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
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