Smart phone OS showdown: iPhone vs Android vs Palm Pre

Both the Palm Pre and the iPhone are very stable. We had one or two app crashes from the iPhone and the same on the Palm Pre.

Android, on the other hand, is a loose cannon. Some apps on our HTC Hero would run without a hitch, while some would crash regularly. Android is by far the least stable, but it's also the one with the fewest restrictions on third-party apps. In mitigation, our Hero crashed far less than our Magic, indicating that the amount of free memory could be an issue here.

At any rate, on current hardware, webOS and iPhone OS are the winners in this category. Given some time, and hardware with more memory and fewer dodgy third-party apps, we think Android could be more of a competitor.