Had you asked me last week if I was connected, I would have retorted, “Me? Connected? Of course I am!” Well, that would have been a complete lie. I have since purchased an HTC Hero on the Sprint Network and now I truly feel connected. I don’t own an iPhone, but I do have an iPod Touch which I do use with a fair amount of frequency. I used to think that the iPhone was the epitome of the “in-crowd, connected” society, but I think it’s miles behind the Android platform quite frankly. Hopefully I’ll successfully expound upon this idea through this post.
Let’s start by laying out the groundwork. AdMob (recently acquired by Google) and Flurry have both compiled data that illustrate and Android market has crept up to 14% over the past 6 months, iPod Touch to 35% and the iPhone to 50%. Android and iPod Touch both gained 4% each whereas the iPhone lost 7% share. This to me is an indicator that some people are starting to see alternatives to the ball and chain of iPhone on AT&T. Perhaps my case is similar: I started with the iPod Touch before swapping to the Android so I can carry a single device which also has cellular service. The thought did cross my mind, however, to get a MiFi card, but that would then be three devices and is a completely different story altogether. Oh, and for the record, who’s bringing you 4G service to San Francisco in 2010? Sprint, that’s who! AT&T just recently rolled out 3G to SF, but Sprint is already planning on 4G service with download speeds of 3-6 Mbps and peak speeds being 10 Mbps, yet I digress…
While sitting in Best Buy purchasing my phone and signing my life away while changing service plans, I powered up my Hero and signed into Google, Twitter, and Facebook, forgoing the Flickr integration for that nonce. A couple minutes later I received a call from my mother, her Gmail picture and information popping up automatically. This was my first taste of connectedness. I hadn’t entered anything into my phone but my Google email and password and already my life was starting to become seamlessly integrated. Next, my Hero suggested verifying my contacts with my Facebook friends. All of the suggestions were correct, but it did miss a few people whose names didn’t match up perfectly. All of a sudden I now had additional pictures, status updates, birthdays, and such integrated into my phonebook.
The next item I synced up was my Twitter account. Real-time updates were then streaming through my phone. During this time, I received a notification that I had a new email in my Gmail. Beautiful! In the palm of my hand are now calls, social news, emails, SMS, MMS, and instant messages just as a starter. Also, as an added benefit, just think of the real-time search results available as of today via Google search which integrates Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace.
The next big thing I’d like to make comment about is customization. With the Hero you are able to customize just about everything you can think about. For instance, there are “scenes” on the Hero which have seven pages. On these pages you can customize widgets, shortcuts, and other various applications that have come with the phone or downloaded from the Android market. You can set up one scene for “work” and perhaps another one for “a night out on the town.” I know for my work scene I’ll have my email readily handy, whereas on my night out scene I’ll have Loopt and Bump as readily available applications.
Another big thing I’ve noticed is the notification bar. A very unobtrusive bar that lets you know what is going on: new tweets, emails, text messages, missed calls, et al. Unlike the iPhone that will constantly interrupt you with new notifications from your applications you’ve chosen to allow.
Personally, if you’re in the market for a new phone, I’d highly recommend looking at an Android phone, and preferably an HTC phone if it’s available on your carrier. I know that there is a big gap from the 9,000+ apps in the market to Apple’s 100k+, but I think in due time that gap will start to level out. All-in-all, this is by far the best phone I’ve ever purchased. I love being on the cutting edge, and I was sorely disappointed I couldn’t have an iPhone because of my unwillingness to switch to a substandard carrier, but my holding out has brought me the best device I could have asked for at this point in time. I mean, I even have a 5 mega-pixel camera built into my phone on top of all my social media. HTC Sense, as they refer to the UI, is comprised of the mantras: make it mine (customization), stay close (all of your friend’s info in one place), and discover the unexpected (all the HTC built in perks and functionalities). HTC, I couldn’t agree with you more: “You don't need to get a phone. You need a phone that gets you.” A phone that gets me is one that has me connected to the world all in the palm of my hand. Google... HTC… thank you!
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