Tech Pro

I have, of late, fallen in love with Android, and my hunch is, you will too. I've carried an iPhone in my hip pocket for what seems like aeons, content in the belief that no other device could navigate to a little park in a town 100 miles away, sync a grocery list with my wife's phone, tell me where to get decent sushi in Park City, remind me of the bones-to-water ratio of veal stock, and stream music or New York Times headlines to me on demand — both at the same time, even.
I was wrong. The latest Android phones, running the latest Android software, can do all of this and more — most of what an iPhone can do, in fact. In some cases, the Android phone does it better.
If I sound at all surprised, it's because Google's little mobile OS did not explode out of R&D with any competitive edge. It was clumsy, both aesthetically and functionally, did not have a huge line of developers waiting to write apps, and was available first on an underpowered phone sold only by T-Mobile, the fourth-place U.S. carrier. Inauspicious beginnings, you might say.
Last fall, Android got its biggest forward push when Verizon Wireless, the country's biggest carrier, rolled out the Motorola Droid, first in a line of Droid-branded phones from Motorola and HTC. It was made of sturdy metal, with a fast chip and a Lucasfilm-licensed name. Most important was its software: It ran the vastly improved 2.0 version of


Android, and came with Google's own voice-guided turn-by-turn GPS navigator. People who had disregarded earlier pretenders to the iPhone throne got behind this one. Not just customers, app developers.
Now, Android is available on every carrier, in multiple shapes and sizes. Many are at least as powerful as the Moto Droid. Google itself released the Nexus One, in part to spur Android's hardware partners to keep their specs cranked and their screens crisp. (Though I tested four Android phones for this article, the Nexus One is the demo I used for photos, because it runs only the Android OS — no carrier or manufacturer interface extras — and it has the latest version, Android 2.2 "Froyo." Sadly, the Nexus One is being discontinued in the U.S.)
Now, all the carriers are up to speed. In the $130 to $200 range, you can pick up Verizon's Droid Incredible by HTC and Droid X by Motorola, Sprint's HTC Evo, T-Mobile's MyTouch 3G Slide, AT&T's Samsung Captivate and HTC Aria. And soon you'll see Samsung's Galaxy S phone, coming out on all of the big four carriers (albeit under confusingly different model names).
Apps and widgets On the iPhone, there are apps. On Android, there are apps and widgets. A widget is a tiny slice of an app that shows up on the phone's home screen. This lets you experience a bit of the app without actually launching it. Take social networking, for example: To get a Facebook update on an iPhone, you either dive into the Facebook app, or set it to give you push notifications, pop-up messages that tell you that someone has written on your wall, or replied to your direct message. On Android, you can browse the most recent posts in your feed without leaving the home screen, diving into the app only if you want to go deeper.
Widgets, like apps, are made by developers, and you get the option to add them to your home screen once you download the app. For instance, before you download the Epicurious cooking app, you don't see the widget. But once you download the free app, the widget appears in the widget menu.

Multitasking The iPhone OS was famously bestowed with "multitasking" powers this year, after owners clamored for it for years. And what does it mean, exactly? For phone users, it mostly means being able to play music, or download files, or get GPS instructions, while running a different app. Android has natively supported multitasking among apps since its start, though it was long ridiculed for supporting something that everyone knew could contribute to terrible battery life. Battery life is still an issue — in my experience no Android phone can beat an iPhone on battery life — but newer Android phones do last longer on a charge. Besides, the latest version of the OS is smarter about managing apps to preserve memory (and battery life).
What's important to know about multitasking is that Android — having done it longer — does it better, in terms of interface. There's a pull-down "drawer" at the top of the screen that can be accessed no matter what you're doing. It serves to alert you when you need to be alerted, but it gives you lots of other information — how many messages you have, how far along a file download has come — information you just can't get from Apple's multitasking. That's not to say Apple's isn't workable, and a huge improvement over what came before. It's just not as nice.