UPDATE: a revised version of this page is here.

I finally managed to get a hands-on look at Spotify Mobile for the iPhone (thanks @JackalHeadGod). Being familiar with Spotify on Android, I was able to compare the two to determine what things they had in common and which features were unique to one device. Here then is the definitive report on which is best – it’s the Spotify Mobile Smackdown: iPhone versus Android!

Besides a few aesthetic differences, here is the complete list of features, blow-by-blow, unique to the iPhone version and unique to the Android version of Spotify Mobile.

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Sync Over 3G

Offline playlists are Spotify Mobile’s killer feature (well, apart from having over 4 million songs in your pocket!), but on iPhone you must be connected to Wi-Fi to sync your playlists due to Apple-imposed restrictions. On Android you can sync over Wi-Fi or 3G: there are options to enable or disable “Sync over Wi-Fi” and “Sync over 3G” (although it does say the recommended setting for Over 3G is off).

Score: Android 1 – 0 iPhone

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Sort Playlist Order

Spotify Mobile on iPhone lets you sort the order of your playlists: touch the mark at the right-hand side of the playlist then move it up or down the list. The changes are reflected on the desktop. On Android, you cannot sort your playlists: you must do this on the desktop.

Score: Android 1 – 1 iPhone

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Sort Song Order Within a Playlist

On iPhone you can also sort the songs within a playlist. Again, this sortability is missing from Spotify Mobile for Android.

Score: Android 1 – 2 iPhone

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Voice-Activated Search

Here’s a feature to impress your friends with: Google’s Voice Search (which lets you speak your search query into your phone before doing some smart voice-to-text translation) works in Spotify Mobile for Android. Fire up Spotify, click the search tab, then say what you want to listen to. It works amazingly well, even when you have a slight accent 😉

Score: Android 2 – 2 iPhone

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View Artist Biography

There seems to be no way to view an artist’s Biography page on Spotify Mobile for iPhone. On Android, every artist page has a set of three tabs: one for all the tracks (the Overview tab), one for top hits, and one for the artist’s biography.

Score: Android 3 – 2 iPhone

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View Artist Top Hits

As with the biography, there seems to be no way to view an artist’s Top Hits page on Spotify Mobile for iPhone.

Score: Android 4 – 2 iPhone

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Artist and Search Pages have Album Art

As you would expect, viewing the overview of an artist’s material on Spotify shows you little thumbnails of all the album art. You also expect to see the album art on search results. But this is only available on Spotify Mobile for iPhone. On Android, all you get is a jumbled list of albums with a white disc icon next to each one, as if it’s tried to download some artwork but failed.

Score: Android 4 – 3 iPhone

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.View Disk Space Usage

Offline Playlists take up disk space on your phone. You can store 3,333 tracks provided you have the space. With Spotify Mobile for Android, there’s an About screen that tells you how much disk space is available, the total storage, and how much storage Spotify has used (in both MB and percentage). I have a 16 MB microSD card in my G1: Spotify reports the total storage as 15186 MB, with 8128 MB available to Spotify. I’ve synced a fair few playlists; my Used Storage is 7057 MB (46%). Spotify Mobile for iPhone does not report any of this disk space usage information.

Score: Android 5 – 3 iPhone

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Home Tab of New Releases

The Home tab in Spotify Mobile for Android shows you a selection of 16 new albums and singles on Spotify, just like the What’s New tab on the desktop version. It’s a quick way to jump to something new (especially given that none of the playlist or new-release recommender sites will work with Spotify Mobile). This page is absent from Spotify Mobile for iPhone.

Score: Android 6 – 3 iPhone

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Run Spotify in the Background

For Android users, the fact that an app can run in the background is nothing special: most apps do just that, you can leave them running while you check that text message, tweet, or email that just arrived. But as has been well documented, Apple do not allow non-Apple apps to run in the background. If you’re listening to music with Spotify on your regular (non-jailbroken)  iPhone and you want to check an email, you need to stop the music. Granted Spotify will start from exactly where you stopped it, but Google Android knocks out the iPhone conclusively with this final unique feature.

Score: Android 7 – 3 iPhone

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Final Score: Android 7 – 3 iPhone – Android Wins!

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Spotify Mobile for Android comes out on top when it comes to number of unique features. Of course, some features may be much more important to you than others. I will leave the last word to @JackalHeadGod, software developer, geek, and confirmed Apple fanboy:

“The iPhone UI is far cleaner but lacks some of the features of the Google phone, including the killer feature of background listening. Users who want to text or check email without stopping their music would be best served by Google’s offering.”

See more on Spotify and iPhone or more on Spotify and Android.

iphone vs. Android image from www.myth.co.nz