From an Open letter to T-Mobile

Moreover, Android offers consumers the freedom of choice. You can choose from a variety of colors, screen sizes, slide-out keyboards, price points and customization options, as well as enjoy the numerous benefits of open source innovation, cloud services and amazing apps.

Having worked on apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Nokia and Windows Phone I can tell you that the freedom of choice that Android offers means more work for designers and engineers and a diluted experience for the end user, or in some cases no experience as the handset firmware cannot be updated to support the app. Apple has a very “closed” approach in that they fix the experience for the user. This gives us app creators more freedom as we have a greater understanding of the limitations as they are so few.

Apple are going to release the iPhone 5 next week and despite some early rumours of edge to edge screen increased size etc. I’d put money on it being exactly the same as the iPhone 4 bar some decent upgrades to the components and possibly an updated outer arial. It means the apps we created last year will work exactly the same on those new devices as they did on the iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4 (and in most cases with the base firmware they came with too).

(Source: blog.t-mobile.com)