I’ve had an iPhone since they came out, so I’m biased. I love my iPhone. I love iOS.

So my phone contract was up and they told me they’d send me a free Samsung Galaxy SII if I renewed it for another 18 months. Fine – might as well. I haven’t really messed with Android – and I am a Google fanboy way more than an Apple fanboy. So here’s what I think of the Samsung Galaxy SII, compared to the iPhone 4.

Device

The device itself is bigger, but lighter. It’s weird because you’d think the lightness would have made it feel better – but somehow it feels cheaper. That’s probably just because the iPhone’s weight is what I’m used to.

The screen is bigger than the iPhone4 – which is a plus. The androids, from what I’ve seen, have 3 buttons at the bottom – where the iPhone only has the Home button. These buttons are used extensively under android – and come in very useful.

Android

The ‘desktop’ on Android makes the iphone’s look stoneage. It’s tiled in the same way that the iPhones is but you can add widgets to it. The widgets might take up say, 3 tiles wide by 2 tiles high – so you organise your tiles around them. This is really cool for things like email, or twitter, as you can show the latest tweet on your phone screen all the time.

It also has a feature where you can drag down from the top of the screen to show the notifications and quick switch things like wifi, sound and rotation lock. This is incredibly useful – and it’s something that apple have apparently unashamedly stolen in iOS5.

Ease Of Use

I think it’s fair to say that Androids aren’t as easy to use as iPhones. iPhones are easy – everything just works. Androids aren’t exactly hard to use – but a lot of times when trying to use the Galaxy I found myself thinking “fuck me, this is a mess compared to the iPhone”. It feels like a step backwards in one way. Back to the times of when I had a Windows Mobile phone – and it was almost like a traditional PC on your phone.

Overall

Whenever you talk to someone that knows about Android they’ll tell you to install firmware x, then download package x and install and activate x. And that kind of sums it up. If you’re into customizing the shit out of your phone then Android is definitely for you.

But if you’re like me and you don’t care about that stuff, you want the minimum amount of options, you don’t want to jailbreak, you want simplified and clean and easy? Go for the iPhone. There’s really not that much in it – and that’s the only fundamental difference.