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Last updated: Monday, January 25, 2010

When you buy a smartphone, what you can do with it is becoming more important than how it looks. Most of the latest wave of smartphones have caught up with the iPhone’s once cutting-edge design. What distinguishes the phones are their features. That’s because when you get a smartphone, you’re buying much more than the gadget itself. You’re buying into an entire ecosystem. That ecosystem consists of the carrier network and all the accessories and applications that go with your phone. It also includes the developer tools and even the philosophy underlying the gadget. Those latter factors are important because they influence what types of applications get made for the device in the future and, ultimately, what consumers will be able to do with them. The notion that there’s more to consider when buying a smartphone than just the way it feels in the hand was near the top of my mind as I was reviewing Google’s new Nexus One, the latest in a line of putative iPhone-killers. The Nexus One is an outstanding device that bests even the latest iPhone in a number of ways. But before buying one, you should consider the broader ecosystem, especially if you already own an iPhone. The biggest difference between Android-based phones and the iPhone is in the number of applications: There are now more than 100,000 available for the iPhone versus about 18,000 for Android devices. But that difference may not matter. Many of the most popular applications on the iPhone also are available for Android. So, if you don’t have an investment in either one, you may not notice much of a difference. However, if you already have one or the other, switching may not be so easy, because you’ll have to repurchase and re-download all your apps. If you’re like me and you’ve purchased a lot, moving…

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Nexus One Great, But Consider the Ecosystem

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