PRESENT TENSE: GETTING RID of the iPhone and going Android takes guts. All right, so no one will give you a medal; it hardly registers on the People of the Year-ometer; there won't be a picture of you on the front of your local paper, holding the iPhone over a bin while pulling an exaggerated look that says "Local's Brave Phone Battle".
But deciding which way to go means stepping on to the front line of what is the current Great War of Technology. Until recently it seemed obvious that the iPhone was the side you needed to be on. Here was a device as shiny, clean and rich as Steve Jobs’s head. Why go from swinging through its lush ecosystem into the ragged, ugly landscape of an Android phone?
Yet, that bit of ugliness, it turns out, is a pretty attractive thing. Two weeks ago, I changed from iPhone to Android (a Samsung Galaxy S2) and, aside from the gee-whizz factor of the technology itself, what’s most surprising about going to Android is how quickly the iPhone appears small and even a little drab. This great icon of modern style suddenly looks like something of a runt, its screen measly and smudged. And each time you see one, it looks pretty much identical to the last one you saw.
On the other hand, the Samsung Galaxy S2 – as with other Android phones – is immediately shaped by its owner, and what is refreshing about this is just how ugly it makes your phone. Oh, there is beauty in the Android: the size of the screen and clarity of the picture; the way the glass remains almost smear free; its speed. But if it were a person it would have blemishes, a crooked nose and a cowlick. It has, in other words, character.
The iPhone, on the other hand, is just one character. Even now, after they’ve canned that campaign, it’s still that guy from the Mac-versus-PC ads. And he really needs a new T-shirt.
Apple has been very good in recent years at making it very clear that your choice of device is about being in or being out, which it rammed home through sardonic humour and perfectly judged self-satisfaction in its Mac v PC ads.
They challenged you to be either the casually hip guy in lightly distressed jeans and simple T-shirt, or a guy wearing glasses, professorial suit and a smirk that would be wiped from his face precisely 30 seconds after the ad began. There was no way you wanted to be that guy, it said. Apple might as well have replaced its music with a simple sting that replicated the snort of a pompous record store guy.
The thing is that, after a while, PC guy began to have his merits. He dressed in a manner appropriate to his age – his supposed naffness actually being somewhat ahead of the curve, judging by today’s hipster trends. He seemed to be a steady fellow who had some kind of reliable, pensionable job compared to the Mac guy, who will no doubt have seen his design company fail in the recession. And he failed repeatedly, predictably, quickly. He was, in other words, the everyman.
Anyway, PC guy is yesterday’s enemy. It’s Android guy now, and that fight is getting louder, and closer. As Android sales outpace that of the iPhone, the courts have been busy. Apple has won the first round of a case in which Android-phone maker HTC is accused of violating its intellectual property rights. HTC has bought a company that has already won a similar case against Apple. Samsung is accused of stealing the look of the iPhone’s icons. And Google, which originally bought and developed Android, is accusing Apple, Microsoft and others of ganging up on it.
In the meantime, the fight is spreading. Apple’s iPad owns the tablet market now, but the alternatives, having been left behind at first, will make ground in the next couple of years. So, you will soon be forced to be either the Apple or Android not just on your phone but also when buying your tablet.
The result is that the average buyer will find themselves standing at the till, paralysed by the choice between going for the guy with the mesmerisingly good teeth or the one with the endearingly crooked nose. Right now, it’s worth backing the guy who looks like he’s been in a fight.
Twitter: @shanehegarty
