We take a look at the latest mobile platforms from Google and Apple and pitch them against each other in a head-on showdown
Google has just launched its latest Android platform, it’s version 4.1 but also known as Jelly Bean. Meanwhile, Apple is preparing iOS 6 to launch alongside the iPhone 5 very soon and it’s already been quite public about some of the new features.
In this comparison we’ll put the two side-by-side to see which comes out the best.
Design and performance
In the last three versions of Android - Honeycomb 3.2, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) 4.0 and now Jelly Bean 4.1 - Google has made leaps and bounds in terms of establishing both a distinctive visual style and in generally improving performance, smoothness and usability, as well as making it much more stable and reliable in the process.
Aesthetically Jelly Bean certainly lives up to its sugary-treat inspired namesake. It’s kept ICS’s striking candy-like blue colour for many of the menu and interface elements, often contrasting starkly to black backgrounds. There’s plenty of white text too though and the font choice is works well for a very clean and high-tech look.
The included wallpapers follow on Google’s recent esoteric style with lots of abstract shapes and interesting palettes, while the icon and widget design ethos has also come across from ICS with lots of bright colours and a sort of cell-shaded, vector art style.
The end result is an oddball blend of a fairly minimalist and monochrome canvas for all the fundamental stuff needed for smartphone operation, such as the menus and control inputs, but then the whole thing has had plenty of noisy and bright stuff slapped on top. It shouldn’t work, but it does.
We rather like it.
Apple’s iOS has always been one of the more stable, reliable and well-performing platforms on the market with a level of operational smoothness by which others are measured. The optimisation is second-to-none.
While Apple’s performance might not have been usurped by its competitors, they’ve certainly now managed to match it. Windows Phone was already there while Android had a reputation for being chuggier, but with Jelly Bean 4.1 it’s a whole other story: thanks to Google’s ‘Butter UI’ tweaks it’s now just as fast as iOS.
Jelly Bean has also updated the drop-down notifications bar and you can now see more information in your alerts via the use of a simple gesture. Want to read a whole text message without leaving the notification bar? Now you can. It’s a small thing, but the ramifications are big and that’s generally the vibe we get from most of Google’s changes here.
With Android having closed the gap on performance and stability, as well as having nearly the same number of apps at its disposal, it’s now on as even a footing with Apple’s system as it has ever been.
Apple’s visual style has changed very little in the last handful of iOS builds.
From a usability perspective, that’s no bad thing as it’ll be all familiar and in-keeping with the company’s carefully designed layout, which is supposed to be as accessible and intuitive as possible.
And it is, but a facelift surely wouldn’t hurt. Android’s recent re-designs have proven that you can keep the fundamental way in which a platform works much the same while giving everything a fresh and much-needed lick of paint.
Winner - Android Jelly Bean 4.1
Features and services
Because of Apple’s phobia of design change (and the fact it’s already about as fast and stable as it can get) all the alterations in iOS 6 are functional ones.
iOS 6 will see the debut of Apple’s new mapping project, on iOS this will simply be dubbed ‘Maps’ and will offer an extremely comprehensive set of location services.
For a start it offers vector-based map graphics, meaning when you zoom, pan, tilt and rotate around it’ll scale smoothly with no loss of detail. There’s also a neat-looking ‘Flyover’ mode, which does pretty much what the name suggests - a photographic flyover view as if you were in a helicopter.
The suite also includes full turn-by-turn navigation with both spoken and visual directions and real-time traffic data.
For iDevices which can use it, Siri has also been tweaked in iOS 6. Apple says it’ll understand more languages and be usable in more countries, but apart from that things are a bit vague as the list of what it can do is stuff we’ve heard before. Apparently it now does it better, or something.
All we can say is, we’ll believe it when we see it, Siri was somewhat underwhelming when it debuted on the iPhone 4S and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak gave a particularly damning assessment when he said the technology was better before Apple bought it.
This is one of the key areas where Google has come straight out of left field on Jelly Bean and run rings around Apple at its own game.
Google already had voice control embedded in Android but it was neither particularly bad or good in earlier builds.
In Jelly Bean you’ve got the addition of Google Now which aggregates voice control, search and notification functions elegantly and smoothly.
Voice recognition on Google Now is far superior to Siri and the speed of responsiveness has been improved considerably. It also features an intuitive card-based interface and very useful location-based alerts which will issue a feed of information important to you.
For all Siri’s noise and flag-waving on its features and the boasts of how good it is, it is actually Google Now which delivers on such promises.
Winner - Android Jelly Bean 4.1
Other stuff
iOS 6 has a few extra features to mention.
Following on from the actually rather good Twitter integration in iOS 5, iOS 6 will feature full Facebook integration, meaning you’ll be able to ‘Like’ and share stuff from most parts of the interface, as well as synchronising your iOS calendar with Facebook events and invites.
Shared Photo Stream is another descriptively titled iOS 6 feature which allows you to nominate certain contacts to have shared access to your photo content via iCloud to any device running iOS 6, Mountain Lion, a compatible Apple TV or on non-compatible devices via a web-portal.
Streamed content isn’t counted towards an iCloud storage limit, features a ‘like’ and comments system and works with both 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity.
iOS's FaceTime video calling now also works on 3G as well as the already established Wi-Fi mode.
Apple's native Mail app has been streamlined to be easier to use and now features a ‘VIP’ mode which effectively lets you flag priority contacts and the Safari browser features iCloud syncing across devices for open tabs and you can save pages to read them offline.
Find my Friends and Find my Phone have been updated and iOS 6 now features extensive accessibility options for ‘people with vision, hearing, learning, and mobility disabilities.’
One of the most significant updates to Apple's platform is that the various storefront apps - iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore, are getting a complete overhaul, something which is long overdue. Hopefully this’ll make getting hold of new content much easier.
Conclusion
By comparison, Google’s Jelly Bean has a much smaller list of new features against those on iOS 6, but if you ask us they’re far more significant in contributing to a fantastic experience on Android, while Apple's additions don't change the fact that it comes across as dated and stale.
The most important thing is that Jelly Bean is currently showing that Anroid is still a dynamic and evolving platform with lots of potential, it’s as fast and stable as iOS now but with much more interesting content onboard.
iOS 6, meanwhile, looks and feels the same as ever, it can do more than it could, but not much more than Android on the whole, and the new stuff it can do isn’t anywhere near as exciting as Google's seemingly 'experimental' style of development.
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