like the foxcon boss
said?
i honestly want to know because i'm actually contemplating jumping ships but have reservations about re-learning the OS and the difference in the app stores
No one seems to answer you, they all get caught up in trying to continue to associate their manhood with how good either platform is.
So I'll take a stab.
I took the switch myself from a iphone 4 to a galaxy nexus.
Yes the first week or so it's like having 5 thumbs because how you do almost anything is different. But that changes quickly.
The major difference is actually just the OS. The app store's pretty much the same sort of generic deal as Apple's. It's a bit better lay out than the iOS 5 app store actually in some aspect. The one thing you might enjoy is how it auto updates apps as long as permission hasn't changed. I quite like that feature. The other aspect that's different is that you can browse and purchase apps from a desktop browser and it would automatically push to your devices. I don't use it that much but it's a nice feature to have.
App selection wise, I find it to be similar. There are still some that haven't made the port over to Android but that's rare now a days. I don't find myself limited by anything. You will find more apps that customize the phone's function. Where as in the apple world Apps are pretty well silos of their own.
Which brings me to the OS. It is liberating when the OS has infrastructure that allows apps to interact. In Android when you want to do something like open a video from say the file manager (yes you can access the FS!) it'll ask you which app to use. And you can choose to always use that app or just once. This is true for almost anything you want to do on the phone and you have multiple apps that offers that function.
The phone also works as a USB storage device. On windows it's plug and play on the Mac you need to download an app that's pretty easy to use. It's a god send. This together with the more desktop like file system and function model means I can drag and drop my videos into my tablet/phone and use one of the fine video players that can handle basically any media format I throw at it.
The app interaction model also means other things. When I take a photo on the phone I can select how to share it. Facebook? Flickr? Google+? It's all there in a menu in the camera/gallery app.
So anyhow that's a taster of what I find good about Android.
The bad is there too. It is somewhat less polished and it at the start of 4.0 stability was an issue (it isn't now). My wife pulled her battery while the phone was rebooting and it screwed up the recovery image that it copies every time it boots. Now that doesn't happen with an iphone. But you know if something goes wrong with the iphone after jailbreak you can be up the creek. For the nexus I just reflashed it myself. And the most wonderful thing about that was when my wife log into her google account it automatically downloaded and installed all her apps without intervention. Pretty cool I thought.
