Safari vs Android (browsers)

 Although they come from two companies locked in fierce competition for users, the browsers are both built on the WebKit rendering engine and are remarkably similar.
Safari has some useful features that Apple has ported from the desktop version that Android's browser lacks. First is the Reading List feature, a convenient tool for marking pages and sites to be read later. If you tap the Action button (the box with an arrow coming out of it at the bottom of the browser,) the second option is to add it to your Reading List.
Once added, you can access it later by tapping the Bookmark button. The Reading List is the first option. That's no accident: Reading List is simply Bookmarks with a better public relations budget. You can also sync the feature with other iOS devices via iCloud.
Reader is another desktop Safari feature that's made its way over to mobile in iOS 5. It streamlines articles, cutting out extraneous ads and page-jumps so you can easily scroll through the story without getting distracted.

The Android browser hasn't undergone many changes recently. Could Ice Cream Sandwich serve up a major refresh?

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Safari's in-page text copy is also extremely slick. Long-tap on the screen, and a magnifying glass appears to make single-word reading and selection easier. Release to get handles for dragging the highlighted area beyond a single word, or for searching for a definition of that word. It may sound awkward, but it's clever and intuitive.
Safari also has a recognizable name. It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for Android to eventually brand its Browser as Chrome, since they're both built on WebKit, but Google has said that's not going to happen in the near future. This is a miscalculation on Google's part. With Chrome growth still stratospheric more than three years after it debuted, the Android browser could well benefit from some of Chrome's better features, such as sync and add-ons.
As an aside, this has led to an interesting problem for Android. There are some serious platform restrictions on iOS that affect your ability to look beyond the default browser. Apple severely restricts your ability to change the default app for core services, so third-party browsers must be built on the same WebKit engine that powers Safari, and those browsers aren't allowed to take over link launching from text messages or other apps. If that happened on Windows, the practices would be quickly labeled anti-competitive and immolated with lawsuits and fire-breathing attorneys.

So on Android, the competition has far outstripped the default browser. Firefox for Android, with its syncing, tabs, and add-on gallery, does an impressive job of replicating the desktop experience in the mobile space. Dolphin does, too, and supports Flash and gestures as well. Opera Mobile offers a similar feature set, plus page compression to accelerate page-load times. And those are just three off the top of my head. Next week's Ice Cream Sandwich announcement could change things quickly for Android, but right now the default browser looks anemic against the home turf competition.
Against Safari, though, it holds up well. It doesn't have analogs for Reader or Reading List, but it does other things better. Safari doesn't have location bar searching enabled, which means that it's got a secondary search box crammed into the top of the interface. The Android browser uses the extra space for a dedicated Share button and one-tap Bookmark button, things that Safari lacks.
Android doesn't offer an instant, single-word definition search or on-board dictionary as a second option to copying highlighted text. It does let you instantly share the text, though, through the standard Android "share" interface. The Android browser also comes with a download manager, it lets you download a page to your SD card for offline reading and lets you view page info such as the full page name and full URL.
In simplest terms, the browsers are a reflection of the operating systems themselves. The enhanced reading options for Safari reflect iOS's "it-just-works" populist approach, while the best of Android's browser set it apart with a bit more in-depth control.

(Credit: Google)

There used to be two major differences when comparing the default versions of the browsers on tablets, but Safari on the iPad has just gotten tabbed browsing with iOS 5. Still, one important feature exists on the default Android browser: Incognito mode. And yes, it's actually called Incognito, which is the first indication we've had that Google is considering re-branding the Android browser as Chrome. Still, there's not one single feature that makes one of these browsers impressively better than the other because where one slacks off, the other picks up.
When it comes to performance, one major recent study showed that the Android 2.3.0 browser was shockingly better on almost all counts than the iOS 4.3 Safari. In testing the browsers and phone models for this story, they were impressively similar in page load times. In informal tests, Android averaged about two to three seconds faster on some sites, like Apple.com, YouTube.com, and NYTimes.com, but on other sites such as Download.com and Amazon.com, they averaged nearly the same render time. Of course, performance depends heavily on hardware, so if you've got an older Android phone running the latest OS, or an iPhone 4 running iOS 5, you're not as likely to see similar results.

iPhone 4S launch: What's different this time?

