Decisions Decisions Decisions

By Gerald McGrew on October 17, 2013 in Other

Photo: Samsung

However, the siren’s call of new technology has been luring me towards a bigger, better and flashier mobile. Like many people I had a look at the latest iPhone and dismissed it as a slightly taller version of the one I bought years ago. No real excitement there. Yes it was faster – not that my old one ever struck me as particularly slow – and it was a touch skinnier. After six years of being offered black or white, the latest iPhone now has bright new colours, and that’s about it. It’s all a bit same-same.

I decided to start checking out the competition – the once unfashionable but now oh-so-accepted Android. The first thing that became apparent is the sheer amount of choice on offer. And that the Android world is a strange place. You see, Android is an operating system that is ‘owned’ by Google but is freely available for hardware makers to use in any smartphone, tablet or other device they wish. It means they can build whatever they think will float people’s boats, and the tricky software bit is mostly done already. Google releases updates and new versions of the software regularly, and the device makers can also add their own tweaks to try and improve their offerings.

While this means that there is endless choice across hundreds of different types of phones, tablets and everything in between, it has led to a problem known as fragmentation. Apple has always been super-organised with their product planning, and as a result there are only four different screens sizes across their phones, tablets and iPods. Even better, 95% are using the same version of Apple’s iOS operating system. This makes life nice and easy for the millions of app and website developers out there – and also for Apple. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the fascists know how to run the trains on time.

With Samsung, HTC, Sony, Motorola, Acer, LG and many more making devices that use Android, and with eight different versions of Android available, it means there are at least 12,000 different combinations of device and Android version in the market. Last year there was under 4000. This is proving a nightmare for device-makers, app and website developers, advertisers and telcos. Anyone involved in the industry is struggling with how to create software, apps, sites, ads and networks that manage this degree of fragmentation. In simple terms, it’s like comparing the town planning of Canberra with Mumbai. Canberra is boring but foolproof (not fool-less), while Mumbai is pure chaos.

So how did I navigate the different Android smartphone options? Once you get past the marketing bullshit – that is, if you can – the reality is that they share the same software, are the same size and have a large chunk of glass on the front. There really aren’t many options for uniqueness.

Which meant I chose the brand whose ads take the piss out of Apple the best. Go Samsung!