"Getting Mobile" is a series of mini-posts meant to explain to the average consumer in non-technical terms the important parts of the quickly evolving mobile handset market.T-Mobile has the G2. Verizon has the Thunderbolt. AT&T has the Atrix. Sprint has the Evo.
Studio shots of smartphones. The phones pictured are an HTC Thunderbolt, an HTC EVO, an HTC Inspire, a Samsung Vibrant and a Motorola Droid. The Motorola Droid is the only one with a keyboard. ///ADDITIONAL INFO: tech.androidphone.0401 - 4/5/11 - ROD VEAL, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER - Studio shots of smartphones. The phones pictured are an HTC Thunderbolt, an HTC EVO, an HTC Inspire, a Samsung Vibrant and a Motorola Droid. The Motorola Droid is the only one with a keyboard.
ROD VEAL, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGI
Driven by strong smartphones like these, Google's Android operating system now holds 33 percent of the mobile smartphone market, ahead of RIM and Apple, according to recent numbers from Internet marketing research company comScore.
Part of the reason Android is catching on is because the platform is more open and can be modified by manufacturers and carriers in any number of ways, including ways that were not originally intended.
That means there are a lot of choices, but it could make picking a winner a tough choice.
Though I'm an iPhone owner, I've spent a fair amount of time with Android and can see its appeal.
Here are five tips to make picking out an Android phone just a little easier.
1.) Try to pick your carrier first
The last thing you want is slow Internet access and dropped calls.
Whether you have a dead signal at home or full bars and whether you trust the customer service of the company which will be accepting a hefty payment from you each month is likely the most significant decision you need to make when picking a cellphone.
I've been testing the Inspire, Thunderbolt and Evo smartphones against one another. Though there are some differences among the phones – the Inspire, for example, doesn't have a front-facing camera for video chat — these three Android smartphones are more alike than different.
All are made by the same company, HTC, advertised as speedier "4G" phones, have the same 4.3-inch screen size and have the same software overlaid by HTC modifying the base Android operating system.
But one runs on AT&T, one on Verizon and one on Sprint and the advertised "4G" service from each is completely different. In my testing, Verizon was far and away the fastest, Sprint was second and AT&T was last. T-Mobile advertises 4G service too, using technology similar to AT&T's, but I haven't tested it recently.
Whose service, and customer service, you trust is more important than which individual Android phone you choose.
2.) Decide, keyboard or no keyboard
I'm comfortable using a touchscreen, but if you have long nails, big fingers or just prefer the tapping of real keys, your decision will be made simpler by picking a phone with a keyboard or without.
Try to spend maybe 30 minutes in a store trying out the different phones available on your carrier and testing out whether you are comfortable with a touchscreen or a physical keyboard.
Once you've picked your carrier and whether you need a keyboard, your decision is going to be relatively easy because you'll have narrowed down your choices to a handful of phones.
3.) Check the software
Ignore the processor speed and megapixels if you can, because the software on the latest generation of smartphones is at least as important as the hardware itself.
Because Android is so "open," the software can be modified from its base versions in any number of ways. In the best cases, this means additional features may be added that make a device more appealing than another, but at its worst, software modifications from a manufacturer or carrier means your phone might not be upgraded to later versions of Android that provide additional features.
Devices might also be shipped with software that isn't the latest. Boost Mobile still sells a phone with Android 1.5, a version of Android that was first released two years ago. The phone provides push-to-talk functionality, which is cool, but free turn-by-turn navigation is probably more important, a feature added in a later version of Android.
Android is currently up to version 2.3 on phones and 3.0 on tablets, even though many tablets still ship with versions earlier than 3.0, and phones ship with versions earlier than 2.3.
Try not to buy anything with software earlier than 2.2.
This is important because…
4.) Apps matter
Some Androids are better for multimedia (bigger speakers, bigger screens), while a great keyboard can make it easy to write lengthy emails, but all official Android devices come with Google's App Market, which sells thousands of apps that further the functionality of your phone. If your phone is stuck at an earlier version of the Android operating system, it may not work with newer apps.
These little software programs, made by big corporations and people working out of their garages alike, allow you to do stuff on your phone that hardly would've been imaginable a few years ago. You can translate spoken language into another language, for example, just by letting your phone listen to the person speaking, or you can snap a picture of a product on a shelf to get information about it.
That's why it's so important that, even once you've brought you phone home, you try to make sure it runs the latest version of Android.
The appeal of Android is also arguably its biggest problem. That is, companies can take the operating system and modify it to be used in many different ways on many different kinds of hardware. The Motorola Atrix, for example, is a smartphone on AT&T that can also become a laptop when placed in a special dock. Apps, which I contend are the most important feature of smartphones today, aren't guaranteed to work right and in some cases may perform very poorly when used this way on a laptop screen rather than a smartphone screen.
5.) Everything else is an afterthought
It's tempting to set up a complicated matrix when picking a mobile phone. Weighing price against processor speed against carrier against features is tempting and, for some people, it makes sense. If you have a very specific use for a phone, like if you really want to get rid of your laptop and carry around a cell phone with you everywhere, then that's going to add more weight to picking AT&T as a carrier to get the Motorola Atrix no matter what you think of its service.
But AT&T makes no guarantees it will upgrade to new versions of Android, so you could be stuck, for two years, with the app experience you get when you first got the device, even when there's a new version of Android ready in six months
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