iPhone is up 142%, more than 2x rate of market growth. Incredible. Apple sold every iPad 2 we could make.

Which is really more of a non-answer. By saying Android activation numbers are “difficult to get their hands around”, Cook is implying that Google’s “activations” might not be the same as Apple’s “devices sold”. In other words, that Android’s numbers are somehow being over-reported. The numbers in question, from Google’s Q2 2011 conference call:

CEO Larry Page announced that some 550,000 devices are being activated every day. That’s about 382 devices being activated every minute, or 3.85 million every week.

I have no idea what the math works out to over the length of the quarter (comments say 37 million), but it could be more than Apple’s 33 million. Cook then went on the offensive, though stopped short of echoing previous quarters’ comments about Google being fragmented and derivative. Instead, he focused on Apple’s positives, including the quantity of apps in general and iPad apps in specific, contrasting Apple’s 100,000 to Android’s “hundreds”. He also highlighted money paid to developers, and consumer satisfaction.

Which is a compelling answer, just not to this particular question.

With the release of the iPhone on the Verizon network just a few months ago, analyst reports are saying it might just have slowed the previously runaway Android market growth. TechCrunch is even conjecturing the upcoming iPhone 5 could stop or even reverse it completely.

For much of last year iPhone was tied to one US carrier, AT&T. Now it’s on AT&T and Verizon, but it’s still essentially one device (though AT&T still has the bargain-priced iPhone 3GS), made by one manufacturer. Usually that one device is on a once-a-year cycle, but this year it might be closer to 15 months. Android on the other hand is on every network, and has hundreds of devices with new releases every few weeks. Given the greater carrier footprint and greater choice in models, all Android devices together should absolutely be outselling the 1 or 2 iPhones on 2 carriers in the US.

However, reports from NPD from April say that the iPhone market grew while Android’s declined. About a month later, Nielsen said Android was indeed leveling off. Just a few days ago Needham was reporting from the use of IDC data that Android’s share of the market hit its peak in March and is now declining, where Apple’s share is once again on the rise. This is the first quarterly decrease that Android has ever seen. Yesterday, BTIG released a report saying iPhone is outselling Android in the majority of US AT&T and Verizon stores. And Verizon reported it had sold 2.2 million iPhones on its network in just two months.

That’s probably not a coincidence. The Verizon iPhone could just be the reason the Android market is leveling off and, in some reports, declining. With iPhone 5 on the way, and the usually media and hype cycles that surround it, it’s not unreasonable to think Apple can keep that momentum going. Add rumors of T-Mobile, perhaps even Sprint support in the future, and it gets very interesting very fast.

What do you think, will Android kick it back into gear and keep growing, or does Apple have a real chance to take the lead here?

[ NDP data, Nielsen data, TechCrunch]

250 Verizon and AT&T stores surveyed on what was their best selling smartphone, and according to BTIG Research, the number one answer on their board was… iPhone 4! It sat at the top of the charts at 89% of Verizon stores (tied with Droid Charge or Thunderbolt at 38% of those), and 65% of AT&T stores.

And while it only launched in February on Verizon, iPhone 4 has been out on AT&T for over a year, and the base hardware is a year old. That’s it’s not only still competitive, but still winning at the carrier outlets is interesting. (Not surprisingly, it’s the top selling — and only selling — smartphone at Apple Stores as well, which just goes to show how large their dominant retail position really is.)

Anyone surprised by this?

[BTIG Research via All Things D]

Google had their big, ice cream sandwich filled I/O developer conference Android keynote yesterday, and with Apple’s own WWDC just a month away, what they chose to announce — and maybe not announce — definitely helps sets the stage.

To keep up with the competition, and our sibling site Android Central‘s complete coverage, follow on after the break!

In previous years Google has showcased everything from hardware to software to sneak peaks to technology previews in volumes we haven’t seen since the great Bill Gates CES keynotes of yore. This year was no exception… unless you were hoping for a Nexus 3 (or Nexus M or H2 or S2) — but hey, we’re probably not getting an iPhone 5 until fall so there’s plenty of time still for that.

Sure, as usual a lot of Google’s announcements this year look like Apple’s announcements from previous years, what with music and movie rentals and accessory integration for the SDK, but WWDC will likely have some Apple announcements — perhaps including system-level voice control — that Google announced at their previous shows as well. It’s all about seeing and raising now. And sure, some of this won’t ship, or will stall (Google TV), or falter (Wave), but a lot of it will. And it will push Apple to keep raising the stakes. And that’s good for all of us.

• Google I/O podcast day 1
• Google IO Keynote Day 1 liveblog
• Ice Cream Sandwich officially announced, coming in Q4
• Android Honeycomb to get updated to 3.1, will bring Google TV support and much more
• Android Honeycomb to get updated to 3.1, will bring Google TV support and much more
• Android 3.1 rolling out today to Verizon Xoom owners
• First Look at Google Music Beta
• Music Beta video posted by Google, reminds us that no cables are needed
• Movies now available to rent from Android Market
• Google announces Android at Home, functionality ideas seem endless
• Google announces a team that will create guidelines for device updates
• Google announces Android Open Accessory
• Google IO post-keynote press briefing
• Samsung passes out 5,000 Galaxy Tab 10.1s to I/O attendees
• Hands-on with the Google IO special-edition Galaxy Tab 10.1
• Return of the crazy dancing Android: Google IO Edition
• Google I/O day one keynote video now available
• Android 3.1 update now rolling out to Verizon Xoom 3G owners
• Android Honeycomb 3.1 SDK add-on now available
• The new Android ADK sure can play a sweet tune
• Google: More than 400,000 Android devices activated everyday

Phew! And that’s just day 1! What do you think? Anything really compelling? Truly tempting? Anything Apple absolutely has to match at WWDC next month?

According to retail checks by Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley, Apple’s iPhone 3GS (which originally launched in 2009 and was stripped down in 2010), and original iPad (2010) are outselling many brand new Android phones and devices just now hitting the market.

“At AT&T, our checks indicated new Android smartphones primarily gained share from Windows 7 smartphones but not from the iPhone. Our checks indicated modest share gains for the HTC Inspire, but the Inspire gained share from the Windows phone 7 smartphones and the Motorola Atrix. As such, the iPhone 4 remained by far the best selling smartphone at AT&T and the 3GS remained a strong selling smartphone due to its $49 price.”

Is this a reflection of Apple’s hardware quality, platform longevity, and reputation for timely and consistent software updates, or just a reflection on people liking cheap and discounted gear? (Old BlackBerry Curves offered on BOGO (buy one get one) promotions used to top of the smartphone sales charts, right?) Maybe a bit of both?

Either way, with the annual Google I/O developers conference kicking off today (check Android Central for complete coverage), it’ll be interesting to see not only what Google announces, but what Apple rumors somehow leak around the same time…

If you’ve picked up an iPhone 3GS or original iPad lately, how are they working for you? And what made you choose them over newer Apple or Android kit?

[via Digital Daily]

Derek Kessler, writing for sister site PreCentral.net:

>May 15th should prove to be an interesting day on AT&T. They’ve got two new smartphone launches planned, and they couldn’t be more different. First up is a phone near and dear to our hearts: the iddy biddy HP Veer 4G. Threatening to overshadown the Veer, in the most literal sense, is yet another Android mega-phone: the Samsung Infuse 4G. This massive phone is faced with a ridiculous 4.5-inch screen. It’s downright frightening in comparison to the Veer.

Phil Nickinson, writing for AndroidCentral.com:

>It’s rocking Android 2.2 Froyo, so let’s hope we see a Gingerbread update in the near future.

Some random guy, writing for TiPb.com:

>AT&T has just finished their Q1, 2011 quarter, which saw 3.6 million iPhone activations, 1 million more than the same time last year.

	HP Veer 4G	iPhone 4	Samsung Infuse 4G
Screen size	2.63 inches	3.5 inches	4.5 inches
Resolution	320×400 (195 ppi)	640×960	480×800 (207 ppi)
Processor	800MHz	~1GHz Apple A4	1.2GHz
RAM	512MB	512MB	1GB
Storage	8GB	16/32GB	16GB
Camera	5MP rear	5mp rear, VGA front	8MP rear, 1.3 MP front
Keyboard	Physical portrait slider	Virtual on-screen	Virtual on-screen
Thickness	15.1 mm	9.3mm	8.99 mm
Weight	103 g	137 g	131 g
OS	webOS 2.1.2	iOS 4.3.3	Android 2.2
Price	$99.99 with 2-year contract	$199/$299 with 2-year contract	$199.99 with 2-year contract

iPhone 4 launched roughly 10 months ago (except for the white version, which launched last week). How crazy is it we’re still in this race?

Nilay Patel, formerly of Engadget writes on his personal blog that, according to Steven Levy’s new book, The Plex, after believing Google copied the iPhone with Android, they hid iPad development from Google CEO and former Apple board member Eric Schmidt.

The acrimony was so deep, we’re told, that Jobs kept the iPad a secret from Eric Schmidt even though Schmidt was still on Apple’s board of directors while it was being developed. (Schmidt would later step down, of course.) It’s juicy stuff, and it nicely feeds right into the current iOS vs. Android narrative of the day.

Prior to the iPhone’s introduction, Android more closely copied the BlackBerry or Windows Mobile Standard look and front-facing QWERTY feel but by the time it launched, post-iPhone, it was a full screen capacitive touch device. What’s not clear is that Apple began work on iPad (reportedly as Safari Pad) prior to iPhone before deciding a smartphone was the better product to introduce first. If Eric Schmidt was in on iPhone, how could he have not been briefed on the Safari Pad/iPad that preceded it?

Patel also delves into the “murky” issues surrounding Google’s strange journey towards multitouch support:

• Did the first build of Android Steve Jobs saw actually have multitouch frameworks and pinch-to-zoom? The answer, according to Levy, is yes.1

• What happened during the development of Android 2.0 and the original Droid that made Google think shipping multitouch frameworks was okay?

• Similarly, what happened on or around February 2010 that made Google decide that shipping pinch-to-zoom in Android was okay? Did Andy Rubin suddenly decide that using a phone with two hands was cool, or was there a legal reason?

Interesting stuff to say the least. Maybe Steven Levy could write a sequel called “The *Droid”?

[Nilay Patel]

Android Gripes, which I’m guessing is an homage to the terrific Adobe UI Gripes blog, has posted up some screenshots of iPhone apps side by side with their Android counterparts.

When I use an iPhone and an Android phone at the same time, I often find that apps from the same company look a lot different on these two platforms – the ones on Android usually look much worse.

There are without a doubt some well designed, great looking Android apps (Google makes a lot of them) but it is strange to see the same apps from the same developers simply not as well rendered for Android as they are for iPhone. Either Interface Builder in Xcode is even more magical than the iPad, there’s some constraint in the Android development tools, or Android users simply aren’t demanding the design level they deserve.

(There’s a joke that if an app has an ugly icon, iPhone users won’t download it. That same joke should exist on Android.)

Check out some more example via the link below.

[Android Gripes via @mdflores]

Um. Okay. Wow. Sony Ericsson, makers of the Xperia Play (aka PSP Phone) went out and got Kristen Schaal from the Daily Show to go all NSFW on iPhone gaming in a new series of YouTube videos (these can’t air on primetime TV, right?). You’ve got your Killing It, Pwnage, Kittenlicious, Kristennetsirk, and Kristen within Kristen, and no kidding — there’s adult language, sexual situations, violence, and numerous potshots taken at our precious iPhone.

(Interestingly, the videos are actually light on real PSP game play. It would have been nice to see them show off their games vs. Infinity Blade, Real Racing 2, Dead Space, and other top tier iPhone games… Right?)

Check out the videos after the break and let us know what you think, full of win or marketing #fail?

[9to5Mac]

According to Android Central this is Motorola’s big Superbowl commercial for their new Android 3.0 Honeycomb-running Xoom tablet, and it’s targeting Apple’s iPad by once again trotting out the old canard of Apple fascism. I’m glad AC managed to sleuth that out because I’m not sure many mainstream football viewers are going to have any idea at all what this thing is about.

It sure would be fun to guess though. I’m going for Spaceballs sequel. Leave your funniest answer in the comments!

[Android Central]

While Apple’s iPhone still only accounts for about 4% of global phone market share they now rake in roughly 50% the profit share. Asymco has charts up for the top 8 mobile phone vendors broken down by market, sales and profit share and while Google’s free Android OS has just crushed Nokia’s Symbian in overall numbers I’d much rather have Apple’s bank account. You?

[Asymco, Android Central]

Still surprising if not a surprise, Sony has made the decoupling their PlayStation games from PlayStation hardware — like the new PSP2/NGP — official with the launch of PlayStation Suite. Android is the only other platform targeted right now (which makes sense given Sony Ericsson’s Android phone investment) but could the 160 million install base strong iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad iOS platform come online in the future?

Hey, Verizon is getting the iPhone so anything can happen, right? Still, with Apple maintaining tight control of the App Store they and Sony would probably have to come to a special licensing and development deal to get the same type of PlayStation content onto iOS. It wouldn’t be as easy as Android and likely webOS would. Sony could always develop/port iOS-specific versions of their titles but that would take more effort on their part, even with 160 million reasons to do it.

Sony also announced their next generation portable (NGP), aka the PSP2 and it’s a monster in every sense of the word. If you thought the rumored Apple A5 chip was hot, this thing is on fire with a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 and quad-core PowerVR SGX543 chipset (they claim it’s close to PS3 in terms of power). No word on what kind of battery that will require to deliver significant online gaming life. The 5-inch OLED display is 960×544 (close to iPhone 4′s 960×640 but at a much larger size) and touch sensitive. It’s got at the 3Gs and Wi-Fis, as well as a touch-sensitive area on the back of the device so you can swipe without obscuring the display. Dual cameras, dual analog thumbsticks and the usual PS controls round out the input methods. It’s also got a new interface that they claim is more social but — at least so far — doesn’t look as clean or consistent as the old crossbar. Sony does say it will be ready for a holiday 2011 release which will put it up against iPhone 5, iPod touch 5, and iPad 2 (with iPad 3 on its way).

Both Sony and Nintendo have been losing mobile gaming share to iOS over the least couple years, will hardware like the PSP2 and software like PlayStation suite start turning that tide?

[Android Central, Engadget]

While sales of Android-powered phones are increasing, Android Market’s paid app sales aren’t keeping pace so an unhappy Google seems to be considering several very Apple App Store-style changes to help give things a jumpstart. Speaking to Forbes platform manager Eric Chu said these changes include in-app purchases. iPhone and iPad users have shown they’ll often chafe at spending $1 to $10 on a game but will happily download a free game and then spend $10-$100+ dollars on in-app purchases to make their farms, castles, and mushroom homes look nicer.

