Default will depend on which phone you get, but there's no shortage of great free ones in the market (Astro and ES File Explorer, for example).
Also, Android phones work just like a USB drive if you want to drag and drop files then access them from another computer later. You can store anything you want and create your own folders, unlike the iPhone where you can only sync certain media types through iTunes. That's what I was referring to with the file manager thing, but I'm not sure how to say that succinctly...
Which everyone wants of course. Except me. Or my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my sister. Or in fact, everyone I know with one.
A feature that you think is critical is a feature that is critical for you. The refrain that iOS suffers from a lack of file exploration or drag and drop of any kind of content is based around the assumption that everyone wants that. Most people don't.
Well let's broaden this, there is no concept of files on the iPhone, and yes, you DO need them.
Example: try attaching an excel sheet you received from a friend to another email.
Example: the powerful Android "share" mechanism --the sole reason I have several iPads but switched to Android for real work (ie on my phone). Share is not limited to a bunch of "friend-aware" apps, but every app can register themselves as a "handler" for particular data objects (files), e.g. "picture" "pdf document" etc, and when you hit "share" all of these are shown in a list. No more circuitous nonsense where you have to open a file in goodreader or save it to dropbox first, so you can access it with another app, which speeds up things tremendously.
I think it's pretty safe to say that moving data from one app to the next is something everyone needs.
Honestly, "Share" is one of the most brilliant features Android has. Great example of something potentially minor (built-in "social sharing") becoming massively useful through extensibility.
Okay but the concept of files versus the specific application of a file manager are different things. I completely agree that iOS needs to expose file representations better between applications, but I think the very notion of a file manager is still utterly redundant for a large percentage of new smartphone owners.
I can understand your point, but too often this sounds like an extremely weak excuse: "So iPhone doesn't have this feature? Good! I didn't want it anyway!".
I personally see having more options and choices as a great thing even when I don't personally need those options.
Even if I think the default android keyboard is the greatest touchscreen keyboard in existence, I still think it should be possible and easy to use another keyboard app instead.
Choice is great, my argument wasn't that choice is bad because that's silly. My argument was saying that a feature that a lot of people have no use for is a really big negative against a platform is an incredibly bad point. It's a feature that has inherent personal usefulness for the user, if there's a strong majority that don't have need of that then it's not a negative against a platform when it's functionality for functionality sake.
But the iPhone isn't just lacking in one or two options. It's a very locked down platform in several ways. I have a hard time applying your argument of "a lot of people have no use" when it comes to something as fundamental as being allowed to run an app or browser that Apple does not like.
Okay so here's choice. You can have chocolate or steak, what you can't expect is that the steak is made of chocolate. There's choice. Apple has presented a product with specific guidelines and won't budge, your choice is "Does this product do everything I want it do/or nearly everything" if the iPhone fits that then that's a fine choice, if it doesn't then you can go choose something else.
It's Apple's party, and they'll approve if they want to. They just don't, because they don't think it's what the majority of their customer base wants.
But now the game has changed from "most people don't need this" to "if you bought Apple you get Apple".
The latter does not deflect the original criticism thrown at Apple here, they are overly restrictive to the point where it's bad for their users.
I think that is a valid point to raise against Apple without meeting a blanket "You bought their product and that's just how they roll". Under that, no company can be criticized for anything, ever.
My mother kept asking me why I made her pay for "a device which can't replace a floppy disk". I'm an android user but I thought the limitations of the iPhone were actually a plus for my mother. It took me some time (and some fiddling with some "approved apps" to make things "work" for her) to understand that those small things could be real deal-breakers when not available.
You're also skewing the point, which is it's a nice option but not a necessary requirement for a large percentage of the user base. Unless 35m is a significantly large percentage of Android users, it's still not something that's an essential feature of a smartphone for a large amount of people.
My point is that tens of millions of people think you should be able to manage files on your smartphone, but Apple makes that impossible without jailbreaking and Apple apologists routinely argue by implication that because they don't feel they need it, it's not necessary.
Not quite - it shows that they think you should manage files on your Android phone. iOS is designed to hide files, but Android has always had it as an option, which is represented in its interface.
Back when I used Android (owned a Nexus One which broke), I had to manage files all the time, because the individual apps didn't do a good job of it. Instead of having a centralised place for photos, I just dragged photos to /sdcard from my computer, and looked at them that way. When I had to put music on my phone in a hurry, I did the same, and navigated to them in the file manager instead of having it in the music app. I had a bunch of Markdown files that were there, too, whenever I synced manually. Now I can do all that without having to worry about where the files are, using iTunes and iCloud.
Since then, every time I've seen someone have to open a file manager, it's to do a job an app could have done. That's why Apple doesn't want to include one - it gives users more functionality, but makes app developers lazy. It's the same reason they haven't decided to include a stylus: it's technically more precise, but would just cause developers to think "don't worry about finger click targets, the user has a stylus".
For starters I'm not an Apple apologist. I use Apple products but I'm fairly critical of them. You don't have to be an apologist to have a specific opinion, and it's reductive to consistently frame counterpoints as "just another Apple apologist excuse". That's often what's bandied about, from both camps. So for the purpose of this discussion apologist, sheeple, iSheep, fandroids and so on should be verboten.
Second, if file management was a feature that people were crying out for in droves they'd either not be buying into iOS or they'd have created such a furore that Apple would have implemented it. Apple has responded to platform criticism by implementing the functionality as iOS has matured, they've just cherry picked what they're implementing to deliver the functionality that has a benefit to the most people. Aside from the obvious missteps like Newsstand or Passbook anyway.
If people want to manage files on a smartphone that's fantastic, there's a platform for them. Why is it a negative point that there's a platform that has a different opinion? It's not, there's a wealth of choice from smartphone players now.
> Which everyone wants of course. Except me. Or my girlfriend. Or my parents. Or my sister. Or in fact, everyone I know with one.
Even my mother has a problem with that on her iPhone. I installed her Dropbox and hooked up some of her apps on the same phone to the same account so that apps can share common data. Otherwise you have apps that take pictures and you can't mail out those pictures etc.
If you ever need to move a file of any kind from one location to another, Android makes it easier than iOS. The fact that my grandmother's cat prefers Meow apps over the ability to transfer files doesn't change that.
My sister wanted to copy a video file from my laptop to her phone. I had it up on the laptop's webserver. No can do; there is no 'save' option for a link or file system for it to go to. To get it there as best as I could tell I would have to get it to her desktop first, and then she would physically have to bring her phone there and wire it up to sync with iTunes. Maybe iCloud could have helped?
My girlfriend, who on the whole loves her iPad, absolutely hates iTunes for and photo and video syncing. She would be much happier simply dragging her nicely organized folders over to the iPad rather than fighting iTunes.
i recently re-installed ES File Explorer and was floored with how much work went into it! i've used it years ago so i could see the difference. it is now also an app manager, ftp client, bluetooth/network explorer.. and it's FREE! i'm also not seeing any ads. how can they afford to put so much work into this app?
"The Android phone functions as a standard USB hard drive." Also, it's not just a sandboxed area, like on my previous "feature phone" (store whatever you like on it, but the phone's OS won't do anything with it), but the real SD card in the phone, directly.
Also, Android phones work just like a USB drive if you want to drag and drop files then access them from another computer later. You can store anything you want and create your own folders, unlike the iPhone where you can only sync certain media types through iTunes. That's what I was referring to with the file manager thing, but I'm not sure how to say that succinctly...