I recently had quite a discussion (or argument) about smartphones with some friends on Facebook. I thought I'd share some of my thoughts here as well.
Really the phone debate is 2 separate issues: phone hardware and operating system (OS). For this discussion, I want to focus primarily on the different operating systems. In today's smartphone world we basically have Apple's iPhone OS (now iOS), Palm's webOS (Palm Pre/Pixi/Pre Plus/Pixi Plus), Google's Android (Droid, Droid Incredible, EVO 4G, and many others), RIM's BlackBerry OS, and a few others.
1) BlackBerry is great if you primarily need email and messaging or if it's required for business reasons. The devices are fast, have good battery life in general, and usually have a great physical keyboard - perfect for pounding out emails and text messages. However, this OS is dated, has a poor internet browsing experience, and it's not optimized for touchscreens like most popular devices use these days.
2) The iPhone OS provides a very streamlined, elegant experience that's easy to use. This makes it great for first-time smartphone users and those who don't really "geek-out" over phones. In addition, this platform has the greatest number of apps available and the next version will finally allow multitasking. That said, using an iPhone puts you in the Apple ecosystem where you are stuck using iTunes and only those apps approved by Apple are allowed. Personally, I don't want Apple to have so much control over a product I purchased from them. However, if you like to live in the iTunes universe, this might not be a problem for you.
3) Android is the anti-iPhone. It's a world where basically anything goes. You can get apps from the official App Market or install an app from anywhere they are available. It has a lot of multi-tasking power, is highly customizable, and has options and setting galore. It's a geek dream; however, it lacks a LOT of polish and is not nearly as easy to use.
4) webOS strikes a balance between the other options by providing a polished, easy-to-use interface, an open ecosystem allowing for a lot of tweaks and improvements, and the best and most intuitive method of multitasking available. However, it's not the fastest OS, does not have nearly as many apps as the other platforms, and its future is uncertain because of the lack of consumer adoption and the purchase of Palm by HP. It's likely there will not be a lot of news from Palm until the acquisition is complete. After that, webOS could grow with the financial backing of HP or be used in some other way by HP which does not focus on smartphones.
webOS provides the best balance of polished user-interface, multitasking power, and openness of all the platforms. Sadly, the best doesn't always win. It's pretty clear at this point that Android is charging toward victory because of the number of different phones on which it is available. Perhaps webOS's problem is its balance. You have people who want simple and straightforward with a clean UI (iPhone or BB), those that want to geek out over openness, customization and options (Android), and few that actually care about and want both (webOS).
I've used webOS for the last year and absolutely loved it even with its shortcomings. Recently though, I was lured by the power of the latest phone running Android - the EVO 4G. I must say, I've really been enjoying Android so far - especially the greater number of apps, customization, and the speed of this particular device. There's just not a perfect mobile OS at this point.
As we go forward, I think that webOS could gain some of the power and speed of Android and Android could become more polished and easy to use like webOS and iPhone. I just encourage you not to go along with all the hype over any particular OS or phone. Study the options yourself, talk to people who own phones with these different operating systems, and consider how each will work with your particular needs.
Need more info? Check out these walkthrough videos of each of these mobile operating systems.
Touchscreen BlackBerry OS 6 (not yet available)
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/06/04/blackberry-6-stars-in-a-17-min...
Non-touchscreen BlackBerry OS 6
http://crackberry.com/blackberry-9670-makes-its-video-debut
iPhone OS 4 (available this month)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A98d9dGPev4
Android 2.2 (available soon)
http://www.androidcentral.com/android-22-froyo-video-walkthrough-nexus-one
webOS
http://www.precentral.net/palm-pre-video-review-everything-you-need-know...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA85oqRGGHw
