Age: 2.
Appearance: The iPhone's annoyingly popular little sister.
So what's this Android then? It's a mobile operating system.
Like dial-a-surgeon? That's not a thing, so no. Android is Google's challenger to the iPhone, a multi-platform operating system used primarily for mobile phones.
A challenger to the iPhone? The uber-cool Goliath of the smartphone world? I assume it's been roundly thrashed. Not exactly. Despite being launched later than Apple's game-changing handset, and never really being hailed as cool at all, Google's upstart alternative now looks set to emerge victorious. Like the unassuming, utilitarian tortoise to iPhone's flashy touch-screen hare, sales of phones using Android have now overtaken sales of the iPhone.
Blasphemy! Not the iPhone! Not the birthplace of Angry Birds – the most addictive and pointless game ever? That's the one.
But I read the Guardian. I worship the iPhone. You'll be telling me Twitter's not the apogee of human progress next. The problem, in a nutshell, is that Apple's mobile operating system is a lot like Henry Ford's Model T.
You have to start it up with a hand-crank? You can have any colour you want, so long as it's Apple. Android, on the other hand, gives you the touch-screen, apps and neat little rows of icons that iPhone users drool over, but can be run on dozens of different handsets from dozens of different companies.
Just like with Macs and PCs. Exactly. You can buy a PC from Toshiba, Dell or Hewlett-Packard. With a Mac, you're bound to Apple and Apple alone. As one commentator put it, "The big deal is: Android is free software, and handsets that can run it are getting super-cheap."
So maybe Apple just needs to start giving away iPhones? Which is why there's a free iPhone for every reader in tomorrow's G2!
Really? No.
Do say: "Switching to Android was the best decision I ever made."
Don't say: "Downloading Angry Birds was the last decision I ever made."
