You have animated wallpaper!
I look at my iPhone 5 and become very sad that the wallpaper doesn’t shoot sparks or ripple with dancing koi.
Your keyboard can learn your typing style.
Not only that. SwiftKey lets you customize the height of the keys, save thousands of keystrokes, and change themes to suit your mood. There are other keyboards to download, but SwiftKey is far and away my favorite.
Folders!
Android lets you see where your files are, and move them around.
Speaking of files…
You can actually Bluetooth files to other devices! I had forgotten about that. Before syncing to the cloud existed, there was brute-force local Bluetooth. Sometimes you just want to transfer a picture without connecting to wifi or launching an app.
You get Google Now.
Stay signed into Google and it will tell you what you need to know. How many minutes till home, the weather, good places nearby if you’re traveling.
You get Google Keep.
Keep your notes (text, image, audio) in a simple, Pinterest-like format. I am using Google Keep to write this.
Widgets!
How could you not want widgets? I like having recently opened notes in Evernote displayed on my home screen, not just the Evernote icon. Glancing at those notes reminds me what I need to do, something which looking at the app icon won’t trigger. Imagine how this works for a planner app, a task list, or the weather.
The mobile Humble Bundle is Android only.
Pay what you want for the Humble Bundle, a collection of great games (the last one included casual game stalwart Plants vs Zombies!) and donate to charity at the same time. These downloads require allowing your Android phone to install non-Google Play apps, which is as easy as unchecking a box.
The Kindle store stayed inside the Kindle app.
For some reason this is important to me. I don’t want to take the extra steps of firing up the browser and entering the URL and signing in to buy a book when I can just tap the shopping cart icon inside the Kindle app.
Sharing is hands-down better.
From almost anywhere within the Android environment, you can share and send. Tap the share icon or choose Share from the contextual menu and a universe of choices appears. Share to Twitter Tumblr Facebook Flipboard Wifi Bluetooth Evernote Kindle Pocket Dropbox WordPress? All there. No moving from app to app needed.
There are many apps on iOS that continue to make it a delightful, creative environment. But when you want to be more efficient and productive, Android might be the OS that fits you. (And! Animated wallpaper!)