The lineup for the iPhone 3GS in 2009.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

After much fanfare, a minor pre-order meltdown, and what was perhaps the largest collection of Apple software updates to go out in a single week, the next iPhone arrives tomorrow.
If it feels like a long time since the iPhone 4 went on sale, you're not mistaken. The iPhone 4S, Apple's follow-up to the iPhone 4, comes a few months later than Apple has typically released previous handsets, and it seems even longer given that leaks led to the world seeing the final design months before it was officially unveiled.
From the looks of it, Apple appears to have used that extra time to polish the latest version of its iOS software, which went out to users yesterday, as well as to ready Siri, the iPhone 4S exclusive voice assistant that's being launched as an uncharacteristic "beta." That's not all that's different though. This year's launch brings a number of other changes, which we've detailed beneath.
More carriers
When the iPhone 4 launched (and every previous iPhone for that matter), the only carrier you could get it on in the U.S. was AT&T.

This time around your choices are more spread out with the addition of Verizon and newcomer Sprint. For those who bought the iPhone 4 from Verizon when it launched on the carrier earlier this year, there's probably a twinge of anger there, however those buyers had some idea of what they were getting themselves into.
So will two more carriers make things more complicated for Apple tomorrow morning? Based on the iPad 2 launch earlier this year, which included 18 different model possibilities--including different 3G-enabled models for GSM and CDMA carriers--probably not.
Outside of the U.S., the iPhone 4S is also launching through KDDI in Japan.



More countries
The phone is launching in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the U.K. at the same time. By comparison, last year's device did not arrive in Canada for some three months after the launch in other countries in that same group.
At last week's event, Apple pledged to get the 4S in 70 countries on more than 100 carriers by December.
Unlocked version from the get go (for some)
Besides the existing lineup of devices attached to carriers, Apple's offering an unlocked version of the iPhone 4S from the get go--at least in places like the U.K. and Europe.
In the U.S., Apple has promised an unlocked iPhone 4S in November. By comparison, it took Apple about a year to begin offering an unlocked version of the iPhone 4 in the U.S. Worth noting is that despite being a world phone, working on CDMA and GSM carriers, the unlocked version of the device will only work on GSM networks.
More stores
Not counting Sprint retail stores in the U.S., there are now other places to get Apple's new phone where you couldn't a year ago. That includes Sam's Club, which announced its deal to sell Apple's iOS gadgets last October, along with Target, which began selling Apple's iPhones last November.

(Credit: Apple)

More colors
The iPhone 4 was originally promised in two colors, but what we ended up with was a 10-month wait for white version. In an interview with AllThingsD in April, the day the white version launched, Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller described the process of making that color "challenging" both in how the color held up over time and how it interacted with the phone's internal sensors.
Since last year's launch, Apple's offered a white iPad 2 on its first day of release and began offering a white version of the iPod Touch, which hit stores yesterday.
More configurations
For the first time ever, Apple's selling three variations of the newest model, while selling last year's model and the 3GS. All told, that's five phones--at least on AT&T.
The big thing here is the move to three capacities from the get go: the 16GB, 32GB and the top of the line 64GB model, which retails for $399, a return to the original iPhone's price after it's controversial cut. Will people be lining up for an iPhone 3GS or a 4 tomorrow? Not unless they've made a horrible mistake.
New add-ons
Last but not least, Apple's rolling out the iPhone 4S with a brand new version of its AppleCare service called AppleCare+. This optional protection boosts the iPhone's warranty from 90 days of tech support to two years. The plus at the end adds accidental damage to that protection. On top of the $99 cost of the service, buyers who have damaged their iPhones in an accident can get a replacement for a $49 fee. This works twice, before you have to start paying full price for a replacement.
What should make tomorrow interesting is that this new level of AppleCare service requires that users buy it at the time of purchasing their new iPhone, unlike the original AppleCare, which gave users a year from the time of purchase to buy and activate it. That could mean a lot of folks making the move buy AppleCare+ with their iPhones, the same way Apple was pushing its bumper cases with last year's model.
The iPhone goes on sale at 8 a.m. local time at Apple Stores and through the company's carrier and retail partners, and CNET will be on the scene to bring you news about the launch.