It is no secret to anyone that reads this blog regularly that I am a big fan of the iPhone. I just upgraded my personal phone to the iPhone 4, and I’m extremely happy with it. I’ve been in the iPhone camp since the very beginning – I switched off of RIM on the day the first iPhone was released, and I haven’t looked back since.
For a variety of reasons, I recently needed to get a second phone specifically for work. My initial reaction was to simply get another iPhone and carry on. But in thinking about it more, I decided it would be more interesting to go in another direction and get an Android based phone instead. I felt that this would give me the perspective I needed to better judge where Apple is going with the iPhone, as well as to get some real-world experience with with what will no doubt be the most significant competitor to iOS.
After looking around, I decided to go with the Samsung Captivate Galaxy S (also on AT&T). It seemed to have a highly regarded implementation of Android 2.1, and Samsung has committed to have an upgrade to Android 2.2 available for it when it’s rolled out.
I still have a bit to learn with the Captivate, so I’m going to hold off commenting on it in detail until I come up the curve. My initial impressions are fairly positive, with the AMOLED display, responsive touch screen, and excellent camera all toping the list of well done features. The interface lacks the polish of iOS, and it has some non-intuitive aspects that I’m going to need to figure out. The app store also has relatively slim pickings and is difficult to find new things in – definitely not impressed there at all. That said, I’m really open to having a good experience with Android – especially as 2.2 is about to be released and more development focus moves to the platform.
I’m looking forward to sharing my experiences with you as I adapt to my first non-Apple phone in a long time.
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