18:04
udaya kumar
You know the old techie joke, right? If you don’t like the Android phones on the market, just wait a minute.
Pogue's Posts
There are dozens of Android phones, and newer, better ones appear every few months. Google subscribes to the Microsoft Windows scheme: write the software, and let other companies build the phones.
The result is a lot of choice, but also a lot of fragmentation. There is no one Android phone. Some models can be updated to new Android software, some can’t. A certain app might or might not run on your particular version.
That master plan differs quite a bit from the iPhone’s.
Apple designs “the whole widget,” as Steve Jobs used to say: both the software and the phone. The result is clean, reliable and consistent — but you’re limited to the features Apple wants to give you. For example, if you want a 4G phone (one that runs on the new, very fast Internet networks in big cities), you’re out of luck.
And a new iPhone, accompanied by a major software release, comes out only once a year, or less often. In any case, there’s a lot of news in Androidland. The three biggest players are Samsung, Motorola and HTC, and all three are offering beautiful marquee Android phones. All three are Verizon 4G phones.
These phones are whopping big; that’s the trend these days. You can almost fit an entire iPhone in just the screen area of these Android monsters. Big is great for maps, movies, photos and Web sites — less so for holding up to your ear on a call.
All three phones have front and back cameras, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. Each can serve as a portable Wi-Fi hot spot for your laptop, for an added monthly fee. On the other hand, they come preinstalled with Verizon promotional apps that you can hide, but can’t remove.
The HTC Rezound ($200 with two-year contract) comes with a pair of Dr. Dre Beats in-ear headphones. Those, plus matching software, give music playback extra clarity and bass.
This thickish phone was the first in the United States with a true high-definition screen (1280 by 720 pixels, 4.3 inches) — sharper than even the iPhone’s Retina screen. Even the front-facing camera can film 720p high-def video, which is a rarity. The rest of the specs are the usual on high-end phones these days: 8-megapixel rear camera, 10 gigabytes of built-in storage for your apps and a memory-card slot if you need more room (a 16-gigabyte card comes with the phone).
Then there’s the expansive Motorola Droid Razr Maxx ($300), whose claim to fame is its beefy battery. This may be the first 4G phone that gets you through a full day, or even longer, on a single charge. Yet it’s still as thin as an iPhone. The non-Maxx Droid Razr is nearly identical — but it’s even thinner and its battery doesn’t last nearly as long. The screen isn’t hi-def (960 by 540 pixels), but the storage is ample: 11.5 gigabytes inside, plus a 16-gig memory card.
Motorola continues to think outside the hardware and software boxes: you can buy a 10- or 14-inch laptop to accompany this phone, which becomes the brain and the storage when you connect it. And the Smart Actions app is pure brilliance: it lets you set up battery-saving rules like “dim the screen when the battery gets low” or “turn off GPS if I forget to plug you in at nighttime.” You can also set up convenience rules like “set the ringer to vibrate after 10 p.m.,” or “display my kids’ photo as the wallpaper whenever I’m at home.” It’s pretty wonderful.
But the Samsung Galaxy Nexus ($300) might be the most interesting phone. Not because of the phone itself, although it’s fine: 32 gigabytes of storage (no card slot), fast processor, removable battery, 1280 x 720-pixel hi-def screen, so-so 5-megapixel camera.
(Confusion alert: Google sells a different phone also called the Nexus. Apparently, any phone can be called Nexus if it offers “the pure Google experience”— no tweaks or overlays like the ones that Motorola and HTC have put onto Android. How bizarre, then, that the Nexus doesn’t work with Google Wallet, Google’s own swipe-to-pay app.)
