Nexus One from an iPhone Developer's Perspective

When you hit the home button, the previous application keeps running, which means it keeps eating memory, keeps using processor cycles, and keeps eating battery.....To truly quit most applications requires a multi-step navigation that is neither intuitive nor well-documented.

That one is one of the most pernicious bits of misinformation about the Android platform. Applications that are no longer visible to the user are NOT "background" applications like they are on a desktop OS. Applications that are no longer visible to the user are stopped. They no longer consume CPU resources, but the OS does hold them in memory in case the user returns to the app. Stopped applications may be killed by the OS, thereby freeing up the memory used by them, at any time by the OS when it determines it needs resources. Think of it like caching. The app state is cached in memory so that if you switch momentarily to another app (to answer a call for example) you can return immediately to the previous app with minimal delay and minimal resource cost (ie, the app doesn't need to be re-loaded, etc). The Android developer docs have more information: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html#....

The only things that truly run in the background on Android are service process. These are somewhat like worker threads that are created specifically to handle long running background tasks (like playing music, or downloading data over the network, etc).

There is absolutely no need to go through any "multistep navigation" to quit apps, nor do non-visible apps continue "using processor cycles and eating battery" (with the exception of course of apps that are supposed to be using processor cycles, ie, music players, etc. running in a background service process).

I agree that a search button is totally unnecessary, and I never use it, but I've had a use for the menu button on every screen. Keep in mind that most iPhone apps have a button bar on the bottom with items. This is just smart screen management. The back button has a few software design quirks that give it inconsistent result, but again most apps use it well.

The author then assumes the higher resolution is just to show off a big number. There's a reason 300dpi is the minimum for print...the eye can detect lower resolutions (and usually higher) [1].

I find it interesting that he dismissed some Android features that "most people won't care about", citing the "average user", and then goes on to dismiss multitasking, saying:

"Everybody except most 'tech pundits' knows that the iPhone's Mach kernel supports full preemptive multitasking and also knows that at any given moment there are somewhere on the order of twenty daemons and other processes running on a stock (non-jailbroken) iPhone."

I don't know if that's a typo or a joke, but I don't think the "average user" cares, I think they just want to listen to Pandora while checking email.

I'm not going to pick apart everything I disagree with the author about, and I'm probably as much of an Android lover as he is an iPhone lover, but I do think this article presents a fairly biased view of the two devices, even though the author claims to not be judging them "purely on what [he] was already accustomed to."

[1] http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/printer-ppi/ and other sites found on Google.

When you hit the home button, the previous application keeps running, which means it keeps eating memory, keeps using processor cycles, and keeps eating battery.

It's a lot more complicated than this. There is a battery monitor application, and background apps don't use much power. (Keeping wifi on and scanning is my biggest power sink. It makes Locale more accurate, though.)

Background apps are quite nice. With K-9 mail and my home IMAP server, I get true push email. Whenever I order something from Amazon or forget my password or something, the little trackball lights up instantly. It's really cool, and it doesn't need any special support. If I had an iPhone, I could never get this functionality.

Anyway, apps are what make Android great, and it's strange that he didn't talk about any of them. If you want nice effect when scrolling through your Twitter feed, get an iPhone. If you want advanced software, get Android.

Wait, wait, wait. Isn't this sort of like a creationist reviewing evolution as a theory? What's the point of "reviewing" something when you already "believe in" the opposition?

[added quote below]

Not chintzy or cheap like the Motorola Droid or most cell phones. It feels solid and very much like the iPhone.

Ok, well, if "like the iPhone" == good to you, then maybe you should just ignore other devices?

It should have just read, "In conclusion, the iPhone is the best thing in the universe, and anything on the Nexus One that seems to be better actually isn't and anyone who thinks so is clearly mistaken."

The article could be better described as a tech-savvy user opinion rather than a developer opinion.

One additional comment about the scroll ball and hardware buttons is that the UX is poor when used in landscape mode and now you have to move your finger in a different position to perform the same task.

This leads to weird contortions in user behavior. For example, my father-in-law's favorite application on his Droid is 'Advanced Task Killer'. From my perspective, the fact that the application even exists is horrifying. A phone should not require sysadmin tools.

In stark contrast, look at how WebOS handles multitasking. You know exactly what's running at any given point, because you have a visible card up. To close an application, flick the card up and off the screen. It's intuitive and obvious, even to non-technical people. It's really an amazing design.

My suspicion is that Apple will never allow multitasking on the iPhone unless they can make it Palm-like in it's simplicity. However, that would probably require a major UI refactor, which is not going to happen any time soon.

EDIT: This contains some bad info. See thread below.