Another change is the move to carrier billing since Google’s own checkout system hasn’t caught on and doesn’t provide the international footprint of Apple’s 90-country iTunes Store system. That’s important to get more paid apps available in more countries.

The most interesting change, however, involves… wait for it… a type of curation:

Chu said there is a human team in charge of weeding out apps that violate Android Market’s terms of service. It sounds like Google is continuing to invest in that team.

While Apple does this in advance, rejecting apps that violate their guidelines before they hit the App Store, Google believes in a more open marketplace and so is handling violations after they hit the store. Whether that’s better or worse for both developers and user experience is debatable. However, finding high quality, paid apps is apparently a big challenge amid a sea of keyboards, low-functionality apps, and other flotsam and jetsam.

With companies like Amazon and the carriers themselves preparing to launch competing Android marketplaces of their own, perhaps with higher levels of curation and easier checkout experiences, Google could be feeling the pressure. 10 billion apps downloaded later, could becoming more like Apple’s App Store be the answer, or do you prefer having the option of another platform with a very different app ecosystem?

[Forbes, Android Central]

The Verizon iPhone is coming February 10 and some of the big questions are: who will leave the AT&T iPhone for the Verizon iPhone, who will leave the Verizon Droid for the Verizon iPhone, and most importantly, what will the next huge wave of Verizon feature phone upgraders choose?

AT&T’s reception — or the lack thereof in some areas — will certainly propel some current iPhone users to switch networks (our poll shows about 19% of TiPb readers are considering doing just that). Some wanted the iPhone badly enough that they tolerated a poor network experience for years but now that they have the choice they’ll switch to a network that better suits their needs as soon as contract and/or cash allow.

On the flip side some wanted the iPhone but just couldn’t or wouldn’t live with AT&T service in their area so stuck with Verizon and got BlackBerry Storms or, especially lately, Verizon Droids. I’m deliberately using Droid and not Android because, like it or not, Android is not a mainstream brand. And no matter how much market metric companies like to graph it, it’s not a phone any consumer can buy. Droid is, in several models, and thanks to Verizon’s massive advertising campaign coupled with Google’s powerful software, it’s a phone that gained some mainstream mindshare.

(Samsung’s Galaxy S, while popular, has a fragmented brand with different names on every carrier so despite incredible sales it collectively doesn’t enjoy the same level of mainstream mindshare.)

No doubt many people bought Droids because they love Android. They’re probably the same people who know what Android is and specifically why it’s great at what it does. They also know Galaxy S and the other models. Many others just wanted a smartphone and Droid did — original, Pro, 2, Incredible, Bionic, etc. They went into the store and it was a brand they recognized thanks to Verizon’s advertising and, with the only other recognizable brand being BlackBerry, they probably picked one or the other (increasingly Droid based on the share numbers).

Now those same customers will walk in and see iPhone. Money Verizon used to spend on marketing Droid is now also being used to market iPhone on Verizon. Apple is also marketing iPhone on Verizon. AT&T will continue to market iPhone (Verizon and AT&T will be competing not just for users but for iPhone users and that benefits the iPhone brand). No one else is marketing Droid.

Some who previously bought BlackBerry Storm or Droid will switch to iPhone, also when cash and/or contract allows. Some will stay with both (productivity mavens and power users), but those who wanted the iPhone and couldn’t get it will switch when they can.

Existing smartphone users are also only the tip of the iceberg. The giant, ship-crushing base of the iceberg is feature phone users who either waited for the iPhone or see the iPhone as just another phone they’ll enjoy using (as opposed to other, more complicated even if more powerful smartphones). The partial migration of AT&T iPhone users and Verizon BlackBerry and Droid users is one thing. The inevitable migration of mainstream feature phone to mainstream smartphone users is another. Because right now iPhone is almost synonymous with mainstream smartphone.

Right now Verizon customers going into a Verizon store to get a new phone might recognize BlackBerry or Droid. Next month they absolutely will recognize iPhone. Just look at how Verizon is positioning it:

• iPhone is front and center on the Verizon home page
• Click on Verizon’s Phone menu and what choices do you get? iPhone, smartphone, feature phone.

Not only is iPhone listed first, Droid and BlackBerry aren’t listed at all. You have to dig for them. [Daring Fireball]

The number of Droid users — of all Android users — on Verizon today is small compared to the number of iPhone users on AT&T. Collectively, across all US networks, Android phones have numbers that equal or beat iPhone just on AT&T. [New York Times]

Next month iPhone will be on Verizon as well. How many will switch to iPhone from Droid? How many will switch to the Verizon iPhone as their first smartphone? No one knows for sure but the number will pass 1 million very quickly, probably in the first week, and several million, probably the first quarter.

Up until now the choice may have been iPhone on AT&T or Droid on Verizon. It also may have been iPhone on AT&T or no-iPhone on Verizon. We’ll find out which next month. My suspicion is Apple’s investment in brand will pay huge dividends and will be something other OS makers and manufacturers will have to start taking much more seriously.

My New Year’s resolution for TiPb is to be nicer to Google in 2011. Last year was an amazing year for the world’s largest, most powerful internet company. Thanks to relentless software improvement, Verizon’s Droid marketing, and top-of-the-line hardware like the Galaxy S, Google’s Android OS became the fastest accelerating platform in the mobile space. They also unleashed improvements to Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, YouTube, and so many other already excellent services at a speed and quality level that, frankly, no other company could have matched.

But it was a tough year as well. They were hurt by their handling of China, by the privacy-shredding launch of Buzz and the aborted Wave. They raised privacy and legal concerns by collecting Wi-Fi data, and they left a segment of their userbase feeling betrayed by throwing in with the devil Verizon and abandoning key parts of their previously staunch net neutrality support, and by letting carriers frak up key parts of the Android user experience just to gain market traction.

The whole “don’t be evil” thing took a huge ding in 2010. However, while Google is certainly responsible for their own actions, we users are responsible for our expectation. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, or free internet services. We pay with cash or we pay with our personal data. And the truth is Google is a for-profit corporation and not a person. It lacks the agency to be either good or evil. I’ve joked about this riff on Arthur C. Clack before but I continually find it to be more and more true — any corporation sufficiently large is indistinguishable from evil. As they seek to grow shareholder value and increase future business their goals will always come into conflict with some portion or another of their user base. (See a counternotions for an excellent summary of how and why Apple and Google differ in their evil.)

As impossible as it may be to believe, some of us here on TiPb get accused of bashing Google and their Android OS. Truth be told, most of us are huge Google users. While Apple is our hardware, Google is our service. We couldn’t run TiPb without Google. We’re almost as deeply invested in it as Android Central, we just run it on iPhones, iPod touch, and iPads instead of Motorolas, Samsungs, and HTCs. We don’t run Android but we sure run Gmail, Google Maps, Google Voice, Google Calendar, YouTube, and all the rest.

When Apple disappoints us with their own China factory scandals, antenna problems, or the inability to produce white phones, with disallowing apps we want or not providing functionality as fast as we want it, they make us just as sad as Google does when we face the issues mentioned above. (And yeah, we get accused of hating on Apple almost as much as Google.)

But it’s because we’ve come to expect a lot from these companies. Maybe too much at times.

We’ll still be covering the competitive aspects of Google and Android, Microsoft and Windows Phone, RIM and BlackBerry, HP/Palm and webOS, and Nokia and Symbia/MeeGo here on TiPb, sometimes with appreciation, sometimes in jealously, often with humor and touch of sarcasm. It’s impossible to avoid. Google is just getting into so many of what are Apple’s key businesses, from phones to tablets to operating systems to music services to set top boxes and the list goes on and on (and is growing all the time!). But we’ll aim to be nicer about it. Especially Google (cause they’re reading our email and will know if we aren’t!)

(That last part was a joke.)

Angry Birds creator, Peter Vesterbacka, in a recent interview had some fairly positive things to say about Apple and the opportunities they have created for developers with the iPhone and iOS platform. He also gives a short explanation for the price tag for the iOS version versus the free Android version.

Apple will be the number one platform for a long time from a developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right. And they know what they are doing and they call the shots. Android is growing, but it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device fragmentation not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem. So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open, a very Google centric ecosystem. And paid content just doesn’t work on Android.

Vesterbacka was also asked about the ever so famous fragmentation issue that Apple CEO Steve Jobs mentioned during Apples Q3 2010 earnings conference call.

Fragmentation on the device side is not a huge problem, but Steve is absolutely right when he says that there are more challenges for developers when working with Android. But that’s fine, developers will figure out how to work any given ecosystem and as long as it doesn’t cause physical pain, it’s ok;-) Nobody else will be able to build what Apple has built, there just isn’t that kind of market power out there.

That doesn’t mean that model is superior, it’s just important to understand that Apple is Apple and Google is Google. Different. And developers need to understand that. Different business models for different ecosystems. And wouldn’t forget about Nokia and MeeGo either, new leadership always tends to shake things up and create opportunity. And HP-Palm. And RIM. And even Microsoft. It’s a fragmented world.

Do you have a preference for ad-supported vs. paid apps? Do you think Vesterbacka is right and certain platforms demand certain business models, or should you be able to choose free-with-ads or paid on all platforms?

[ Tech N' Marketing ]

Android is already the biggest iPhone competitor and if technology and emerging markets combine to create $100 off-contract Android phones, will Apple need an iPhone nano to keep both user and developer mindshare?

Seth Weintraub at Fortune kicked over this latest Android anthill with an article on how cheaper chipsets and Google strategy could align to make those $100 Android smartphones a reality, shoving the migration from feature phone to smartphone into overdrive. That’s interesting in established markets like US and EU, where the idea of walking into a store, laying down very little cash, and walking out with a “good enough” handset, sans additional contract obligations, is a mainstream dream come true. In emerging markets in Asia and Africa, that’s the gold mine. Forget a PC on every desk and in every home — soon it will be a smartphone in every hand.

Nokia and RIM, falling further behind the smartphone software race to Apple and Google, have increasingly looked to emerging markets for their low-cost Symbian and BlackBerry handsets as a way to leverage old technology until their next-generation Meego and QNX-based handsets are finally ready to market.

Google has already got a next-generation OS, perhaps not as polished or usable as Apple’s iOS, but “good enough” in the classic, market-dominating sense and ready to go on everything from the highest end geek phone to the cheapest budget handset.

Apple has iPhone 4, $650-$750ish off contract, and last year’s iPhone 3GS, $550ish off contract. And that’s it.

Given the heavily subsidized, long term contract market that dominates the US, that’s been translated into $199-$299 for iPhone 4 and $99 for iPhone 3GS. Those prices were low enough to prevent any umbrella — to stop any cheap alternatives from gaining traction. But if Android starts arriving at $100, maybe even $75 off-contract, on good-enough devices? That’s one huge umbrella opening up underneath iPhone. It’s a circus tent.

Jerry Hildenbrand at Android Central points out that while geeks might turn up their noses at cheapy $100 Android handsets the mainstream won’t and the resulting sales will have a profound effect among one incredibly important group — developers. Right now iOS’ mind and marketshare means it still has the best apps and most passionate developers on the planet. If Android sales reach the billion unit level, that might change and Apple could quickly lose their developer advantage to Google.

In the MP3 space, where devices have never been subsidized, Apple quickly followed the original iPod (now iPod classic) up with the iPod Mini (now iPod nano) and even the super-cheap iPod shuffle. For years the iPod nano was the most popular iPod. More importantly for Apple, it prevented competitors from differentiating based on price. Who wanted the “good enough” (or even arguably better spec’ed) competition when you could get the Apple brand and everything that came with it for “cheap enough”?

MG Siegler over at TechCrunch thinks North American carriers may, by hook or by crook, prevent $100 or cheaper handsets from taking off so they don’t threaten the lucrative contract model. Perhaps. For a time. Or they may switch to a non-Net-neutral model where they bill us per byte to access YouTube or Netflix unless we’re on those traditional contracts (or even if we are). Or they may just fork Android, make their own proprietary carrier OS, and only sell first-party phones. The pipes will get paid.

Either way, Apple may have to contend with those $100 handsets the way they contended with Windows in 1990s, and netbooks and cheap MP3 players in the 2000s. None of those are perfect parallels for the smartphone market of the 2010s but together, differentiating on software quality, build quality, and not leaving an umbrella, could they provide a strategy? Could Apple go to an iPhone nano to stop the ultra-cheap Android invasion?

[Fortune, TechCrunch, Android Central]

Last night I quoted Marco Armant asking if Android phones would ever achieve iPhone-level polish and usability and a lot of Android enthusiasts fired back that they could do things on Android that they couldn’t do on iPhone, so Android was more usable.

Well, no.

That’s not usability, that’s functionality. Those two can be as diametrically opposed as simplicity and complexity…

Copy and paste on iPhone is broadly consistent system-wide. On Android, even Gingerbread, there are at least three or four different ways of doing copy and paste in different apps, including Google’s own Gmail. They’re both functional but iPhone is more usable. FaceTime on iPhone 4 is locked to Wi-Fi but works the same way as placing a phone call. Android (and before them, Nokia) devices had front-facing cameras first but relied on 3rd party apps to handle the video call, even over 3G, but with decidedly mixed results. Android is more functional, iPhone is more usable.

I’ve mentioned other things before as well. Memory management on iPhone is invisible to the end user, they’re never supposed to see an “out of memory” error. Multitasking on iPhone, via the Fast App Switcher, is all but invisible as well unless you hit the Home Button twice in rapid succession. It’s literally behind the scenes and can be easily ignored. The App Store, thanks to iTunes, just works in over 90 countries around the world, even though it doesn’t have some categories of programs, and doesn’t allow for themes and skins. All of those might prove less functional to a hardcore user but it’s more usable to the mainstream majority.

Even notifications on iPhone, one of the nastiest thorns iOS users still have to deal with and something most of us are begging Apple to fix in iOS 5, are so singular and modal as to be extremely usable (you just click and they go away or you go to the app) to a non-tech savvy user. (Something a few very well known, very push-notification heavy app developers have said they fear losing if Apple goes to a more Android- or webOS-style notification system).

A stock iPhone is inarguably far less functional than a high end Android device, but its consistency, attention to interface and experience detail, and level of fit and finish make it just as inarguably more usable.

My 2 year old godson can use iPhone well. He can turn it on. He can find and launch his apps. He can play his games and read along with Dr. Seuss and Disney. About all my 2 year old can do with my Android 2.1 Nexus One is throw it.

That doesn’t indicate the iPhone is a “toy” for children, it indicates the level of usability Apple has achieved, and is something Android enthusiasts should be angry that Google doesn’t seem intent on matching, just as iOS users are upset when they see that cool new feature Apple seemingly has no interest in.

And yes, you can Jailbreak an iPhone to make it far more functional but that increases complexity and lowers usability, bringing it more in line with the Android model. (I’m currently Jailbroken via redsn0w, though ironically my Nexus One isn’t rooted. Go figure.)

