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Why I Can’t Kick The Apple iPhone Habit

Why I Can’t Kick The Apple iPhone Habit

Louis
Gray just wrote an interesting post about how he kicked iPhones
out of his life and went with Android. I could write that post too.
After all, I agree with it in principle, even if I can’t take the step
and cross over the iPhone/Android barrier.

He isn’t the first, either, to advocate giving up your iPhone and
going with one running Google’s Android OS. Leo Laporte told me the same
thing at FooCamp (Tim O’Reilly’s campout where he invites a few
hundred geeks for a weekend campout at O’Reilly’s headquarters).
Although Leo was holding an iPhone he told me he is kicking the iPhone
habit and going Android.

On vacation I had dinner with Brett Schulte, who is an IT
consultant for celebrities. He’s the one who got me on the set of
Criminal Minds and is one of those few influencers that companies try to
get to push their products onto sets and into actors’ hands. He’s
kicked the iPhone to the curb for the same reasons Louis gave.

And I do try. I’ve had three Android-based phones in my hands in the
past nine months: a Droid, a Nexus One, and a Sprint EVO. I’ve also
tried a Verizon Incredible and a Hero.

All of these phones have some magical features, to be sure. I loved
having the EVO be a wifi hotspot. I like some of the apps better on
Android, in particular, Google Voice, Google Maps, and Google Buzz. All
are way better than anything on the iPhone.

But still I can’t kick the iPhone habit. Why not?

1. I’m more productive on the iPhone. You might say I didn’t give
Android enough of a shot. But I completely stopped using the iPhone for
two weeks to see if I could get my Android skills up. I still was
faster and more comfortable with using the iPhone. More on why in a
second.

2. The hardware is simply superior. Even with the weird
antenna issue I just like the way iPhones are built. They feel better
in my hands and that’s important to me since I use these devices SO
MUCH during my day. The screen on the iPhone 4 is simply superior to
anything Android has today. Leo told me “wait until you see the
Samsung.” Well, OK, but the Samsung isn’t out yet. When it is I’ll try
it out and see if that gets me to kick my iPhone habit.

3a. Apps on
iPhone are way better quality. Sorry, but the apps I count on, things
like the Twitter app, the Facebook app, the camera/photography/video
apps, location apps, etc are almost wholly superior on iPhone than on
Android.

3b. More app choices on iPhone, especially in games. I keep
finding world-class games on iPhone that haven’t been ported yet to
Android. I should make a list.

4. I hate AT&T’s quality, but I
don’t hate it enough to leave. I didn’t really understand that, but
then I started keeping track of how often I use voice. On my phone I
only use voice about 5% of the time I use my iPhone. Almost all the
rest of the time I’m using it for Twitter, to read news, to interact
with apps, to play games, to Facetime with my sons/wife, etc. In
non-voice parts of using the iPhone AT&T’s lack of quality of
service doesn’t matter at all. Most of the time I’m doing those kinds
of things I’m on wifi anyway. To gain better voice quality, which I
only use about 5% of the time, I’d have to give up a better experience
on the web and in apps, which just isn’t acceptable to me.

5. Apple
users tend to use more apps. I’ve been asking my friends who have
Android apps how many apps they have. The average, so far, is about
half of the apps that my iPhone-using friends have. Also, something
else I noticed, when comparing experiences with SlideShare’s CTO,
Jonathan Boutelle, was that we both noticed that Android users haven’t
purchased many apps yet. That is something I’m hearing from app
developers, too, which explains why the best developers put most of
their time into the Apple platform and aren’t working as hard on the
Android. But to me this is a bummer because the way I discover new apps
is to talk to people. In airports you’ll see me stalking iPhone users
asking them what their favorite apps are, or online you’ll see me
searching through Appsfire.com for
new apps. Is there an Appsfire for Android? My point exactly. There is a
network effect with apps and Android hasn’t gotten there yet. Will
they? I’m sure they will, Google seems to have the same advantages that
Microsoft had in earlier platform battles with Apple, but TODAY Google
hasn’t come close and that means I can’t kick my iPhone habit.

6.
Battery life. My Android phones totally suck when compared to the
iPhone 4. My son literally texted with friends all day while at
Disneyland (nothing like a teenager obsessed with texting). At 11 p.m.
he still had 36% battery left on his iPhone 4 and I had 50% left, even
after using it a lot as a camera taking video and photos of the family
and checking into Twitter after an earthquake closed down a lot of the
rides there. My Android-based phones don’t come close. My Sprint EVO
used 40% of its battery on ONE one-hour phone call. Louis says he gets
pretty good battery life, but then I started asking him what he did with
his phone to get that and he turned a lot of stuff off that came on by
default. I didn’t have to do that on our iPhones.

7. Camera
features and aspirational advertising. You know, I’ve had tons of Nokia
phones with two cameras. I’ve never used them as much as I’ve used the
one in my iPhone. Why? Affordances. My iPhone affords using these
features. It is easy, and when someone calls me I can see if they can
use Facetime with me. Plus, their advertising is aspirational and gets
my friends to WANT to try these new features out. I’ve never had
someone get a new Nokia phone, call me, and beg me to try out a new
feature. I’ve gotten DOZENS of those kinds of calls in the past three
weeks.

So, why am I more productive on iPhones than on Android?

It came down to small things that I’ve noticed. For one, each app
works more consistently. On Seesmic on Android, for instance, I could
scroll to the top of its window by clicking a red bar. On every iPhone
app that happens by clicking the top bar. On EVERY app. On Android it
isn’t in the same place, or with the same command.

When I want to edit text, I just click and the cursor on the iPhone
enters the place where I clicked. On the Android it doesn’t work as
consistently. Partly because some of the screens aren’t as sensitive as
the iPhones, but partly if you click too long a dialog box asking if
you’d like to copy text comes up. Grrr.

On other things, when I double-click columns of text the iPhone works
how I expect it to: the text zooms to fill the maximum width of the
screen. On Android it often would overzoom so now I’d have to scroll
around to read. Add in the extra readability of the new screen and this
is maddening, but is a little thing very few people would notice.

I’m sure lots of people will argue with me and tell me how the
Android is already superior in all of these cases. They probably are
correct: for them.

But I’ve tried it out and continue doing so (I keep my Verizon
account and Motorola Droid and I keep playing with it just to see if I
can kick the iPhone habit) and for me I’m still addicted to the iPhone.

When that addiction ends, you’ll be the first to know since I’m in
agreement that Google is the company I’d rather be in bed with than
Apple but for now I just can’t kick the Apple habit and I’m very happy
with giving Steve Jobs more of my money because Apple definitely has
built the best mobile device on the market today.

Tomorrow? We’ll see.

How about you? Have you kicked your iPhone habit?

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