The above analogy was an epiphany I had a couple days ago. I was listening to a co-worker talk about his new Motorola Cliq when I realized the primary difference between the iPhone and Android phones.

Here’s what my co-worker said:

“My phone’s battery kept running out quickly. I looked around online and saw someone in a forum suggest closing applications one at a time and checking the memory state after each close. After closing a few apps I figured out that it was some stupid app I downloaded that ran in the background and alerted me every time I lost GPS connection.”

Think about that for a second. Isn’t that ridiculous? It’s a phone; not a computer. His process reminds me of using Mac OS 9 and trying to figure out which extension was crashing the computer. That kind of control and information availability shouldn’t exist on a phone.

People constantly whine about the iPhone not providing multitasking (besides the built-in iPod). I applaud Apple for continuing to delay that functionality. Allowing multitasking opens up a lot more questions. How do I quit apps? Do I need to quit apps? I remember using my HP iPaq and having to manually quit one app at a time when it slowed to a crawl. That was so annoying. It sounds like Android has similar complexity issues. Apple’s placement of restrictions on the iPhone is actually a feature.

The iPhone has remained a phone: simple.

Android continues to sound (and feel) like a computer: overkill.

Note: If Apple in a few months announces OS 4.0 with multitasking, I’ll feel pretty silly in between moments of excitement.