Indecision
Our fearless leader recently made the decision to get all of his tireless, dedicated, and amazing employees new smartphones (Thanks Dave!). For the majority of us the decision of which phone to get was an easy one – an iPhone. For others, it wasn’t so easy. For me, it was a struggle.
I’ve never owned an Apple product. In fact, I’ve avoided it like the plague. I didn’t want to be forced to use iTunes. I didn’t want to use a proprietary cable to charge or manage my phone. I didn’t want to overpay for generic technology wrapped in a nice package and I didn’t want a product that doesn’t have any option for expandability (No memory card slot).
What I really wanted to do was get an Android phone. Android can do anything an iPhone can do and more. You have a wide variety of models and manufacturers when choosing an Android phone. If you choose wisely you’ll end up paying less money for better hardware and a phone that you can customize to your heart’s content. Android is becoming very popular and Google is constantly updating the Android platform and its app store is increasing its content every day.
Why didn’t I get an Android based phone? It came down to one thing – updates. I’ve stated that Google keeps Android up to date and that is true. However, phone manufacturers modify Android to work with their specific devices. Any updates released by Google have to be modified for all the different variations of Android phones on the market. This means that if you happen to buy an Android based phone that doesn’t sell well it is entirely possible that the manufacturer will simply never release an update for it. Tailoring an update to work with modified Android operating systems costs money and phone manufacturers (and carriers) are under no obligation to keep their phones up to date. So you bought an Android phone and want this really cool app that only works with Android 2.3? Tough. Your phone is stuck on Android 2.2 for eternity. Congratulations, your device is already out of date and it’s only a month old.
An iPhone is a sure thing. If Apple updates iOS your phone will get the update regardless of what carrier you are with. Have a problem with your phone? Call Apple. They aren’t going anywhere (at least until the anti-trust law suits start happening). Sure, I can’t customize my iPhone beyond changing background images and ringtones (but not text tones, that’s too much to ask) but that is part of its allure. If you can’t modify it you can’t screw it up and it’s going to work for years to come.