Dave Burrows – Tech / iPhone Blog – Technical Evangelist

The iPhone vs Android debate is a big one and it follows on from the old days of PC vs Mac.  There’s a loyal fan base on both iPhone and Android. Most of the iPhone followers feel the iPhone is better, most of the Android followers agnostic and some that drift between the two platforms.

Well I’m in the camp where I prefer iPhone over Android but I have both platforms and use both regularly.   Whilst there are things I like about Android, and one is a larger screen, there are a lot more pluses for me on iPhone.  Not the OS or the simplicity, although they can be a bonus, but the accessories.

I have on my desk 3x iPhone docks.  I have iPhone speaker docks  at home both in my lounge and in other rooms.  They’re docks that both charge and allow the iPhone to be used as a loud speaker, much louder than the iPhone speaker can output.

The problem I have with Android is fragmentation.  Not in the normal sense you hear about Android OS levels being fragmented, but manufacturer fragmentation.

Each manufacturer creates their own style of devices, each have different sizes of phones, different rounded edges, different thickness of devices, the charger plug could be mini USB, Micro USB or even a non-standard connector.  The connector can be on the bottom of the phone, the left side or the right side of the phone.  This means that no one manufacturer can make a dock accessory that will work with multiple phones.  So most dock/accessory manufacturers just  decide not to make one, it’s that simple!  Then the manufacturer of the devices only make one dock if you’re lucky, and it’s a pretty poor afterthought.

Now roll on iPhone.  Sure there’s multiple iPhones like a 3G, 3GS, 4, 4S.  So there’s a little difference but most docks that work mostly work across the entire range.  There’s hundreds if not thousands of accessory makers for the iPhone but no where as many as for Android when it comes to docks.

This to me is the biggest Android killer, along with manufacturers not upgrading OS’s to the latest flavour, e.g. ICS (Ice Cream Sandwhich).

If only Android device manufacturers would standardised so docks and other accessories could be used across devices and across manufacturers then it would make Android a much better platform.