Preparation
Some preparation needs to happen before leaving the iPhone platform. 1) Get your contacts into Google Contacts or Gmail. This can be done on your next sync with iTunes by choosing the option to sync with Gmail. I would do this on my very last sync with iTunes though, as Google Contacts don’t play nice with the iPhone and generally cause duplication on your device. It’s easy enough to fix this on Google’s contact page before you sync them to your new Android phone. 2) Get your calendar synced to Google Calendar. 3) Set up a Gmail account if you don’t already have one. If you aren’t already using Gmail, check out this article for 10 good reasons to start using it. Finally, consider selling your iPhone on Craigslist.org or some other electronics friendly selling site. I’ve sold 3 iPhones on Craigslist for $400-$500/each. Each device sold within 10 minutes of posting it. There is a big market for these devices when sold out of contract. Selling the device paid for my early termination fee with AT&T, as well as for my new device on Verizon.
Setting Up Your New Device
Setting up your new device is unbelievably simple. Type in your Gmail address during the authorization process and 2-3 minutes later your email is on the phone, as are your contacts and calendar.
Learning to Navigate Your Android Phone
Android’s homescreen layout is very similar to the iPhone. There are multiple screens, the main homescreen is in the middle of either 3, 5, or 7 homescreens (depending on your device). There are dedicated buttons on the device at the bottom of the touch screen. The Home key – a dedicated key on the bottom of the device, takes you back to the homescreen. The menu button reveals a menu that is situational – depending where you are in an application or homescreen, a different menu of options pops up. There is also a dedicated back button as well as a search button. The back button is very different from the iPhone navigational system. Most applications in the iPhone have a back button embedded in them. There is no standardized place for button placement within the app, so it can be confusing when trying to navigate. Android solves that problem by giving you a dedicated back key that works within and outside apps. On the bottom of the touchscreen in the center there is an arrow icon, sliding this up reveals a tray of all apps installed on the phone.
At the top of the home screen is a status bar. On the right side of the bar is a clock, a battery indicator, 3G status, wifi (when turned on), alarm clock (if an alarm is set). The left side of the status bar is reserved for notifications. Notifications can be configured in the settings of individual apps, as well as from the general settings. If you elect to receive notifications for individual apps, they will appear in the status bar. For instance, when an email is received, you can elect to have a sound notification, an LED notification, and the notification will also appear in your status bar as an envelope. Pulling down on the status bar reveals further information about the notification. Then clicking on the notification takes you into the application to view the email. Notifications can be configured for many apps – E-Mail, SMS, IM, Twitter, Facebook, To Do apps…etc. There is a clear button on the right hand side of the exposed notifications allowing you to dismiss notifications without viewing.
Adding – Removing – Rearranging Icons on Homescreen
To remove an icon from the homescreen, press the icon and hold it. The icon will vibrate and the arrow at the bottom of the screen turns into a garbage can. Drag the icon to the garbage can, when it turns red, release it and the app is removed from the homescreen. Sliding up the app tray reveals that the app is still on the device, just removed from the screen. There are several ways to add an icon, shortcut, or widget to the main menu. One way to add a shortcut to an app is to slide up the app tray. Find the app you’d like to put on one of the homescreens, and long press it. You’ll feel a slight vibration and the app tray will close, leaving you with the icon to be placed on the homescreen. A long touch on the icon once it is on the homescreen allows you to move it to any open space on the screen. Another way to add a shortcut or widget to the screen is to long press an empty space on the screen. Doing so reveals a popup window that allows you to add a shortcut, widget, folder, or change the wallpaper. Clicking on the Shortcuts menu reveals the ability to add applications, a contact, a direct dial shortcut (the ability to directly dial a contact from the homescreen via a shortcut icon), a direct message shortcut (the ability to directly IM a contact from the homescreen via a shortcut icon), as well as options for several other shortcuts. Selecting widgets from the menu reveals widgets for all the apps that are packaged with widgets, standard Android widgets, as well as any stand-alone widgets you’ve purchased from the Android Market. Widgets are not available on the iPhone platform and are a feature that sets Android above the iPhone OS. Widgets can be placed on your homescreen to control things like wifi on/off, GPS on/off, screen brightness, activate vibrate mode. Other widgets contain information – the Facebook widget displays your friends latest updates and you can scroll through them from your desktop. The Pandora widget controls the start/stop of music from your homescreen, and when Pandora is active, allows you to give thumbs up/down, pause or fast forward music. There are countless widgets available in the Android market, and many widgets are included with apps purchased.
