I have previously published an Android vs IPhone comparison and many people requested that I do a comparison of Android vs iPhone vs Nokia vs BlackBerry vs Windows Mobile 7. So here goes.

Android

• open platform http://source.android.com
• can compile custom firmwares - good for hackers and other
• good framework, extended on each new firmware
• supports multitasking
• nice IDE - Eclipse, NetBeans
• development SDK is free
• easy to debug, can send logs to developers
• programming language is Java but bridges from other languages exist (C# .net - Mono, etc)
• Java is a high level language that appeared in 1995. Android supports Java 1.5 and translates the byte code to its own custom Dalvik byte code optimized for mobile devices.
• for the hardcore programmers, Android offers the possibility of programming in C using the native dev kit NDK
• can run script languages like LUA, Perl, Python, etc
• can install third party applications from sdcard, random sites - not locked to a specific market
• applications can hook and override everything - email interface, SMS sending, custom keyboards, etc
• supports widgets
• can publish applications on the Android market instantly - initial one time registration fee is 25E
• user has access to the sdcard and can use it as a USB disk
• no Adobe Flash support yet. Probably will be available in Q2 of this year.

iPhone

• closed platform
• no multitasking except for some Apple applications. multitasking is probably going to be introduced in the next vertion of the iPhone, the iPhone 4
• development kit costs ~90E
More...

I found a very annoying "bug" on the Nokia 6212 NFC and Nokia 6131 NFC.

I was building an obfuscated MIDlet when all of a sudden it started crashing on the NFC phones mentioned above. The 6212 and 6131 were crashing before starting the application, so it got me thinking that it might be a verification issue.The crash was followed by a warm reset of the phone and after 4 consecutive crashes by a cold reset of the phone.

I tested in the emulator and everything was fine. I tested on other phones and again, no problem.

I tried to exclude classes from the build that I thought were not verified correctly but I had to give up because of the huge number of classes ~approx 500.

I removed the code requiring permissions and signed the MIDlet. Still no luck.

I started looking at the SVN, since I knew the application was previously working. I noticed something. The icon.png of the MIDlet used to be 24 bits of color and now it was 32 bits. Somebody has changed the icon. I knew the Nokia 6131 NFC and 6212 NFC don't support such a high image depth so I rolled back the icon to 24 bits. TADAAA, I was now able to successfully obfuscate and run the application on the NFC phones.

This has been a really annoying and difficult to spot bug.

Interesting facts: