Lol, who on earth expects an iphone user to admit his phone is inferior or vice versa with an android?

I've tried both as well as the BB Storm2 and I know which one I'm using now and will be for a long time. Not going to say which I have, but c'mon guys/gals... you're all biased in favour of the one you've spent your money on.

I'm an iPhone user and I think Android beats iOS in many areas.

I have an iPod Touch 2G running iOS4 and an HTC Magic (aka the G2) running Android 1.6.

While iOS is a slick affair, I'm not getting the benefit of the limited multitasking introduced in iOS4 due to the hardware and Apples' decision making.

I like both OSes - my biggest gripe with Android is the lack of OS updates for the handset I own, fuelled by the breathless release schedule of new handsets (literally weeks apart). New phones with improved versions of the OS are pointless if you're already locked into a 18 or 24 month contract.

In the time I've had the iPod Touch I've installed two major OS releases (iOS3 & 4), and with at least 16 months left of a 2 year contract on Vodafone I'm looking forward to no prospect of an OS upgrade.

That said, I do like my phone and it's OS - just as well as I'm stuck with is for a good while yet.

This is the main reason I ditched Android - buying the 'killer' handset means you have a great phone for a month and then the next 'killer' handset is released which leaves yours out of date.

I have an iPhone and the OH has a G1 so I have some experience of the android operating system. Prefer the ios. It's more user friendly.

If you must refer to the OS rather than any other aspects of them, then for me the IOS choice wins hands-down. The sheer breadth and capability of the apps in the app store for an incredible amount of applications is just years ahead of anything else. For my particular job and lifestyle, IOS is the only place to find digislate clapperboards, audio room analysers, loudness meters, timecode calculators, medication schedulers, health trackers and all manner of other seemingly bizarre and obscure apps, a broad choice of them too, not just one or two. Being happy to pay for them makes their existence feasible, and it's a healthy market. You'll find similar attitudes in quite a few professions, IOS is the choice for professionals where Android needs to mature a lot before it reaches similar maturity (like Palm once had also).

I really can't understand this logic, your handset doesn't suddenly start doing less because a newer model has come along, you have a choice of upgrading or not. I know choice is something that terrifies Apples disciples but a lot of us quite like it.



You have transparent thumbs then?

Nothing to stop you obtaining a 3rd party ROM and flashing it. Then you'll get the latest OSes well before HTC/Samsung/etc bother to release it. Your phone doesn't have to become useless.

The G1 is now running 2.2 because of the hard work of the likes of xda-developers. Won't see that happening with many other non-Android phones (except WinMo, possibly)

(of course, HTC's attitude is rather indefensible at times, so I'm not trying to defend it)

If you buy a "killer" or High End" Android Phone (Desire/Nexus One) now then there's a high chance you will not need to worry about your handset being forgetten. It's highly rumoured by numerous tech sites, that Android 3.0 will provide it's own UI which will mean there won't be a need for UI like Sense. Obviously this means, instead of waiting for HTC etc to spend ages testing to upgrade your phone..you will automatically get the update as soon as Google releases it.

Google won't be able to release firmware for phones that aren't theirs (so anything that isn't the N1). What it might mean, if HTC actually upgrade any of their 2010 phones to 3.0, is that updates will take a lot less time to create since there is no Sense to worry about. HTC might use the "we can't do Sense, and the phone was sold with it, so no upgrade" excuse to not bother.

(particularly for the Desire, which is extremely similar to the Nexus One so there would not be a lot of work to port to it)

No my thumbs are moving all the times, my eyes seem to compensate, it doesn't cause me any problems. In fact I prefer playing games like Plants vs Zombies & Chuzzle on a touch screen than I do on a computer.

You say that but the HTC Hero was also extremely popular and look what happened to that, people had to wait until June 2010 to get the 2.1 update and I assume they have no chance of getting 2.2. Pretty poor support for a popular phone that just came out a year ago.

I think I would rather a phone where I am guaranteed all major updates in a timely manor for atleast 2 years after I buy the product.

Grow up, theres no need for comments like that - its off topic and attention seeking.

I received an HTC Hero pretty soon after it launched as HTC's newest flagship android device. It was quickly outdated and as many bitter Hero users will confirm, the updates were slow and patchy. Only now is it getting a 2.1 update which is an absolute joke. Of course you can always upgrade however as im sure youll agree, if you enter into a contract, buying a brand new handset every other month would make no sense and would financially cripple most people.

Indeed most people enter into 24 month contracts and you should at least get regular updates for that time period. At the very most the Desire will be supported till next year but even then I wouldn't hold my breathe.

2.2 is a decent update but hardly groundbreaking. It certainly doesn't make phones running anything else truly useless.

Only those who want to be on the bleeding edge would keep buying new phones (and logically wouldn't tie themselves into a 24 month contract), or failing that you could put an unofficial ROM on that gives you 2.2 on your Hero, and more.

We don't even know if HTC are going to not bother with a 2.2 update for the Hero. Given that they've just put a lot of work into 2.1, and 2.2 is not a huge leap, they might.

Yeah because the common person is gonna go install an unstable unofficial ROM onto their phone... The company should support the product you have purchased, you shouldn't be required to do this as it's piss poor customer support. Of coarse this is the problem with HTC bringing out so many handsets, they need to drop support for old ones fast. As soon as the HTC Desire HD is out the Desire will be ignored.

