This is a thread for people to discuss what they think of these 2 OS' after they have genuinely experienced EACH of them.

Please don't post here unless you've actually got experience with both Android (I personally am comparing 2.3) and Maemo (I'm dscussing 5)

So, what do people who have honestly tried both feel about them?

My thread, I suppose I'll go first.

The other day my N900 broke (I just woke up, and it no longer functioned, at all) so I decided i had finally had enough of the old bird and got and android (Moto Defy).

It's now been a month, and I hate android.

Usage scenario, you want to set an alarm.

Maemo;
Pull down taskbar,
Select clock,
Set Alarm.

Android,
Home screen,
App Drawer,
Clock,
Set alarm.

Now i know there are ways i can make this easier/faster in android, but we're discussing the stock user experience here, and in android, it's sorely lacking. People always seemed to suggest that maemo was too beta, but honestly, i'm shocked how dodgy android is.

Maemo seems to me an exercise in perfection, building a complex building floor by floor, and not moving on until the previous floor is done.

Whereas android seems like they built all the way to the top, and only now are they starting to make it work. Too often i find myself frustrated at how stupidly complex it is to do simple tasks, and all i can do is regret that my slice of the future is now gone..

My vote:
Used both, Maemo ftw!

Honestly speaking being able to use both devices I would say that it would really depend on what you expect on the OS.

For maemo yes it is very open to the point that it doesn't even need to be hacked to access it completely. And gives you almost all the freedom to do anything to it.


And for android it is a device made for the end users. End user devices doesn't and I mean should not be open as most of the users doesn't know such complicated technical things. Say for example if a user opens file manager and see /home folder and find that he doesn't need it then he would probably delete it.

Users aren't allowed to delete /home on any distribution I'm aware of... including Maemo. It's usually owned by root and read-only to anyone but root itself. Sorry--try again. On the other hand, it's CLASSIC for DOS/Windows users to successfully delete C:\DOS and C:\WINDOWS for years until NT came along. Took 'em long enough.

The differences are quite obvious.

I prefer Maemo, but I felt a lot of times frustrated because of the lack of officially supported apps. That's the main problem. The other problem has been the battery, that was quite resolved by Karam's batterypatch. Other problems like unresponsive OS have been also solved by Kernel Power and overclocking and by Karam's speedpatch. But that's a lot of time waiting and tweaking just to get a decent experience. On the other hand that was possible thanks to the openness of Maemo (despite of not being fully open) and this awesome community. Also, the HW keayboard made the experience even better.

When I have used Android I have felt like in a jail, but with all the commodities, you know.

In other words: It's just like being in jail... except they give you the keys (rooting) and nobody really cares if you're going in and out (no enforcement of rooting, unlike iOS)... or even if you stay out (CyanogenMOD and other Android based ROMs). Oh yeah.. I can see how AWFUL that is.

I can only agree. But first you have to spend a night in prison, and that isn't enjoyable

I already posted in my thread earlier (I bought an LG Optimus) about my recent experiences with 1 N900 (2010~now), 2. Iphon4 (2010~now) and the latest and the greatest, 3. LG's Optimus 3D (sept 7th 2011 ~ now). Loving the 3D screen/3D recording, 1080p recording of video @ 24fps in 2D and 720/3D Side/SIde with dual 5mp cams at the back.

the screen is big enough at 4.3 and with 7 desktops avail from start and 1000s of utility widgets at our disposal you can do whatever the hell you want to even w/o rooting. I already did the rooting and have used non market apps as well for backup and stuff but not too much tinkering since the offical roms not available yet and dont want to brick it. I did once but was able to restore by just pressing combo hardware keys and it auto goes to factory.

N900 was good fro about 6 months till i bought the iph4 last year and then n900 was mostly used as music player.

Hardcore peeps talk about customization and all sorts of hardware superiority but let me tell you , Android is as much customizable as n900 with added advantage of 500K+ apps already in market place and tons more by enthusiasts available. Here when i had n900 i had to refresh pages everyday for any "official" apps to make an appearance. And lets not talk about ovi (POS) store for n900. 2 pages of half hearted attempts by some devs.

Hardware wise people used to hype n900 about o/c'ing etc and yet my LG920p is A9 Arm processor @ 1ghz with dual core, dual channel, dual 256mbx2 memory tech. Each processor can use one pipeline or access both as required. That's why it's called Tri - Dual tech phone.

Anyway u can read my rant up here :
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...08#post1085108

The thing about Android is.. it's basically a virtual machine. It will never be quite as fast as Maemo / Meego / IOS / Symbian etc..

Android lags and crashes often on underpowered decices such as the HTC Wildfire.

lets add an extra element to make up the fight....

what about QNX..... when truly ready for the mobile, it will be the most powerful OS ever...
Friends of mine who have "played" with a Playbook say that it is a very smooth experience.. no lags, efficient battery etc....
they ascribe it to the microkernel nature of the OS... also the kernel is only 170,000 lines compared to 17million lines of code of linux....

If the QNX comes this year to the blackberry, and delivers its promise (+android apps as in PB), it could be a strong contender


now argue....