While Apple unveiled a host of new features with iOS 6 including turn by turn navigation in their new 3D maps app, there is one key feature that Apple can’t improve enough to match Android – alerts.
Android vs iPhone features: Google’s OS still king when it comes to alerts
You can’t say that Android is easier to use than iOS – iOS is a simplified, stricture experience. This makes it easy for newbies to pick up, and also makes it harder for them to mess up. Android is way more flexible and offers more customization scope, but it’s also harder to navigate and more confusing to smartphone virgins.
The alerts system is where Android takes the medal. This may sound trivial, but it’s not. If you’re a business professional or self-employed and on the move a lot, your smartphone is your mobile office. Alerts give you timely info updates, grab your attention and give you almost instant access to the latest messages from important contacts.
Apple made progress with the alert system in iOS 5, with a little inspiration from Android, but it still doesn’t come close. iOS 5 wasn’t even a serious competitor to Android 2.3 Gingerbead, which has been superceded by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich since and now the upcoming Android 4.1 JellyBean update which takes alerts to another whole new level again.
Android alerts’ biggest advantage over iOS alerts is the glanceability, and this owes a lot to the platform’s basic design. This is also why iOS isn’t going to catch up any time soon. What is glanceability? Well, when you turn on your Android display you’ll see some little badges in the top left of the screen that tell you you have an appointment coming up, or someone’s messaged you on FB, or someone’s emailed you, or it’s going to rain later….you get the drift.
In iOS you have to swipe down to see the notification centre and then scroll through the whole list app by app to see what’s happening. Most often, iOS users look to see if their mail, messages, calendar or Twitter (and so on) apps have the red alerts popped up with the number of as-yet-invisible things to take care of. You have to go into the app to find out. Many iOS apps have the red badge of activity, but you still have to delve further to get the gist, which isn’t as efficient as Android’s quick glance.
Android also bests iOS in the listing of alerts. iOS is more configurable and customizable with listings, but Android’s default configuration is as good as it gets – you can’t make it any better than it already is. iOS lets you choose how many alerts you want to show for each app and in what order, but Android shows the alerts in chronological order regardless of the app. You can also just swipe right to dismiss alerts in Android Ice Cream Sandwich – in iOS you’re stuck with them.
You have to remember that Google is good at alerts and Apple just isn’t. Consider what Google’s done with Google+ alerts – building them into the universal toolbar so you have an at-a-glance grasp of what’s happening in your Google+ world. Apple on the other hand has still not devised a decent universal alerts system into its Mac OS – the best solution so far is Growl, a third party app.
here are loads of other things that Android does better than Apple, like turn-by-turn GPS directions and Google Voice integration, but Apple will improve its Maps and GPS in iOS 6, and Google Voice is a bit of a technophile’s solution only. Alerts is the one area where Android consistently betters iOS, and this is likely to be the case until Apple revamps the UI on its home screen and not just with a new iPhone 5.
