MY FIRST POST IN ALMOST A YEAR IS ABOUT A MOBILE PHONE?!

I must say that as a self-described Apple "fanboy" for the last eight years or so, I have a hard time keeping quiet when someone wants to debate the pros and cons of anything invented by Steve Jobs' company.

And if you've been watching nearly anything on the television over the last few weeks or so, you've no doubt seen the "iDon't" commercials that advertise Verizon's new "Droid" phone while attempting to slam Apple's iPhone. In case anyone hasn't seen the commercial, here it is:

The thing I found instantly perplexing about this commercial is that it avoids showing what Motorola's new Smartphone actually looks like. Same thing went for the Droid's own website, and this might just be why:
No, that's not the best cell phone of 1994... that's the device that Verizon hopes will make it's current customers forget about the wildly popular iPhone. Apparently it's a bit harder than it seems to make a device both functional AND attractive. But Motorola has packed this phone with some impressive features, so let me attempt to defend the iPhone, starting with the claims made in the "iDon't" commercial:

1. "iDon't have a real keyboard."
I might be in the minority here, but I never warmed to the idea of a so-called "physical" keyboard. My last phone prior to the iPhone was the LG enV with a complete QUERTY keyboard, and I still rarely texted or returned email on the device. One of my main problems was that I found it difficult to hold the phone while typing with my oversized thumbs, and this phone would seem to be a bit "top heavy" with the slide-out glass screen hovering above the user's fists. On the iPhone, I utilize a one-hand "hunt and peck" system that works great for me - and I haven't looked back in nearly two years of use.

2. "iDon't take 5-megapixel pictures."
This is true. Although the iPhone's camera has made significant leaps over its three generations. As any photographer can tell you too... more megapixels doens't automatically make a better picture.

3. "iDon't take pictures in the dark."
This is true too. Although I'll wait to see what the led flash on the Droid does for picture taking. I had a flash on a few other phone cameras, but might as well not have... they never worked well.

4. "iDon't Customize."
This is also true for all iPhones who stick to the letter of the law regarding the iPhone, however there's a significant population of "jailbreakers" who would disagree with this statement.

5. "iDon't run widgets."
Again, this is non issue for myself as I have several apps on my iPhone (ESPN Scorecenter, Facebook, Twitteriffic) that I update manually thoughout the day to see all the information I need. And because they're not always running in the background, they're not affecting my battery use (always an issue on large touchscreens like these) or data speeds while I'm using other apps.

6. "iDon't have interchangable batteries."
True enough, but companies have come calling with some pretty compelling fixes for this "problem".

As for #7 and #8, I'll take them together. "iDon't run simultaneous apps." and "I don't allow open development." While these are both true statements, there's also a good reason why Apple decided upon this course of action. After all, it's not as if Apple couldn't just allow these things with a simple software upgrade. They actually have a reason behind not supporting either.

You see, along with open development can come problems that affect the performance of the phone... likewise with running multiple apps. These smartphones (both iPhone and Droid) are basically tiny computers which can be overloaded with too much active processes running at the same time. The fact that the iPhone has a "one at a time" mentality with apps, means that I've never seen it truly hiccup under normal use. However, as a recent reviewer of the Droid said:

"One Droid feature touted heavily in Verizon's television commercials is its ability to run several applications simultaneously, which is something the iPhone can't do. Generally, I found that the Droid does this pretty well.

There were hiccups, though. As I was listening to music, I tried to take a photo to send in a text message to a friend. Elvis Costello started to stutter as I pressed the shutter button. Another time, I tried to make a call while the Maps Navigation application was running and had to endure very loud instructions about where to turn while the phone was ringing."

Now what if that were an important business call while the turn-by-turn intstructions are blaring in your ear? Or what if you're late for a meeting and your directions are interrupted with music?

And that's the potential problem with the Android phones in my opinion. Different phones will process Googles Android 2.0 software differently... just as different cell phone companies will complicate the integration with the OS as well. Apple has always sought to minimize these problems by controlling the OS and the hardware at the same time. That way, product testing creates a "real world" sample of the phone's performance. And if there's a problem on one iPhone... it's usually a problem on many iPhones and therefore can be fixed once... and quickly.

With Google's Android 2.0 OS (as with Microsoft Windows), it will soon be on tons of different phones (made by different companies) with different internal hardware, and running on many different networks. Conflicts will be hard to trace, and therefore hard to correct across the multitude of different Android Phones. Also, some are already complaining that some Android apps looks horrible on certain screens because there is no uniform screen size across the Android phone market.

This was a similar problem for me when I owned PC's that ran Windows. I would often get odd error messages and in trying to troubleshoot the problem, I would get the run-around from the various companies that made up my "one-of-a-kind" PC tower. Since I switched to Apple (in December 2001) I've fixed nearly all of my problems by searching for people with my particular "box" (and similar problem) and following their lead.

This approach of caring for the user experience is what makes Apple users such vocal supporters of the company. It's also what's made iPhone users the most satisfied smartphone owners... and that's good enough for me.