Unstable? The one I am running is hardly unstable.

Of course they should be expected to provide updates for a reasonable time. Not defending that (particularly when they are still selling the phone). I am just saying that there are other avenues and claiming the phone is "useless" is erroneous (it isn't useless, even on 2.1)

We'll see if HTC's support for handsets improves. I believe they have said they are trying.

Its pretty much universally agreed that the Hero wont receive any updates after this given how long its taken to get 2.1. Regardless of how little or much an update adds to an OS, its in the users best interest to be able to upgrade as soon as possible due to the fact that apps etc are made to take advantage of the newest OS features as small as they may be.

If I buy a Dell PC and then Windows 8 comes out and they don't upgrade it, is that piss-poor customer support? They support the phone as they have sold it, just like Nokia et al do.

HTC's upgrade policy or lack of, though, is not specifically an Android issue any more than the signal problem alluded to earlier are an iOS issue. It's annoying, yes, but then the comments we've seen on here about how the iOS4 update doesn't run particularly well on the 3G (and even 3GS in some cases) suggest that whacking an update on any old phone isn't always the best policy. I'm also getting a little tired of the "HTC release a new phone every week"-style comments though - they release a number of phones but they fit different price points in the market and therefore them releasing a new phone doesn't affect the current ones in any way. The Desire is still the flagship phone and probably will be until October-ish, by which time the Desire will have been out over 6 months. How often do Nokia release new phones? Noone seems to complain about them.

Android is pretty damn good for an OS still really in its infancy. It doesn't have the polish or established-ness of iOS but then the original iteration of the iPhone was a poor relation to what that phone is today. At the end of the day they are both awesome OSes that both allow you to do pretty much whatever you'd want to with your phone. Really there's nothing to choose between them other than brand loyalty or personal preference.

I think when he says unstable, he means that not all functions work properly. For example in the Hero 2.1 roms features such as gallery graphics, gps, camera quality etc were an issue. Flashing an unofficial rom unless its a leaked pre-release rom isnt an ideal solution unless youre into the rom scene.

I think the 'new phone every other week' comments are fair enough in that if HTC in particular keep releasing new killer handsets, or at least announcing killer handsets, its natural that focus on older (and by older I mean a few months old) hardware is going to become less of a priority. I dont mean this in an Apple are bloody amazing way, but the plus point of having one handset with one major update every year is that you know you have the primary focus of the manufacturer that will extend beyond a few months. Ive never owned a 3GS nor have I tried os4 on one so I cant really comment - I would agree that its a crap deal that it doesnt run properly on it.

It might have had something to do with 1.6 being fundamentally different to 2.1, and a lot of work was required to bolt Sense to it.

2.1 to 2.2 is hardly a giant leap.

I'll believe "there will be no 2.2" when HTC say it.

As for "Desire will be forgotten when the next phone comes out", I wouldn't be so sure. The Desire appears to be an extremely popular handset, with lots of people tied into contracts and unprepared to buy a new phone so soon. If HTC were to forget about them it might affect future sales quite badly. I might be tempted to consider another manufacturer next time, even though I use custom ROMs.

I have to admit my biggest issues with Android are the handset manufacturers. I'm not a fan of HTC, Samsung or Sony (I used to like Sony though before their phones started breaking all the time). I'm sure if Nokia made an Android phone it would really show the OS off but ofcoarse they are sticking to Symbian which although a decent OS is way behind iOS and Android ATM. I am however still looking forward to the N8 as I really like the look of it but my expectations are not great.

Also iOS4 works great on a 3GS, I have friends who use it and it almost as good as on the iPhone 4. The people with issues should do a clean install of the OS as i'm sure that's where the problem lies.

iOS4 on the 3G is another story, the handset is over 2 years old and only has 128MB of RAM and it really shows. Before you run any apps at all you only have like 40MB of free RAM so many of them run a little slow. Apple said they are looking into it and we may see a fix in 4.1 so it's good to know Apple aren't abandoning the 3G just yet. With that said if 4.1 doesn't fix it I will downgrade the phone back to iOS 3.

Of coarse i'm not saying that handset manufacturers should support phones for many years but they should atleast support them for the term of the mobile contract.

Also a 6 month turnover on your flagship phone is to much IMO, there isn't sufficient technological advancements to make it that much better but it does give the company yet another phone to support which leads to older but still well spec'd phones being dropped before their time. Even one phone a year doesn't add that much new technology so there is no need to being out a new handset faster than that. I mean who would buy a new computer every 6 month?

But not everyone can do that, or knows how to do it (much like custom Android ROMs). Since Apple has decided to inflict a dodgy OS on everyone they will have to make it work acceptably.

Fully agree or make it easier to downgrade to iOS3. IMO Apple should just have left the 3G on iOS3, most people wouldn't complain about dropping support for a 2 year old device.

The OS isn't exactly dodgy though it's just a little slower than the previous OS. The phone is still usable though but the framerate in some games isn't great. If it wasn't usable I would downgrade it now to the old OS but instead I am waiting to see if they fix it. The rumor is that spotlight uses alot of memory and disabling it would fix the problem but you can't completely disable it currently.