Why the Verizon iPhone Announcement Doesn’t Excite Me

For years, I have been frustrated that the iPhone was only available on AT&T. While AT&T claims to have great service and great coverage, they neglect to cover much of rural America. With zero bars, they simply were not an option for our area. I have waited every year for the Verizon iPhone announcement to be made, but now that they finally unveiled it today, I am not excited.  I think it will be great for Verizon and bad news for AT&T, but I have no plans to switch. It’s too little, too late for me because I’m perfectly happy with my HTC Desire Android phone. Since I’ve had my phone, my iPod touch gets used less and less, because I prefer using my phone for everything.

For me, an android phone just makes sense. I use almost all of Google’s services like GMail, Google Calendar, Google Voice, Google Reader, Google Docs, and Google Maps, and all of these are integrated much more tightly into the android operating system. You can truly customize android phones. I love having the ability to customize home screens with widgets and custom apps. For power users, there are even more features that you can unlock when you root your phone. I’m using the cyanogenmod rom, and I feel like my phone  will do anything that an iPhone will do and more.  The iPhone’s advantage is simplicity. It’s much harder to mess it up, and Apple’s control of the App store keeps everything under their control.

I think competition is great and the race between the iPhone and Android is now officially on. I can foresee today’s announcement really hurting the next generation of Windows Mobile phones and Blackberry. Microsoft waited too long to release a quality operating system for phones and Blackberry has not kept up with the increasing media and web fascination of the average user. Verizon has a strong android lineup, so it will be interesting to see how they sell compared to each other.

My final verdict

  • iPhone = great for the average user
  • android = great for the power user

Will you be switching? What are your thoughts? Leave me a comment and let me know.

Mike

I am a former design engineer who now pastors Cornerstone Community Church in Galax, Virginia. I'm passionate about following Jesus and I love technology. I've been married to Jennifer for 28 years, and we have three adult children.

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3 Responses

  1. What are power user features about Android that you recommend?

    • Mike says:

      The speed of innovation seems to be much faster on Android. I’ve had the ability to use my phone as a mobile hotspot for a good while now. You can load custom roms and launchers to change how your phone functions as well. Newer roms like MIUI take the best of the iphone interface and the best of the stock android interface and merge them together. I’m running the cyanogenmod rom which adds new features almost every month.

      The ability to customize the phone is amazing. I’ve got gestures on my unlock screen to automatically launch certain programs. If you draw a C, it automatically launches the camera. LauncherPro and ADWLauncherEX both add tons of new features as well. You really have a lot of options in your settings to setup your phone like you want it. However, android also gives you the ability to screw everything up if you don’t know what you’re doing. So that’s why I think the iPhone is better for the average user.

      • Yea that’s interesting. I guess how I can see that the open platform would tend toward more power user functions. It’s a tough call, since I’m thinking about buying a smart phone asap.

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