Torn Between 2 Phones: Nexus One vs. iPhone

To switch or not to switch, that is the question. Google’s announcement of its Nexus One smartphone happened over a week ago and I’m still receiving lots of Tweets and e-mail from readers asking the same question: Should they give up their iPhone for the Nexus One?

Some people with iPhones, frustrated by AT&T’s inadequate service and the high monthly cost, are wondering if an alternative has finally arrived. Does the Nexus One offer the feature list that Apple has led them to expect?

I’m on the fence myself, even though I never thought I’d be interested in anything but the iPhone. From my experience using the Nexus One, and from talking to people who have made the shift, it’s not necessarily about the differences between the iPhone and the Nexus One. The phones are extremely similar in design and general feel. Instead, the decision can be made based on the software services you use on your desktop or in the browser.

Chad Dickerson, chief technology officer of Etsy, received a pre-launch Nexus One from Google three weeks ago. He says Google’s phone feels connected to certain services on the Web in a way the iPhone doesn’t. “Compared to the iPhone, the Google phone feels like it’s part of the Internet to me,” he said. “If you live in a Google world, you have that world in your pocket in a way that’s cleaner and more connected than the iPhone.”

The same thing applies to the iPhone. If you’re a MobileMe, iPhoto, iTunes or Safari user, the iPhone connects effortlessly to your pictures, contacts, bookmarks and music. But if you use other services, you sometimes need to find software workarounds to get access to your content.

In comparison, with the Nexus One, if you use GMail, Google Calendar or Picasa, Google’s online photo storage software, the phone connects effortlessly to these services and automatically syncs with a single log-in on the phone.

The phones work perfectly with their respective software, but both of them don’t make an effort to play nice with other services.

Tim O’Reilly, founder and chief executive of O’Reilly Media, also took the leap to the Nexus One and discussed his thinking in a recent blog post on O’Reilly Radar. Mr. O’Reilly wrote: “Gmail is so good on the phone that I can, for the first time, imagine being totally without my laptop.” But he also added that trying to get music onto the phone had been extremely frustrating.

Mr. O’Reilly said in an interview that there was a clear divide between these two phones that felt like a war taking place between Apple and Google. He said it reminded him of the early battles with Microsoft and desktop operating systems. “If you’re a primary user of these platforms you get a great experience,” he said. “If you’re a heavy Google user on the Nexus One it’s great, but if not you’re on another device, you become a second-class citizen.”

Ultimately, Mr. O’Reilly said he made the switch because he found the wireless service to be less expensive. And he liked that Google’s Android platform was more open to developers than Apple’s iPhone ecosystem.

Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple, also has a crush on the Nexus One, as he explained on an NBC show this week. Mr. Wozniak said the Nexus One was his “latest” favorite gadget. (It should be noted that Mr. Wozniak later pointed out that he still has “two iPhones.”)

So those who are still wondering about the Nexus One should think about the software services they rely on, and explore how easily they integrate with their current phone. Then decide from there. Of course, there’s also the customer service factor to consider.