Going Droid

Survey from ChangeWave Research: click through for details

(via MediaPost)

I’ve been thinking that when my current contract is up this holiday season I would move to an Android-based phone. I’ve loved some things about my iPhone – it has essentially sold me on the utility of touch-based interfaces – but other things about it drive me batty, and the constant upgrade-jailbreak-restore dance just isn’t worth the trouble.

Apparently I’m not alone. According to this survey from Change Wave:

Among consumers planning to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days, 37% say they prefer to have the Android OS on their new phone — a 7-pt jump since our previous survey and a new all-time high for the Google operating system.

Add this to the data from earlier this week that developers are betting on Android as an OS:

What’s different is that percentage of developers who consider Android’s long-term prospects to be brighter than those of iOS has increased by about 10% in the past three months. In June 2010, 54% of developers said Android had the best long-term outlook, compared to 40.4% who believed iOS would do better over time. In September, 2010, 58.6% of developers saw a better future in Android, compared to 34.9% who rated iOS’s potential superior.

Of course folks have been predicting “the death of Apple” as long as the company’s been around – I’m sure they’ll do just fine without me. But it does feel like the ground is quietly shifting a bit.

10 Comments

  1. I’m not sure if switching to Android will solve your jailbreak issues. I’m on Verizon Incredible and each time there is an update, I have to research and figure out how to not lose root. In the end, I’ve switched to a 3rd party ROM to simplify things, but that gives me an uneasy feeling. Who knows what is on a ROM. I can only assume by it’s popularity that there is nothing nasty, but I don’t know for sure. So far, the only solution for a truly free smartphone is the Nexus One, which is discontinued.

  2. Good point.

    Does Android allow you to put music on and off the device as though it were just another usb/mounted volume?

    I listen to lots of podcasts and hate hate hate the way one is required to move music on and off the iPhone through iTunes. (As an old Archos Jukebox user I still want direct file access to tunes).

  3. I just ordered the Samsung Vibrant from T-Mobile. I’ve been a BlackBerry user for the last 5 years.

    There are a bunch of new Android phones coming out that have better hardware than the iPhone. However, there are a ton of compromises you make when you buy hardware that has to run on someone’s network. For example, I know there will be application icons that are perma-glued to the home page.

    You also compromise with the hardware manufacturer. From what I understand, Samsung has a UI skin that detracts from the beauty of the original Android UI. However, removing the skin could brick your device.

    I made a promise to myself that I am not going to fiddle with my phone. It just isn’t worth the time or effort! I think the iPhone is a great phone, and if you can convince yourself to not hack it, you may just want to stick with it.

  4. My iPhone 3G hasn’t been exactly a great phone – it’s been a nice portable internet device, but I’ve always had dropped calls intermittently, and not the greatest battery life.

    More recently, my 3G has decided to stop connecting to wifi – at all, anywhere. Haven’t had the time or energy to go visit a genius bar and get it looked at but going back from 4.x to 3.x and doing a full restore of the iOS didn’t do it. (And I know it isn’t a security/key/wireless settings problem – tried too many wide open public networks that once worked).

    Not trying to knock the phone, but it certainly hasn’t been perfect.

  5. Of course, in that same survey, customer satisfaction for iPhones was at 74%, and for Android devices just 65% – so I guess I shouldn’t leap too quickly.

  6. My Blackberry keyboard is dying. Also, I have heard that slide-out keyboards can fail. So I have decided to go without the physical keyboard and will use Swype.

    Look for my review of the Samsung Vibrant, if Amazon ever gets around to shipping it.

  7. Nothing about Symbian? I agree it’s dying, like Plam but it still has some marketshare.Ans a SE user is a little bit similar to a iPhone user: both love their phone experience.

  8. I do like the Nokia E series phones with qwerty keyboards which run Symbian, but I just don’t know that it is competitive these days with Android and iOS in terms of innovative new development.

    I will be sure to try all three before making a decision come December.

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