Anyone here own an Android based phone ? google released their update to google maps on Android phones today and it's amazing. It's now a full blown GPS system with turn by turn voice navigation but with the added bonus of street view too so you can actually see as you're driving down the street and look at what you're actually seeing.

Hands down the best Satnav i've used and with live traffic updates and other 'layers' you can add such as wikipedia info on buildings and the ability to click on shops to bring up their phone numbers and addresses it's just awesome.

Sounds cool, don't do much driving any more though.

Still considering an Android phone for my next phone though, just cause I think the iPhone is too expensive.

Android owns the iphone any day. Iphones are glorified toys that have been marketted well but have hugely limited functions

That's fighting talk, the iPhone fanbois will be on soon!

That's ok, I'll put them in their place. I use an iphone during work a lot

cake baker you going to be on xbox live anytime soon ? I need to speak to you about iphones / android as I am due an upgrade and not sure what to get. Put off getting an i phone last year but i may relent let me know.

talk here then I can listen in, need a new phone myself.

What did yo uwant to know ?

what is the best android phone so i can compare it with an i phone. I might just get an android and an itouch then i have the best of both worlds

An Android and a iPod touch? Sorta pointless really, if you must have an apple mp3 player and you need a phone, the iPhone seems perfect for you?

I don't really want it for an mp3 player but the problem is i don't know too much about android phones but it would definitely be cheaper than getting an iphone. I have got a HTC touch diamond at the moment so might get another htc but an android.

It depends what you like. I don't like touchscreen only devices for typing so I have the G1, if you don't mind that then the HTC Magic is an awesome phone (my brother has one) and runs android nicely.

Android handles mp3's and more filetypes than the iphone can (open source etc) so if you just want some music it's perfectly fine. It also has google listen (only on android) that supports streaming music and podcasts from sites perfectly.

What you need to make sure is that you get a "google experience" phone and not just an android one. There's android phones that just run android but don't have all the full functions as they're not specifically supported by google. If you get a full google experience one you can enjoy free (proper) push gmail, not just imap but push as in blackberry style. As well as all the cool GPs functions and google wave etc (when it's out in the UK)

If it's apps you want then android hs exactly the same apps as the iphone (some by the same people too) and mainly they're free instead of paid for like on the iphone. There's less top quality games on android but then it's newer and there is some awesome games on the market that are slowly being released. There's less interference from google about what apps get released unlike with Apple, so android has way more useful things like tethering apps and VOIP etc.

Android IMO handles all the updates and emails / messages etc in a much better way than on the Iphone. You don't get a huge message in the middle of the screen covering whatever you're doing, it's just a little icon in the top and you can drag down a bar from the top of the screen with your finger that shows all previews of waiting messages which you can either reply to then or flick the bar back up to take another look at later and get on with what you were doing.

Free push gmail and syncing with google calendar is a huge plus over the iphone which can only do Imap and retrieve mails every 15 mins unless you purchase apples mobileme package and forward your emails there. Which makes you lose all the conversation views etc that you get with android.

I love how everything on android is all tied into one place, all contacts added are instantly available in gmail along with calendar entries, tasks, maps, picasa photos, basically anything google has can be synced with the phone. If you lose your phone you just change your gmail password from a pc and everything is locked out and wiped. I knwo you can do some of the live contact syncs etc with other phones, especially the ipod but it's just not as well handled as it is on android.

Like I said, I have the G1, which has the slide out keyboard which I find way easier to type on than a touchscreen only device but if you don't mind that then the magic is the closest one you'll get to the iphone in terms of looks and feel, it just has a couple of buttons on the bottom of the screen extra and comes with an SD card which can be upgraded obviously.

if you do get an android phone though, make sure you get a decent mobile internet package on your contract as it's permenantly synced with your google account. I have a 500mb a month package and only about 15mb or so is used a month through the syncing, but with all the other online functions and apps etc being available so easily you can end up using a couple hundred MB a month with no problem.

The ONLY thing that is better on the iphone, is multi touch on the screen. When browsing pages in android you have to press a little - or + magnifying button to zoom in and out (it supports double tapping for zooming in and also holding your finger down on a webpage to bring up a scrollbox to flick through the page quickly) It's not as "slick" as the iphone in that respect because you have to press a button - shock horror! - but it works equally well and you don't even notice it after a while.

I've owned a lot of phones running different OS's and Android is the best one I've used so far - it can literally be made to do anything and there's plenty of custom ROM's of the OS if you don't even like the google provided one.

Any more questions ?

Oh and I forgot the most important thing. Android phones can run one more than app at a time ! That completely kills the iphone. Imagine how annoying it is to be chatting to someone on msn on your phone and then you open a webpage and you lose the msn application. Or yo uneed to check a contact info while you're browsing a webpage, but the browser is closed. It just gives you way more freedom and is far less annoying

Maybe, I still want an iPhone though

Your loss

Though the google phone look promising...

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/14/exclusive-first-google-phone-nexus-one-photos-android-2-1-on/

Yeah I saw that, especially if they do subsidise the price and sell it cheap online only with no contract and not locked to a carrier. That's what they said they were hoping to do in one interview.

There's a hacked version of 2.1 running on the 'Droid' at the moment though.

http://www.zjtechlive.com/try-android-2-0-on-your-windows/

Try this if you've never used an android device and want to check out how it all works