What "functionality" does Android have over iOS or WP?

[Mitlov]

I've seen in a few different discussions with a few different people the assertion that, compared to Android, iOS or Windows Phone lacks "functionality" or "basic functionality." What are things you can do on Android that you can't do on Apple or Microsoft's operating systems?

This isn't a rhetorical question; I'm genuinely curious. I'm due for a new device early next year, and while I'll probably go WP8 simply due to my severe Zune Pass addiction, US Cellular is getting the Galaxy S III so I figured I should at least do some due diligence investigation into the competition.

[Adama D. Brown]

I've seen in a few different discussions with a few different people the assertion that, compared to Android, iOS or Windows Phone lacks "functionality" or "basic functionality." What are things you can do on Android that you can't do on Apple or Microsoft's operating systems?

This isn't a rhetorical question; I'm genuinely curious. I'm due for a new device early next year, and while I'll probably go WP8 simply due to my severe Zune Pass addiction, US Cellular is getting the Galaxy S III so I figured I should at least do some due diligence investigation into the competition.

I'm not intimately familiar with either iOS or WP7, so this list is by necessity a little vague and not in depth, however:

Alternate applications. If you don't like the default email client in Android, you can use a different one, for which there are many. Same for contacts, file manager, etcetera. I don't know about WP, but that's not the case on iOS.

Customizability. If you don't like the way Android works normally, you can change it a dozen different ways, ranging from superficial to completely system-altering choices.

Hardware choices. With Android you can get keyboards, sliders, big screens, little screens, just about any hardware you'd be likely to want. Not the case with iOS, and severely limited when it comes to WP. I can probably name 5 high quality Android models, whereas WP has basically the Lumias.

Developer support. Android has more apps than iOS, and far more than Windows Phone, along with a greater rate of growth.

It's not exactly a platform thing, but most high end Android phones have the ability to do HDMI out either with a standard $3 cable or with a simple $7 adapter. The iPhone needs a $40 adapter, and I don't think it's an option with any of the current Windows Phones.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

[Mitlov]

Thanks, good response.

I'm not intimately familiar with either iOS or WP7, so this list is by necessity a little vague and not in depth, however:

Alternate applications. If you don't like the default email client in Android, you can use a different one, for which there are many. Same for contacts, file manager, etcetera. I don't know about WP, but that's not the case on iOS.

There are some third-party contacts apps on the WP7 marketplace, but personally, I think the People hub works so well, I haven't looked into any of them. I don't know of any third-party email solutions, but once again, since I personally really like the native email app (which includes threaded views, easy sorting of mail into folders, etc), I haven't looked into it.

But for someone who doesn't like the native apps, I could see that as a selling point.

Customizability. If you don't like the way Android works normally, you can change it a dozen different ways, ranging from superficial to completely system-altering choices.

Fair enough. Neither iOS nor WP allow much customization of the user interface. I personally think both work really well, so for me that issue is more theorical than practical, but I could see how for other people it's a more practical issue (or the theoretical issue offends them more than it offends me).

Hardware choices. With Android you can get keyboards, sliders, big screens, little screens, just about any hardware you'd be likely to want. Not the case with iOS, and severely limited when it comes to WP. I can probably name 5 high quality Android models, whereas WP has basically the Lumias.

I'm not sure I'd agree. I think there's a lot of diversity among WP phones available in the US. Sure, some of them are "dated" designs, but since WP7 has severe hardware limitations (one resolution, single-core processors), that's not a huge distinguishing factor from a new WP7 design. If you want a physical keyboard, you can get the HTC 7 Pro from US Cellular or HTC Arrive from Sprint. If you want a small handset, there's the HTC Trophy from Verizon or Lumia 710 from T-Mobile. AT&T offers five different WP handsets, from the gorgeous-screened Samsung Focus S and the gorgous-bodied Nokia Lumia 900 to the huge, camera-oriented HTC Titan II, to the budget-oriented Focus Flash and Focus II.

Developer support. Android has more apps than iOS, and far more than Windows Phone, along with a greater rate of growth.

Not to be glib, but how many of those are "fart apps"? Comparing iOS and Android, in my experience, iOS is still the first platform to get high-end mobile games, productivity software, and quality children's entertainment software.

I'll agree that WP is still waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind on this front, though it's not quite as dire as it used to be. We have Final Fantasy!

It's not exactly a platform thing, but most high end Android phones have the ability to do HDMI out either with a standard $3 cable or with a simple $7 adapter. The iPhone needs a $40 adapter, and I don't think it's an option with any of the current Windows Phones.

