HTC Ion (aka Magic; running Android)

Pros:
Threaded, and Push, Gmail: The UI is a little wonky, but having truely threaded and push based Gmail client is this phone’s killer app. When an e-mail comes in, you have the option to have your phone notify you by ring tone, vibration, status light, or all three. It is nearly instantaneous, and it’s absence on the iPhone is baffling.

Unlocked: The HTC Ion that Google IO gave to developers is a truly unlocked GSM phone, perfect for overseas travel (or carrier portability). Not being able to pop in a local SIM when abroad locked me into AT&T’s scheme, which ultimately doubled my monthly bill. Having an unlocked phone would have allowed me to cut that bill significantly.

Battery life/Background Apps: Having Google Talk run in the background is one of the things I miss most since picking up the iPhone. OSX hasn’t allowed it, and even if they had, the battery hit would be huge. On the Ion, you can easily go two-days running background apps, using e-mail and making calls on a single charge.

Apps (specifically: ShopSavvy, Wikitude, Locale, Sky Map): Background apps that don’t drain the battery make a huge difference, but there are several noteworthy apps that don’t appear on the iPhone (yet) — and make Android attractive.

- ShopSavvy has a gorgeous UI, and links directly to Google Shopping. No need to take a photo of a barcode — you merely hold the camera over it, and the app does the rest of the work.

- Wikitude also takes advantage of the camera on the Ion to do visual (and location) based Wikipedia look-ups. The closest thing on the iPhone would be WikiMe, which while one of my favorite apps, lacks that visual and spatial GUI.

- Locale is one of the most promising applications. You tell your phone how to act (“turn on wifi,” “switch to 3G,” “turn on background apps”) when you are in different locations by using a Google Maps plugin to define areas (“home,” “work,” etc).

- Sky Map uses the built in compass to show you what stars you’re looking at as you move the phone around. While I couldn’t see myself using this on a daily basis, it’s a neat option to have.

Incredible fast OS: We’re talking lightening fast. The iPhone’s UI is pretty — the apps appear and disappear as if you’re flying to or away from them — but Android just opens your app fast.


Cons:
The Browser: As someone who has gotten used to pinching and double tapping in Safari, the browers on Android doesn’t come close. Granted Safari is a memory hog, but it’s nothing a hard app close can’t fix.

The Keyboard: It sucks. Bad. Typing is a chore on the phone, and short of Google re-working the code here, I think it is safe to call it nearly unusable.

Gestures: Using the touch screen for scrolling, typing, or anything beyond tapping apps open/closed is a pain. OSX is incredibly responsive, where Android requires you to exaggerate your strokes to trigger actions — that themselves are exaggerated.


Lessons for Future Smartphones:
While the HTC Ion currently has a hardware advantage, the iPhone’s architecture (OS, apps, music and movies) makes it a no-brainer when it comes to selecting a smartphone. And since I will be returning to my iPhone full-time, my advice will be more for Apple than anyone else. Here are some (reasonable) things I’d like to see from WWDC next week (or in the next year) from the iPhone:

Threaded, and Push, Gmail: Android has it, the Blackberry has it, the Pre is going to have it — the iPhone needs it. Period.

Unlocked: Whether at WWDC, or concurrent with LTE, having unlocked phones on the market would benefit both Apple and the consumer. The carriers may cry and scream, but people want unlocked phones. At the very least, the ability to (legally) unlock the iPhone after two years of service needs to included as an option.

(Note to Christine Varney: can you go after the Verizon/AT&T and Comcast instead of Apple/Google, plz k thx?)

Google Reader App: Loading 15 stories at a time is a pain. Why not have a dedicated app that loads all their unread items into a locale cache for later viewing?

Battery-Efficient Background Apps: Apple’s promised background apps in 3.0, and if they can deliver, it will go a long way to helping the iPhone play catch up with Android and Blackberry in this regard.

Location Based Management: This is the one that should get the most tongues wagging. If you are at home, with your phone plugged in, and wifi on — your phone should know — take that information, and become proactive.

While you’re sleeping the phone should silently update itself (with push-like technology). It should download your entire Twitter-feed, Google Reader RSS, update the weather/stocks every 15 minutes, pull the latest NYT stories and cache them in the app, download the latest Youtube channels/clips you subscribe to, pull in all your unwatched episodes (for TV shows you subscribe to through iTunes, and that you’ve asked to be auto-loaded)… so that when you unplug your phone, it’s all there and you’re good to go.

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