Iphone Vs Android

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.

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.

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.

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.

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