Yeah, I don't know of any HDMI out solutions for WP.

[brickman65]

Android has more apps and developer support than iOS?!?! Really?? Not sure I agree with that one. Others yes but not that one.

[Drillbit]

Really, fart apps? There are a lot of high quality games on Android. Try Asphalt 7 or Shadowgun. The margin between Android and iOS apps are remarkably close, and in many cases Android apps have better features for example.

1. Android is the only OS I've seen whose forums do "Show your Homescreen" threads.

10 Best Homescreens of 2011 - MyColorscreen Blog

2. Best notification and alerts system I've seen on a mobile platform by far. The notification curtain system is simply outstanding. Attempts to copy and differentiate with iOS's own version has fallen short. There are a whole bunch of reasons about the Android notification system but I won't list them for now. ICS as well as Android UIs continues to enhance this curtain. Notification systems also extend to the creative use of notification lights.

3. Launchers. These apps are complete shells that takes over the main user interface. Often launchers allow fine grain of options and control over elements of the interface. For example, the degree of transition animations; categorization of the application homescreen into games, recently opened, and so on.

4. Modifiable lock screens. Yeah, you can change that, like turning the lock to open GMail directly from the lockscreen, for example.

5. Multitasking menu (ICS only). This is clearly the best I've seen so far. Used to be it was WebOS and everyone was copying the flow card format from WebOS. Yes, it was Mattias Duarte who designed that part for WebOS. What he did on Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich is to outdo his previous work on WebOS.

6. Modular, system wide app sharing system. Adding apps increases the options of sharing as each new app interfaces with the sharing system. This lets me share to Facebook, Picasa, Google+, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Twitter and so on and on. This ability is not created downward by the OS maker like you do with iOS and WP. If I create a new kind of social network, for example, MySocialNetwork, Android or any OS won't have support to sync and share to MySocialNetwork by default. However, Android has API hooks, so using these hooks, MySocialNetwork app can enable sync and share with Android as it is was tightly integrated to the OS. Heck, Android has been sharing directly to Twitter since and before Android 1.5. And when I mean share, I mean like ranging a picture from the Gallery, or a webpage from the browser.

7. Live wallpapers. More than just animations, a live wallpaper is actually a true app on its own. It can interact with the user for touch based effects, and it can interact with location basing and other sensors too. This lets you for example, turn the background into a dynamic weather map. Live wallpapers also respond to the compass and accelerometer, enabling the wallpapers to change direction and three dimensionality depending on how the phone is held.

8. Cloud based sync. Android's sync system is highly modular, and not merely for Google's. Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WhatsApp, and so on, can sync their cloud services to it. Just today I installed a third party Facebook app on my Android. Instead of reentering my login into the app, all it did was detect the presence of Facebook sync and attached itself to it.

9. Contacts joining across different services. If I have this same contact, and he has separate entries for his Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo, Google, Twitter, WhatsApp or Viber account, I can link them into a single contact page, with separate field entries for each of these services. I can also read their latest updates too.

10. Dynamic widgets. Each widget is an app on its own. You can actually scroll through the entries within a widget, and respond into the widget without launching the main app. Widgets can be stretchable and sizable, to fit a homescreen.

11. Unified cloud system. OS version wise, iOS is less fragmented, but only a fraction of iOS users are in iCloud. In contrast, every Android user is on Google's cloud except for Kindle Fire. Google's own apps are independently updated regardless of the OS version --- Google Maps, GMail, Youtube, Google Search, and not the least, the Market/Store itself. Thus there is little or no fragmentation among the services, you still get the latest Google Maps for example. The Android Market/Play Store is a marvel on its own --- it will literally update right in front of your eyes, if an update is active.

12. Apps self updating system. Apps can automatically be set to update itself on the background unless a permissions is changed. You don't have to sign in into the Apps Store all the time just to update. This allows the installed base of apps to have a consistent version level, keeping app version fragmentation in check. It is also remarkably convenient.

14. The OTA update execution scheme is just plain remarkable. A phone can have a complete OS update in minutes right in your pocket.

15. Nice convenient touches and features. Depending on the make of the phone or the apps you install, it is very cool to see a percentage battery gauge meter in your notification bar, or a data on and off switch at the press of your power switch. You can also silence the phone, turn GPS or Wifi or Bluetooth on and off from the notification bar.

16. Just awesome to have battery usage graphs (from Gingerbread and above).

17. Data metering. You can actually measure the amount of data you are using, set limits for example, and have the phone respond to that limit.

