I CAME UP with a joke today.

Q: What will we eat if Android wins the mobile operating system war?

A: Blackberry and Apple Crumble.

I never said it was a good joke. But after the day I've had, even a lame pun is better than nothing.

Monday, 6 January

At this point, I am going to let you into a little secret. I nearly caved today. I was sitting in a room with four Windows machines, all switched off. I'd spent five hours - yes, five - trying to post an article.

During that time, I fought against devices rebooting, apps that crashed for no apparent reason but always at the crucial moment, and a cut and paste mechanism that seems to have been written by the cast of Sesame Street on ritalin.

It is safe to say that, for a journalist on a successful tech website, using Android exclusively is, while not impossible, certainly not convenient. It's a little like a holiday in North Korea. It can be done, but it probably isn't very relaxing and you might not get out of it in one piece.

I'm an advocate for Android due to its open ecosystem. But that can also be its undoing. There is often inconsistency between apps that means that they behave differently than Android design guidelines, thus reducing their capacity for intuitive use.

In addition, because many apps come from back bedroom developers, they are prone to instability. There isn't a huge community of bug testers to check every possible eventuality, and you can be sure that the one they haven't tested will be the one you end up running into and finding out about the hard way.

More:

The INQUIRER Android Experiment: Episode Three