None of this takes into account Apple’s industry leading accessibility features either, which make iPhone usable to those with low or no vision. Nor does it reflect how carriers often mutilate Android by locking it down, or locking out or stripping functionality entirely. (Even Google with 720p video recording on the Nexus S.)

So if experts want to argue Android is more functional than iPhone, go ahead. Nokia enthusiasts can argue the same and probably from way before Android came around. However, since the day it was released in 2007 nothing is yet as usable for as many people as iPhone.

Current Instapaper and former Tumblr developer Marco Arment wonders out loud if Google Android phones can ever achieve the levels of usability and polish Apple’s iPhone has arguably had since day one:

Android will continue to exhibit what Google does best: great low-level engineering and tight integration with Google’s other services. But it’s never going to be Apple-like in user experience, polish, or design.

Attention to detail, like most facets of truly good design, can’t be (and never is) added later. It’s an entire development philosophy, methodology, and culture.

Armant argues that users waiting for Android to get iPhone-like fit and finish “any day now” shouldn’t hold their breath. (Probably any more than iPhone users should hold their breath for Google-like features, such as a less curated market open to system-wide enhancers.)

Smartphone platforms as reflections of the corporate cultures is an interesting idea that doesn’t stop with consistent UI or tightly integrated hardware. HP/Palm’s webOS, is both slick and far more “open” when it comes to end user than open-source alternatives. Apple has wrested almost all control away from carriers, as they rest almost all control away from users as well. Google has let carriers run roughshod over Android’s user experience, writing fringe blog posts about the problem but not withholding Gmail or Android Market from user-hostile handsets. (The way Apple would withhold the entire iPhone for years — see Verizon.)

If that’s the case, can those corporate cultures be transcended? Could Android 3.0 Honeycomb come out with a UI as consistent and delightful as anything from Apple? Could iOS 5 packs as much power and as many features as Google throws at their phones? I think they can, though it requires Keyser Sose (or Steve Jobs) level “single act of will” to achieve. I’m betting there’s no C-level drive at Google to go iPhone’s last usability mile and Steve Jobs has no interest in being more like Android.

So Android probably won’t ever achieve iPhone’s level of polish and usability, and that probably doesn’t matter to anyone who isn’t already using an iPhone for those very reasons. We’re left in a world where each platform has its strengths and weaknesses and we have the luxury to move between them as best suits our needs at the time.

Update: Usability is not the same as functionality.

[Marco.org]

iPhone 4. Nexus S. There’s probably more to say about the differences than the similarities. Different operating systems? Check. Don’t work with 3G on the same networks? Check. Different screen sizes? Check. Different philosophy and methodology towards multitasking? Check. Different video conferencing solutions (insofar as few to none work yet on the Nexus S)? Check.

The list goes on, but we’re sort of guessing that for most the choice between the Nexus S and the iPhone 4 will be determined by carrier choice and OS preference more than whether Android’s latest can go head-to-head with Steve Jobs’ glass-encased wonderphone.

All that shouldn’t stop you from hitting us after the break for a photo fight between the iPhone 4 and the Nexus S – with some extra attention paid to how the iPhone still has the best music player around while Android’s just-released Google Maps 5.0 makes iOS’s version look a little lacking.

Want more? Be sure to hit up our frenemies at Android Central for all the latest on the Nexus S.

One look at the games being released for this season and it’s easy to think we’re entering into the next great generation of iPhone (and iPad) gaming. Infinity Blade has brought Epic’s Unreal 3 Engine to iOS in grand fashion, with spectacular, real-time environments, fun gameplay, and character models and motion that would have blown me away on a PS2, let alone a handheld device that also surfs the web and makes phone calls. In a day or so we’ll also get Real Racing 2, sequel to Firemint’s Apple Design Award Winning driver, complete with 30 licensed, gorgeously reproduced cars and highly anticipated multiplayer online gaming.

These are features that, until now, were reserved for PC and console games. They’re premium titles, the kind that take the time and effort of small scale motion pictures to make. They’re what’s putting a hurt on Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS business, never mind other smartphones. And they’re on our iPhone, with more and more to come.

In a market where other platforms are now achieving 3rd party software parity with Apple — they have enough of the kind of applications people want on their mobile devices that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands are quantitative but no longer qualitative differentiators — and raw hardware specs that equal and may soon eclipse iPhone 4, these kinds of games could be the iPhone’s killer apps and Apple’s next short term differentiator.

The first series of iPhone 2G ads were features — the internet in your pocket, music on your phone. The next series of iPhone 3G were centered around “app for that” with every commercial showing off first the apps themselves and later, with iPhone 3GS, what you could do with them. Then the Android Market gained critical mass and with iPhone 4 Apple returned to feature marketing — FaceTime, Retina Display, and battery life (along with a healthy dose of Kodak-style emotion thrown in). But there are already front-facing cameras on competing devices, along with a couple Retina-class displays, and battery life will no doubt catch up as well. Whether or not other platforms get software and user experience to match iPhone 4 is a different question, but the feature checklist will make the advertising moot. Apple’s update cycle means they won’t have a new iOS to show off until March or April’s preview event, new iPad hardware until April, and iPhone 5 until June. But they’ll have these games.

Market share numbers remain dubious metrics. We often see how many OS-running devices competitors sell compared to how many iPhone AT&T sells. It’s hardly news that all other devices combined outsell the iPhone but here’s the thing — Apple still sells a ton of iPhones, 14+ million last quarter and that was the quarter before the traditionally strongest holiday buying season. Apple sold so many iPhones in fact that even Verizon may have conceded ground to line it up for next year. Add to that all the iPod touches sold, and iPads that can run iPhone apps (albeit in fuzzy double chunky mode) and it makes a realistic install base approaching a hundred million mostly compatible devices. (Apple has sold well over 125 million iOS devices but the number still in active use, and able to run modern games is no doubt significantly lower.)

Sure there’s some legacy issues as older devices don’t have cameras or GPS or the RAM and chipset power needed to run current generation games, and some fragmentation between iPhone and iPad, but it’s nothing compared to other platforms and even discounting older devices the install base is huge. (That’s not a debate, developers will tell you that especially when it comes to apps that need to be as carefully coded and optimized as premium games.)

The biggest evidence to support the size of iOS’ install base, the quality and consistency of Apple’s hardware, and the power of their SDK is that we’re seeing games like Infinity Blade and Real Racing 2 on iPhone and… nowhere else. Not yet and probably not for a while. (I still think one look at Unreal Engine 3 for iOS as much as any government antitrust action got Apple to change its mind about cross-compilers and quick).

Talking to developers, they’re happy enough to take on the small challenges of porting their casual games to other mobile platforms as things like Android’s install base and Palm’s easy-peasy PDK make it attractive. Gameloft has almost made a science out of packing their apps for multiple platforms. But console quality, premium games? Those are iPhone only. For now.

As things like Android 2.3 Gingerbread and the accompanying PlayStation Phone app with enhancements and content specifically for gaming get wider penetration, as Microsoft fields Windows Phone with its Apple-like platform control and Xbox Live integration, as RIM flirts with a next-generation OS for the BlackBerry PlayBook, and as Palm gets its post-HP acquisition act together, a lot of things could change and we could see a far more mature, more competitive gaming market.

But if and when it does, it probably won’t be before Apple has iOS 5, iPad 2, and iPhone 5 ready to one-two-three combo 2011, and new set of features to tout in their ads.

Until then, next generation games are all but exclusive to iPhone and for the next few months, that’s the killer app.

iPhone has decimated Verizon’s growth, Google is uncertain ally, and Android is simply not competitive with iPhone to the degree Verizon may have had to give in to Apple’s demands in order to launch a Verizon iPhone is 2011. That according to Horace Dediu of asymco who breaks down the numbers Matthew Goodman, a research analyst at ITG Investment, claims may represent Verizon’s monthly sales figures by device.

If the data is accurate (big if), Dediu says RIM’s BlackBerry and Palm’s webOS fell considerably and Android manufacturers hit a wall in August following the wide spread availability of iPhone 4.

I wrote this up as a lack of competitiveness. It may seem provocative, but I define competitiveness narrowly: the competition is for a purchase decision on equal terms. These purchase decisions are fiendishly complex to predict, but the data speaks: whether it’s due to brand, visibility or performance and in spite of “antennagate” the iPhone is cleaning up.

While Android didn’t rescue Verizon, it did put them in bed with Google, a capricious evil compared to Apple’s more predictable evil, currently in service of AT&T. That’s why the same August period might also explain the uptick in iPhone on Verizon rumors. What of BlackBerry, Android, et. al when (if) Verizon turns to iPhone?

BlackBerry and Droid have been reliant on Verizon’s promotion, not as much RIM or Motorola/HTC generated marketing. If those marketing dollars shift to iPhone and if Verizon’s customers shift to iPhone, what does that do for the competitive market?

my conclusion remains that iPhone will find at least 8 million new users with Verizon. The analysis above give me confidence to increase the upper bound to possibly 12 million.

[aymco via @Lessien]

I was wrong when I wrote last week that Google’s Nexus line of Android phones were brilliant examples of counter-programming the iPhone. I still believe that of the Nexus One but not of the Nexus S.

I bought a Nexus One when it was made available with AT&T/Rogers-friendly 3G bands and was fairly certain I would be getting a Nexus 2 when it came out. But it didn’t. The Nexus S came out instead and while I joked the S was 2 written backwards I now believe they deliberately didn’t use the 2 and I think I know why.

The Nexus One was an aspirational device from Google that lead the way to a new generation of Android phones through much of 2010. Nexus S is more of a summation device, capping off the current generation of phones that ended 2010. Both are aimed at developers and technologists but one showed where Android was going and the other where it is.

Nexus One was the darling of CES 2010. Nexus S is loved by some bloggers but already boring others. When the Nexus One came out there weren’t really any other Android phones, or arguably any phones, to compete with either its specs or its software, including its great screen and system-wide voice integration. When the Nexus S came out it was the 6th or 7th Galaxy S device in the last couple months with some unrealized near-field communications thrown in the mix. And frankly, I still prefer the look and feel of my Nexus One to the decidedly Hasbro aesthetic Samsung just won’t let go of.

Where’s the 720p display? Where’s the pentaband radio so it can work on more than just T-Mobile 3G? Where’s the inductive charging, facial recognition, Google Voice-as-VoIP, or any other iPhone 4-killer feature? They even took out the 720p video recording, which Apple added to iPhone back in June. Sure the Galaxy S has Android 2.3 Gingerbread and will always get the newest updates first, but the same is true of the Nexus One, right?

Maybe it’s not the Nexus 2 because Samsung didn’t want to be Number 2 (insert Austin Powers joke), or maybe it’s not that next-generation, aspirational follow up device and Google didn’t want to raise that expectation, even though most of us probably heard the Nexus brand and immediately raised our own expectations. When Nexus One came out it prompted all sorts of rumors about Apple feeling the pressure and Steve Jobs promising iOS 4 and iPhone 4 would take it to Google with next release. I don’t think Apple is sweating in the least over the Nexus S, and I’m not happy about that.

Pictured above are the new Google Nexus S webite (www.google.com/nexus/#!/index) and the iPhone 4 website (www.apple.com/iphone) launched back in June. Apple is no doubt hugely flattered.

[Nexus S and iPhone 4 via Brad W. Allen via Daring Fireball]

Google has just announced the Nexus S, a pure Android 2.3 Gingerbread-powered, Samsung manufactured smartphone aiming to take the Nexus One into generation two and set the standard for a legion of subsequent devices in 2011. Our sibling site, Android Central has got your full Nexus S and Gingerbread coverage, and they’re even giving away a free Nexus S in their Android Forums, so go check that out. What interests me, however, is that like the Nexus One, Nexus S shows that Google is one of the few companies that really know how to counter-program Apple and iPhone.

Apple sold 14 million iPhones last quarter. Released in June. On one US carrier, with controversies real and imagined about the antenna, and with one of the two models — the white one — delayed until next year. Other phones that were announced around a similar time either got overshadowed, lacked brand power or distinction, or suffered carriers meddling with and defiling them at every turn. Aimed at mainstream consumers who probably had little idea what version of Android they ran or whether they were Galaxy S behind all the different names, as often or not they were probably sold as “like an iPhone”. They’re one of an unremarkable many at this point. A me-too. A memory.

Nexus S will be different.

Like the Nexus One, it’s released far outside Apple’s iPhone cycle, when early adopter, influencer types just might be getting bored with iPhone 4, or the latest from Motorola or RIM or HTC. It’s marketed to geeks and power users, the type of people who want unlocked devices and unmodified software. The ones who want the latest hardware that’s guaranteed to get the latest updates first. Sure, the T-Mobile/Wind/Videotron only 3G bands at the moment are a colossal fumble, but only for the moment.

Now don’t get me wrong, given those limited 3G bands and Google’s demographic there’s no way Nexus S will put a dent in Apple’s iPhone 4 numbers. But far removed from WWDC’s iPhone debut, it will make a huge impact with bloggers and those who read blogs, technologists and those who love technology. Nexus One was the talk of CES 2010 and it had 3 months in the spotlight before Apple could preview iOS 4 and 6 months before Apple could respond with iPhone 4.

There’s every chance Nexus S with its curved screen, near field communications, and other bar-raising features could do the same thing at CES 2011, leaving Apple again unable to respond until their yearly cycle allows, with an iOS 5 event in March/April and an iPhone 5 debut at WWDC 2011.

Howard Stern, at the height of his radio popularity, was asked how other stations could counter-program him. Many had tried — and failed — at using shock jocks of their own, so Stern’s answer was as sensible as it was surprising — go music only. You’re not going to get his audience, you’re going to get the one he’s not reaching.

Google gets that. They aim the Nexus line squarely at that audience and so far, they’re doing it well.

[Android Central Nexus S coverage]

According to the latest data from The Nielsen Company, Apple’s iOS for iPhone and RIM’s BBOS for BlackBerry are neck-and-neck for total U.S. smartphone operating system market share sitting at 27 percent each. Android OS, which powered a bunch of phones from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and others, is hot on their heels now sitting at 22 percent of total U.S. Market share.

Among users planning to get a new smartphone, current smartphone owners showed a preference for the Apple iPhone (35 percent), while 28 percent of both smartphone and featurephone planned smartphone upgraders indicated they wanted a device with an Android operating system as their next mobile phone.

Featurephone owners planning to get a smartphone are less likely to have made up their mind about the OS they will choose: 25 percent were “not sure” what their next desired OS might be compared to 13 percent of smartphone owners. Those over 55 were markedly less certain than younger mobile users, with 27.8 saying they weren’t sure what kind of device they wanted next, compared to 12.2 percent of those 18 to 24.

Apple’s iPhone and devices with the Android operating system were the “most desired” among likely smartphone upgraders, with Apple showing a slight lead among those age 55+ , 18 to 24, and 25 to 34.

