iPhone versus Android for an ubergeek (no holy wars, please)

• I'm looking for experiential narrations of what it's like to own and use an iPhone or an Android phone as an ubergeek. This will help me decide what to do now that my non-smart T-Mobile phone is starting to die. I've been a T-Mobile customer for long enough that I'm not on a contract with them (so I can switch to AT&T, for instance), and my http://www.nokiausa.com/find-products/phones/nokia-5310-xpressmusic MP3-playing phone is starting to die (the keyboard is unreliable - I've taken it apart and cleaned it and the keyboard is a membrane keyboard, so I don't think I can really maintain it any better than that). I like the 5310 well enough but work-wise it's starting to look like it would be a good idea if I had at least a Blackberry (something I could use to really read and answer e-mails over a cellular network of some kind). I've also done some homework: - I've looked at the iPhone plan with AT&T and I know that I can afford it and it's similar enough to what I already have with T-Mobile. - I've read the relevant-looking Android and iPhone and smartphone AskMe posts (but if there's one you think I missed, please let me know) I do have an Apple iPod Touch. I got it in September of 2009 and I've gotten some good use out of it. It's 32 GB, relatively fast and I've invested about $50 in apps (I also do not have any app-specific content, like iBook or Kindle reader content or anything like that). I know that if I moved on to an iPhone, I could use the same apps on the iPhone. I think that the differences between the Touch and an iPhone are small enough that I don't need a lot of info about using an iPhone, but if you've experience in particular features I'm interested in below, please do let me know here. My primary curiosity is what it's like to geek out (with specific features below) with an Android phone, so I can try to figure out whether I want to deal with purchasing/finding parallel apps to the ones I have and like on the Touch or whether I figure going with an iPhone is likely to work out okay and I'm not missing out too much by not going Droid. I should also note that I am not interested in jail breaking anything. I know it's easy to do but I'm not really willing to do the extra maintenance involved after jail breaking the hardware (like keeping up with firmware/OS updates and watching the jail break scene and having to be careful not to update until the updated version has a clear jail break path). Also, price is not a huge object, but above $300 and a 2 year contract and it'll probably not be something I go for. Here are the features I'm primarily interested in: - Alternative input schemes (e.g. the Samsung commercial about breaking the world record) - GPS applications - Camera applications (including integration with social networking sites) - Deep geeking (like console/ssh access to underlying OS, direct file access, access to files via USB, as well as telnet/ssh clients for accessing other systems) - Crypto applications (including but not limited to high-grade trustable password/financial info wallets - like KeePass on full-blown computers) - Office apps (I use QuickOffice on the Touch) integration with Google Docs, and e-mail) - Games/Game Culture - DJ/Beat Synthesis/Sampling - Any other sort of deep geekiness (scripture, astronomy, math, pattern puzzles, network tools, etc.) - Configurabilty of the phone (I set specific ringing profiles depending on what part of the on-call cycle at work I'm on - the full on-call, back-up only, and off - that's the primary phone configuration I'm interested in) The primary philosophical problems I have with the iPod is that the OS does not allow me reasonably free access to the filesystem and the files that I own or created on it. So if you can help me out by letting me know how your Android phone or how the non-jail broken iPhone works with respect to these features, that would be great. If you do regarding a Droid, it would be awesome to know which kind of Droid you have. Thank you in advance.

• Answer:

  Android (Droid I) and iPod Touch user here. Alternative input schemes: Swype is revolutionary. Couldn't move to iPhone just because of its lack of Swype. GPS applications: Google's free navigation is great on Android Games: forget Android for this. Way behind the iPhone DJ/Beat Synthesis, etc: iPhone has Android beat hands down Configurability: Android is much more configurable without having to root. If iPhone had the following, I would consider switching: - Verizon - Swype - user-swappable batter - standard micro-usb charging and drive access - micro USB - configurability It would be tough to give up the great Google integration (gmail app, Google voice, etc) as well. Good luck. Not an easy choice.