Following on from last week’s post (Apple or Android? The iPhone vs HTC Legend), I’ve had time to ruminate over my transition, and having given the Legend back a week or so ago, I’ve had time to miss the things that I actually grew to kind of love.

For instance, as much as I love the clean layout of the iPhone, it was useful to be able to sprinkle apps and widgets about, dedicating one page to the apps I used most regularly, one to favourite contacts and one to a calendar overview. It’s a different way of working to the iPhone, but one I found I enjoyed.

I loved Spotify. I really liked the maps, and the addition of a compass which my old skool iPhone lacked (you can’t imagine how gratifying it is not to have to spin in circles on the pavement, trying to work out which direction was which).

But as much as I wanted to, I did not love Android.

My conclusion is that Android is still for early adopters. The marketplace is incredibly disorganised, and lacks the sleek standardisation that Apple’s draconian rules result in. The apps themselves were wildly varying in quality, which is something most app stores suffer from. However, this was highlighted in the Android store by certain apps that promised to do one thing, and once downloaded would just direct you to an advert – just when you thought spamming had nowhere else to go.

The Legend, however, I would be all over if it magically started running the iPhone OS: good to hold, super-bright screen, and fast – ohsofast — compared to my sluggish iPhone 3G. So that’s what I’m pushing for in the inevitable June iPhone announcement — simply a partnership and HTC to bring me the new phone of my dreams. Fingers crossed, eh?

If you’re a lover of air conditioning and cool air, get yourself down to Hell right now. It has temporarily frozen over whilst I temporarily dump my iPhone for an HTC Legend.

When announced, I wrote that the Legend might just have the potential to make the swap from iPhone to Android, but it was always going to be a tough transition. Here’s a little diary on how it’s gone.

Day One
This has officially been the worst day of my life.

What, you want an explanation? Oh alright. I have tried to de-Apple myself, and Googlify my life by swapping my sim to an Android phone. The result? A kabillion duplicated contacts on my iPhone, calendar appointments appearing two or three times and inexplicably adding alarms at every opportunity, an iPhone wiped of music and a whole load of tears. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming Google, and I’m doing my best not to blame Apple. I’m sure there are ways of smoothly transferring all of the above between operating systems, but I’ll be damned if it’s ever happened to me.

Day two
I’ve yet to find the time to take advantage of all the things that make Android phones a compelling option, and I’m still in mourning for my well organised, if slightly Apple-dominated, life. Having said that, I spoke to my mother today, and her review of the phone was as follows: “Buy this phone immediately, Susannah. This is the first time I’ve been able to hear you properly in several years”. I’m thinking of getting her a column in Mobile Reviews.

Day three
The battery seems to be worse than my iPhone, which is saying something, and it takes me a while to realise this is because of that damned multitasking I was so excited about. Exiting to home from the middle of a programme keeps it running, and I’ve now got a dozen things sucking up the battery all at once. A quick Task Killer app installation, and I think I’ve got it sorted.

Day four
Today it came close to clicking. I always thought Spotify was my killer app for an Android, or at least the ability to run it in the background made it leaps and bounds ahead of the iPhone version. I’ve now upgraded Spotify and so could listen to my cached playlists. If I keep the Android handset it’s going to change the way I listen to music – currently I have 2,000 songs on repeat, most of which are old news. With Spotify I can see myself preferring whole albums, simply because the playlists are easier to manage that way. No bad thing, actually, as it might increase my musical concentration from ‘first line….bored of this…skip…hate this one… skip…’.

Find out if Susi survived the week in the next gripping instalment.

Another month, another technology show. This time, it was the turn of the mobile industry to get up all in your grill, showing off their latest innovations and creations. I luvz it. Mobile World Congress is one of my favourite shows (Barcelona, phones, tapas – what’s not to like?) and — thank god — this year it felt like we could spend whole days without uttering the words ‘well, it’s not iPhone, now is it?’.

Here’s the phones you might want to bear in mind when you’re given the magical ‘it’s time for your upgrade’ call:

HTC Desire – March/April
Desire doesn’t cover it – this phone is the kind of phone that will have you laughing too loudly at its jokes and desperately trying to copy its body language in the hope that at the end of the day, it’ll choose you to go home with. There’s a 1Ghz processor (fast!), an AMOLED display (bright!) and Flash video capabilities (videos on the web! Unlike the iPhone!). HTC has also reskinned Android with its own Sense UI, and given it a nifty People widget, feeding all the social networking gubbins into one handy feed. But there do seem to be a lot of buttons on the bottom….