Women planning to get a smartphone are more likely to want an iPhone as their next device, with slightly more males preferring Android.

We know if you’re reading TiPb you probably like the iPhone but what’s your opinion on the survey, do the results match what you’re seeing with your friends and colleagues?

[ Nielsen via Engadget ]

In an interview with a Dutch newspaper, Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak made quite the statement about Apple’s main competition, saying Google’s Android would be the dominant platform in the future.

Woz told the newpaper that Android smartphones (yes Android is not a phone but an operating system), not the iOS powered iPhone would become the dominant smartphone on the market much like Windows was and still is the dominant PC OS. He also added that he believes Android phones have more features that users want and gives users more choices overall. He also believes eventually Android quality, consistency, and user satisfaction will match that of iOS.

Update:

Woz says he gave the De Telegraaf reporter a lengthy demonstration of voice commands on iOS and Android, pointed out that Android offered the ability to say “Navigate to Joe’s Diner,” and suggested that Apple would catch up through its purchases of Siri and Poly9. According to Steve, that’s about it — he says he’d “never” say that Android was better than iOS, and that “Almost every app I have is better on the iPhone.” Woz did say he lightly prognosticated that Android would become more popular “based on what I’ve read,” but that he expects Android “to be a lot like [Engadget]

The Woz also had some interesting insight into the beginning of the iPhone. He told a story of how back in 2004 Apple worked with a well known Japanese electronics company to produce a phone that would be ahead of its time. It obviously never came to market because, as Woz stated in his interview, they liked the build quality but wanted something that would simply amaze the world, which in turn ended up coming a few years later in 2007.

Steve Wozniak has some interesting points and we want to know what you think about his comments and we want to know your thoughts on the whole Android vs iOS debate. Just keep it above the belt in the comments below!

[ Engadget ]

Both AT&T and Verizon have now released their quarterly earning statements, and it turns out AT&T (driven primarily by 5.2 million iPhone activations) signed up 2.6 million net subscribers to Verizon’s 0.9 million.

So Droid doesn’t bring subscribers the way iPhone 4 does? That’s actually terrific news because Verizon in a position of power is not something any Android or iPhone lover would want to see. Perhaps this will encourage Big Red to let Droid be a little more Android. No doubt it’s what’s encouraging them towards a Verizon iPhone 4 in 2011, right?

Former Facebook for iPhone developer Joe Hewitt has weighed in on the Steve Jobs re-ignited “openness” debate with a cogent argument that Android isn’t much more open than iOS, at least not in the true spirit of the term. Here’s what he posted (mostly via Twitter for iPad, for those keeping track at home):

How does Android get away with the “open” claim when the source isn’t public until major releases, and no one outside Google can check in? [@joehewitt]

Compare the Android “open source” model to Firefox or Linux if you want to see how disingenuous that “open” claim is. [@joehewitt]

Until Android is read/write open, it’s no different than iOS to me. Open source means sharing control with the community, not show and tell. [@joehewitt]

The comparison to Mozilla is something our own Phil Nickinson of Android Central made during our recent podcast bonus feature on openness and it’s a good one. Hewitt famously walked away from developing Facebook for iPhone because he didn’t like Apple’s closed Apple Store, whether or not he’s secretly working on a secret Facebook phone right now alongside former Android lead Eric Tseng, he makes an interesting case.

And it goes back to what we’ve been saying for a long time — at the end of the day it isn’t hyperbole that matters, not about open or closed, fragmented or integrated, uncontrolled or restricted, it’s about who makes the best phones for consumers and who provides the best platform for developers (either to write the code they want or make the money they need to feed their families). That’s echoed in a great discussion between David Barnard of App Cubby and Liessen on Twitter:

“Open” is an emotional argument pandering to the philosophy of developing in a perfect world where it’s about freedom not money. [@Lessien]

Maybe it’s the circles I run in, but I don’t know many coders who can eat, drink, or find shelter in this freedom you speak of. [@drbarnard]

So let’s worry more about the end user product and less about the philosophies of the OS and manufacturing companies, okay?

Iain Dodsworth, CEO of TweetDeck, follows Andy Rubin with Twitter comments refuting what Steve Jobs had to say during Apple’s Q4 2010 earnings call:

Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Err nope, no we didn’t. It wasn’t.

This in response to Jobs’ statement that TweetDeck (he called it TwitterDeck) recently launched their Android app, and the “daunting challenge” of having to contend with 100 different versions of software on 244 different handsets.

Dodsworth added:

We only have 2 guys developing on Android TweetDeck so that shows how small an issue fragmentation is.

The flip-side of open source and multiple handset choice is fragmentation, there’s no denying it. We’ve heard from developers that it definitely is more challenging to code and sell Android apps than iOS apps, but Dodsworth’s point is that the difference is negligible. Any developers who work with both Android and iOS care to weigh in?

[@iaindodsworth, tip of the hat to Phil Nickinson]

by Brian Tufo

Andy Rubin has responded on Twitter to Steve Jobs’ remarks about Android’s openness — how Google is using it as a smokescreen for fragmentation — made during the Apple Q4 2010 earnings call yesterday.

“the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make

During the live call, where Apple announced their over-the-top results to shareholders (and everyone listening along on the web), Steve Jobs expounded on Apple’s integrated business model and software focus, and how that’s parlayed directly into the success of the iPhone and iPad. In markets that were previously considered slow-moving when it came to innovation, and not particularly user-friendly before Apple came along, Jobs singled Google out for requiring Android users to be their own systems integrators.

Does Rubin’s tweet, while a perfectly nerdy, open-source software response (the commands needed to view and compile Android’s code), really do much to counter that notion for the mainstream?

[@ARubin via SlashGear, Android Central]

by Andrew Wray

Why did Steve Jobs show up on an Apple financial results call, something he’s done in the past but doesn’t typically do, and more importantly why did go all Samuel L. Jackson on RIM’s BlackBerry and Google’s Android, something not typically done on any results call? After all, there’s an Apple event coming up on Wednesday where no doubt Jobs will be center stage, in front of almost the entire blogsphere and half the internet at large. Why not wait for then?

Because this was about mobile and about iOS, and about iOS’ place in mobile, and Wednesday is purely Back to the Mac. The next iOS-centric event likely won’t be until January 2011 for iPad 2 and by then the all-important holiday quarter will be over, RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook will be closer to launch, a million more Android devices will be on the market, and Microsoft and Palm might be getting back into the game.

Right now, today, Apple posted unbelievable numbers — 14.1 million iPhones sold and 4.1 million iPads — they beat RIM’s BlackBerry numbers this quarter and given the way Jobs was strutting, they likely beat the numbers of every Android device sold as well. This was Jobs on top of the mountain, seizing the high ground, and striking.

First he hit RIM, not just in the sales numbers but in the technology where it hurts. The Torch didn’t ignite anybody and the PlayBook is little more than a video at this point, their next-generation QNX still a ways off. But he called them out as a hardware company, as people who piece together model after iterative model, not craft platforms. He shone a spotlight on their lack of developer support and high quality apps and he did it in a time when they’re transitioning from the past to the future and can’t show off anything in the present to refute him. Then he and Tim Cook touted iPhone and iPad enterprise adoption, just to kick RIM while they’re down: it’s not that BlackBerry isn’t competitive, it’s that they’re not even competing.

Next was Google, whom Jobs acknowledged as Apple’s chief mobile competition and the only other platform succeeding in the space. Those were about the only kind words he had for them, however, as he proceeded to cut into the heart of the argument Eric Schmidt has been foisting for months: the value of “openness“.

Here Jobs conveniently conflated openness with decoupled hardware and software, and Apple’s closed with integrated hardware and software. That let him liken Android to Windows and Microsoft’s abandoned PlaysForSure DRM strategy. Neither good analogies. Where Jobs did hit home, however, is equating open to fragmented. That’s the manifestation of the philosophy and as much weakness as strength — you can get any device you want, but every device will therefor be different. With choice comes challenge. Jobs acknowledged some consumers might prefer that but staunchly and steadfastly repeated that he thinks Apple’s business model is better — their phones are consistent, they just work, and they don’t require the end user to be a systems integrator.

Jobs spoke not only to the analysts on the call and the influencers who were following (and blogging) it, but to developers, citing TweetDeck as an example of an app that had to be coded for 100 different versions of Android running on 244 different devices, where iOS typically has 2 versions (current and one previous) and largely binary compatible devices. He also pointed out that while Android still struggles to sell apps, and Verizon, Vodafone, and Amazon look to fragment Android Market, Apple has a unified App Store with unified billing and customers that pay for apps.

Lastly was tablets. Of the few current and impending iPad competitors, many are using a smaller 7-inch screen and Jobs thinks they have no idea what they’re doing. Clearly Apple has tested 7-inch iPads internally (and likely other sizes), and rumors of Apple releasing one keep popping up on the internet, but Jobs’ couldn’t have been plainer: 7-inch tablets are terrible.

Jobs maintains the screen size sounds almost as big as the iPad’s 9.7-inch display but since those are diagonal measures actual real-estate is only 48% the size and Apple (meaning Jobs) doesn’t think you can make great tablet software on a screen that size. Everyone who currently buys a tablet already has a smartphone for small scale mobile computing, Jobs says, and 7-inch screens don’t allow for the software needed to make really great tablet apps. The UI elements are too small or too close or too few and far between. They’re tweeners, too big for the pocket too small to really work.

And he thinks that due to Apple’s incredible economies of scale — essentially the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and now Apple TV share most of the same guts and Apple designs everything from chipsets to battery chemistry to enclosures themselves — their competitors won’t be able to match iPad’s pricing. They’ll provide half as much value at twice the cost, and next year they’ll figure out post-release what Apple did pre-release, abandon their 7-inch tablets, and leave users and developers high and dry. That’s extremism for absurdities sake, of course, but it creates the impression Apple is that far ahead of the curve.

The reason, which Jobs touched on several times, is that Apple is a software company in a hardware-centric industry. He even accused competitors of making the cheapest hardware they could and then crossing their fingers and hoping their after-thought software would fix it. Apple decides on the software they want and painstakingly crafts and integrates the hardware to support it. And then every year they iterate, improve, and offer more for the same price as less.

Because unlike Nokia — and netbook makers based on prior statements — Apple’s not willing to make cheap products that suck.

All of this, taken together, let Jobs set the stage for the holiday season precisely how he wanted it set. Now journalists can use any of these loaded quotes to accompany everything they write about RIM, Google or Nokia, or Microsoft or Palm. Instead of effusing on openness they’ve been primed with fragmentation, instead of extolling 7-inch tablets they’re thinking Apple tried and rejected that form factor as sub-standard, instead of promoting Android numbers they have 14.1 million iPhone 4 and 125 million iOS devices to add Apple-specific context with.

Developers flirting with the idea of diving into Android are left think again about the easy 70% from the App Store versus the picture Jobs painted of a broken, commercially unproven, wild-west market for Android where you rolls your dice and takes your chances whether they’ll even fit on the table, or the struggling and still largely empty App World from RIM.

And by ignoring Microsoft and Palm, Jobs dismissed them as non-contenders right when they’re about to come to market, or come back to market.

It was a masterful show from a master showman, showing just how critical the mobile space is to Apple going forward. (As if the Mac OS X vs. iOS numbers didn’t make that plain enough).

Developer and consumer mindshare is what shape the mobile battlefield, and Jobs clearly stated Apple is in it to win it.

Making a surprise appearance during Apple’s Q4 2010 conference call today, Steve Jobs tore into Google on the issue of openness. Jobs basically said Google uses openness as a smokescreen for fragmented, while Apple prefers an integrated software/hardware business model.

Apple makes devices that just work, Jobs said, while Google expects the customers to be systems integrators and figure out multiple different hardware and now even app stores as Verizon, Amazon, and Vodafone start rolling their own markets. For developers, considering everything from testing to selling, it becomes a mess.

Some highlights, paraphrased:

• SJ: Google activating 200,000 Android devices a day, 90,000 apps. Apple activating 275,000 iOS devices on average, 300,000 peek. Apple has 300,000 apps in its app store.
• SJ: No sold data on how many Android handsets sold. Manufacturers don’t report it. Hopes they will. Waits to see who was the winner in most recent quarter.
• SJ: Google likes to say Android is open, iOS is closed. Jobs finds that disingenuous. Unlike Windows, Android is very fragmented. Many Android OEMS including Motorola and HTC install proprietary UI, user is left to figure it all out. Every iPhone walks the same. TweetDeck recently launched Twitter Client, had to contend with 100 different versions on 244 different handsets. Many apps only work on some handsets on some versions, on devices shipped less than 12 months ago.
• SJ: Amazon, Verizon, Voda all creating their own app stores. Customers much search, devs much figure out. Going to be a mess. iOS App Store is one stop shopping.
• SJ: Even if Google was right, open systems don’t always win. PlaysForSure used separated model, even Microsoft abandoned that, turned to Zune, left OEM empty handed.
• SJ: Open vs. closed is smokescreen. What’s better for customer, fragmented or integrated? Android is getting more fragmented every day. Users shouldn’t be system integrators. Huge difference in approach. Apple thinks just works will trump Google’s approach every time. Better for developers.
• SJ: Apple confident integrated will triumph over Google no matter how much Google calls it open.

TiPb’s been saying for a while that Android is open for carriers and manufacturers, not end users, but Jobs’ take was certainly more calculated. What does he gain by taking it to Google like this?

Given all the Verizon iPhone rumors of late, and given our fears Verizon would try to mutilate iOS the way it’s mutilated Android, it’s rather shocking to hear Android founder Andy Rubin say the following to PCMag‘s Sascha Segan:

If I were to release an operating system that I claimed was open and that forced everybody to make [phones] all look the same and all support very narrow features and functionality, the platform wouldn’t win. It wouldn’t win because the OEMs have a lot of value to bring and the carriers have a lot of value to bring, and they need a vehicle by which to put their interesting differentiating features on these things. Every phone shouldn’t look like every other phone. If that was the case there would just be one SKU, right? The whole idea here is just to figure out what consumers want, build phones and tailor them to what consumers want.

Which must be locked down search engines, aGPS, bloatware, and the various other sins Verizon, AT&T, et. al have visited on other platforms, including Android, right?

No thanks.

He also thinks Microsoft shouldn’t have bother innovating Windows Phone 7 and just used Android. He thinks everyone should just use Android and no one should bother innovating anymore. By that logic, he shouldn’t have bothered founding and innovating Android either and just waited around for Symbian Foundation to give him a build of their old OS. Sigh.

Unfortunately, it looks like he’s already getting his wish and those of us who were looking forward to a few more innovative takes on a smartphone OS might just be disappointed.

[PCMag via Android Central -- love the new logo!]

