My Galaxy Nexus arrived today, its amazing in some ways, hugely "behind" in others, I'd still recommend an iPhone 4S over it, although I'm greatly looking forward to trying out new things on mine in the future.
I think for most people, the iPhone is leaps and bounds ahead, its made like a piece of jewelry, its screen is better quality than any Android phone I've seen (the HTC One X might change that), its metal and glass rather than hollow feeling plastic, it has apps beyond your wildest dreams, and its plain "integrated" feeling, it feels complete.
I've only had this Galaxy Nexus literally a couple hours, but I've spent time playing with my friends Android devices of all levels these last couple years. The Galaxy Nexus (and the Nexus series in general) are the most iPhone like devices, but even THEY have glaring differences, by design, such as the possibility your updates are NOT actually coming from Google as you expected when buying a Nexus phone
Luckily, mine show through the app they *are*, but I'd be pissed if they werent, if I had to wait for updates which may never come, look at the poor CDMA versions of previous Nexus devices, which seemed to be left in the cold!
"oh, you can just flash a new custom ROM..." seems to be the cure all fix, rather like "oh, your computers having problems? Just restart it and hope its fixed", none of my Android using friends seem to have a go to OS version, one will say X has the best battery life and custom tweaks, another will say Y. I say go for a Nexus device, and leave it on stock, the straight version of Android from Google, then any faults are those of Google, theres no blaming the device or the version of Android you have!
I'm looking forward to using this phone in future, but for most people, people who are not majorly "Anti Apple" in some way, I would still greatly recommend the iPhone for being the complete package, without the rough edges that remain even in this Nexus device.
Its up to you, its great we have two strong mobile operating systems going at it to the death, rather than 95% using an objectively crap OS, the other 5% using an objectively better OS.
I use what is essentially a "stock" firmware on my Galaxy Note, and I have no problems with it. I'm running a custom kernel and the only real difference is it makes things marginally quicker.
With most models, particularly the Nexus series, there's no need to change the firmware unless you _want_ to. Rooting the phone is simply analogous to Jailbreaking an iphone. There's no need to do it, but it may allow you to get around some irritating restrictions (on Android it lets me delete the useless bloatware apps primarily - which are pretty much a non-issue on Nexus devices).
I really can't think of a good reason to jailbreak an iPhone unless perhaps you want better networking options (better tethering, vpn etc), although some of the UI tweaks were handy (5 icon trays etc)
Ignore the potential for updates. If the current model of a device doesn't do what you want, don't expect an upgrade down the line to suddenly make the device useful to you. Odds are when the update arrives, you're going to be disappointed in some way.
jaywontdart: .... it has apps beyond your wildest dreams...
That paints a slightly misleading picture. The Android Market isn't too far away from Apple - 400k+ apps (as of Jan 2011) v/s 500k+ in the App Store. So there's a pretty good chance that the apps that are beyond your wildest dreams are present in the Google store as well. Also, putting the numbers aside, there are plenty of unique apps on the Android market that will never make it to the Apple app store due to Apple's restrictive policies. This can be a good or bad thing though, depending on the kind of user you are. But since GeekZone is mostly frequented by geeks, I think it's safe to say that our geeky app dreams would be slightly better fulfilled by Google's store. :P
jaywontdart: .... it has apps beyond your wildest dreams...
That paints a slightly misleading picture. The Android Market isn't too far away from Apple - 400k+ apps (as of Jan 2011) v/s 500k+ in the App Store. So there's a pretty good chance that the apps that are beyond your wildest dreams are present in the Google store as well. Also, putting the numbers aside, there are plenty of unique apps on the Android market that will never make it to the Apple app store due to Apple's restrictive policies. This can be a good or bad thing though, depending on the kind of user you are. But since GeekZone is mostly frequented by geeks, I think it's safe to say that our geeky app dreams would be slightly better fulfilled by Google's store. :P
You're quite right d3xt3r that the "App Gap" has closed in terms of number, but theres no question that the Market......Google Play store isnt anywhere equal in terms of quality, not even within a lightyear!
Almost any given app *will* work better on iOS, the polish, the loading times, the features, developers tend to aim for iOS first (see Zombies, Run, an awesome game I love https://www.zombiesrungame.com/ or the official Geocaching app, geocaching in itself a "nerdy" hobby, yet the Android app is A MILLION YEARS behind the iOS version, I have it on my iPhone, a couple friends have it on their Android devices)
Look at Instagram, a company recently bought for a billion bucks, and up until a week or two ago, its 20 odd million users were ALL on iOS, because there wasnt an Android version!
The quality is nowhere close, why? I'm not sure, theres certainly no technical reason why Android apps could not equal iOS apps, its just a design philosophy, a sort of Windows/Linux "cobbled together" ness, as long as it runs fairly well, then its "good enough".
I'm very glad that Martias has taken over design at Android
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matias_Duarte
Its been so sorely needed. I've only just gotten my ICS device, so I'm going to enjoy using it compared to earlier Android devices, but hell, even in that case, when a new version of the OS comes out, even if this OS has all the boxes ticked, and a beautiful design like Ice Cream Sandwich seems to, theres no guarantee it will ever come to even a handful of other phones!
@jaywontdart interestingly the early Iphone had a designed and manufactured Samsung screen. The Iphone 4 had an LG manufactured screen so that would say that android not only has the same type of screen but possibly better. Also of note is the new OLED screens that are being looked at by Apple but are currently Samsung. The 4S is a relatively new phone so hard to make comparisons based on current offerings
It is also interesting that Apple design but don't manufacture but are very good at it, especially the marketing as can be seen by the price they are able to get away with.
I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that your comment was more subjective than objective and an opinion but seems to come across as fact which maybe not have been your intention, suffice it is good to have a choice and competition is good for consumers.
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