So, since I haven’t carried an iPhone around with me for more than a week and I got an up and close look at the iPhone 4 today here’s my list of the pros and cons of iPhone 4 vs. the Sprint EVO or Verizon’s Incredible (the two best Android-based phones out there).

1. Screen quality. iPhone wins, but only slightly over the EVO.
2. Multitasking. All of them do it, but Apple’s system is a LOT easier to figure out and manage. That said, AT&T’s new data plan pricing has left a very bad taste in my mouth. I’m going to have to use the iPhone 4 for a month to see how much data I actually end up using now that I can do things like use Waze for traffic at the same time as playing music on Pandora, or watching live streaming videos from Ustream, etc. The iPhone should be miles ahead here, because of its superior OS, but is only slightly ahead because AT&T is dragging down the experience for me.
3. Battery life. HUGE win for the iPhone 4, which gives up to 40% longer talk times than the 3GS, which is already giving me at least 40% better battery life than the EVO.
4. Application choice and quality. A slight win for iPhone 4. Overall I like apps on the iPhone better and there definitely are more to choose from. 225,000 according to Steve Jobs today. But there are some apps on Android that are better. Google Voice and Google Maps are two of them, which are pretty dramatic. I keep getting complaints from developers about the Apple approval process, too.
5. Feel in pocket. iPhone 4 wins here. It’s thinner and since it’s glass on both sides more pocket compatible.
6. Voice quality. The EVO is a LOT better than the iPhone 3GS, but I wasn’t able to try it out today for a phone call, so we’ll need to wait until June 24th for that.
7. Sexiness. The iPhone 4 wins here big time.
8. Carriers. The iPhone 4 LOSES here big time. AT&T has dead zones where none exist on my routes around the San Francisco Bay Area on Sprint or Verizon.
9. Video and camera. The iPhone wins here by quite a bit. The focusing on the iPhone is better. The quality seems like it is better, but I’ll need to do a head-to-head after June 24th to really know that for sure. The video features are FAR superior on the iPhone, especially the new editing features. I will buy the iPhone for these features alone, so for a video geek like me these are a huge deal. My wife, though, uses the iPhone camera a lot more than I do (I have a pro camera, she doesn’t and she takes a lot of pictures of the kids), so it’ll be interesting to see what she does with this.
10. Video games. The iPhone is already ahead here by a long shot and with its new gyroscope we should see even more apps for the iPhone that are cool and now that Zynga is bringing its games to the iPhone Apple has widened its lead. Yeah, yeah, I’m sure all the haters will remind me it doesn’t play Flash games but, sorry, that train has left the station and isn’t coming back.
11. Tethering. The EVO lets you share your phone as a wifi hotspot and lets other devices use its data plan to get on the Internet. This is wildly cool and how I get my family’s iPads on the Internet when driving in the car. Apple didn’t say a thing about tethering today and I’m hearing rumors that the iPad won’t tether with the new iPhone. So, this is a major feature in the EVO camp. Plus, AT&T’s new data plan restrictions really bug me.
12. Synch and services. Here Android kicks Apple’s ass. The iPhone has to be physically plugged into a computer and connected to iPhone to synch it. With the EVO I never have connected it physically to a computer. I just entered my Gmail address and password and all my contacts, all of my calendar items, all of my email, and all of my applications just showed up. This is a MAJOR advantage to the Android system.

So, will I start using an iPhone again? Yes, but I have the luxury of being able to afford two devices and I’m definitely keeping the EVO if just for the tethering. If I could only afford one? I’d go with iPhone 4 over the EVO. Mostly because the OS is nicer to use (hard to explain all the ways this is so in a short post, so you’ll have to wait for a longer post after I get mine), the video features, and the battery life is dramatically better. But I totally understand why many of you will ignore those advantages because AT&T sucks so much. If voice quality is more important to you than all the toys, the nicer OS, or the video chat, then definitely go for the Sprint or the Verizon.

To the second part of this question. Does Nokia, MIcrosoft, or RIM have a chance to get into the game?

Well, let’s look at the strength’s of each company.

1. Nokia has a ton of market share in low-end markets. That still gives it a powerful voice brand to build off of. Will it matter in the high end game? I don’t think it will, but I’m sure I’ll have lots of Nokia employees telling me why it does.
2. Microsoft has the Xbox and their new phone is coming from the same team. Wired also explained how Microsoft’s Kin and a bunch of services give it a leg into the game. I don’t buy that horseradish, but I can see how many of you will.
3. RIM has the best keyboards and best integration with Microsoft Exchange (still). Corporate IT folks care about both of these. Even Mark Zuckerberg carries a Blackberry to do email on. Until Android matches the keyboard quality RIM is safe. The first Motorola Droid has a dreadful keyboard. Will the next one have a good enough keyboard to let RIM’ers switch? We’ll have to see.

