Android's one killer feature that trumps the iPhone

Android's one killer feature that trumps the iPhone
In iOS, you actually have to swipe down from the top of the screen to open the Notification Center and then scroll through your whole alerts list by app to see what all you might need to address. A lot of iOS users just aren't in the habit of checking the Notification Center since it's a newer addition to the platform. The iOS 5 Notification Center has handy weather and stock updates but alerts require a lot of scrolling.Jason Hiner | CNETMore often than not, the habit in iOS is to see if your apps for Mail, Messages, Calendar, or Twitter (or various other apps) have their red alert badges in the upper left corner activated with the number of important new things you haven't seen yet. Then you go straight into each app and check the new stuff. Lots of iOS apps can use the red alert badge now and it's handy for the stuff you want to track most often, but it's obviously not as efficient as that quick glance in Android. A single alert in iOS can quickly get your attention, but it can break down when you have multiple alerts.Jason Hiner | CNETOnce you get past the glance-ability, Android also has iOS beat when you dive into the listing of alerts. Ironically, iOS is actually more configurable and customizable in its listings, but Android's default configuration nails it, and that's more important since most people never change the defaults. While iOS lets you decide how many alerts you want to show for each app and how you want to organize them, Android simply mixes up the alerts and shows them in chronological order from the time they happened. In Android 4.0, you can also simply swipe right to dismiss individual alerts, which isn't possible in iOS. Here's a comparison of the alerts listings in iOS and Android.Jason Hiner | CNETAnother thing to keep in mind here is that Google is just really good at alerts, and Apple isn't. Take a look at what Google has done with Google+ alerts by building them into the universal Google toolbar and giving an excellent at-a-glance look at the activity that's happening around your Google+ content. Meanwhile, Apple has still never built a decent universal alerts system into Mac OS. The most popular solution is the third party app Growl. Google+ is another example where Google has done good work with alerts.Jason Hiner | CNETDon't get me wrong, there are plenty of other things that Android does better than iPhone -- for example, turn-by-turn GPS navigation and Google Voice integration. But, Apple will likely catch up in maps and GPS and Google Voice is a niche solution mostly used by technophiles. Alerts represent the one area where Android is a lot more friendly and usable than iOS, and that's unlikely to change any time soon unless Apple does a more drastic redesign on the user interface of its home screen.