Have I mentioned before that competition is good thing and makes me happy? I want manufacturers to try and kill the iPhone. I want companies other than Apple to try and take it to the next level. Why? Because you and I- the consumers, benefit from this. Competition breeds innovation. I was reading a Mashable article (You should open that link to see the points I’m covering below and their finding amongst the 4 phones) that covered the new Nexus one vs Droid vs iPhone with a great comparison chart.

I don’t do very many opinion pieces on this blog as I normally put them for my Tumblr, but as a card carrying Apple person I thought this was relevant enough to go here. So let’s go line by line in their comparison chart:

Storage Capacity- Expandability is nice. I’m not going to lie to you. My previous “smartphone” 3 years ago pre-iPhone had an SD slot. It would be very nice to have that on the iPhone. Really does an extra 16GB’s of SD cost $100, um no.

Battery Life- Well this one is a joke as I haven’t ever gotten more than 12 hours of battery life out of my 3GS. Seriously, if you have a kick ass phone won’t you be using it? I’m not going to save battery by turning off GPS, 3G and not checking email. Hello, that’s why I have it! So while I think Apple’s battery claims are a crock, I’m betting that our competitor friends are using similar claims of how long their batteries actually go for.

Camera- So this is one of those things that I have to retract on. I once said that I didn’t care about how good the camera was as if I was looking to take good pics I would be using my point and shoot. Well, there’s a saying that goes “The best camera is the one you have on you”. Since my iPhone is always in hand it has done a fair share of my yearly picture taking. With this last release you can even add video recording to this. It’s now an important feature to me. So to see that Droid and Nexus One both have 5.0 Megapixel cameras and video is awesome. Enough to make me switch, no. The iPhone also has built in editing of video. Seriously, though, there could be an app for that on Droid and Nexus.

Wifi- don’t even talk to me if you can’t do wifi. Pshf.

GPS- Once again, this is mandatory. It has become such a huge part of my day to day I can’t even imagine how I would find my own home if I didn’t know where I was at all times on my little map

Voice Commands- This year I purchased a car with all the bells and whistles. I have voice activated navigation and hands free. Unfortunately it’s like 5 voice commands and buttons to get to a place where I’m actually calling someone. Pressing my home key and then saying “Call Kevin” is much quicker. Voice commands are now necessary.

Formats- As long as the basics are there I really don’t care.

Number of Apps- Yes iTunes has nearly 4 times the amount of Apps but are they all important? If I was going to choose between Google and Palm though, that piddly 258 would sway me against getting the palm.

Multitasking- Hmmmm, Apple seems to be missing out here. Not knowing real multitasking since I’ve had the last three iPhones, I’m not sure I can properly comment. Would I like the ability to be in an app and reply to a text message without having that first app completely quit, yeah I would. Is it a deal breaker for me currently? Not enough of one to even think about jumping. Especially when this could be rectified with a software update.

Price- A $50 difference from the Palm to the iPhone, that’s really not a big deal if you are already buying a phone that has a pricey monthly cost associated to it.

$$- The Unlimited Plan Total Costs numbers are a bit staggering. That’s over a $1000 delta for a 2 year period or $41 a month more for the iPhone and Droid with max data.To be very honest with you, the convenience I have of having my phone integrate into everything else in my life is huge. It just works. If I wasn’t a Mac it might not be that big of an inconvenience to use something else. I did horrible workarounds to get my data to sync between my Mac and phones prior to having the all in one Apple solution.

I’m always curious to see what deal breakers are for others. If you have made the switch away from the iPhone for another phone I would love to know which phone and why?