18. Agents or tasking. Tasking means the phone will have to reconfigure itself automatically in response to a certain time, battery or location condition, like automatically putting the phone into sleep mode at a certain time of the day, or cutting off background or cloud sync if the battery has reached 30% of its capacity.

19. It actually has a file system! Any Android phone or tablet when connected to a computer can become an external hard drive to that computer, allowing files to transferred by drag and drop from the PC interface (Mac or Windows). You can also do peer to peer folder sharing wirelessly across a network of PCs, and some Android tablets, Acer in particular, got ports where you can plug a flash drive or external hard disk and read or write to it. The flexible USB port also allows various USB devices, like game controllers, to hook up to the Android.

20. ROMs like MIUI and Cyanogenmod. That deserves its own chapter and here, this is where you start to get really creative. All the others above are just the icing above the iceberg.

[Mitlov]

I don't think you should read too much into the fart apps comment. I wasn't saying that's ALL Android has. I was just pointing out that even if Android has exceeded iOS in sheer number of apps available, for the sort of quality apps people actually seek out, iOS generally is the first to get developer attention, with Android second. Blackberry and WP7 are distant, distant, distant thirds.

iOS v Android: why Schmidt was wrong and developers still start on Apple | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Anyway, thanks for the detailed response. I'll look through that tomorrow.

[Mitlov]

Looking through these lists, it looks to me that the issue is generally not so much what I'd call "functionality," but what I'd call "customizability." There aren't many substantive tasks that you can perform on an Android phone that you are unable to perform on an iPhone or a Windows Phone. However, iOS and WP often lock you into one way of doing that task, whereas Android allows a tech-savvy person to customize how the task is performed. You can check email on an iPhone or an Android phone, but there's one email interface on the iPhone and a multitude of different potential interfaces on an Android phone. You obviously can use any OS to launch applications, but iOS and WP lock you into one user interface to launch programs, whereas Android, for the tech-savvy user, is highly customizable in how you launch them. Is that fair?

[r0k]

As a long time iOS owner and a recent Android owner I have a few things I like or dislike about each platform.

Pros:
Android: I like the way google's photo sync works better than photostream for getting photos ON my devices. All my picasa web albums "just showed up" on my Android devices within hours.
iOS: I like photostream better than google's photo sync for getting photos OFF my devices, and to me getting photos off is more important than getting photos on my devices.
iOS: Just about any iOS device you buy can run the latest OS for 3 or more years to come.
Android: form factors. You aren't stuck with just a few form factors on the Android platform.
iOS: Maybe it's just because I'm more used to them, but I like the iThings on screen keyboards better than Samsung's keyboard or even the Swype keyboard.
Android: Widgets (plus side) can show weather, battery status, etc on the home screen.

Cons:
Android: I don't like the speed of google cloud sync. iCloud is a lot faster.
Android: Few users have access to the latest OS. Depending on the device you buy, you might be stuck at one OS for life.
iOS: not very customizable.
iOS: terrible modal notification popups.
Android: Widgets (minus side). This creates a 2 tier application access heirarchy which is overly complex compared to iOS.

[Adama D. Brown]

I don't think you should read too much into the fart apps comment. I wasn't saying that's ALL Android has. I was just pointing out that even if Android has exceeded iOS in sheer number of apps available, for the sort of quality apps people actually seek out, iOS generally is the first to get developer attention, with Android second. Blackberry and WP7 are distant, distant, distant thirds.

Yes, there's a ton of silly BS apps for Android. There's also a ton of silly BS apps for iOS, a ton of silly BS apps for Blackberry, and a ton of silly BS apps for WP7. That's the nature of the market. Everybody thinks that their little tip calculator or soundboard is worth distributing.

As far as "functionality" versus "customizeability," you have to remember that there's a lot of functionality issues that aren't being addressed here because they'd be too hard to itemize. Case in point, iOS couldn't do multiple email signatures until OS 6. But while that would be a minor problem, it becomes major because you can't simply use another email client.

[LandSurveyor]

This is not really on point but I never have understood either tip calculators or, for that matter, percent keys on some calculators. How hard is it to multiply some figure by a decimal?

I agree that Android devices have more form factors but that really doesn't say anything about the OS itself. An Iphone could have a keypad and only doesn't because Jobs (not to knock on him) wouldn't have it.

This is a good thread. Many good contributions by people who have had more than one OS and an absence of fanboy defensiveness. Do go on!