Android Features That Blow iPhone Out of the Water

Posted by Dylan Love | October 21, 2012
URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/224707


While iPhone fans brag about their beloved devices, Android fans will grin knowingly and take comfort because there are several solid reasons to stick with -- or switch to -- their Google-powered phones.

Here's a look at the nine biggest features that make Android devices more favorable than Apple's iphone:

1. Expandable storage
If your iPhone is filled with files, you're out of luck. Not the case with Android, which welcomes and supports SD cards for added storage capability.

2. Killer maps
The iPhone 5 saw Apple pull the plug on Google Maps and sub in its own mapping app. And it's embarrassingly bad. Apple CEO Tim Cook even wrote a statement apologizing for it.

Google Maps is still alive, kicking and as accurate as we remember it on Android phones.

Related: We Just Found Our New Favorite Weather App

3. No 'walled garden'
In the Android ecosystem, there are fewer restrictions on apps. Apple will only allow apps into its App Store after it reviews and approves them, which can take weeks. Google will let anyone who agrees to follow their policies publish an app, often within hours.

4. Ability to Choose your default apps for Web browsing, email and more
Apple forces you to use its email app and Safari Web browser by default. Android is so open that it will let you pick any alternative browser or email client to be your default. If you want to get especially customized, you can even change keyboards.

5. Support for multiple app stores
Yet another extension of Android's open attitude: You are free to not only run any app you wish, but that app can come from any Android-based app store you want. Amazon operates one, for example.

6. Multiple hardware choices
Not everyone wants to have the same exact phone. Because Android runs on multiple devices, you can have your choice of processor speed, screen size, and price.

Related: 10 Android Apps You Didn't Know Existed, But Make Your Phone Much Better

7. Standard cables and dock connections
There's no goofy Lightning connector in the Android world. Your phone connects to and syncs with your computer via a few different types of readily available, standard USB cables.

8. Better widgets
An Android lock screen displays more useful information than an iPhone's and does so in a more aesthetically pleasing way. Graphic weather updates, album art for music, and notifications for missed calls and the like show up neatly.

9. Better integration with Google services
It only makes sense that a Google-based mobile operating system should integrate gracefully with Google's Web services. If you're a Google Calendar user or Google Drive warrior, you only need to log into your Google account once and everything syncs up in a snap. If you've tried using Apple's iCloud, you know it doesn't match up to Google's web prowess.

Google says Maps not waiting in wings for iPhone 5

(Reuters) - Google Inc has made no move to provide Google Maps for the iPhone 5 after Apple Inc dropped the application in favor of a home-grown but controversial alternative, Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said.

Apple launched its own mapping service earlier this month when it began providing the highly anticipated update to its mobile software platform iOS 6 and started selling the iPhone 5.

But users have complained that Apple's new map service, based on Dutch navigation equipment and digital map maker TomTom NV's data, contains glaring geographical errors and lacks features that made Google Maps so popular.

"We think it would have been better if they had kept ours. But what do I know?" Schmidt told a small group of reporters in Tokyo. "What were we going to do, force them not to change their mind? It's their call."

Schmidt said Google and Apple were in constant communication "at all kinds of levels." But he said any decision on whether Google Maps would be accepted as an application in the Apple App Store would have to be made by Apple.

"We have not done anything yet," he said.

Google and Apple were close partners with the original iPhone in 2007 and its inclusion of YouTube and Google Maps. But the ties between the two have been strained by the rise of Google's Android mobile operating system, now the world's leading platform for smartphones.

Schmidt said he hoped Google would remain Apple's search partner on the iPhone but said that question was up to Apple.

"I'm not doing any predictions. We want them to be our partner. We welcome that. I'm not going to speculate at all what they're going to do. They can answer that question as they see fit," he said.

Google provides Android free of charge and allows developers to add applications on an open basis, betting that by cultivating a bigger pool of users - now at over 500 million globally - it can make more money by providing search functions and selling advertising.

"Apple is the exception, and the Android system is the common model, which is why our market share is so much higher," Schmidt said, adding that success was often ignored by the media, which he said was "obsessed with Apple's marketing events and Apple's branding."

"That's great for Apple but the numbers are on our side," he said.

At one point, Schmidt, who was in Japan to announce the launch of Google's Nexus tablet here, used the device to show off a new function of Google Maps.

The feature allows users to shift their view of an area by moving the device in the air without touching the screen, similar to the effect of looking around.

"Take that Apple," he said, adding quickly, "That was a joke by the way."

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