The Phone Wars: Google vs Apple

Unless you have been living under a rock lately you know about the fight going on between Google and Apple.  This fight had been escalating for a bit now.  In my opinion here is how the fight is going:

Apple: blocked the Google Voice app from the iPhone. If it was at AT&T request is not the point they still did it and there are jailbroken phones that could of used it off of AT&T.  

Google: Launched the Nexus One even though it obviously was in development for a bit Apple's punch came first

Apple:  Mr Crapple (aka Steve Jobs) trashed Google at the Apple all employee meeting

Google: Turned on mutlitouch in Google apps on the Nexus One

Handicaps:  

        Apple: AT&T's network is being severely strained by data users.  To make matters worse for AT&T, they approved the SlingPlayer app for use over their 3G network.  I see data usage going up even more now.  More dropped calls on the iPhone now.

       Google:  the Android Market & app storage.  The interface is not great and there is no real good way to browse the market on the web. The App store may have more apps but that means more junk as well.  Developers are slowly moving apps to Android from the iPhone.  Google is working on Apps2sd as a default to make more memory for app storage, but currently storage is an issue.

Current state of the fight:  Google ahead.  The Nexus One running it's current enhancements is a stronger phone than the iPhone.  Once Google gets apps2sd running and the market in good shape the iPhone is in serious trouble, but we will just have to wait and see who lands the next punch and what it brings.  

Smartphones - Cellphones or Computers

I am getting really sick and tired of all this ROM crap in the smartphone world.  Today's smartphones are basically small computers with a phone program running on them.  Manufacturers, carriers and developers need to start treating them like a computer.

For example, you go into a store and buy a computer.  It has a designated OS on it (most likely Windows or Mac).  You can put what ever future OS on it you want as long as it meets the minimum hardware requirements for the new OS.  All of your old programs still work(for the most part) because the new OS is backwards compatible.

Now onto what to do with the smartphones.  Manufactures build a phone with a specific set of hardware.  This hardware may or may not support different OSs.  If it can support multiple OSs they will probably choose to market just one.  They send the phone to the carrier with the carriers apps preinstalled and ready for the end user.  When an upgraded OS comes out the customer will have a couple of choices to get the new OS.  1) purchase a new phone from a carrier or 2) purchase and/or download the new OS (free in terms of Android, paid for WinMo.  The carrier can keep a set of apps on their website hidden behind a customer login for the customer who has upgraded to get the carrier apps to reinstall.

Doing this will stop all of the bullshit going on right now with people waiting to get the latest releases and people hacking phones to get an OS to put on another phone.  This will free up developers to write some more kick ass apps instead of trying to hack the OS.

This will really put the carriers on equal footing in terms of hardware and really make them compete on their network.