iPhone or Android?

• 

iPhone or Android? These are the two biggest players in the smart-phone market right now. When you walk into buy your next phone, you need to know which one rules above the other.

Matt: I was a loyal Blackberry user for years, but had some terrible luck after my first one broke. A quick tangent: they essentially sent me four different “refurbished” phones over the next four months that all somehow ceased working in their own unique way. That was it with Blackberry for me, so I made the switch over to Android. I don’t really know very much about the inner workings of the technology (I’m sure Mercho will offer that side of it for you), but I like to think I have some aesthetic taste. The iPhone’s menu is pretty boring in my opinion, whereas the Android has six different menu options.  The just seemed to be more personalizing options on the Android system. The biggest plus, though? There are so many phones to choose from that run on Android technology. There’s just one iPhone.

Jay: I used to have an iPhone, but I fell down some steps and broke the screen. Funny story. Anyway, The iPhone was great, but in order to make it the phone I wanted it to be, I had to “jailbreak” it and do all this shady gray-area stuff. It seemed (to me at least), that Apple wanted to restrict customization as much as possible. After that iPhone, I had a smaller, less-smartphone from Samsung, which was great, but not as fully-featured. This past year, I made the switch to Android and I couldn’t be happier. Everything I loved about the iPhone was present on the Droid, and everything I didn’t was easily changed. Like Matt says, there are so many ways to personalize an Android phone, and they don’t make you pay for ringtones and such. The Android Market isn’t as deep as the App Store, but it’s close, and many of the best apps are present in both. My advice? Get an Android.

Sophie: I once had to research this as part of a job application (my job search took me all over the place, clearly) and the security risks with the Android are REAL.  It’s by far the easiest phone to hack into — and security breaches happen all the time.  And I’m, like, important, so people are always trying to hack into my phone.  Plus the iPhone is so clean looking!  Anyway, you can play Angry Birds on either one (yeah, I just discovered that game.  Always late to the party.)  And I’m still a loyal BlackBerry user (BBM for life! No???) so I’m mostly answering iPhone to be unique.

Alex: Android. Without a doubt. So much more freedom in terms of selecting your own user interface, more frequent updates, more devices and more features. I was once a big fan of the iPhone, and I respect the contribution it made to the cell phone industry in terms of advancing the quality of phones, but Android devices are simply better in (almost) every aspect. Obviously, it depends on the phone, some Android phones are much better than others, overall; however, it’s a crystal clear decision. Also, angry birds is free on Android…not so on the iPhone.

•