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What a guy that Sebastian Anthony from ExtremeTech is! One day he publishes an article saying iOS 5 bashes Android in the teeth, and the very next day he publishes an article saying Android leaves iOS 5 in the dust!

Pick a side already, Sebastian! Oh well, at least you’ve done a great job outlining some of the best features of both mobile platforms. You’ve given us an interesting read. And I agree that it can be hard to predict the future. So it’s understandable that nobody wants to make any hard predictions. Better play it safe and root for both platforms!

At the moment, things are looking slightly better for Android than they do for iOS 5. Because iOS 5 got hacked within 1 day of somebody getting his hands on it. And we won’t see iOS 5 for a little while. September at the earliest. But at the same time, lots of Android smartphones are being released this summer.

But then again… you never know how hard iOS 5 will strike back at the droid when the time comes.

The reasons why Sebastian Anthony thinks iOS 5 might beat Android:

1. iCloud Photo Stream
2. iCloud API
3. Post PC freedom
4. iMessage
5. Safari and iCloud

1. While it is true that Android does not have anything even remotely similar to iCloud Photo Stream, the service still relies on the iPhone’s own camera. Since mobile cameras are still of much lower quality than standalone digital cameras are, I can’t help but wonder whether the iCloud Photo Stream is being put to good use by Apple.

2. The iCloud API allows developers to freely tap into Apple’s free iCloud service, which brings cloud storage to the masses… for free. It’s quite a breakthrough accomplishment. Good point here.

3. Sebastian’s post PC freedom argument is also a great insight. Thanks to Apple’s free cloud storage, your iTunes library can be backed up from your iPhone to the cloud… but not to a PC. The PC isn’t necessary anymore. You can restore your music right off the cloud as well. No more hooking up your iPhone to your computer. It’s all in the cloud now!

4. While iMessage might be a step in the right direction, iOS 5 is not the only one developing an answer to the wildly popular messaging client called WhatsApp. Google is also developing its own WhatsApp alternative. So iMessage might not necessarily be a reason for iOS 5 to be better than Android.

5. Safari is iOS’ default browser. So far, it has left to be desired. But so has Android’s default smartphone browser. But with iOS 5, Safari is going to make a huge leap. It will get support for multiple tabs and it will also have a much faster rendering engine. Sebastian makes a good point here. But how long before Android introduces their own, very well liked Chrome browser?

The reasons why Sebastian Anthony thinks Android might beat iOS 5:

1. Home screen and widgets
2. Flash
3. Customizability
4. Voice control
5. Google account integration

1. Android gave users complete flexibility with regards to the icons and the widgets displayed on the home screen right from the get go. So far, iOS has failed to do this, giving users no other option than to put up with the default set of icons. It’s completely out of style to not allow users to design their own home screen.

2. Sebastian claims that iOS will never support flash. Not sure if that’s true, because in this article I linked to another post on this site showing an iOS 5 feature image that’s saying it will. Not that I feel it matters much, because Flash performs poorly on smartphones anyway. It might change because of quad core SOCs, but Flash is on the way out anyway. So who really cares?

3. When it comes to customizability, Android truly is superior over iOS. Android has an enormous modding community behind it. This was to be expected, since Android is open source. Everybody can download the code and modify it however they wish. Check out the CyanogenMod website if you want to learn more. Also, Android lets any app be linked to any other app. With iOS, you get Twitter functionality baked into every app. That’s nice, but it still can’t hold a candle to Android’s app linking capabilities.

4. Android’s voice control is a very powerful feature. Most people hate typing on virtual keyboards. So if even the SwiftKey X application isn’t good enough for you, then you can simply talk to your Android device and search the web with vocal commands.

5. Google’s account integration might not be a cloud service, but at least it lets you edit your docs right there on the web. Apple’s iCloud is just a storage service that does not support streaming. So does it really matter if the online service you make use of are cloud services or not? Google’s account integration let’s you reach out to the whole world from your Android. But iOS is trying harder to lock you into it.

Android vs iOS 5 – Who’s The Winner?

Android.