iPhone or Android?

[Commander Jubby Shepard]

I'm getting a new phone in a few days and as a student/ RPGFan I'm wondering whether the iPhone 3g, iPhone 3gs, or HTC INspire would be better for me?

[Eusis]

You could always get the best of both worlds by sticking with Android then getting an iPod Touch when a new one comes out. Actually, the fact we still haven't seen an iPhone 5 is probably reason to go for an Android, I haven't followed up on those but I figure you could get a fairly recent model, whereas the iPhone would be obsolete in a few months.

[dyeager]

It's very tough to go wrong these days. I definitely prefer the iPhone simply because my whole house is wired with Mac stuff - but otherwise there is pretty much no advantage anymore, Android has really come a long way and even passed Apple in a lot of areas.

The only thing I would say is the breadth of apps is still larger on the iPhone, but Android is closing the gap there slowly but surely.

So at this point go with whatever gives you the most bang for your budget - it's an awesome time to be on the consumer side for smart phones!

[John]

You've offered a small subset of phones there - are you handcuffed by price and/or carrier?

The Inspire is a 4G phone, so that's a big plus, and we're likely not going to see a 4G iPhone until there's a unified chipset, which will probably be next year or later.

The iPhone has the big plus of having a very popular app store with quite a lot of quality games.

[Akanbe-]

Personally, I'd go with the HTC Inspire - ESPECIALLY if you're limited to the iPhone 3GS or lower.

If you go with the android, make sure you check out the following AT&T phones as well:

-Samsung Captivate
-Samsung Infuse 4G
-Motorola Atrix 4G

All three are great phones.  The Inspire 4G is nice as well, but I would check the other ones too.

[Darklight]

Have you got your new cell yet? I'd recommend an Android device, there's really no messing around with installing new stuff and the majority of the applications I had on the iphone I could find for my Desire. You can use it as an external hard drive which makes file sorting a breeze. I have put the starburst rom on mine with a 32gb card, it fools the desire into thinking it has 8GB internal ram and 24GB sd card memory. It's not illegal and the accessibility is the selling point for me

The iphone is great for the ipod, I find owning a seperate dedicated ipod is better on battery life. I liked both my iphones, I just didn't like the dicking around to customize it the way I wanted to. I can't really think of anything it could do that my HTC can't, sure there's something.

[Taelus]

I personally would just get an iPod for those few exclusive iOS games (of which there will steadily be fewer as Android continues to grow and overtake iOS in terms of sheer numbers).

There's a number of great games available on both platforms, though your options in terms of hardware are wider with Android. It's also much easier to tweak the phone, as jailbreaking simply isn't really something you have to deal with.

The Nexus S, which is available on Sprint, AT+T, and TMobile is an awesome phone that I can heartily recommend. Plus, it's $99 now, and it's among the few phones with pure, unskinned Android, and you can unlock the phone and flash different firmwares on it with basically ten seconds worth of effort. Also, in my experience, it plays basically every game smoothly, with the occasional hiccup during Dungeon Defenders.

[Maxximum]

Well, no matter which you pick, you will have to give up on something. The iPhone is like relinquishing your free will. Apple will make all the decisions for you. With Android, you surrender your privacy, because Google loves to track you. Neither is really a terribly big deal and it mostly all comes down to what kind of user you are. If you're not very good with these kinds of gadgets, you're better off getting the iPhone. Apples "everything goes through us" policy means that its a lot harder to mess up your device with dodgy software. On the other hand, if you do know what you're doing, Androids open source, java based nature means that there's much more potential for third party software.

[Vanguard]

I don't own an iPhone yet, but when my last upgrade comes through early next year, I am definitely picking one up. The reason? I want to carry less stuff around. Carrying a phone, an iPod, keys, etc in my pockets is too much.