Anyway, Apple is still on top of the mind share mountain and that’s a powerful place, indeed, to be. Look for Apple’s sales and profits to continue to go up. I’m buying three (one for Patrick, one for Maryam, and one for myself).

What do you think?

Steve Rubel came over the house on Friday (and so did my friend Luke Kilpatrick, who is a Palm Pre freak and does social media for VMWare) and he has already switched his business life to the iPad (he’s a senior vice president at Edelman PR, the largest independent PR firm in the world) and when we started talking iPad apps over dinner I knew this would be a fun way to look at a bunch of different apps. We spend an hour going through all our favorite iPad apps.

What iPad apps do you have that we missed?

Last week I wrote a guest post for Techcrunch titled “Location 2012.” I’m pretty proud of how it came out, based on a road trip I took last weekend with my family. Funny that since I wrote it a lot of companies who are working in the location space have been coming out of the woodwork. Plus I’ve caught even more rumors of what Apple and Google are up to, so I’ll keep tracking this story. I’ve even seen a stealth company that I can’t share yet (more later this week) that is working on pretty much exactly what I laid out.

MG Siegler, at Techcrunch, did the editing, and he made my piece tighter and better. He’s a real catch for Techcrunch. Arrington better hope he doesn’t get stolen away.

Anyway, I wanted to make sure you saw the post, some of you don’t read my Twitter stream and just follow me on an RSS reader, so it was worth pointing that out here.

What do you think? Are you working on location-based services to make this new world a reality? Let me know!

Everyone seems to be against Mark Zuckerberg, founder/CEO of Facebook, lately.

Shel Israel says he should step down.

Market Watch’s Therese Poletti says he had a Nixon moment on stage at the AllThingsD Conference.

Jason Calacanis details what Zuckerberg should do to regain trust, all while noting that he imploded on stage at AllThingsD.

Even Steve Jobs was schooling Zuckerberg on privacy. More on Jobs later.

Heck, on this week’s Gillmor Gang, even +I+ was saying that Zuckerberg should put Sheryl Sandberg into the CEO role and should go and run R&D, basically agreeing with Shel Israel.

Part of me wants Mark to tell us all to go to hell and keep changing the world. He would be justified in having a Carol Bartz moment. After all, in his 26 years he’s done more than me or Calacanis TOGETHER will ever do. To detail:

1. He has — in less than seven years — created a company that has hired more than 1,000 people. How many other USA companies have hired 1,000 people in Silicon Valley in the past five years?
2. His company has been valued at many billions of dollars.
3. His company has created a platform that supports, among many companies, Zynga, which also has hired 800 employees (it’s only two years old) and my friends are throwing around valuations of billions for Zynga.
4. His company has 500 million people using it around the world and most love it a lot. My wife still is effusive with love over Facebook.

He’s done 100x more in his few years of running Facebook than Carol Bartz has AT ANY COMPANY! In her entire career! But she felt enough confidence to tell off Mike Arrington, on stage at his own conference, and telling him to “f*** off.” (that part comes at about 25 minutes into the video of Bartz on stage at Techcrunch Disrupt).

Zuckerberg, for some reason, doesn’t have that kind of personal confidence to clearly answer questions and also tell all of us to f*** off.

He should take some lessons from Bartz and have his own “Bartz moment.”

After all? How many people have I hired? 1? Israel? 0. Calcanis? 40? Even add Arrington’s 15 into the pile, it isn’t even a wart on the pile of people Zuckerberg has hired.

Have any of us changed the world the way Zuckerberg has? No. Not even close.

Have any of us caused Google to look at itself differently? No. Not even close (even Bartz hasn’t been able to do that).

Plus, he’s 26 years old. I’m not as smart or done as much and I’m 45 years old. Heck, add us all together, that’s more than 100 years of living more than Zuckerberg has and, yet, we haven’t accomplished nearly as much.

Heck, Calacanis has done such a poor job of being a CEO that he doesn’t even talk about HIS OWN COMPANY anymore. Zuckerberg should have just stared back at him and asked him “how’s Mahalo going again?”

OK, OK, now I’m going to tell you why Mark should still step down. Even though his answer to me SHOULD BE to “f*** off.”

