ORM are working on application UI design for a number of mobile projects for some major financial institutions. They are predominantly apps for iPhone but we're now seeing a lot more interest in the Android platform. We got ourselves a few Google Nexus One's at the beginning of the year and have been living with them side by side with our iPhones to compare.

A lot of us here have had iPhones since their launch so it will need to be a great device for us to change from our iPhones, but the launch of the new Google phone and the evolution of Android has finally started to make it look like a serious competitor in the smart phone market.

What the hell is Android?
If your thinking this then I will try and sum it up in the next sentence, alternatively go to Wikipedia to find out:

Android is Google's mobile operating system developed using open standards. It's available on a large variety of handset manufacturers and all the major telecom operators so it's not just tied into one manufacturer and operator - this gives you and me more choice and freedom than the Apple offering. The handset is application centric and currently has over 20,000 applications (compared to iPhone's 140,000), we expect this to increase massively over the next year.

So how do they compare?
Well, I'm the Creative Director and not the Technical Director at ORM so this post is a bit fluffy... and I'm not going too in depth with the iPhone features, this article is more about my initial view on the Nexus One.

Google's Nexus One is approximately the same physical size as the iPhone so it feels much more like the iPhone than the HTC Magic and other smaller-screen 'droids. It's a good looking handset with a warm-tinted aluminium style case. It has a trackball which I hadn't a clue what to do with – other Android users have also commented they never use it too, the only use I have found for it is when you need move the cursor through text blocks to edit however, the trackball does glow to alert you that there are notifications (text messages, email etc), so Google found another use for it.

Like other Android handsets it has four soft-keys, these are important and play a big part in any application design (I'll come to these in a moment). It's volume control and the on/off button are pretty much in the same position as the iPhone so there's a bit of familiarity about it. In fact, there's something quite nice about the overall look of this phone or have I just got iPhone fatigue!

The four soft keys consist of a 'Back' button. This is important as it allows you to go back through your steps and is similar to your browser back button although it allows you to step back through applications.

The 'Menu' button will pull up menu options specific to where you are, this is quite significant for application designer's as it's a good place to put page specific functions. Android user's will use this Options Menu frequently when they are within applications.

The 'Home' soft key takes you to the main 'Home' page of the handset with the Application drawer where all your apps are stored. You can drag apps out of the drawer onto the multi-page home. The button is always your exit from any app and works just like the iPhone's 'home' button.

Finally the 'Search' button synonymous with 'Google' is available when you need to perform a Google search. Applications can also use the search feature to work within the application as well.

The Nexus' screen is very crisp and sharp. It's a WVGA screen that is 480x800 pixels with 240dpi (dots per inch) resolution compared with the iPhone's HVGA 480x320 pixel screen which is 160dpi resolution. Now that's a lot of pixels squeezed into a similar sized screen and when I compare both screens together watching a YouTube video the Nexus' screen has the edge, however, the built in speakers on the iPhone are far superior so expect to use headphones on the Android at all times.

As you would expect both these handsets are great for surfing the web, the Nexus' tighter screen resolution fits more of the page on the screen (See the pictures below). I was disappointed that Android 2.1 didn't have multi-touch gestures and found myself pinching images and websites and nothing happening... but the recent update (2.1 update 1) has just added multi-touch pinch and pull to zoom in and out. So now it's feeling more like an iPhone than ever before.

Android 2.1's UI has certainly moved on from the tired looking 1.6 on our HTC Magic handset. It feel's more fluid and responds more quickly, scrolling through the home pages is now a lot like the iPhone (it even has the little dots to denote multiple pages) – but is it as responsive and slicker than the iPhone?

Some of Google's own apps on Android 2 now borrow the familiar iPhone UI's horizontal slide when you tap a button to reveal more details - this helps the user visually understand that they are drilling down to another level. I find the haptic vibrating feedback useful on the Android, and when it's used correctly within an application it can let you know a task is complete or a button tapped.

ORM use Google Enterprise Applications for staff email, calendars and documents. Staff can collect their email in their preferred email client (Outlook, Apple Mail etc), although most tend to use the browser on their desktops and laptops. The Android is obviously designed to work very closely with Google Mail and other their applications and this is where the Android really does notch one up on the iPhone. The Google Mail application works great, so much so that I haven't even used the general email client that comes with the Android OS. Your Google account will sync contacts and calendars so this is a big benefit (if you use Google apps!). All Google Apps now work within the mobile browser so you can access other features via the browser.... If anyone knows if you can add a bookmark as an icon to the home pages (you can on an iPhone!) please let me know?

As expected the Google Maps application works really well on the sharper screen and I'm now finding that I use the Android handset to view Maps more than I do the iPhone - this maybe because it tends to get a better 3G connection (the iPhone device is on O2 and the Android is with Vodafone so it may be a carrier thing).

The Voice Search works well on the Android, and I like the little widget on the home page has voice search, but you still look like a plum when you speak into your handset 'Call Wife' or 'Paolozzi prints for sale' (that's a little hint to ORM - my birthday's coming up!).

From an application design viewpoint we find the iPhone a lot simpler to design for. Because of the range of Android handsets we have multiple screen resolutions to contend so there's more to think about, although the new app-centric iPad will run iPhone apps as well as a whole new suite of tablet-orientated apps. Designing maybe more of a pain but developing applications for the Android is a lot more simple when it comes to distribution and ad-hoc prototyping/testing. There's no lengthy submission and vetting of apps process (like Apple) when you add your application to the Android Market Place, you can even have your apps available outside the market place if it suits you.

So has it replaced the iPhone?
Well, the answers no although I'm carrying both around for now. I certainly don't want to give the Nexus up just yet, I think Android as a platform will get better.

Perhaps I'm just a little tired of the iPhone, it hasn't changed much on the outside since it's launch and it can feel a little dated when I go back to it after using the Android but there is something that always brings me back to the iPhone... and although it will pain some people that I'm saying this, it's iTunes that makes the big difference. The iPhone has my music, films (for those long train journeys), kids cartoons (for those long car journeys) and photos from the last 12 months - and it's this multimedia part to the iPhone that rocks. I haven't bothered to download any music to the Android yet, although I have added some to the SD card, maybe I just don't associate it with music and video, whereas the iPhone with it's ancestral iPod roots has the natural association.

The future's bright...
Some statistics were published on Mashable today that shows Android has doubled it's market share to 5.2% of the US Smartphone market. And unless Steve Jobs has another flavour iPhone for us soon, I expect Android to have an equivalent market share to the iPhone within a couple of years.

We're going to hold some workshops for our clients to come in a have a look at the Android phones, and compare them to the iPhone, Palm Pre's and other smartphones. In the UK 16 million people accessed the internet from their handsets in December 2009 and viewed a combined total of 6.7 billion pages*. Now more than ever, we all we should have mobile web versions of our websites as smartphones like the Android become the most popular method of accessing the internet.

* Source: Wireless Federation