Top 10 Awesome Android Features That The iPhone Doesn't Have
by Whitson Gordon on May 15, 2011, 8:57 AM
We love both Android and iOS, but the open nature of Android just means it can do things others just can't. Here are our favorite Android apps and features that you won't find on its Apple-clad brethren. We didn't hold anything back in this list: rooting, jailbreaking, editing system files are all fair game. If there was some way to do it on the iPhone, we left it out. So, while there are a lot of great things about Android that don't come out of the box on the iPhone—like free turn-by-turn navigation or pull-down notifications—there are still ways to get those features on the iPhone. So here's our list of the ten features you just can't get, no way, no how, on a jailbroken or non-jailbroken device. A note on flame wars: We love iOS, and obviously it has many of its own things going for it. This post isn't meant to flame or troll the iPhone; it's more of a "If you've decided to go Android, make sure you're taking advantage of these awesome exclusive features, since they're part of what makes Android great" post. Please keep the flame wars to a minimum in the comments. This post originally appeared on Lifehacker.
#10 Alternate keyboards  From text predictors like Swiftkey to the innovative like Swype and the downright adventurous like 8pen, you have a lot of different keyboard choices on Android. Typing on a tiny phone keyboard isn't anyone's idea of fun, so it's great that Android provides so many options to make it as painless for people as possible, and super easy to install. The iPhone has other keyboards, but they're usually separate apps that require you to import text to another program—it's just the kind of system-level functionality that's hard to get around.
#9 Automation  One of the most powerful, useful Android apps around is Tasker, the automation program that lets you turn your phone into a superphone. You can turn settings on and off for certain applications, by location, time of day, and pretty much any other condition you can think of. With the right commands in place, Tasker can access the deepest and darkest settings on your phone, which is something you just can't do on other platforms. Be sure to also check out our second list of Tasker setups, three handy Tasker profiles from our readers, and how to roll your own "Find my iPhone" for Android. Similar apps like the battery-saving JuiceDefender would also fall into this category.
#8 Custom home launchers  While iPhone users can customize their home screen quite a bit if they've jailbroken, they don't allow the kind of customization that you can get on Android with custom home launchers. Third party launchers can add all sorts of extra features to the home screens of your device, like gestures, different kinds of shortucts, and even low-level settings that can help speed up an older phone. Whether you're using the super-fast LauncherPro or the insanely customizable ADWLauncher, third-party launchers add a ton of configuration to your device.
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