Nielsen is once again trudging out a survey saying Android outsold iPhone and BlackBerry in the US. So once again we’ll trudge out this kindly, helpful reality check:

• Android is platform, not a phone.
• Android is free, you can’t buy it.
• iPhone is not a platform, it’s a phone.
• iPhone, you can buy.

So did Google’s own Nexus One outsell iPhone? No, of course not. Android is great OS running on spectacular hardware. However, its used by multiple manufacturers on multiple carriers in multiple models in the US. iPhone is made by Apple and runs on AT&T on the US. Now if Droid X outsold iPhone, that would be a proper comparison. Moto vs. Apple, Android vs. iOS, Verizon vs. AT&T. Hey, I’d pay to see that in the consumer Octagon any day.

Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber makes an argument that if Apple ever got on Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile USA the comparison might be more meaningful, as it is now in countries like Canada where iPhone is on 3 major carriers and their subsidiaries. Apple still offers one phone (or one current phone and one holdover from the year before) while RIM offers a variety of 1st party BlackBerrys and Google licensees offer a variety of 3rd party Androids. If the US were like that at least we’d be able to see what if any differences those three business models bring to the market.

Android as a platform, given its license, is surely going to eclipse any solitary handset by anyone else, including Apple (unless and until Verizon forks it into its own, proprietary V-OS, but that’s another post).

For now, Nielsen’s survey and the headlines rapidly making their way around the blogsphere might as well read:

BREAKING!! Protein outsells golden delicious apples in the US!

Absolutely true, and absolutely meaningless.

[GigaOM via Daring Fireball]

Apple’s iPhone 4 IPS LCD Retina Display has pulled out a big win over Super AMOLED displays used in Samsung Galaxy S and other Android devices for best mobile display in existence today. This comes to us from DisplayMate.com.

“Since its introduction the iPhone has been one of the wonders of the modern tech world for many reasons – but its display was never one of them – up until the iPhone 4, where it finally got the display it deserved. The iPhone 4 display, nicknamed the Retina Display, is an outstanding “Super” LCD delivering top performance in many of our test categories – it has the brightest and sharpest display, but on the other hand its color gamut is too small, producing under saturated somewhat washed-out colors, and its image contrast is too high, which produces punchier images and also partially compensates for its smaller color gamut. These were most likely intentional tradeoffs made by Apple to increase screen brightness, power efficiency and battery run time. None-the-less the iPhone 4 earned our Best Mobile Display Award in the DisplayMate Best Video Hardware Guide. We include a dedicated comparison with the iPhone 3GS below. “Retina Display” is a great marketing name, and it is the sharpest smartphone display available, but quantitatively it is a factor of two lower than the acuity of the human Retina. Click here for a discussion on the Retina Display. Finally, Part II of this series will discuss some major flaws in the iPhone 4’s Automatic Brightness control, which hopefully will be corrected in the near future through a software update.”

For the full in depth analysis and test results be sure to hit up the link below and make sure you have quite a bit of free to time as you will need it.

[DisplayMate via Daring Fireball]

Gartner says global Android market share will surpass iPhone market share by 2011:

Gartner expects manufacturers such as Samsung to launch many new budget Android devices in 2H10 that will drive Android into mass market segments. Other players, such as Sony Ericsson, LG and Motorola, will follow a similar strategy. This trend should help Android become the top OS in North America by the end of 2010.

Internationally Android would be second only to Nokia.

Totally unrelated link: iPhone is 3% of handset unit volume, 2x profit of RIM, Nokia, Sony combined. iPad next?

[Gartner via Android Central]

Net Applications is reporting that iOS has passed Linux to become the third most popular platform accessing the internet. With a 1.1% share, they’re still behind big brother Mac OS X’s 5% and way behind Windows all-encompassing 91.3% share. However, for a mobile OS, especially considering the next most popular mobile OS, Android, is at 0.2%, that’s a fairly huge accomplishment. According to Vince Vizzaccaro, VP of NetApps:

“Whatever the sales are, we’re seeing iOS totally dominate the market on the Web. iOS has nearly a 6:1 advantage over Android.”

Eh. Given the high adoption rate of greeks and mainstream now, Android will probably catch up quickly. Linux probably won’t. Mobile as a whole is on a tremendous growth curve.

[NetApps via 9to5mac]

Tech Crunch‘s Jason Kinkaid reminds us that it’s been a year since Apple responded to the FCC about Google Voice’s rejection (or perpetual non-acceptance) from the iPhone App Store.

Apple denying the app to those who want it, especially when it allows similar apps such as Line2 into the App Store, means it’s almost certainly what we thought it was last year — less to do with what the app does than what it represents.

Before the Google Voice rejection story broke Apple and Google still seemed to have a love affair going on. Apple provided beautiful devices and Google supplied incredible services. It was a match made in heaven.

Following the Google Voice rejection it became clear that those two goals were becoming less cooperative and more competitive. Apple wants their beautiful devices to be the focus, and to be able to swap in and out different services behind the scenes without affecting the UI or being noticeable to end users. Google on the other hand wants their incredible services to be the focus regardless of device, and to be able to easily swap users from iPhone or Pre to Google’s own, growing, Android platform.

Apple’s exclusionary control over the iPhone is a huge problem for Google, just as Google’s predatory control over their services is a huge problem for Apple.

What if Apple pulled Google from the iPhone? Google could lose a huge percentage of revenue to Microsoft (or whomever Apple swaps in) in the blink of an eye. What if Google pulled their services from the iPhone? Apple could lose a ton of users to Android just as fast. (Whether Apple or Google would ever do that is besides the point — it could happen, therefor strategically planning for the eventuality has to take place.)

Google transformed their original Android-as-BlackBerry competitor to an Android-as-iPhone competitor. Apple began building data centers, acquiring PlaceBase and Siri. And generally the move from friends to fremies to enemies progressed.

Since the Google Voice rejection, Google has continued to leverage their services and Android has surged in popularity thanks to Verizon’s Droid line, HTC‘s Evo 4G, and Samsung‘s Galaxy S.

Apple has continued to tightly control their user experience, creating controversies with Adobe but also introducing new features like FaceTime which depend on Apple owning the phone UI, not Google.

Has the Google Voice rejection cost Apple customers? Probably. Given that a) Google Voice is still only available in the US means its absence only effects US users and b) it’s still a mostly geek-centric service, further reducing the pool of potentially affected users. Of those affected, it’s perhaps further split between those who really want the functionality of Android over the user experience of iPhone, and those who wanted to grab headlines (and in some cases quickly came back to that user experience). Google’s also had their own set of controversies, especially concerning privacy, net-neutrality, some of the content that’s ended up in their app market, and that their much vaunted openness applies primarily to manufacturers and carriers, not necessarily users. Whether or not that has cost them any users is equally hard to tell.

Kinkaid says:

Most of Apple’s ardent defenders will simply tell people like me to go use another, more open platform if they have a problem with the App Store and Apple’s policies. Fair enough. But the time and uncertainty involved in having to switch to a new computer platform are far from trivial, and eventually we may have kids who are raised on iOS — getting them to switch platforms so they can use an innovative new browser or FaceTime competitor or whatever else Apple is quietly blocking from the App Store will be no easy task. It is this inertia, which is only going to become more difficult to overcome as iOS becomes more successful, that troubles me most. Apple will be able to get away with even more egregious behavior, because its users will want to stick with what they know.

And maybe so, but would moving from iPhone to Android really be any harder than moving from Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Docs, Google Talk, Google Reader, Google Voice, Google Navigation, Blogger, and all their other services to Apple’s, Microsoft’s, or anyone else’s? Probably not. (Personally, it’s far, far easier for me to pick up a Nexus One, stick in my Google ID, and go than it ever would be to transfer all my Google stuff over to Microsoft or someone else if I had to — even the thought of the work involved makes me wince.)

At the end of the day — or of the next year — Apple and Google have both become devils we know. Apple will reject another app for annoying, intolerable reasons and Google will allow in a Nazi theme or malware app. Apple will block a competing service and Google will abuse our privacy. What troubles me is the mistaken belief one is essentially better than the other. What assuages me is that we have both — and potentially a resurgent and more open Palm webOS, and equally controlled Windows Phone on the horizon.

[TechCrunch]

Phil Nickinson from Android Central has done a full review of the Verizon Motorola Droid 2, the second coming of the first Android phone to really rocket into the mainstream. With a big screen, ample app marketplace, full hardware keyboard, and Android 2.2 Froyo, it seems to improve upon the original in every way, even if it now faces stiffer competition from its own sibling on its own network, the Droid X. How does it net out?

If you’re coming from another platform, you can’t go wrong with the Droid 2. And the same goes if you’re comiing from another carrier. If you’re already on Verizon? It’s a bit of a tougher choice. The Incredible is another solid phone and has the HTC Sense customizations on the same size screen. The Droid X has a larger screen and the same customizations as on the Droid 2. (Anecdotally: We watched on launch day as the second person in our Verizon store — we were the first — traded in a Droid X for a Droid 2.)

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, changes in that equation if rumors of a Verizon iPhone 4 pan out this January

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Verizon rumors explode, would you switch? Could the iPhone replace your wallet? Sony and Android teaming up to take on iOS. Apple reviewers making fart apps? And what’s the deal with iAds? Line up for your podcasts now, folks, this is iPhone live!

Credits

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Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
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Engadget has it from a reliable source that there’s a device being prepared by Sony Ericsson that will look like a cross between a Samsung Captivate and PSP Go, run Android 3.0 “Gingerbread” and, enjoy PS titles like God of War.

If it pans out, if they nail the hardware and software, it will be a serious competitor to iPhone and iOS in the mobile gaming space. If Sony can work a little Apple-style magic and get it integrated with the PS3, it could be flat out awesome.

So what do you think, combine this with Windows Phone 7 getting Xbox live features, will Apple, the App Store, and their upcoming Game Center be enough to hold on to the mobile gaming market?

[Engadget via Android Central]

Once again the internet is flooded with catchy headlines that Android outsold iPhone for the first half of 2010. And why not, that’s a great headline. But it’s also — to quote the Simpsons — unpossible.

Which Android device out sold iPhone? No, not the one with the GBs. Android is an OS, not a device. iPhone is a device, not an OS. Android is also not sold, it’s given away by Google for free. Android devices are what’s sold.

Maybe a more accurate, if admittedly awkward, headline would have been “All Android devices combined on all carriers in the US sold more than the iPhone on AT&T during the period where Apple constrained supply right before iPhone 4 launch”.

That’s not to say there aren’t Android devices that sell phenomenally well. Just one look at Android Central, especially any of the articles on Verizon’s Droid brand, will show tons of hot-selling devices. It’s just a completely different business model. No, not a truly open one, but one that values diversity. (I think there’s a good chance my fridge is even running Android now!)

In Canada, and many other countries, iPhone is available on pretty much every carrier and unlocked directly from Apple. There’s no Verizon Droid brand here. The original Droid is called the Motorola Milestone and any bets how well it sells on Telus compared to the iPhone?

Even in the US Verizon’s Motorola Droid 2 just launched yesterday to little in the way of lineups. Anyone think it will outsell iPhone 4 in Q3? Of course not. Th US market is in no way, shape, or form able to express any meaningful “Android outsells iPhone” numbers or vice versa.

If iPhone shows up on Verizon next year, or better yet on Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile US, then at least the carrier field will make for more useful comparison.

And maybe that’s why Apple wants the iPhone on Verizon, because they’re tired of seeing their numbers influenced by the not-iPhone compromises.

The folks over at OkCupid have performed a little study where they analyze photography from a numerical angle. The finding we found most interesting is that iPhone users have more sex than other smartphone users.

The above chart compares the number of sexual partners of 30 year olds who use an iPhone, Blackberry, or Android phone. They also broke down the data of the number of sexual partners by age. The iPhone wins on that chart too.

The mathematical part of me has to ask, are iPhone users attracting more partners because they use an iPhone, or is that that these people prefer iPhones (perhaps because of all those dating apps)? In the chance that it’s the former, any Android users ready to make the switch?

[OkCupid via Daring Fireball, Andy Baio]

Here’s our question — if an iPhone 4 really does show up on Verizon in January 2011, how many Droid users would switch to iPhone?

Original Droid, Droid Eris, Droid Incredible, Droid X, upcoming Droid 2. The whole Moto/HTC/Lucasfilm line. Vote in the poll above and give us the details in comments!

We’re guessing Apple will get an AT&T Captivate (or similar Samsung Galaxy S-class device) death-grip video up sooner or later, but in the meantime… Scoble to the rescue!

He shows both devices in the same area on the same network dropping bars and, he says, calls. We get it. Manufacturers aren’t perfect. Phones aren’t perfect. How many more videos will we get before this meme dies like bars beneath watery flesh?

And no, it’s not an outsource, just yet another video making its hits off the antennagate saga where no phone, on no carrier is safe. Now before anyone cries “yeah, but iPhone 4 only needs a death-touch, not a death-grip!“, we’ve already seen other videos showing the Galaxy getting killed by a single finger as well.

Of course, iPhone 4 is iPhone 4 in every market and on every carrier, so if anyone has a problem it’s very easy to find out about everyone else who has that problem. With other devices, if someone has a problem with a Captivate will that get tracked to someone else with a problem on a Vibrant on T-Mobile, or a Galaxy in Europe?

No doubt Consumer Reports is on top of that.

[@scobleizer]

I’ll preface this by saying before this review, I’ve hardly laid hands on an Android device, let alone considered throwing my iPhone aside to completely delve into the OS and see if I could actually survive without my iPhone.  In my time with an Android device, the short answer would be that Android would be a perfectly passable everyday phone.  But would I make the switch and ditch my iPhone 4? Hit the jump to find out as well as see tons of videos and a gallery chock full of comparison pics!

Coming to the decision to give Android a try was the easy part.  Then came the tricky part, picking an actual Android device.  With the iPhone it’s simple, the best model is typically the newest model, and with Apple’s current product cycle, there’s only 1 a year to choose from.  Along with that, in the US you have one carrier choice, AT&T.  (Unless of course you want to unlock and use an iPhone on T-Mobile sans 3G.)  I decided the easiest solution would be to stick to AT&T and check out their Android selection.  This proved to be an easier decision on AT&T opposed to other carriers such as Verizon, which carries an abundance of Android powered devices.  My choices were between the HTC Aria and the Samsung Captivate.  Both of which run Android OS version 2.1.  I’ve never been a huge fan of HTC hardware, so I went with the Captivate, and I’m glad I did.

Hardware

The most obvious thing about a phone, and the first thing you notice is the physical design.  Both of these phones are built extremely well.  When comparing specifically the iPhone 4 and the Captivate, both feel solid in your hand.  The back of the Captivate is a brushed metal with glossy bands on the top and the bottom while the iPhone 4 is a solid slab of glass on the back.  To me, the back of the iPhone 4 may look better, but in everyday use, I somehow feel more comfortable setting the Captivate down on a bare surface naked and not worrying whether or not it’s going to scratch.  One of my only peeves with Apple products are hairline scratches.  The plastic backs of the iPhone 3G and 3GS held up well as far as the white version went.  The black version was a fingerprint magnet and you could see any tiny imperfection.  The iPhone 4 in black holds up better in my experience than the previous models as far as blemishes, but the fingerprints still madden me.  As far as feel, the iPhone 4 still feels more solid in my hand than the Captivate.

