Long Story Short

The main thing that stands out in moving from iPhone to Android is how much more work it is to get an Android phone to do what I consider to be all the basic smartphone functions.  Now, calling favorites is easy and intuitive.  Set up your favorites in the pre-installed widget and give them their own home page.  Touch their face and talk to them.  10 out of 10.  I’m no longer on Verizon so chances are I can actually make the call.  However, Verizon did drop my Father’s Day call from my son as I drove through the western mountains of Virginia.

The big four of smartphone uses are the four C’s, Calendar, Contacts, Chats, and Calls.  If you are a Gmail user, just enter your Gmail account info when setting up the phone and you can use all the Android apps.  However, HTC includes some nice apps that require a second setup using either Microsoft Exchange or pop/IMAP settings.  That’s fine for non-Google accounts but redundant for Google accounts.  I did find this more straightforward than either setting up syncing through iTunes or MS Exchange on the iPhone.

But it is not all sweetness and light once we leave the land of meat and potatoes and head to the side dishes of smartphone life.  The iPod on the iPhone is slick.  The only gig on the iPhone is that one has to manually update podcasts or hook up to a computer and sync with iTunes, which automatically updates podcasts.  However, the interface for music and podcasts is beautiful.  It matters not whether we are listening to albums, artists, genres, audio podcasts or video podcasts.  It is beautiful, intuitive, and all in one place.

An Android phone breaks the iPod function out into multiple applications.  There is an Android Music app.  It is beautiful and also allows playing by artist, album, playlist, song, genre, or composer.  One can easily make or add to a playlist.  Hold your finger down on an album or song and follow the menu for adding to a playlist.  You can also copy m3u format playlists from your computer.  Getting music onto the phone is as easy as copying it to an external thumb drive.  HTC adds an attractive widget for this app.

There is an audio podcast app, Listen.  Listen bests the iPhone in one area only.  It updates podcasts over the air automatically.  No need to manually pick new episodes or hook up to a computer.  The ability to find a podcast with Listen’s search function is horrible, however.  I found myself shopping for podcasts in the iTunes store and then copying the URL of the podcast and then typing it into Listen using their ‘Add Subscription’ function.  Awkward and shameful from a company that is primarily known for their ability to perform a search.

Both viewing photos and videos are done using the Photos app.  There is no way to subscribe to a video podcast of which I am aware.  There is no way to bookmark where one leaves off viewing a video.  Like the new iPhone one can do basic picture edits, but there is no iMovie equivalent for videos.

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