iOS vs Android: Hardware Compatibility

When we are talking about iOS vs Android, we are not barely talking about the hardware. We would wanna focus on the firmware itself and how your hardware can benefit from it. Lets take iPhone 3GS and one of the best Android phone in 2009, HTC Hero for comparison. Both are the best phones released in year 2009.

iPhone 3GS 16GB
RRP: RM 2490 (when it first launched)
Released: June 2009
CPU: 600MHz
RAM: 256MB
OS: iOS 3.0
Upgradable to: iOS 5.1.1 - May 2012

HTC Hero
RRP: RM 2399 (when it first launched)
Released: July 2009
CPU: 528MHz
RAM: 288MB
OS: Android 1.5 Cupcake
Upgradable to: Android 2.1 Eclair (official ROM) - May 2010
                        Android 2.3 Gingerbread (custom ROM) - April 2011

By looking at the comparison above, there are not much difference on their system spec and released price. However you can see that there is a big difference in their firmware support. Yeah this is what I am talking about, software/firmware support. The latest official firmware for HTC Hero is Android 2.1 which was released in May 2010. The developer has stopped providing firmware update less than a year after the phone is launched. Thanks to CyanogenMod who has released it's custom ROM for Android 2.2 Froyo and later Android 2.3 Gingerbread. But if you are not an IT savvy kinda person, you'll find that flashing a custom ROM for Android device is quite a hassle. Even if you have successfully flashed to the most stable CM7 ROM, the good looking GUI in Gingerbread will eats your 256MB of RAM like a hungry shark and eventually suffers from performance issues.

If you bought an iPhone 3GS when it first launched, it is now about 3-years-old. Probably you can see a lot of wear and tear on your phone. However you are still getting software support from Apple until present. By only a few clicks in iTunes, your 3GS will be updated to the current latest iOS 5.1.1. You can see how a 3GS user appreciates the release of iOS 5.1.1 as it fixes hell lot of bugs experienced in previous iOS and the 3GS can now benefits from some of the new features in iOS 5.1.1. Apple is now working on iOS 6 and i believe iOS 5.1.1 will be the final supported firmware for iPhone 3GS.

Anyway, what mentioned above are almost history. The recent development of smartphone OS is what we are more interested to know. Apple has been doing a pretty good job over the years and we can only expect they will do it better in future. As for Android, will they focus more on device compatibility or continue with their fancy new features which encourage users to frequently purchase new devices. We'll see...