So, I am an Android Phone user. I have the HTC Hero. A very good phone. People (of a non-technical persuasion)  ask me what its like, and I say “Well Dave, its like an iPhone” as it is the closest thing I can imagine Dave will be able to reference. Then comes the epic question back from Dave. “Yeah, but is it AS GOOD as the iPhone?”. Deep breath.

Yes, it is better. It does everything an iPhone can do and I can legally mess with the source code of the software. Its integrations with Google are flawless* and actually the whole phone is made better with the HTC Sense UI, AND I get regular ROM upgrades, and will get an upgrade to Android 2.1 very soon I hope. Does this make it better? Well, for Dave – no. Because he doesn’t care about the above. He wants a phone that is easy to use, and that has arguably the largest collection of tacky accessories ever made for any device ever. China are doing very well out of the iPhone, thank you very much.

One thing I do know is that the Android is rising – mostly because you can only buy the iPhone software on erm.. the iPhone. The fact that 74 days after the launch of the Droid it outsold the iPhone 1G is a little miss leading. The Droid was launched in the middle of the SmartPhone boom, where as the 1G was launched too long ago to remember – but it pretty much made smart phones main stream. Also, these figures are “estimated” from Apps installed on devices. Still, the point is Android devices can be made faster, and spread faster than the iPhones are capable of because of the devices and the platform flexibility.

Launch Sales Comparison through Day 74 - Droid v.s. iPhone

Launch Sales Comparison through Day 74 - Droid v.s. iPhone