1. Life is too short to do stuff you don’t like to do and it’s clear that Mark doesn’t like being the public face of Facebook. He doesn’t enjoy it. If he did, he would be happier on stage and wouldn’t be sweating. I’ve seen him up front and close and he’s far better when he starts talking geekery than when he is trying to represent Facebook’s business interests. I’ve recently turned down some pretty serious money to do something else because I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as what I’m doing now for Rackspace. This is something I ask myself every week or so. “Am I having fun?” If I’m not, I’m going to do something else. So should Zuckerberg. Not to mention Zuckerberg ALREADY has financial freedom I’ll never know in my life.

2. I’ve been studying Zuckerberg for a while and comparing notes with people who know him even better than me, like David Kilpatrick, who wrote an excellent book on Facebook, and it’s clear Zuckerberg has a vision for changing the world with social technologies. If we get his brain focused more on the technology side of things and less on the representing Facebook side of things I think we’ll win more. Do we really want Zuckerberg in front of Congress trying to convince politicians that Facebook isn’t evil? No. He has far more value to all of us focusing on the tech side of things, even though he’s hired very well and built a world-class organization that is disrupting Silicon Valley in a huge way.

3. My boss evaluates the job I’m doing every six months and we look at whether I’m doing more good or harm to Rackspace. I think Zuckerberg should do the same with his performance. Could he find a role that would let him use his skills in a better way? My report card of him? Hiring: A+. Mergers and Acquistions: A+. Technology leadership: A-. Execution: B+ (only because they could have gotten privacy right when they first shipped). Ability to sell: D-. Ability to positively affect perceptions: D-.

It’s clear to me where Mark has considerable skill. So why is he trying to do something he clearly isn’t having fun at? Just to get the experience? Or is there some other reason, like ambition and wanting to be the next Bill Gates? (Bill, by the way, has always sucked at public speaking and hasn’t been a loved character either, until recently when he started to save the world, so, again, why shouldn’t Zuckerberg tell us all to screw off?)

I come down to #1 the most. If Mark called me tonight and asked my opinion (he has not) I’d focus on that. Is he having fun? He sure doesn’t look like it. To me that would lead me to tell him to step down from CEO and take on a role that he’d have more fun with, like head of R&D.

But, if Mark was on the phone and I gave him that advice I’d be secretly hoping he’d tell me (and Calacanis and Israel and all the rest of the chattering masses) to screw off and have him go off and change the world again.

Oh, and back to Steve Jobs. If I were him I’d worry that I’ve lived without my iPhone for seven days so far and I haven’t missed having the crappy cell phone service from AT&T, not to mention I like having the extra features of the Android OS that aren’t yet available on the iPhone. Now, most of those features are rumored to show up on Monday but Steve should worry about AT&T. More and more of us are deciding to leave iPhones because of that (to me AT&T’s quality is worse than ANY of Zuckerberg’s privacy problems). Jobs should also worry about the kinds of anti-Apple stuff I’m hearing from developers lately, too. One developer just wrote me and told me his app hasn’t been approved for two months. How is THAT not worse than anything Zuckerberg has done to our privacy? Jobs should worry more about what his own company is doing rather than poking at Zuckerberg.

If you’ve been following me on Google Buzz or on Twitter you can skip this, but it’s useful to wrap up some of the conversations we’ve been having online. Last night I got together with my friends Luke Kilpatrick and John Poore. Between the three of us we have nearly every cool smartphone known to mankind. Palm. Apple. HTC. All that.

Anyway, we met just to see if there were any more pros or cons we could add to the list between Android and iPhone that I started a few days ago on Google Buzz. This is the most complete back and forth I’ve seen so far on the topic.

Living without the iPhone has been a lot easier than I expect, here I show you the devices I’m using and talk about what the advantages are to both iPhone and Android (the video plays here, while on my computer the embed doesn’t play well).

Recently I had lunch with Loopt’s CEO, Sam Altman, where he pulled out his iPhone and showed me a new version, called Loopt Star, that gives you incentives to visit major retailers. I talk with him about that in the video embedded on this post.

I’m working on a longer post about the location-based services that are out there and I’m getting tired of the data silos that are being built up here. I’d love to see someone take more of an integration approach and do that first before going after the monetization like Loopt is here, although I understand why Loopt is doing that.

That said, this is an interesting new entrant. Will it get me to check into it along with Foursquare? That’s the big question and I don’t see enough utility is here yet, but I’ll keep watching to see what the offers are like and whether that’s enough of a hook to get me.

There’s a ton of other reports about Loopt Star on Techmeme.