HTC Legend – April
Enter the HTC Legend. Quite frankly, it’s not quite as good as the HTC Desire – there’s no Flash video and it’s not running off the 1Ghz snapdragon processor. What it lacks in power, though, it makes up for in sheer lickamability. That’s a Macbook-esque aluminium unibody you see there (oops, Apple, what are you going to announce as your iPhone hardware update now?), and they’ve dumped any kind of nipple (hee!) for an optical trackpad. Hawt.

Windows Phone 7 – December
You’d be forgiven for throwing a whole lot of meh at Microsoft, for its consistent attempts to cram a desktop OS onto its mobile phones. But hold your horses there, cowperson. The latest Windows Phone 7 OS looks suspiciously usable (if you’ve had the chance to play with a Zune, you’ll find the interface similar) with big widgets, no tiny crosses in the corner of screens crying out for a stylus, and most importantly, there’s added Xbox.

The phones will be compatible with Xbox Live, so you’ll be able to interact with other players using your avatar, view updated records of play and access messages through the service.  Remember though, this was an OS preview, so the hardware could still be meh-y

Puma phone – April
Honestly, this strikes me as one of those phones that everyone falls a little bit in love with, but no one actually buys (trust me, I once bought a Nokia 7280, I’m very familiar with phones you really shouldn’t buy). The main feature of this phone is the solar panel sitting on the back. And the fact that it’s made by a company better known for producing Big Cats and sportswear.

For every one hour in the sun, you can apparently claw back two hours of music playback, and there’s a nifty little counter keeping count of how many of your calls, messages etc are available after you’ve left in the sun (no word on how much music you get for leaving it exposed to sleet though, as of yet).

In keeping with the Puma theme, there’s also  a pedometer, stopwatch and GPS tracker, so you can keep track of where you’ve been expending all that kinetic energy.

So, CES has drawn to a close, and the UK tech contingent is heading home. Or at least we would be, if something that looks suspiciously like The Day After Tomorrow hadn’t been happening in our absence…

CES this year has been… fine. It’s been slightly more interesting, in terms of launches, than last year, but not as good as when Philips launched all those diamond encrusted USB sticks. I’d rate it a 6.5 out of ten.

You might have been wading through the liveblogs, the analysis and the constant updates, but more likely, you were sledging. So, for you sledgers, here’s a round-up of what you missed:

Nexus One
Woo hoo! It is the Google phone! Except it’s not really – it’s an HTC phone. And there have already been loads of HTC Android phones. But wait! Google are revolutionising the phone market by offering it SIM free! Which is only new and exciting if you’re American, and are used to buying phones with SIMs locked inside. So, it’s a new Android phone. But at least it’s a good looking one. It’s running Android 2.1, has a 5-megapixel camera, snapdragon AKA superfast processor, 4GB MicroSD card which can be expanded to 32GB. I’m sold.

Panasonic 3D TV
Like it or not (I don’t) the age of 3D is upon us. Naysayers have been hushed as manufacturers have launched actual available to the common man 3D TVs this year, and the best of the bunch seem to be coming from Panasonic. They’re so into the third dimension, they’ve even launched a 3D camcorder. Just imagine the nightmarish scenes your younger brother could produce armed with a teenage imagination and a 3D camcorder.

Lenovo U1 (above)
This is mental – it’s half laptop, half tablet but it’s 100% brills. Whilst the screen resides in the case, it works as your average notebook, but you can unclip it from the casing, at which point it becomes a tablet. When it’s a notebook, it runs Windows 7, when it’s a tablet it uses Lenovo’s Skylight OS and has 16GB of flash memory. There’s also wifi, 3G, speakers and a webcam in the tablet, so unless you’re after a keyboard, it’ll be tempting to dump the casing all together. Although for $999, that’s some expensive discarding.

Polaroid PIC1000
Polaroid are back, and this time, with added Gaga! Yes, Lady Gaga is apparently now a creative director of the company, complete with her own business cards. No word on whether she’s the driving force behind this latest launch, which takes Polaroid back to its roots with a new instant photo camera. It’s totally retro-tastic in its design, and at £60, might make a cool alternative to your bells and whistles digital camera. [Photo via Pocket Lint]

Since the Apple vs Android war has officially kicked off, I’d like to pledge my allegiance to Android. I’ve yet to get my paws on the newest generation of phones, but I’m an avid Google fan and the idea of buying an iPhone leaves me feeling a little blah.

After checking out what’s currently on offer, and what’s to come, I’m more than a little excited.

The HTC Magic (right) sits at the more aesthetically pleasing end of the Android scale.  The HTC was the second offering from the Google Android market after the T-Mobile G1, and the improvements show.

It’s much slimmer than the G1 thanks to the removal of the QWERTY keyboard, and general reports seem to indicate a system with far more usability.

HTC are dominating the Android market at the moment. Their latest offering, the HTC Hero, is professional-looking and stylish enough to face up against Apple’s iPhone.