Adding and Deleting Applications from Device
If you’ve used the App Store on the iPhone, the Android Market will seem very familiar. Launching the Market takes you to the featured apps page. Pressing Apps goes to a list of categories of apps. The magnifying glass icon always present in the top right of the screen allows you to search by name or keyword for an application. Within app categories, apps are further divided by Top Paid, Top Free, and Just In. Selecting an app to view reveals a description of the app – woefully short in comparison to the App Store, comments/reviews, more applications from the developer, a link to the developer’s web page, a link to send an email to the developer, and a link to flag the app as inappropriate. At the bottom is the option to install an app. If the app is free, it will immediately install upon selecting install. However, if the app is paid, it will wait to authorize payment before installing the app. Status of the download and installation of the app is present in the status bar. Once an app is downloaded and installed, it is available in the app tray.
When I first made the jump to Android, I was very disappointed in the Android Market. Today, I’m much more tolerant of it. It’s not as robust as the App Store, but for the functionality I’m looking for, there are generally 3-10 apps to choose from with varying levels of usability. While it’s true that the descriptions in the market leave much to be desired, the Android Market has a silver lining. While you don’t learn much about the app from the description, you can try apps out for 24-hours and return them if they don’t meet your needs. As long as an app is uninstalled within 24 hours, a full refund is given. To uninstall an app, go into the market and select the Menu Key from the main page. Select Downloads and a list of the apps you have purchased with your account are listed. Select the app, if you are within the 24 hour window for returning an app, there will be a button to Uninstall & Refund your purchase. If you are outside the 24 hour window, there will be a button to uninstall.
A few caveats to understand about the current state of Android phones. Memory on Android phones is limited. While the SD card offers up to 32GB of memory, apps cannot be stored on the SD card. They are stored on internal memory, of which, generally only about 512MB. Most apps are relatively small, and most users won’t bump up against that 512 MB limit. However, it’s not as limitless as the iPhone, and you have to keep an eye on how much you are loading onto the phone.
Multitasking in Android
On the iPhone, the only multitasking (to date) to be found is with the native iPod running in the background, or talking on the phone and using other applications. Android is one big bucket of multitasking. What does this mean for you? Open up the music player, or Pandora, or Slacker, play some music, hit your home key, and do anything else you want and the music will continue to play in the background. Yippee, right? Well, sort of. That big bucket of multitasking means that when you press your home key after leaving an app, you aren’t actually closing the app. It’s still running in the background. Android was made to handle this, shutting off apps as you need more RAM to run new apps.
The easiest way to multitask in Android is to long press the Home key. Doing this brings up a list of the last 6 apps you’ve been running. So moving between, say, a SMS/IM conversation while browsing the internet simply requires a long press on the home key and selecting the apps to slide back and forth between. The change is very fast, and you do not lose your place in any of the 6 apps that are running.
One more note – Android phones are akin to computer devices. Like computers, they also function better when shut down occasionally. I power down my device daily. Takes about 2 minutes and clears the cache. I find when I do this my device is much snappier.
General Differences Between iPhone OS and Android OS
First and foremost, there is no replacement for the iPhone in terms of touchscreen responsiveness. However, the Android devices I’ve used work extremely well. When switching over to a new phone, understand that there will be some missed swipes, scrolling may not always be as smooth, and it may not be as easy as it was to choose tiny links in the browser. That said, within 2 weeks of picking up the Droid, I no longer notice the differences between the touchscreen experience that seemed so apparent in the beginning. Hang in there, it gets better.
Second, getting away from the iPhone and Apple means that you don’t have to settle for standard features on your phone. For instance, I was going crazy with the on-screen keyboard in comparison to the iPhone keyboard. And I hated that the hardware keyboard didn’t autocorrect my mistakes. So I went to the Market, and installed Smart Keyboard Pro. I dropped the iPhone keyboard skin onto the keyboard and now I have a keyboard that works better, a better dictionary, and the hardware keyboard now offers predictive text and autocorrection. Sweet. There are literally hundreds of options to try out in keyboards that may work better for you. There are multiple keyboard replacement apps in the Market. I also wanted better looking power widgets than those found in the stock Android widgets, so I downloaded Beautiful Widgets from the Market and replaced them on my homescreen. I was very frustrated with only 3 homescreens that come stock on the Droid, so I downloaded the HelixLauncher which allows me to stretch this to 7 homescreens. There are multiple Homescreen replacement apps in the market which essentially give you the ability to customize your device to be exactly the way you want it to be. This is where the iPhone is completely missing the boat. What you give up for simplicity with the iPhone, is the ability to make the device truly your own.
The Android OS is not as polished as the iPhone, certainly not as simple to use, and there are trade-offs to using it in terms of app development. However, the app Market is growing very quickly, and many popular apps available on the iPhone platform are also available in Android. After using Android for several months, I feel like this device is much more powerful than my iPhone, simply because I have more control over how it functions. Most of the features coming to iPhone OS 4 are already available in Android. The learning curve for using an Android device after the iPhone can be steep in the first few days, but stick with it, try not to ask it to be your iPhone, and you will be happy with the end product.
For suggestions on must-have apps for Android, check out my next blog post!
Can you explain why task killers are bad?
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