Time to buy a new phone? You are going to want a 3G smartphone that can access an array of available apps. Two main players come to mind in the smartphone app enabled market, the iPhone and Android. Next you ask yourself, what are my choices? The iPhone with its homogeneous form factor and UI offerings, provide the user with what amounts to a single choice. That choice includes a phone without a keyboard, with the same UI, operated only on AT&T's network. Never mind what your 3G coverage is like in your area, or what you will use your phone for ie. work, play, music etc... Never mind your phone looking like a single sheep in a flock of non-multitasking, singular form smartphones.

Android on the other hand offers you a CHOICE, to choose the phone that is right for YOU. What are the choices you might ask? For starters Android will soon be offering it's OS on more than 10 handsets in the U.S. alone. Android handsets are available on 3 of the big 4 carriers in the U.S. and will soon be on all 4, including Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and next AT&T. There is no single location where an individual might desire to own a smartphone or "superphone", these days. From the shores of Maine, to the plains of the Midwest, to the beaches of California, we use these devices in all locations every day. Before becoming the next person to go out and buy an iPhone, think of what that purchase could mean for you, where you live. Will it get a steady 3G connection? How is the cellular service on AT&T in general where you live? A good place to start when answering this question would be Consumer Reports, who recently provided a breakdown of Cellular service rankings in a slew of market locations. Find out which company can provide you the best service in your area. You don't want your smartphone to serve as a paper weight after you are locked into a

2-year deal.

Android's offerings don't stop with multiple carriers. Hardware producers are joining team Android, with a line-up including Motorola, HTC, Samsung and more to come.  Each of these handset producers has looked to provide individualized offerings for you on Android, by adding their own UI to many of the phones. Motorola for example produced a socialized UI they tittled Motoblur, which was released on the Cliq and provides your phone with a deeper social networking integration. HTC included sense UI on the Hero, which includes the largest number of stock homescreens sold on the market today at 7. Samsung included a cube interface into the Behold 2, which allows you to place your favorite apps into a cube on the homescreen of the device. All of the UI offerings are a supplement to the well designed Android OS which is built into each of these phones. So, although they might appear different in the UI, Android phones can run a majority of the same apps downloadable from the Android Market.

As I explained earlier, Apple provides what is esentially a single form factor for the iPhone which has changed minimally over time in comparison to Androids offerings. With Android,  you again have the choice of a physical keyboard integrated into the phone as seen with the Cliq, Droid and Moment or you can stick with the virtual keyboard offered on the Hero, Nexus One, Eris and Behold 2. With varying screen sizes, widths and weights the Android line up provides you, (the user) with choices of both look and feel of the device. HTC with the MyTouch even began offering an array of stylized patterns on the stock phone, for the user to choose from when making a new purchase. The recently released Nexus One, has taken customization of the Android phone to a new level, incorporating living backgrounds that move into the homescreen.

Overall, Android provides a more diverse line-up of choices that in the future is expected to continue the trend of providing an ever expanding line-up of phones. Multiple hardware producers announced that their smartphone line-ups will include new Android devices for 2010. As iPhone sits stagnant in its design and network provider, we will continue to watch Android grow, providing us with exciting new options.

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