With the launch of iOS 4.0 -- the rebranded iPhone OS 4.0 -- slated for June 21 and the recent unveiling of Google's Android OS 2.2, the two leading-edge smartphones platforms have new OSes to build on. There are a lot of cool "bells and whistles"-type features in both, but when it comes to deploying the smartphone as a business tool, which OS is better?
Perhaps neither of these smartphone platforms is "best" for the enterprise environment. Where security and manageability are concerned, RIM's BlackBerry OS is the leading smartphone platform by a wide margin, and even third-place Windows Mobile -- to be replaced with Windows Phone 7 in late 2010 -- is a more established business tool with tighter enterprise integration.
[ Stay up on tech news and reviews from your smartphone at infoworldmobile.com. | Get the best iPhone apps for pros with InfoWorld's business iPhone apps finder. | See which smartphone is right for you in our mobile "deathmatch" calculator. ]
However, iPhone and Android are the best smartphones in general available right now, so business professionals and IT administrators need to be able to weigh which is better for their business needs.
Who wins for business professionals
Let's stack up iOS 4.0 and Android 2.2 head to head.
Email. iOS 4.0 introduces the unified email inbox to the iPhone. Rather than having a separate inbox for each email account, all email goes to one inbox and conversations are threaded for more efficient messaging. Android 2.2 does not have a unified email inbox or threaded conversations.
However, enterprise customers that use Microsoft Exchange and ActiveSync to push Exchange email to the smartphone already have a unified inbox on both platforms. By setting alternate email accounts to deliver messages to the primary Exchange inbox by default, those messages are then synced with Exchange, and delivered to the smartphone along with the rest of the Exchange messages.
Winner: iOS 4.0