The Camera

Compatibility

I remember back before the iPhone when I used Blackberrys and we had to keep a PC laying around solely so I could back up my Berrys and be able to upgrade to the latest leaked OS, as well as sync my content.  Eventually 3rd parties picked up the slack for RIM, but it still wasn’t the most ideal solution.  Eventually RIM came out with a Mac client, but it was too little too late in my opinion.

I was hoping this wouldn’t be the case with Android.  But alas, I could not find an easy way to get my contacts and media on the Captivate.  I eventually asked some trusty folks on Twitter.  Instead of taking several hard routes, I created a new Gmail address and imported my contacts to that address for wireless sync.  Workable but not the most convenient method.  For media, several people recommended DoubleTwist.  It got the job done, but it was somewhat maddening that I had to go through a few different processes just to get content onto the device.  There are also programs like Missing Sync that work well, but a $40 price tag just to have better sync with Mac is somewhat ridiculous.  I understand that several years ago Mac users were a niche group and less than 2% market share.  This is by no means the case anymore, so software manufacturers need to stop leaving out Mac users.  By now, we should have compatibility right out of the gate.

With my iPhone 4, I sync to iTunes and I’m done.  I’m also a MobileMe user so I’ve never had to worry about that content being lost when switching from iPhone to iPhone.  I also found no easy way to get my iCal events onto my Android device.  To me, if I wanted to use the phone in the way I intend, it almost forces you to use not only Gmail but GCal as well.  Since I am a Mac user, the iPhone 4 obviously wins hands down as far as compatibility goes.

Battery Life

Applications

YouTube Link

This is one area I enjoyed exploring.  The Android Marketplace really DOES have tons of apps.  No, they don’t have the same ridiculous number Apple has, but I disagree with Apple’s representation of apps.  When I look at the number of apps a platform has, I want to know how many “quality” apps that platform has.  Leave out all the junk and apps that should have never been approved in the first place, and I’d say the iTunes app store has less than 40,000 quality apps.

I was pleasantly surprised with the selection Android users have.  Any type of app I could possibly want, I have at least 3 choices or more, which in most situations are more than sufficient.  The only area I saw a pretty poor selection in was Twitter clients.  This is probably just me though.  I have more Twitter clients on my iPhone than you can shake a stick at.  And I switch between them – frequently.  I’m flaky when it comes to Twitter clients and I get bored. For any normal person, Android’s growing selection would accommodate most non-mutants just fine.

Now let’s talk native applications.  Google put a lot of thought into basic everyday apps like the phone and texting app.  I absolutely love how you can swipe left and right in your contacts to call or message someone.  That’s ingenious and a really quick way to interact with your contacts.  I’m not sure if these features are unique to Android OS 2.1 or not, but they’re pretty frak’n sweet.  Clicking on someone’s picture within their contact card also gives you additional ways you can interact with that person.  The message app is also very easy to use and overall, I really enjoyed the interface of all the core apps.  The only thing I really did not care for was all the trial and bloatware that comes pre-installed on the device.  I spent 30 minutes clearing out junk before I actually dug into the marketplace and loaded the phone up with things I actually wanted.  This reminds me of the shiver that runs down my spine when you boot up a new PC and see a desktop loaded with nothing but crap.  Hey, maybe Best Buy can start offering Android optimization services as another form of highway robbery. (You can thank me later for the idea Best Buy, just know I’ll be expecting my royalty check every month.)

Once all the bloatware was thrown into a fiery hole of despair, you are left with a 4” canvas of AMOLED goodness to tweak and customize until your heart’s content.  And that leads me to my main focus of this article…..

Android OS vs iOS

The OS is probably the single most important factor when choosing a phone.  In my experience, I’ve found things about Android that I really like, and then things that I really don’t like.

The main screen on Android OS is pretty much a blank canvas for you to do what you will with.  You can drop icons and reorder them just like you would on the iPhone, but you can also create widgets and customize until your heart’s content.  This is one area Apple really has fallen behind.  My biggest gripe with iOS is the lack of a decent notification system.  In that area, Android wins by a landslide.

The Android OS also gives you a few choices when it comes to keyboards.  I was pretty excited to get to try out Swype.  While it seems to be pretty quick, it still has its quirks.  No matter what keyboard I chose, I found myself lagging behind how quickly I can type on my iPhone.  But to be fair, I have been typing on an iPhone keyboard for over 3 years now.

Android offers a lot of cool gestures and shortcuts in general I wish Apple would take a closer look at.  But there’s also certain things that seem to be overdone.  It seemed I spent a good amount of time figuring out alerts and sounds, as well as configuring general settings.  It seemed a little overwhelming that I could pick alerts for every little thing.  The option is nice but the settings panel is a little confusing.  Sometimes I felt like I didn’t really know what settings I was changing, I had to experiment.  It reminded me somewhat of the 80 billion alerts Blackberry users are presented with.  To me, it was a little overkill.

Conclusion

Thanks to my boss who took tons of excellent hi-res pics for me since I’m too cheap to break down and finally get a DSLR. And a special thanks to @kasperapd as well for lending us some iPhone 4/Evo4G comparison shots (apparently that phone IS rarer than a unicorn!) And as always, we encourage you guys to chime with your comments and thoughts!

Apple has posted yet another competing smartphone attenuation video, this time rounding out their infamous collection with Motorola’s just-launched Verizon Droid X. The video shows the aforementioned monster of a phone dropping from 3 out of 4 bars to none when death-gripped.

Once again, however, no demonstration is made of any iPhone 4-style death-touch de-tuning.

So yeah, you can imagine how our friends over at Android Central are reacting…

Who does that leave for next, Palm, LG? Does Apple need to finish what they’ve started or just let it go already?

Video after the break…

I’ve written several times that the “openness” argument made against Apple’s iPhone in general, and by Google against Apple in particular is overblown and often disingenuous. Sure, other smartphones might theoretically be more open at the platform level, but when it comes down to manufacturers and carriers, the end user-facing openness is just not there. We’ve already been through how manufacturers can lock down ROMs, carriers can lock out side-loading and add bloat-ware, and Google themselves can remote kill apps. But we haven’t had real look at just how much of the “completely open” platforms are, you know, completely open.

Enter Robert Werlinger from sibling site PreCentral.net who is at OSCON 2010 and sat in for a talk by Aaron Williamson from the Software Freedom Law center on why open-source doesn’t always mean open on smartphones.

Just how proprietary are the implementations of Android? After examining what isn’t open source and why in contemporary Android phones (and on HTC G1), Williamson set out to see just how open he could make his phone while still maintaining phone functionality. After stripping all of the proprietary software with the exception of the modem firmware and audio routing software, he was left without: A camera, GPS, WIFI, Sensors, 3D , Bluetooth, Market. A surprising lack of functionality in an operating system that is presumably so “open”. Indeed, Android employs a similar licensing structure to MeeGo and Symbian: The Kernel is GPL and everything is Apache 2.0, allowing for proprietary modifications.

Bottom line, on a truly “open” Android device, you can’t even make a phone call. Eric Schmidt’s “completely open” is hyperbole when it comes to end users, even power end users. Robert sums it up nicely:

The biggest problem from an enthusiast standpoint is that folks like Cyanogen will continue to exist in a legal grey area, as members of the “open handset alliance” continue to perpetuate the myth that its platform has anything to do with openness.

Apple’s iOS is based on the open-source, BSD-licensed Mach kernel and network layers wrapped up in a completely proprietary UI and totally closed and controlled app platform. That has advantages and disadvantages and every user — from hax0r girl to soccer dad — will have to decide what better suits their needs.

Any company that thinks they can re-frame the discussion around false “openness” is in for a surprise, however, just as any user switching platforms over philosophy is going to get burned. That’s why philosophy be left out of the discussion and smartphone platforms and their backers compete with each other based on technology. In that arena, Google and their Android partners are catching up fast (even overtaking depending on who you asked). In that arena, Microsoft’s newly reborn, and proprietary Windows Phone 7 is just as interesting as Palm’s extremely open if not open-source, and newly acquired webOS, RIM’s ultra locked down, uber-secure BlackBerry as much competition as Nokia’s slowly opening Symbian.

Don’t believe me? Believe the FSF. Just like cake, “open smartphones” are a lie.

We often accuse Apple of being too controlling when it comes to the iPhone, but sometimes that control benefit the end user — for example preventing the kind of carrier bloatware being foisted on the iPhone that Wired says is being foisted on the new Android devices from Samsung and HTC. Examples include trial versions of subscription services like MobiTV, GoGo Flight Internet, Where, Nascar, Football, and others.

“It’s different from phone to phone and operator to operator,” says Keith Nowak, spokesman for HTC. “But in general, the apps are put there to meet the operator’s business and revenue needs.”

[...] But bloatware isn’t a feature in all smartphones. AT&T hasn’t piled extraneous software onto Apple’s iPhone.

No, AT&T hasn’t piled extraneous software onto Apple’s iPhone because Apple won’t let them. As Wired themselves profiled recently, any attempt by AT&T to dictate anything iPhone related to Apple would be rebuffed and — if needed — “escalated to Steve” who may then “scream at Ralph”.

At the D8 conference Steve Jobs said many companies mistakenly believe the distributors (retailers, carriers, cable providers, etc.) are their customers. Apple believes end users are their customers and in this case they don’t seem to care a wit what the carriers want.

Google’s model, by contrast, is incredibly carrier-centric. Their customers are the carriers. Their prime consideration is to get more and more manufacturers and carriers to make and carry more Android devices. That’s why their open source license is Apache — a license that ironically leaves their source open to carrier control up to and including the ability to close things out. Manufacturers and carriers can do pretty much anything they feel like including adding non-removable bloatware, locking out side-loading, preventing rooting, etc. And yeah, you can hack your way around it but you can also jailbreak an iPhone. That’s fine for power users. For mainstream users, not so much.

(Sadly, the single Android handset Google did control, the Nexus One, is being taken off the market.)

So we iPhone owners can get upset when Apple occasionally messes up and doesn’t approve an app until there’s an outcry, or sticks stock and weather apps on the iPhone we’d rather hide away, but does anyone think the iPhone user experience would be better if Apple were more open and the carrier was given complete control?

[Wired]

HTC’s Eric Lin has responded in statistical fashion to Apple’s iPhone 4 press conference where Steve Jobs showed off a Droid Eris losing singnal when death-gripped:

“Approximately .016% of customers [have complained]. We have had very few complaints about signal or antenna problems on the Eris”.

Which could also just mean there hasn’t been the attention or scrutiny placed on signal strength attenuation in the past, and again it will be open season now with any number of YouTube videos popping up showing everything from the HTC Droid Eris to HTC Droid Incredible to HTC Nexus One succumbing to the death-grip, just like Apple demonstrated.

However, HTC does have the forethought to warn customers not to touch the spot over their antenna (see image, top).

[Pocket-Lint via Android Central, Daring Fireball, Engadget]

When someone starts writing it’s not unusual for them to want to be creative, to be un-boring, so when they have a character talk, that character “intimates”, “whispers”, “suggests”, “exclaims” and otherwise enjoys every imaginable bit of literary variance the author can throw at them.

More seasoned writers tend to just stick with “said”. When a character talks, it’s “said”, “said”, “said”. Over an over again. Page after page. Turtleneck after jeans. “Said”, “said”, “said”. It’s used so often it just disappears, the mechanics disappear, the author disappears, and all that’s left is the character.

Apple’s iOS has a pretty consistent user interface. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it’s more consistent than its competitors. Occasional page curl in Maps aside, the basic ways you move around the iPhone are the same, Apple app after Apple app. (And anything that’s not tends to get hidden away so power users can “discover it” and mainstream users can live their lives never having to be bothers by its existence).

iOS is so consistent, so single minded it being consistent, that when it isn’t — especially when 3rd party apps aren’t — it causes problems. Upper left had corner is a virtual back button. Tap and you go back. Tap and you go back. Tap and you… are suddenly editing your account? That’s the type of exception that proves the rule. You’re so used to doing something, it’s so instinctive to do certain things, that when they don’t happen you notice, and you get annoyed.

Beyond the UI it applies to Apple’s platform as well. From 2007 to 2009 every iPhone and iPod touch — 6 devices not counting re-issues — not only ran pretty much the same OS but had pretty much the same specs, the same screens, the same types of chips. When newer, better technology was thrown in — GPS, 3G, faster chips, more RAM, iOS abstracted them through API like CoreLocation so they remained broadly consistent. In 2010 Apple added the iPad which admittedly muddied the consistency waters, but they made sure it could run iPhone apps either 1x or 2x in double fuzzy chunky mode. iPhone 4 quadrupled the resolution but kept the same size so old apps “just worked” with 4 pixels instead of 1 if they had to, and the new gyroscope got hooked up to the old accelerometer and CoreMotion was born.

When speaking of the iPhone and the iPad, Apple SVP of design — and again, how many hardware/software companies have an executive level designer? — said he did everything possible to get the device itself out of the user’s way. It’s just a screen. Apple’s software designers have done a little of the same. But maintaining consistency to such a a consistent degree, a significant part of the OS gets out of the user’s way as well and only the content is left.

Say what you want about the iOS home screen being a boring old app launcher, but it’s always a boring old app launcher, swipe after swipe, page after page. It’s not a card view one moment, app launcher the next, wave in between. It’s not a bank of widgets arrayed like Hong Kong street signs surrounded by empty spaces and the occasional app in between — if they’ve been liberated from the drawer.

iOS consistency is so prevalent it becomes easy to overlook, but just spend a few days with another platform and it you start to realize it almost immediately. Incredible variations in hardware and UI skins are great for varieties sake but usability takes a huge hit.

Just for fun I passed around a few non-iPhone devices to co-workers, all smart techies. It took them a while to do even basic things like turn them on, unlock them, find Wi-Fi and add the password (note: never have two buttons for Wi-Fi one on top of the other where the first one turns it on and off, they’ll hit that one every time while looking for the settings hidden in plain sight beneath it.) I watched in particularly horrible fascination as a friend of my went to Digg’s mobile site, tapped a link, and had the device activate the link below it. He repeated and it did it again. About 4 out of 5 times when he hit pretty much the same spot — a link — it would trigger the one below. And yes, only 4 out of 5 times, just to be inconsistent about the inconsistency. Finding the phone to place a call? Woz wasn’t wrong. It was comedic at times.

