Online analysts have had ample opportunity to examine Apple's iPhone – a bleeding-edge staple since January 2007 – and the first phone to run on Google's Android operating system, the T-Mobile G1, which hit stores last month.
Tech writer Erick Schonfeld said that both phones mark a quantum leap forward for the mobile experience.
"The table stakes have just been raised. From now on, phones need to be nearly as capable as computers," he wrote for TechCrunch.com. "All others need not apply."
To that end, the battle between the two products may not come down to how well their casings are designed, but how well strong their operating systems are and how powerful their applications are.
Schonfeld said that as of now, Apple's selection of applications is superior to the G1, but that might change, given Google's open-source nature.
"[The G1] lets developers access pretty much anything on the phone, from the camera to the music library – both of which are currently restricted zones on the iPhone]," he said.
Tech writer R. Krishna of India's DNA Money agreed that the G1 has great potential, while adding that Apple still has a major hardware advantage. In other words, the iPhone still just looks cooler.
"Some good manufacturer may even build a solid hardware product with enough oomph to take on iPhone," he said. "And when the two come together, iPhone might have something to worry about. Moreover, you can expect a lot more apps for a G1 than an iPhone."
As far as hardware goes, the iPhone and the G1 offer a lot of the same bells and whistles: large touchscreens, GPS, WiFi capability, 3G cellular antennae, full web browsers, accelerometers and cameras.
But Schonfeld added as of now, the G1's interface is no match for the iPhone.
"Where things break down with the G1 is in subtle differences in the user interface that keep making me stumble and pause to try to figure out what to do next," he said. "This is a problem I rarely have with the iPhone. The crux of the problem is that the G1 has too many buttons. There is, I’m afraid, a hardware/software disconnect. Too often on the G1, the hardware gets in the way."
But even despite Google's potential advantage when it comes to software development, Jeff Holden, CEO of mobile tech firm Pelago, said that Google will have to play catch-up.
"Apple has a great ecosystem going with the iPhone and AppStore, and consumers go where developers go and developers go where consumers go," he said. "So being the first game in town can create a lot of advantage."
