This is more of an OS comparison than a hardware comparison, but I’ll touch on hardware a little. Mostly though, I want to compare Android 1.5 to Palm WebOS 1.4. When the Samsung Moment gets the Android 2.1 OS upgrade, this could be a completely different discussion.
I’m not sure I’m ready to say Palm webOS is a superior OS to Android, but as a Palm fanboy and a web developer, I think it’s pretty slick.
Email
One of my biggest gripes about Android 1.5 was lack of support for Google Apps. A year or so ago I convinced my coworkers that we should migrate to Google Apps to handle our email. I was very disappointed that Android’s Gmail app could not support multiple accounts. I’ve even read that I could not have used my Google Apps account as my main account on Android — that it had to be an @gmail.com account.
Even my old Blackberry had a dedicated app for a Google Apps email account!
Supposedly Android 2.1 will allow multiple accounts in Gmail. Maybe somebody could confirm or deny that for me. Looking forward to it….
Meanwhile, I was impressed with webOS’s Gmail handling in the emulator. webOS’s Synergy feature is pretty cool — quietly commingling your email, calendar and contacts from various accounts all into one view. They can be viewed separately as well of course, but having one inbox will all your unread email is pretty cool.
All that being said, I’ve run into a problem with webOS’s email which I will discuss separately.
Everything Else
So email was my main motivator for switching ( at least temporarily ) to webOS, but what about all the other stuff? Well, the Palm Pre is definitely smaller and lighter than the Samsung Moment. I miss my nice wide horizontal sliding keyboard on the Moment though. The Pre’s keyboard is not bad and I can hammer out an email pretty quick ( even with my giant sausage thumbs ), but its a tad cramped.
The phone itself is better on the Pre. I live in a basement and get a horrible signal anyway, but the Moment was barely usable as a phone in my apartment. The Pre does much better and I don’t get “hold on dude… you’re breaking up” all the time.
The web browser is at least as good as Android’s, and maybe better because of Pre’s multitouch support. Zooming in and out on large web pages is pretty slick.
Moving around in webOS is really cool. Once you get the hang of the swipe and flick gestures, you can get around really quick. Sure, Android uses gestures too, but flicking webOS’s “cards” around is much more fun.
Just my two cents on Sprint’s two (so far…) Android phones…
As a longtime Sprint customer, I waited patiently for an Android phone to arrive. The HTC Hero was finally announced and the Samsung Moment shortly after. At first glance, the Hero was a much slicker device — both in hardware and software. Coming from a Blackberry though, I was hoping for a real keyboard.
A friend ( who owns some HTC Windoze phone with a slide out keyboard… ) convinced me that slide out keyboards weren’t worth the extra thickness, so I jumped on the Hero as soon as it was released. And I was not disappointed. The Hero is a very cool device with a nice interface. HTC has done some cool things to pretty up the standard Android interface and give it some of the eye candy we’ve come to expect from modern OSes.
So, the day the Samsung Moment came out, I went and made the switch. According to the sales rep, you can exchange ONCE in the first 30 days. And boy am I glad I did. The Samsung is MUCH faster! It boots faster, loads apps and web pages faster, and it is much more responsive to screen gestures.
The Keyboard — I couldn’t get past the virtual keyboard on the Hero. My gigantic thumbs didn’t quite get along with the little buttons – especially in portrait mode. And the auto correction it rams down your throat was a saving grace in some instances, but a curse in others. If you weren’t paying attention it would auto correct a word to something completely different and you might not notice until your message was long gone.
The Screen — the AMOLED screen on the Moment is as bright and vibrant as advertised. The Samsung definitely wins with 16.7 million colors compared to 65k on the Hero. AMOLED is supposed to consume less power too. Check goes to the Moment.
HTC Hero
The Interface — HTC’s SenseUI is pretty cool. The social networking integration was pretty nice — it was nice to connect my Google contacts to Facebook and have it use people’s profile pics, update their status in the contact list etc. HTC wins in this category… if you care about that sort of thing. I don’t. Even on my desktop — I run a minimal desktop with all the eye candy stuff turned off. Performance is much more important to me. The Moment sports a plain ol’ vanilla Android interface.
The Camera — HTC wins here too — 5MP compared to 3.2MP on the Moment. But again… not important to me. I’ve rarely used the camera on any phone I’ve owned. Not sure why… I’ve probably missed some good memories. If you take a lot of cell phone pics, check goes to the Hero.
So for me, the Samsung is the better phone — the speed, screen, improved reception and slide out keyboard win out over thickness, weight and a boring interface.
