The smartphone platform war between the Apple iPhone and Android is intensified with the latest release of the Google-backed mobile OS. While Apple believes that the competition is still catching up with the first generation iPhone, the fact is that Verizon has managed to take a huge mindshare with the Motorola Droid running Android 2.0. With Google's blessing, Motorola now has Android 2.0 running on the Droid, much sooner than any other manufacturer.
Android 2.0 is believed to be the evolved version of the open source mobile OS that would power some great smartphones in 2010. The expectation that Android would overtake the iPhone by 2012 now looks much more real. Two great things 
about the Android OS 2.0 are the support for different screen sizes and resolutions. Along with superior gaming support, that makes it a real iPhone competitor. A big headache for Android developers was having to cope with the varied hardware (dozens of smartphones for the platform with different specs). However the process to roll out some great apps for Android is now much simpler.
Besides all this, there is more to Android 2.0 that makes it a must-have. Google has a new navigation service that offers great turn by turn GPS directions (voice-assisted and with other amazing features); that too is completely free of cost. This beats the professional devices and $100+ paid service. Being first on the Android, this navigation capability is a huge attraction. And the killer punch with Android 2.0 is perhaps the multitouch support in its APIs. Now apps on the Android will be able to offer the multitouch magic soon!
The mega-hype, amazing multitouch UI, and the App Store apps make the iPhone the Jesus phone. But Android 2.0 sure is an accelerated attempt to catch up with the iPhone, with the road ahead set to conquer all of the iPhone advantages. The catch surely is the fact that WM and Symbian are left behind while the heavyweights fight it out!
Article comments
1 - Markus
"and along with the superior gaming support"
By superior gaming support, do you mean Android's 256 MB of app storage? MYST for iPhone is over 700 MB. This will no doubt be fixed in a future release, but for now, the iPhone still has the superior gaming support.
2 - Annkur
I was referring to hardware acceleration
3 - Markus
You could have an 8 core processor and 16 gigs of ram and you still couldn't play much on it.
4 - Annkur
Android 2.0 sure is an accelerated attempt to catch up with the iPhone .... as I said.
As for the app storage issue as I have learnt - A well written Android app will create what use to be called an “executive” which will be loaded in ROM. Most execs are very small (measured in KB not MB). The rest of the program (app), regardless of size, can be on the SD card.
5 - Jeff Smith-Luedke
Thanks to the inclusion of slots for mini SD cards, sorry Markus, but those 700 mb of storage on the iPhone mean nothing. I've got 4 gb on mine. And with the superior processing power, yes, Android phones have superior gaming support. No way around that.
6 - anaon
The only reason iPhone games are so big is because those devs can afford to be lazy and put the whole thing on the drive. In Android they will have to put the core on the internal and have it download the rest to sdcard. No big deal, this is how most PC games work
7 - pygmy hedgehog
I think the competition is very healthy for us consumers and I wish there was more. The situation with iPhone prices and forced AT&T is completely ridiculous and monopolistic. Go Android destroy Apple! and then someone should destroy Android..
8 - barbara barnett
Being a verizon customer, I've not had an iPhone. I do have an iPod Touch, which I love. However, having gotten the Droid last week and played with it, my iTouch is sitting on my nightstand gathering dust.
9 - Ratnok
Great comments and explanation. Another barb to Marcus is that the Droid is ONE PHONE. Android is an operating system over a tile wave of phones that existed before (G1, MyTouch 3g, Cliq, HTC Hero, Samsung Galaxy, Samsung Moment, Moto Eris) and a huge number of coming phones (Samsung Behold II, Sony X10, and many more). To your point, the Sony Xperia X10 comes with 1g of internal memory but with executable files and SD cards, internal memory is largely irrelevant. But that's right, iPhones idon't have removable/exchangeable memory.
10 - Annkur
Thanks for the informative comments everyone. Such interactions are good and educative.
Cheers
Annkur
OnlyGizmos
11 - Matt
Great comments. I believe that the long term would seem to favor Google, since the shear multitude of phones it will be released on, versus Apple's Iphone (assuming that is all they continue to offer). Nonetheless, I agree with Pygmy - the competition is good and I think both platforms have their merits. As far as WM? We will see - market share may be a thing of the past for them (i.e. none).