It's now been 1 week with the Galaxy Nexus even though I do like the phone there are some issues.

1) I don't get Downcast, my all time favorite podcast app is not on Android. BeyondPod is ok and I bought the license for it but not as good as Downcast in my opinion.

2) My biggest gripe is the way this device handles bluetooth. The iPhone has separate volume profiles for different bluetooth devices and this device only has 1. I have a small bluetooth speaker at home and my car has bluetooth streaming. I kept my iPhone at full blast in the car and at about 50% on my bluetooth speaker so I had to make a universal adjustment. Also, I've had a few issues while playing music/podcasts and trying to answer a call or execute a voice command, this function is the pits on the Galaxy Nexus. As flawed as siri is she at least worked in my car.

3) The ability to easily manipulate the music app that is currently running without needing to unlock the phone is not entirely gone but not as clean of an implementation. Also, sometimes it just plain doesn't work. IOS you double tap the home button and play/pause/forward/back pop up for music manipulation.

4) Easy access to camera without needing to unlock the phone was nice on IOS. I think there is an app solution for this on android but I haven't really looked too hard for one.

5) Visual voicemail was tricky to setup, I basically set it up so when I don't answer my phone it forwards to my google voice voicemail and it works great. Still more tweaking than the average consumer would like.

7) App management in general is a bit more work but nothing terribly bad.

8) Backup and Restore. iCloud changed the game in this respect, I can simply tell my phone to restore from iCloud and pretty much every aspect of my phone is restored with little to no fuss, this includes app and folder placement. There is no such solution for Android, if there is I have yet to see it. Also, requiring someone to root for this purpose seems extremely silly. I just tried to erase and restore my Nexus 7 tablet and it didn't restore jack. I also bought Mybackup Pro which is a paid app and now am stuck with something useless, online storage is only through them and they charge extra monthly fees if you want more then 100MB storage.

Things I like:

1) Freedom to change any aspect of the phone or tablet I don't like. From keyboard to browser to mail client.

2) Widgets are a nice touch. I have a few of them now and they make looking stuff up like my appointments that day the weather and stock.

3) I have come to like the gmail client now that I have used it for a while and dolphin is an awesome browser that allows plugins.

4) Massive screen for viewing videos or using RDP.

5) Tight integration with google services which I use daily is great.


I feel I can make a decent conclusion of the people each platform will attract. Those of us in the know at least. I say “in the know” because the average user only cares about the basic functionality and app selection these days. Those of us that know the pros and cons tend to be a bit pickier.

Android user: Those of us that like to tweak things to no end and make sure everything works for me and only me. If I want to use the default apps that my device came with then great. If I don’t want to the that then I have options.

Where Android truly sucks: Simple backup and recovery.

Apple user: They like safe and tight integration of everything they have. Not a whole lot of tweaking here just accept what you get and roll with it.

Where IOS truly sucks: Customization

Where I sit? I can safely say I dabble in both camps at this point and see why someone would like one over the other.