Volume

The phone only understands one call volume which applies to the earpiece, bluetooth, and speakerphone.  This is silly.  The iPhone remembers each of these volumes independently.  With my Android phone, every time I hit the Speakerphone button I have to crank the volume up, then crank it back down when I switch back.

I think even my old flip-phone supported this.

Conversation view

One horrible misfeature of the iPhone is that the iPhone does not always show the date and time of text messages.  It seems like if the messages are close enough together it groups them as part of a conversation, and it only displays the time stamp of the first one.  This has been a problem for years and is a constant unaddressed complaint. 

While this does save a bit of screen space, it is frustrating when someone replies with "I'm running behind, if you don't see me in 15 minutes just go ahead without me." and you didn't notice the message right away.  Apple deserves a smack-in-the-back-of-the-head for this one.

Fortunately, this is resolved on Android.  Every message shows the time stamp.  Comparison shots below.

(iPhone screen shot courtesy of tyler ingram's blog)

Accurate cursor positioning

I like the way they handle cursor positioning in a text box on Android.  The fundamental challenge here is figuring out how to position a 1-pixel wide cursor using a 40-pixel wide finger.

On Android, you touch a spot and the cursor goes there.  Then you get a little bubble that you can drag around for more precise positioning.  This allows you to be accurate without the bubble getting in the way.

On the iPhone, you touch and hold, which displays a magnifying glass showing you a blow-up of the screen.  The magnifying glass lets you see the cursor position more clearly.  The magnifying glass vanishes when you pick up your finger.  The problem I had was that after I released my finger the cursor would be one character to the left or right of where I was.

The magnifying glass isn't a general purpose magnifying glass though.  It only magnifies some parts of the screen while others are mysteriously blank.  The screen on my Droid is bigger, so maybe it doesn't  need the magnifying feature anyway.