I’ve been using the Droid for almost a week now, and while amazing, it does make me appreciate some of the things we have going on with the iPhone.
Multi-touch – I still find myself trying to zoom in on the browser with a reverse pinch. The Android browser is perfectly usable with it’s double tab zoom, but the pinch wins. Unfortunately, Apple has a patent application in on that which may be preventing others from implementing it.
Byline – I use Google Reader to keep up on feeds, and the Byline iPhone app is an amazing iPhone front-end to Google reader. I like it better than Google Reader. There are some Android apps that uses Google Reader, but nothing blows me away. What kills me is that this is Google’s OS. How can they not have a GReader app built in, or at least available.
The home button – There’s something natural about hitting that big round button on the iPhone. I can use the phone in the dark. My three year old can use it. The Droid has four “buttons” on the bottom that are just touch-screen buttons, nothing tactile to center you without looking or fumbling.
Facebook App – The facebook app on the iPhone is better than Facebook itself. The Facebook app on Android seems like an afterthought they threw at Zuckerberg’s 14 year old nephew to pull together in case this Android thing takes off.
Prowl and Boxcar – Boxcar is a great app that implements push notifications for Twitter and Facebook. Thankfully, Android apps can run in the background and can take care of their own notifications, and the twitter apps do notify on mentions, etc. I guess it’s just the Facebook notifications that I miss. Prowl will push Growl alerts from your desktop to your iPhone. It isn’t immediately obvious why that’s so great and you sort of need to figure this one out for yourself, so give it a try.
Ember – At my company, we LIVE in Basecamp and Campfire. Mostly Campfire. Ember is a kick-ass iPhone app for Campfire. No such app exists on Android yet. WHAT???
Audio books – Audible doesn’t support Android yet. boo.
Kindle – Amazon hasn’t build an Android Kindle app yet. boo.
Tweetie – There are plenty of Twitter apps on Android, but nothing comes close to Tweetie. I heart Tweetie.
the iPhone itself – when I go back to using the iPhone, especially after using something else for a few days, it is just so usable. The form factor, the buttons, the software interface, all of it. Amazing.
Now before you get all over my shit for comparing the iPhone and the Droid, let me say that there are at least ten things that I’d miss in the other direction. Much more significant and important things. But that’s for another post.
Have you switched from iPhone to Droid? What do you miss?
