Why only a choice of these two, in the 3rd and 4th places of market share? This isn't like asking Coke or Pepsi (which are the 1st and 2nd places).
My preferred choice is Symbian. Android looks fine too, and I'd much prefer that over IOS. Though I'd prefer just about anything to the IPhones, based on how many features they lacked over the years. (Not even sure why the earlier generations counted as a "smartphone", when it was just as locked down as a feature phone, and lacked many basic features. If Internet access and running apps counts as a smartphone, then just about every bog standard phone made in the last 5 years is a smartphone - the days when only high end phones could do this were around 8-10 years ago!)
There's also far more choice than the Droid, if you don't like the form as Crbarber22695 says. You've got things like the Nexus One and HTC Desire; and my Nokia 5800 is sleek enough for me
Technically, iPhones have the slight edge; that is, any phone out now (that I'm aware of, anyway) won't compare to the new iPhone's screen.
Well, we can't say they have the slight edge, based solely on one factor though.
Also, consider all the years when the IPhones had a very low resolution. I find it interesting that no one ever considered that a problem then, but all of a sudden when screen resolution is the one thing the IPhone allegedly does better, suddenly it's the most important factor...
Seriously, go to an Apple shop and take a look, it is magnificent. However, it's simply not worth the cost. Android-based phones just offer so much more value for money that it would be insane to buy an iPhone.
I agree
In terms of the OS, they both do pretty much the same thing. The App Store on the iPhone has more apps, and you'll find apps for the iPhone that you can't get for the Android, but frankly, the difference is totally insignificant
I agree it's insignificant, but also note that comparing app store counts is unfair, as on Apple, you can only release on their app store. It would be silly to claim for example, that the IPhone has more software than Windows, based solely on the fact that there's no Microsoft app store!
Like I said, the OSes are basically the same; they offer pretty much the same functionality, at the same speed. The Android, though, can multitask, which is pretty damn useful...
Yep, find this useful on Symbian too. Surely the whole point of a smartphone is to behave like a general purpose computer - if I wanted Internet access and apps without multitasking, you can get a feature phone that does the job at a fraction of the price. I think they _finally_ added it, but that's the whole problem - as with basic features like copy/paste, having a decent resolution, video recording, video calls, MMS - it all comes years after the competition (and when it does come, there's usually a big fanfare as if Apple did it first).
And, as GenocidicBunny said, you can make your own apps! For me, at least, that's a pretty big plus; even though there is usually an app that will do what you want, just knowing that you can make your own just in case is a big plus.
Yes, the idea of paying a company for the privilege of writing your own software seems mad to me. Symbian is great for development - it now uses the crossplatform toolkit Qt, which makes development easy, and it's trivial to crosscompile to Maemo/Meego, Windows, Linux and OS X.
You can put CivRev on your iPhone.
Therefore iPhone wins
It's depressing that so many companies are deciding to cater only for the IPhone. Even more depressing when the UK Government and public funded organisations like the BBC are doing it. When this happens with Windows, there's an uproar, but catering for only ~3% of the phone market is apparently fine. At least Windows has 90+% market share, and it's number one - in so-called "smartphone" OSs, ignoring J2ME, Apple are still only 3rd place in the US, and 4th worldwide, with no sign of overtaking anyone (Q2 2010 results showed Android was increasing sales fastest, with Symbian 2nd, Blackberry 3rd, meaning the gap between all those and Apple is increasing, not decreasing).