Following in the footsteps of the Magic and the G1, it features that ‘chin’ at the bottom that seems to be bit of a Marmite feature. The Hero’s camera is the big difference between this handset and the others, boasting a high quality 5-megapixel camera.

The search feature is a nice touch too, allowing you to search through tweets, e-mails and messages.

Samsung have recently entered the Android market with the Galaxy i7500 (right), currently exclusive to O2. Measuring just under 12mm, it’s a skinny handset packed full of features and widgets.

There have been some complaints of slow reactions on the touch screen, and a lack of customisability (a common complain with most of the Android handsets), but overall it seems to have strong reviews.

I’ll be interested to see what the recently announced i6500 Saturn will bring to the table, and whether it will fix the buggy screen.

The Motorola Dext (left) reverts to the old QWERTY keyboard, much to my fat-thumbed glee. An Android aimed at social networking fans, the handset boasts the Motoblur function to make keeping in touch even easier.

Whilst this initially wooed me, the news that it’s currently only available on Orange was a massive turn off. Rubbish signal and sitting on the phone to customer services for hours is not an appealing feature.

Sony Ericsson have finally entered the market too with the Xperia X10, the first of many headsets that will be appearing in early 2010.  The handset includes a wireless stereo headset, 8.1 megapixels camera and a features called Timescape which holds all your communication for one person in one place. So in theory you can browse the texts, e-mails, tweets and facebook messages of one person at a single click.

The phone everyone is really waiting for though, is the Motorola Droid. This smartphone features a huge screen, 5-megapixel camera, and a free GPS system powered by Google.

The system is reported to be ultra fast, and many are comparing it to the iPhone for its performance.

With news of several more handsets in the works from Archos and NVIDIA, 2010 should be a very good year for Android.

You should probably know right now, I use a Macbook. And an iPhone. And I briefly considered buying the new Magic Mouse, even though I work on the sofa, which isn’t massively conducive to miceness (or non-twisted spineness, since you ask). So, yeah. I’d like to protest I’m not a fangirl, but the facts point to the contrary.

Having said that, I think it might be time for my iPhone and me to part company.

[I just had to take a little break to re-read that sentence for a few minutes. This is going to be hard].

There have been one too many complete wipes of the phone. I’m fed up with running out of space and having no choice but to delete, rather than to add memory. And most of all, Android is looking just too tempting (also, the latest release is called Doughnut. It’s like they know me).

In the Alien’s corner

• Apps run in the background

This is useful for many applications, such as being able to receive Skype IMs whilst you’re checking your email, but it becomes downright essential with Spotify, which is an app closer to my heart than my pulmonary veins. I love it on the iPhone, but if you’re listening to Spotify, you can do literally nothing else. Twitter becomes dead to you, and Scrabble is but a distant memory.

• Battery meter

Much like the Task Manager on your PC, there’s a battery meter on the Android which can tell you which of the apps are sucking up the most power – essential for those of us that would get so excited about running apps in the background they’d run them all. So, um, me.

• Augmented reality

Augmented reality uses GPS and the compass in the phone to pinpoint the exact position of the phone, which then allows developers to create application that can layer information over what you can see through the camera. So, it’ll point you towards the nearest tube stop, or give you historical information on the building in front of you. If you haven’t checked it out, go google it, for it is teh awesome. Anyway, the point here is that you need an iPhone 3GS to appreciate it via Apple, but all of the Android phones have it. That makes them more futuremafied. Futuremafied = good.

But then there’s the iPhone…

• Choice of handsets

Hmm, you too initially read this and thought it should go in advantages, right? But really,  have you seen them? They’re… fine. Some of them are even quite nice. But honestly, none of them even come close, design-wise, to the iPhone.

• User interface ishoos

I’ve played with a few Android handsets, from a few different manufacturers, and I’ve yet to see one with a touchscreen as sensitive as the iPhone, and no matter which way you slice it, the Android OS ain’t as intuitive as the iPhone.

• Change! ARRRGGGHHHH!

It takes a long time to get everything playing nice when you sync your phone to your computer, regardless of manufacturers. I’ve finally got there, and I’m hesitant to upset the apple cart (LOL-ish). I’m staring down the barrel of hours of research as to how to get my Gcal to sync with my iCal, how to transfer my DRM protected music out of the almighty iTunes, not to mention the fact that I’m going to have to train my ear to recognise an entirely new ringtone. I ask you, is it worth it?

I was hoping I was going to be able to do one of those ‘So, in conclusion…’ summaries the likes of Charlie Brooker always seems to manage, but instead, I’ve got myself in a bit of a pickle. I hand it over to you, dearest reader. Please tell me what to do. And I will do it. Probably.