I did it !
I broke the Reality distortion field cobweb of Steveji and joined the Android Brigade! It has been more than a week since I bought my first smart phone – a Samsung Galaxy S ( on the left – yes it does look very iPhoneish ) and it is Enthiranistic ( hehe 🙂 )
It was a tectonic mind shift for me. I love Apple products – my first laptop was an iBook. Then I bought iMac, iPods. When the 1st gen iPhone came I wanted it badly – but as a rule I never buy 1st Gen Apple products ( can’t afford the Apple Tax ).
Recently I decided ( the power above approved rather 🙂 ) to go for a smartphone and my obvious choice was an iPhone. Despite the attenagate I wanted to buy the iPhone 4. However I started reading more and more on the iPhone vs Android wars and found how closed Apple had become.
In the iconic 1984 Super Bowl Ad when Apple introduced PCs to the IBM masses – a lady with a hammer hurls it on the Big (Blue) Brother who preaches :
“Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause.”
How ironic. You can now replace the Big Brother with Steve Jobs and the words still apply. You might own the hardware, but you cannot install any applications that you want to. You cannot hack your machine – you will void the warranty. Want to transfer files – you have to do it with iTunes and nothing else.
And more importantly – Apple for some reason – hates India. The iPhone4 release date could as well be in 2011. iPhone 3 got released exactly after a year it got released in USA. Also Apple’s prices are illogically high in India.
Anyway – here are the things I liked on the Galaxy.
Swype – I am as fast as the Chinese Teenage kids when it comes to texting now.
Google Apps Integration – Whenever I want to add a contact and if I am near a computer, I add it in my Google Contacts – and it magically appears on the phone.
No Brainer Syncing – Since I am on linux I do not have iTunes -in fact my iPod is yet to be updated with Enthiran songs. However with Galaxy S I just dragged and droped the media files.
Internet Tethering – Worked out of the box – on Ubuntu. I did not expect that.
I am not sure how this phone pits against the Retina Display of iPhone. And this phone does not have a flash – which is a bummer.
One parting advice for Steve Jobs – just let it go. You have the best product in the universe. Why create gates and windows?
