Droided...

I almost ordered an iPhone 4 the night my beloved iPhone 3G died. But fate shone down on me and a spare Droid at the office was found and I'm glad I never placed that order. I've been using an unlocked Motorola Milestone for the last few days and my suspicions have been confirmed.

I recently blogged for Macadamian about 'iPhone vs Android vs Windows Phone 7 from a development managers point of view', and, well, now I can at least do the Android vs iPhone comparison from a user's perspective.

First impressions so far:

UI - it's good - not great. Reminds me still of an early 2000s BMW. They look good, but... you certainly don't go 'oooooohhhhh' like you do when an <insert Italian car manufacturer here> drives by.

User Experience Consistency - Submitting an application to Apple and following their UI guidlines might be as enjoyable as getting teeth pulled, but it works, iPhone apps are usually consistently usable. By contrast, the user experience from a droid application to another just isn't as polished compared to the iPhone. Once again it works - but this time it reminds me of sitting down in a corvette. WTF are the grand am radio controls doing in here??? Seriously sometimes things just feel out of place.

Creativity/Out of the box thinking - a side effect of not having a dictator-like grip on the UI/UX... well everything to do with getting your application to market, is there is a positive side effect. Some of the application have some pretty neat and intuitive ways to get about them, and they don't necessarily follow all the rules. For example, I really like the use of press and hold menu's. They just make sense. Apple - do more of this.

Overall I like it. It sync's beautifully with gmail and Google Enterprise (duh!) it really would have been tragic had it not. It's not as sexy as the iPhone, but being a creative enginmaneer that likes functionality that works beautifully, I will sacrifice some sex appeal for practicality and versatility. Will I switch? Not for a Milestone, the slide out keyboard sucks but I am seriously thinking about a Samsung Galaxy. Yup - Droid you've won me over, for now. Bring on the WP7.