Jeromy Lukenbaugh Spills from my brain

There I said it. I’m an Android groupie.  Though Wikipedia describes a groupie as someone who seeks sexual intimacy with a celebrity or musician, I’m not quite that into Andy.

Back in early 2008 I was still a Nokia loyalist. After having owned only Nokia’s since I began using a cell phone in the mid-late 90′s, I always felt a cell phone could do more. Below is my list of phones that I’ve owned since the dumb candy bar era.

• Nokia e62 – Cool phone, bad AT&T crippling by taking out WiFi and their software stack made it slow.
• Nokia n82 – Great phone, best camera in a phone ever, small but usable screen.
• HTC Dream (G1) – Best idea, worst battery, decent cpu, decent screen and my first Android phone.
• Blackberry Curve 8310 (Work) – Great for email and calls (sometimes, thanks AT&T), crap for everything else IMO.
• HTC Magic (MyTouch 3g) – Better phone w/ the increased storage space – same decent CPU.
• Blackberry Bold 9000 (Work) – Better phone, worse hardware quality then the 8310, better screen and 3G/WiFi.

I preach Android to all my iPhone, WinMo and Blackberry friends. I believe in what Android is doing to the smartphone market and the strengths it has over IOS. The cons of Android are shrinking with every release with Froyo I think pretty much bringing it up to speed with IOS 4.

So as my friends convert to Android they are skeptical at first. Besides app purchases most of the apps are on all four major platforms now. But each one has been happier than ever. I was most leery about the iPhone converts; some have bought four phones in a row from Apple. But thankfully AT&T has the Captivate that is based on the Samsung Galaxy S platform so it’s a great alternative to the iPhone.

I really hope Google continues the Android march and continues to spur companies to build even better hardware but please improve the battery life. I understand these phones do more then ever, but 16 hours on a charge is pretty much crap if you actually wanted to use your phone while not near a power outlet.

I think Nokia got caught up on Symbian and thought they could add enough widgets and screen sizes would compete against Android and IOS. But I think what they failed to see is that an OS born from dumb phones could not compete with a smartphone OS. They are just on a different level in terms of usefulness. RIM has always been centered on Email as the first use and everything else second. To me that is the main reason RIM has become so entrenched in the business world. But every month I have users giving their Blackberries back and getting an iPhone on their personal account. As this scale tips I can see us only having a small number of Blackberry phones mostly due to how AT&T has their corporate minute sharing setup.

Going forward I can see Android topping the market share with IOS as usual in strong second place with RIM and Nokia falling behind unless they really revamp their approach. Thanks Google for buying Android, geeks every have a real phone to use and hack.