It's nice to see a detailed comparison from an iPhone user that doesn't hate on Android just because it's not iPhone. I went from iPhone to Android after 6 mon

It's nice to see a detailed comparison from an iPhone user that doesn't hate on Android just because it's not iPhone. I went from iPhone to Android after 6 months of owning an iPhone 3GS (I went to the original Motorola Droid). For me, it was a big relief, even though it was in many ways a step backward. The entire time I owned the iPhone I felt like I was doing something the benevolent overlord didn't want me to do - I jailbroke to enable some features (some of which are addressed with newer OS since then) and never knew when I'd be stuck between upgrading or losing my jailbreak. Android isn't without some of the same problem, but at least I can do more with it out of the box without some exploit. I have the iPad and the Xoom, and I haven't touched the Xoom since the first week (I'm likely returning it). The iPad is everything I love about iOS, and the things it's missing aren't AS important to me on the tablet (although they are important). For the iPad, however, applications are significantly more important for me than on the phone, and most applications I use haven't made it to Android. The things I absolutely don't want to lose and thus won't switch back to the slightly superior (more refined) experience on the iPhone are: * Notification bar. iPhone's modal pop-up is just incredibly annoying. * Native Google Apps. For this I mean everything Google releases. I use a lot of it - Reader, Gmail, Maps, Navigation, Latitude, Google Voice. These are all web apps or backdated or both on iOS. The Maps experience, for example, is significantly better on an Android device than on iOS. You can simply do more useful things with it. And that's ignoring Navigation, which sells Android on its own if you drive a lot. * Background processes. I haven't used iOS enough to tell if its half-way implementation does enough for me. It very well might, but I know it is more limited. Sometimes this doesn't matter, but every now and then I just want to run multiple things at once without fighting the OS. * No reliance on iTunes. (I'd repeat that, but that'd be rude) * I can develop for it without an Apple computer. * I make my money off of Android right now. :) All in all, they are fair competitors with different mentalities. If I didn't use Google so much, I might be less inclined to stay with Android. Most of your complaints about Android are pretty fair and accurate.