In stark contrast I’ve mention numerous time how I’ve given iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads to children as young as one and half and they’ve been able to unlock them and launch the apps they wanted to launch. At two and half they could use it well.

That’s the power of a fairly consistent platform running fairly consistent consistent software.

It’s what Apple has been doing for years, for decades — making software and focusing on human interface (they’ve even got guidelines). It’s why feature checklists might not be the best way to measure advances in the smartphone space (though every June Apple takes as good a jump down checklist street as anyone.)

Microsoft is reportedly laying down the consistency law for partners with the upcoming Windows Phone 7, and rumor has it Google might try to divest itself of all those Android UI skins with version 3.0.

Sure, “power users” might get bored but we complain about everything anyway. People who just want to use their device won’t even notice — they’ll be too busy using their device. Just like readers are too busy enjoying their novel and don’t give a second though to “said”, “said”, said.”

A bit of a roundup this afternoon as the cell phone inventor Martin Cooper, personal computer inventor Steve Wozniak, and advertising revolutionary Larry Page all give their opinions on iPhone vs. Android.

Martin Cooper went on CNN with this zinger:

“I think that the Android phones are catching up now, and the latest version of the Android phones are every bit as good, if not better, than the iPhone.”

Of course, the accuracy of statements about which is better are inversely proportional to their generality. Don’t tell us which, tell us why.

Apple’s Steve Wozniak on Korea Times offers a little of that:

“It’s difficult to find where things are (on Android phones). More and more, I feel like it is more like (Microsoft’s) Windows in which many different hardware vendors have installed different equipment on the same platform. The (Windows’) platform has to be very neutral and cannot be special. That’s the similar problem Android phones have,” he said.

“When you write an app for Android phones, there are so many platforms to consider. That’s the problem Microsoft was facing with its Windows years ago. People like Apple products because they are always predictable and work.”

Apple does a subset of features very well, but woe to you if you need something outside that subset. Google is currently doing as much as they can, even if all of it isn’t polished yet. Both are moving towards the same goal, just taking very different paths.

As if to highlight that, Google’s Larry Page went so far as to accuse Steve Jobs of distorting reality when it came to Jobs’ charge that Google dropped the gauntlet by deciding to compete with Apple:

“We had been working on Android a very long time, with the notion of producing phones that are Internet-enabled and have good browsers and all that because that did not exist in the marketplace. I think that characterization of us entering after is not really reasonable.”

But it is reasonable to say Android was aimed squarely (pun intended) at Windows Mobile Standard before Apple launched the iPhone, and now look at who’s duking it out full-screen multitouch to full-screen multitouch.

We’ve just gotten a Nexus One running Android 2.2 Froyo here at TiPb HQ and we’re going to put it one-on-one with iPhone 4 and iOS 4. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see, let us know in the comments.

[CNN via Android Central, Korea Times, Fortune, via 9to5Mac]

Fring has just updated their app to allow iPhone 4 users to chat with Android and Nokia/Symbian S60 users with the appropriate camera hardware. So while FaceTime remains easier and slicker if you’re both on iPhone 4 on Wi-Fi, if you want to get some cross-platform chat on, this is your go-to option.

To test out the new Fring, Phil Nickinson from Android Central and I fired it up, Phil on his HTC Evo 4G and me on my iPhone 4. Hey, if Jobs and Schmidt can take coffee, I can talk to Phil, okay?

The quality wasn’t bad considering he’s in Florida on Sprint and I’m in Montreal on Wi-Fi. I did have a problem with the speaker volume, however. I couldn’t get any real speaker phone action going on, which meant I couldn’t hear Phil unless I put the iPhone to my ear — thereby destroying the whole point of a video call.

That might have been me not knowing which button to tap or setting to swipe, but we’re looking for an answer and will update when we get on. Apple made FaceTime’s underlying protocols open, so maybe we’ll see a future update employing those as well?

If you want to see Phil’s side of the call, head on over to AC.

So now that we live in a world where iPhone’s and Androids can talk together, who’s going to give it a try?

UPDATE: Due to every iPhone 4 owner jumping on the new 2-way video calling, Fring has had issues and had to pull their Skype service. Sorry folks, more as this develops…

[iTunes link]

Which has the fastest browser, Apple’s iOS 4 or Google’s Android 2.2? We’re used to browser battles here on TiPb, but how about a browser battle battle? See, both Ars Technica and Engadget ran some tests, pitting iPhone 4 on iOS 4 against the Nexus One running Android 2.2 Froyo and the results… varied dramatically to say the least.

Ars SunSpider and V8 benchmarks showed the Nexus One blowing iPhone 4 out of the water with almost double the JavaScript performance. Engadget‘s real-world test loading real-world webpages, however, had iPhone 4 with a slight lead when Flash was enabled on the Nexus One, and slightly behind when Flash was disabled.

Both iOS and Android use WebKit-based browsers, with Apple running the Nitro JavaScript Engine and Google running their V8. Likewise iPhone 4 has Apple’s own A4 processor while Nexus One boasts a 1Ghz Snapdragon.

Some might not think iterative increases in rendering speeds matter, but as we race towards the agile future of web apps, every little bit becomes important. Just like on the desktop, we expect every new release from either party (and others) to keep pushing the envelop. We should get iOS 4.1 in September and Android 3.0 later this year as well, both likely faster than what we have today.

So kudos to Google. Hopefully Apple responds in like fashion and the browser battles (and browser battle battles) continue!

[Ars Technica, Engagdget, Android Central]

Come next week Verizon users still waiting for a mythical iPhone 4 all their own will get Motorola’s latest, greatest new Android offering — the Droid X — to hold them over. And Verizon users with no interest in anything Apple will have the new king of Google’s ever growing hill to play with.

The original Motorola Droid on Verizon was arguably the first smartphone to really give the iPhone 3GS a run for it’s money. However, it came out months after the iPhone 3GS when hype had abated somewhat, and it’s Droid Does list included things like multitasking, which iOS 4 now Does Too. That means while Droid X is a better, badder phone, it has a tougher challenge ahead of it as well.

If size matters, the Droid X is bigger… 4.3″ of screen but with less pixels, at a lower density, and without iPhone 4′s IPS Retina Display panel.

It’s got a bigger 8 megapixel camera on the back to iPhone 4′s 5 megapixels. But iPhone 4 has a back-illuminated sensor that isn’t as chopped up, which should mean better low-light pictures, and iOS 4 camera software while less feature-filled still seems to produce better images with just a touch of the tap-to-focus-and-balance. iPhone 4 also has a front-facing camera (and FaceTime), Droid X don’t.

3 external mics on the Droid X, including one for video camera work trump iPhone 4′s two mics. iPhone 4 does have a gyroscope, though. And yeah, Droid X has got dual antenna. Ouch. Otherwise they’re both monsters on the spec sheet.

In terms of apps Apple’s App Store still wins on sheer number, though Google’s Android Market retains bragging rights on being more open.

Droid X is only running Android 2.1 Eclair right now, though a turbo-boosting 2.2 Froyo update is on the horizon. So, a lot may come down to whether you like Droid X’s “don’t call it MotoBlur” UI, which seems quicker and cleaner than the CLIQ if not as spartan as the original Droid. iOS 4 on the other hand is iOS 4, there’s only one iPhone and one interface on the market at any time.

Strangely, that may mean the Motorola Droid X will face stiffer competition from something other than Apple’s iPhone 4. Verizon already has the HTC Droid Incredible, Sprint the HTC Evo 4G, and every carrier and their subsidiary seems poised to get a Samsung Galaxy S class-device, including Verizon with the Facinate. As we’ve mentioned before, in a world where Apple releases one major iPhone a year, and Android can drop 8 news phones in a weekend, it gives any one new Android as much competition from within as without. And that’s great for Android lovers.

So is the Droid X currently iPhone 4′s big nemesis? If you live in the US and don’t want AT&T, it’s definitely a phone to look at if you’re in the market today. If not, wait a week or more. AT&T might drop a tower in your backyard and Google might just drop 5 more Android’s on another carrier.

Great time to be a consumer!

Apple iPhone 4 vs Android Evo 4G as expressed by potty-mouthed, poorly animated, digitally voiced, anthropomorphic stuffed animals? Ohecksyeah.

If you’re enjoying the 4th of July holiday in the US, or have a way to keep yourself safe at work outside the US, give these dueling videos a look and enjoy the good-natured iPhone and Android rivalry gone horribly wrong.

(And yeah, the guy who made them works at Best Buy mobile, never mentioned Best Buy in the videos, and still might get fired by the humorless big box — who should be falling all over themselves offering him a job in their creative department.)

Again, NSFW-L, play at your own risk… of amusement. After the break…

[Thanks Anthony!]

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a recent interview that they’re not in competition with Apple, even while taking a little shot at the company on whose board of directors he sat during the iPhone’s development.

We don’t have a plan to beat Apple, that’s not how we operate,” Schmidt says. “We’re trying to do something different than Apple and the good news is that Apple is making that very easy.”

“The difference between the Apple model and the Google model is easy to understand – they’re completely different. The Google model is completely open. You can basically take the software – it’s free – you can modify whatever you want, you can add any kind of app, you can build any kind of business model on top of it and you can add any kind of hardware. The Apple model is the inverse.”

Which is poppycock, really.

I’m as invested in Google’s services as I am Apple’s products, but come on. Completely open? Like any company, Google is open in what doesn’t make them money and proprietary as heck in what does. Android is open (under the Apache license, not GPL — which should give the philosophical FOSSies pause) but Google certainly hasn’t opened their search or AdWords platforms. Likewise Apple open sources WebKit (which Google uses for their browser) and OpenCL and Grand Central and FaceTime, but keeps their crown jewels equally closed. So enough already with the open stuff. You give me free services so you can mine my data, I sell my soul to you to use them. Deal. Just don’t insult my intelligence while doing it.

Much like the silly Google I/O comments, Google needs to compete on technology, not fake ideology. Android 2.2 sounds smoking hot and Android 3.0 might finally look as good as it works. Compete on that.

(Which, of course, is Google’s plan. It’s the plan they claim they don’t have — the one that had them go from a BlackBerry-esque prototype to an iPhone-like model almost immediately after Macworld 2007.)

They are opposites when it comes to go-to-market strategy, however. Apple is doing the (almost) bottom-to-top solution, lacking only their own carrier. Makes for great, integrated, singular vision. Google is partnering on hardware and implementation. Makes for excellent, diverse, flexible options.

We’re lucky to have both. We’d be luckier if Google just said so straight out.

[Telegraph.co.uk via Android Central]

UPDATE: Why is Android being Apache license important? Because it’s a corporate-centric license. A carrier could take Android and, under Apache, release a completely locked down phone if they want. It makes Android only as open as the company implementing it. That highlights another key difference between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android — Apple is targeting the customer. Google is targeting the carrier/manufacturer. Apple has given carriers as little say in the iPhone as possible. Google’s license gives the carrier complete say if they so choose. For the average consumer, that’s what makes the philosophical argument about “openness” realistically meaningless.

Also, any app is difficult given Google recently remote-killed 2 apps off users phones (something Apple has yet to do). Sure, you could side-load apps, except the Apache license allows AT&T to close that aspect of openness, doesn’t it?

Motorola’s full page New York Times ad takes a swift jab into the tenderest regions of iPhone 4 antenna issues.

most importantly, it comes with a double antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like and use it just about anywhere to make crystal clear calls. You have a voice. And you deserve to be heard.

In our minds (and tweets) it played out like the original Karate Kid, with Droid X getting it’s iPhone 4-bloodied nose seen to by the Moto Kai sensei who mercilessly whispers “sweep the leg” “go for the antenna”.

Whether or not iPhone-san can pull out an iOS 4.0.1 crane-kick of a software fix and get its victory-from-the-jaws-of-defeat Hollywood ending remains to be seen…

“Send in a bumper case, yeaaaaaaah!”

[@sarahintampa via Android Central]

No starker contrast could be drawn between Apple’s iPhone 4 strategy and Google’s Android than this past week where iPhone 4 made its traditional once-a-year debut — just as Motorola showed off a new Verizon Droid X, T-Mobile Charm, AT&T Flipout, and Samsung announced the Galaxy S-class Sprint Epric 4G, Verizon Facinate, T-Mobile Vibrant, AT&T Captivate, and an as yet unbranded US cellular Galaxy S as well.

Only some of these have been officially announced, but even that number dwarfs Apple’s once-a-year iPhone release schedule. That they’re coming out around iPhone 4 launch, and iPhone 4 is a strong contender in the market right now (1.7 million in 3 days strong) is interesting. That Google and their manufacturing partners could keep up this pace in 3 months, 6 months, and when iPhone 4 is starting to show its age in 8 months is… something else.

Personally I — and most importantly my early-adapter-pained wallet — enjoy Apple’s annual cycle. I don’t know how Phil Nickinson from our sibling site Android Central survives some weeks. To always have a new phone to look forward to is exciting — and terrifying. Ask me again in January though, and I might be itching for that iPhone 5…

Do you feel you benefit as an iPhone user from Apple staying focused on that one, integrated, end-to-end handset you own for the better part of a year? Or do you think Google’s approach of hardware partners launching new devices, on different network, all the time will lead to greater innovation in the end? Focus can lead to stagnation, fragmentation to loss of direction. Maybe having both approaches in the market, pushing each other, is the best thing for all users?

Google has remotely wiped two apps from Android users’ phones, which is something Apple has always had the ability to do with iOS, but has so far never done.

For all the crazy stories about App Store rejections, and the well-deserved criticism Apple faces for some of them, to their credit they’ve never reached out and yanked an app off a users’ phone. Amazon famously deleted Orwell books from Kindle libraries, and now Google has killed Android apps, and maybe one day Apple will find a reason to do likewise (malware comes to mind) but today, they’re the ones who haven’t.

Irony aside, Google’s been very open about the reasons for going all “power word kill” on the apps:

Recently, we became aware of two free applications built by a security researcher for research purposes. These applications intentionally misrepresented their purpose in order to encourage user downloads, but they were not designed to be used maliciously, and did not have permission to access private data — or system resources beyond permission.INTERNET. As the applications were practically useless, most users uninstalled the applications shortly after downloading them.

After the researcher voluntarily removed these applications from Android Market, we decided to exercise our remote application removal feature on the remaining installed copies to complete the cleanup.

The remote application removal feature is one of many security controls Android possesses to help protect users from malicious applications. In case of an emergency, a dangerous application could be removed from active circulation in a rapid and scalable manner to prevent further exposure to users. While we hope to not have to use it, we know that we have the capability to take swift action on behalf of users’ safety when needed.

Again, Apple may decide they have to do likewise one day, so it’s an important reminder to anyone with a managed app or content store — iPhone, Android, Kindle, maybe Palm someday as well.

Does this concern you, or do you trust platform providers to only use the big red ban button when it’s to protect you? Or do you think users should have the choice — a big scary prompt button saying “malicious app detected – delete now/cancel at own risk”?

