August was supposed to be the month that Andre Torrez kicked the iPhone habit. Like many tech-savvy early adopters the chief technology officer at Federated Media in San Francisco had had enough of Apple’s omnipresent iPhone.

Frustrated by stories that Apple was squeezing software developers and rumours it was blocking applications that could compete with products controlled by Apple and its partners, Torrez decided it was time to switch.

Like all good techies he made the move a public event — blogging a day-by-day account of his defection to a G1 phone powered by Android, a mobile software platform developed by Google. Torrez is hardly alone in developing a new-found antipathy for Apple’s iPhone. In recent months several tech writers have turned on the world’s hottest smartphone, frustrated by its service and concerns over Apple’s tight control over the development of the myriad applications the phone now runs.

Google’s Android, in contrast, was designed to offer open standards — a system supposedly more attractive to software developers. For the average consumer, arguments about “open source” versus closed systems might look academic, but Apple knows how important the advanced guard of techies is to a company’s fortunes. When they move on, many follow.

Luckily for Apple, by day three Torrez’s enthusiasm for the G1 was already waning: “I can’t think of one application that works as well as the average iPhone app. I need to keep looking,” he wrote.

By day seven it was over. Queuing to use a cash machine, Torrez found he had even lost the will to Twitter. “I give up. I thought it would be fun to see what life was like on a different platform but I think I’ve seen more than enough on this hardware,” he wrote.

“On Saturday my family was here to visit and I found myself reaching for the iPhone to check on a restaurant, map some directions, and to check on an order. Given a choice between the two I just could not keep flipping that thing open knowing there were other perfectly good computers nearby ... I took the G1 into work today but I came home knowing what I had to do. I switched back to the iPhone.”

Good news for Apple. Bad news for Google.

It is almost two years since Google launched Android but so far it has disappointed. After the initial hype, Harry Wang, analyst at Parks Associates, said he was surprised by how slow the rise of the software had been. “After the G1 was introduced I expected more products to arrive featuring Android. The pace is so slow,” he said.

Some have pinned the slow start on Google’s decision not to launch its own phone but to partner with a variety of providers. Announcing Android in November 2007, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said the operating system was “more ambitious than any single Google phone”. “Our vision is that the powerful platform we are unveiling will power thousands of different phone models,” he said.

So far those phones have failed to materialise and the iPhone’s popularity has convinced developers to set aside their open source preferences to work on applications for Apple. As for consumers: “They care about the experience,” said Wang. “So far Android hasn’t offered much in that regard.”

Next month will be a big push for the system when Motorola is expected to introduce new phones powered by Android. The phone giant has lost a lot of ground to rivals including Apple and BlackBerry.

Wang said there was still a lot of ground left for Android-powered phones. At the end of 2007 there were 35m smartphones in America. Parks Associates reckons that number will be closer to 90m by the end of 2009. Wang said Google was a formidable competitor and had signed up impressive partners. But Google has a lot of work to do convincing even Apple’s least happy customers that it’s time to join the Androids.

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