Really? Look at a list of what both phones have side by side and it's not even close. The nexus one wins every category. Just the ability to be able to upgrade the memory with a larger SD card is a huge plus. RAM is another issue. Even the iPad I am typing on only has 256MB while my HTC Hero has 288. That's ridiculous. I mean seriously, the iPhone wasn't even able to do MMS messaging until recently without a jailbreak. Even basic phones could do that. Apple really needs to step it up.
You're trolling.
256mb of ram is more than enough. Your iPad is silky smooth isn't it? So why complain? In recent years RAM prices have come down and as a result a lot of laziness has happened on the computer end of things when it comes to developers. They're sloppy, stashing everything in ram and because there can be tons of it now it just simply doesn't matter.
On a small embedded device the developers just need to develop around the ram limitation. It isn't really a limitation. A single app has tons of ram available to it and the SDK does some really nice stuff to help destroy views and free up memory if it's needed.
These new multi-tasking APIs are killer. They beat Android hands down in terms of sheer ingenuity. The ability to have an app just finish what it was doing and then it quits as normal. The ability for applications to be aware of GPS in the background but not necessarily run otherwise. Audio only streaming and not have to worry about the rest of the stuff. All of that is designed around the idea of less ram and making the system function at a core level.
What is this doing? The same thing HTML5 support is doing. Developers are being smart with their code and developing for the platform and to do so they need to keep memory in line. HTML5 support is killing flash because it's too ram and cpu intensive. You're privileged enough to see to see a computer revolution here. Where developers need to once again be smart with their code. They can't write trash and get away with it. It's sort of like a programming reset.
Let's see.
Copy and Paste. Long awaited and amazingly awesome when it arrived. Why? Because it does way more than we expected, and does it in a very elegant way.
MMS. Long awaited and i suppose amazingly awesome when it arrived for some people. Support for sending photos is easy. Support for sending GPS info and contact info is pretty darn slick.
Multi-tasking. I'm sure they could've easily just allowed it to happen. But what we ended up getting instead was a very streamlined approach that will pay off big time when developers take advantage of it. You'll see.
A few things I really am disappointed with though.
The notification system really is trash. It needs a thorough update. I'm not sure why this wasn't tackled in this update. Bothers me to no freaking end.
I would've liked to have seen some sort of mifi application that AT&T released with Apple that provided 250mb/unlimited just like the iPad. So those of us with iPhones could use our iPhone has the 3G portion of our iPad. I suspect this was merely too much to ask for though.
I wish there was a way to easily disable various services. Quickly and easily turn off bluetooth and wifi from the status bar.
Lockscreen information like unread emails, upcoming calendar events, etc.
I'm sure we'll see it eventually.
Android is a cluster (beep). Most of the phones out there are still running 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6. Nevermind that 2.1 is the newest and the only device really running it is the Nexus One. I hear Droid's are finally getting the update. But seriously. It's been out for how long now? Over a month at least. That doesn't change the fact the entire OS is so fragmented. With so many phones using older versions of the OS it makes developing for the platform worthless.
The apps are inconsistent looking. They have no consistent UI guidelines. It's just all around a mess. It has potential. But it's a mess that I wouldn't let my parents use. An iPhone they could totally use though. That's a huge deal.
Nevermind all this though. If you're so unhappy with iPhone OS 4.0 then go buy an Android device. No one is stopping you.