[Android Developers Blog via Android Central]

Even as iPhone 4 goes out for delivery, and reservists start lining up at Apple Stores, Motorola, Google, Adobe, and Verizon announced the Droid X, the latest, best Android on the planet.

Our good friend Phil from Android Central was there to live-blog all the news live as it happened, and even now is going hands-on with the Droid X, but we managed to tear the spec-sheet away from him long enough to update our joint fact sheet on all things iPhone 4 vs. Android.

For easy reference, here are the Droid X stats gone solo:

• Huge 4.3″, 16:9, 854×480 screen (that’s 400,000 pixels)
• HDMI out and DLNA support
• 1GHz TI OMAP processor
• Full Flash 10.1 (not available at launch, waiting on Froyo 2.2)
• 8 gigs on board and a 16gig card included, but compatible with 32gig SD cards for a total potential memory of 40 gigs
• 512mb RAM
• 8 megapixel camera that captures 720p HD video
• Three microphones (outward-facing for video, noise-canceling, and regular)
• a 1570mAh battery, which should be ‘comparable to the Droid 1′ on battery life
• GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, naturally
• Wi-Fi Hotspot with support for tethering up to 5 devices will also be available for an additional $20 per month with a 2 gig cap.

Good on Android for getting around previous app storage constraints, and for keeping the push on for Wi-Fi Hot Spot. It won’t be released until July 15 but announcing now lets them get b-roll on iPhone 4 coverage so, smart. (Though some are playing this off as more competition to the Evo 4G than the iPhone 4).

Anyway you slice it, this is a big Droid. But is it big enough to go one-on-one with iPhone 4 and iOS 4?

Verizon has a teaser up for their new, big DROID X which is claiming a 4.3″, 720p display (which is usually 1280×720) — a significant challenge to the iPhone 4‘s 3.5″ 960×640, LED IPS Retina Display.

It’s more pixels but it’s also a bigger display, so it could net out to the same pixel-per-inch count — somewhere above the magical 300 mark. It’s also teasing HDMI out.

Begun these display density wars have?

UPDATE: Engadget, who had a brief hands on, thinks it might have the same 854 x 480 as the original Droid and Verizon is referring to some video functionality that’s 720p. Verizon does say 720p display however, so at the very least it’s confusing.

UPDATE 2: Verizon has updated their site to correct the erroneous claim. 720p is video recording, NOT display.

[Verizon via Android Central]

It should come as no surprise that both Palm webOS and Google Android want iPhone developers on their platform. Mac developers have long been as passionate about their platform and incredibly talented in the apps they’ve delivered, and a lot of that has transferred over to iOS devices like the iPhone and now iPad.

Whether or not Apple is engaged in a platform war with Palm and Google it’s inarguable that the current generation of users want apps and right now Apple has an advantage in that area. Part of getting people to switch to another platform is making sure the apps they love are on that platform, and that means big name apps and fan favorites alike.

If Google is moving around behind the scenes, approaching core iPhone developers (the ones who make the most iPhone-like apps and enjoy high mind share) and trying to sneak them over to Android, Palm has gone one step further — openly courting them.

In the middle of Apple’s iOS-centric WWDC 2010 no less, Palm held a shindig of their own, a PDK (Plugin Developer Kit) soiree to wine and dine iPhone developers, point out the Pre has pretty much the same guts as the iPhone 3GS, and that a lot of applications can be ported over — especially games. And they made certain to highlight their openness, especially to emulators and cross-compilers. And they offered $1 million dollars in incentives.

Obviously users go where the apps are and developers make apps for where the users are, so the cycle can be vicious or virtuous, and just as obviously Google and Palm would much rather the latter.

Competition is good, different approaches are good, and options for developers are great, but whether or not Google and Palm can convince iPhone developers (and now iOS 4 developers) to become mobile developers is the question.

For those of you who love your spec porn, there it is up top, and we’re honestly beginning to wonder — what could they possibly do next? (Besides mind-control, of course).

Phil Nickinson over at Android Central has just posted a full review of the Sprint HTC Evo 4G, which he’s billing as the baddest Android on the planet. Big screen, front facing video call camera, brand new OS in the pipeline, it’s not hard to see that this will be Sprint’s answer to the iPhone HD/iPhone 4G (unless and until they’re able to offer the iPhone HD/iPhone 4G on Sprint — just sayin’).

It’s at the top of the Android smartphone pile, for the moment. That’s not to say that phones like the HTC Incredible and Nexus One (and very possibly the Samsung Galaxy S) aren’t right up there. But the screen size, 4G data and promise of an upgrade to Android 2.2 make the Sprint Evo 4G the phone to beat, and it may well hold that title through the end of 2010.

Check out the galleries, the videos, and all the words holding them together and then come back and let us know what you think about the Sprint HTC Evo 4G — is it the right handset, on the right network, at the right time, to give the iPhone HD/iPhone 4G a run for your money?

TiPb’s wondered out loud before about the prospect of the Apple TV joining the iPhone OS family and providing a better overall package than the current no browser, no apps, no pretty much anything exciting product that hasn’t seen a hardware update since… almost ever.

Now with Google TV on the horizon, Fortune brings word that while the Android box will be running an Intel CPU it will be using the same GPU as the iPad (and iPhone 3GS) — the PowerVR SGX.

PowerVR is owned by Imagination and both Apple and Intel have stakes in the company. With Google pushing into every one of Apple’s businesses, is the living room something Apple’s going to be willing to surrender, and if not, how will they push back?

Current Apple TV hardware runs a custom Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 OS on top of an Intel Pentium M 1GHz “Crofton” CPU and NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 GPU which was low-end desktop kit a few years ago.

We’re still loving the idea of a 1GHz Apple A4-family powered, next generation Apple TV with iPhone OS. That’ll leave Google and Apple to compete as they usually do — with Google giving away everything that doesn’t make them money and offering diversity, and Apple focusing on a few core things and making the experience as user-friendly as possible.

Google TV could get built into every display and set-top box (though big media will freeze it out of interacting with any cable or satellite content stream, sorry VoD fans) and kinda sorta work for nerds willing to IR blast or harmonize their remotes. Apple TV could only work with iPods, iPhones, iPads, Macs and PCs but what content you have or Apple provides would be easy and seamless.

Which means both solutions would still be incredibly lacking, but given the restrictions Apple TV with iPhone OS would still be a lot more compelling — and competitive — than it is today.

[Fortune]

Steve Jobs is once again putting finger to touchscreen to jot down tersely worded replies, this time on whether or not Google’s Android will leap frog the iPhone and whether or not the WWDC 2010 keynote will bring the rain.

First question:

Are google taking the [p1$$]? I hope you have some good WWDC announcements to blow them out the water?

Jobs’ answer:

You won’t be disappointed.

Sent from my iPhone

Second question:

Do you believe Google is surpassing you guys [...]?

Jobs’ answer:

Not a chance.

Regardless of your personal proclivities when it comes to iPhone or Android, no one can deny that the competitive smartphone landscape has become a whole lot more fun. (Well, except for everyone who isn’t Apple or Google at the moment).

We ask again, was Google smart to rile up one Steve P. Jobs this close to the WWDC keynote?

[MacRumors and Gizmodo via 9to5Mac]

Google used their Android 2.2 Froyo launch today to bring the fight squarely to Apple and Steve Jobs, saying in essence they created Android because they feared a future where one man (Steve Jobs) and one company (Apple) controlled the mobile space.

Now I’m not going to call that cake a lie (because it’s technically a chilled desert this time), but let’s be clear — Google created Android because they feared any future where any company — be it Apple, Microsoft, or some unforeseen upstart to lock them out of their cash-cow, advertising. (FYI – That’s why Microsoft built Bing and why Apple is making iAds: so that one company — Google — doesn’t control online advertising).

That’s smart business. But to claim any form of benevolence or greater-than-thou community spirit is disingenuous-to-insulting. Google, like Apple or Adobe is as open as suits them and as proprietary as their revenue generation demands. As much as Apple controls the iPhone, as much as Adobe owns Flash, Google’s crown jewel of advertising is theirs and theirs alone. AdWords isn’t open source.

So they can make fun of Apple curating the App Store, or that at any one time any of a dozen high-end Androids can perform certain tasks well, or that they can put Flash on a phone but not Silverlight or ActiveX, or poke at iTunes not yet being cloud-based. But they can’t and don’t talk about the Android Market’s enormous selection of keyboards, fess up to the battery problems as a platform issue, come to grips with the inconsistent user experience, deal with the reality that is recent devices have unclear and fragmented OS paths, and acknowledge those users burned severely by the still immature cloud who want local solution options as well.

Google pushed out a lot of tech this week. A scary, wonderful, crazy, beautiful amount of tech I don’t think we’ve seen in such volume in such a short time before. It will be challenge enough for them to realize most of it, much less all of it. It’s just plain gutsy.

Even gutsier was poking Apple before the much better spoken Steve Jobs takes the much bigger stage at WWDC 2010 to announce the much more attention getting 4th generation iPhone.

[Android Central]

Google seems set to announce the next version of their Android operating system, deliciously dubbed Froyo (frozen yogurt) at the Google I/O conference today. Android Central’s Phil Nickinson is at the conference and will be bringing us the action live and as it happens.

The exciting and terrifying thing about Google is that you never know what they’re going to do (and give away free) next. Last time it was Navigation, and TomTom is likely still reeling. This time it could be free cell service for everyone in Rhode Island. Who knows?! My official prediction is up as part of the Android Central Round Table. They’ve also got a ton of coverage from yesterday, which included the announcement of the VP8 video codec being released open source and freely licensed as part of their WebM initiative (which includes the MKV container and Ogg Vorbis audio codec), a Chrome Web Store, Adobe’s HTML5 exporter for Dreamweaver, Google’s foray into the 10″ TV “experience” with Clicker.tv, and more. Here are some more highlights, but join Phil and crew for all the live fun and we’ll be back with our thoughts later:

• The Great Wall of Android
• Hands-on with the Android Kindle app
• Google IO keynote liveblog – day 1

We’ve seen much of iPhone OS 4 (iPhone HD/iPhone 4G special features not withstanding), we’ve seen BlackBerry OS 6, we’re not sure what’s up with the next version of webOS yet (are we?), but after today we should see what Apple has to compete with when it comes to Google for the next half a year or so…

According to NPD, more smartphones were sold in the US that run Android than smartphones than run iPhone OS in Q1 2010. BlackBerry remains in the number one spot. According to NPD. Apple isn’t a fan of the metrics being used:

“This is a very limited report on 150,000 US consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide,” Apple spokesperson Natalie Harrison, told The Loop. “IDC figures show that iPhone has 16.1 percent of the smartphone market and growing, far outselling Android on a worldwide basis. We had a record quarter with iPhone sales growing by 131 percent and with our new iPhone OS 4.0 software coming this summer, we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”

Since Android can be found in a variety of form factors on all four US carriers, and since Verizon offers it as part of their BOGO (buy one, get one free) promotions, just like the BlackBerry, even if the NPD numbers hold up they’re not surprising.

That the iPhone’s market share is so high in the US, given they’re on one carrier with one form factor, is actually more surprising — only that it happens so often now we’ve stopped being surprised, especially after Apple’s last financial results statement.

And yes, we’re tired of beating that old horse as much as you’re tired of watching it get beaten, but Apple cares only about market share as much as it amplifies profit share. Google isn’t making direct money off of Android (though they do off monetizing services like search, which they also monetize on the iPhone) and on the low-margin, BOGO devices that give BlackBerry its lead, they’re not making Apple-sized margins either (they likely do better on Bold-class devices).

Needless to say, Apple’s not letting AT&T do BOGO for iPhone. For Apple, the iPhone is a premium product and they’d much rather maintain their huge lead in profit share than line discount bins for the sake of per-unit OS market share.

[Android Central, the Loop]

An Android-based tablet was captured on video running Flash — or should we say trying to run Flash — before it crashes:

“Here’s a quick and dirty hands-on video review of the Android multi-touch tablet prototype (Android ipad). Yes, it does Adobe flash and air well.”

Ironically, you can hear the cameraman boast how he’s happy he did not purchase an iPad just as he goes to YouTube and the tablet crashes.

(For the record, after watching this video I am perfectly content with my iPad purchase.)

In fairness, this is beta software on a beta device, and it will no doubt improve as they throw time, money, and hardware at it. Then again, it’s 2010 and Apple’s had YouTube on the iPhone since 2007, and now have it on the iPad (running cool to the touch with 10 hours of battery life).

Is Adobe proving Steve Jobs right?

Video after the break!

[Daring Fireball]

No sooner did the UK announcement of Google Maps Navigation bring word that an iPhone version would follow… some day, then Google goes into disaster recovery mode and says, um, uh… maybe not:

“We did not say we would bring it to iPhone, we said to date we’ve had it on Android and that in the future it may come to other platforms but did not confirm this will be coming to iPhone at all.”

In all fairness, it’s likely far more complicated to get Google Maps Navigation on the iPhone because, while Google can do what they want on their own Android Platform, Apple builds the Maps UI on the iPhone and controls the App Store, and that means Google and Apple likely have to work together to get this done and delivered. They’ve done that in the past with the built-in Street View and the separate Google Mobile app, but utterly failed to do it with Latitude, for example. (Never mind the colossal cluster-frak that was Google Voice).

But none of that means Google PR shouldn’t get it together. Maybe navigate over to a nice cup of coffee, hash things out, and then get back to us?

[PC World via MacRumors]

Hey, maybe free Google Maps Navigation for iPhone is what Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt were confabbing about over quinti-venti-lattes? Okay, maybe not but as part of the UK Google Maps Navigation roll out, they did once again say the envy-worthy, currently Android-only service would indeed be coming to the iPhone…

…they just still haven’t said when.

Psst, fella, we’ve got this huge iPhone OS 4 update coming this summer, how about then?

[via MacUser, thanks Chad!]

Yes, it’s completely useless and quasi pornographic to compare prototype and rumored specs for unannounced, unfinished devices like the iPhone HD (iPhone 4G) with specs from real, announced, and shipping or shipped devices like the Verizon Droid Incredible, Sprint EVO 4G, and Google Nexus One. But it’s damn fun.

We’ve gone over the iPhone HD design, given our thoughts on the hardware, so now check out the above graphic for just such a spec showdown. Yup, Android Central’s epic army (as composed by the one and only Phil Nickinson) goes one-on-one with the magical unicorn that might just be Apple’s next iPhone. Network, operating system, screen sizes, processors, memory, storage, data speed, MicroSD, rear camera, video recording, front camera, second mic, Adobe Flash support, Bluetooth, WiFi, MiFI-like hotspot, GPS, FM radio, TV-out, size, weight, battery, price, and SIM card support are all covered.

So get your geek on, click up top, and let us know how you think these devices stack up!