It is hard not to pitch Google+ against Facebook. The latter is the undisputed king of social networks (following the fall of Hi5 and MySpace becoming more of an artists’ niche) while the former dominates the Internet through a great variety of services and software products.

It may be unfair to do this comparison, since replicating features is bad for innovation (and Google does like innovation). Still, Facebook’s features is what we’ve become accustomed to and while changing the way we do things is ok, we need to know at least that we can do the same things (hopefully easier and better). Choose the next page for the first comparison (friends lists vs circles):

Well, now Google claims to have figured out the social networking part. Whether this is due to their mobile Android experience and its constant battle against Facebook to lock users in, it remains an open question. But what does Google+ really has to offer?

1. User Interface: After going around tester reviews of Google+ as well as the Google+ interactive tours and presentations, one thing is clear: Google knows user interfaces! Google+ has an uncluttered, no-nonsense interface that is fun to play with. On the opposite corner, Facebook has a cluttered interface, where various basic options are nearly impossible to find. Compared to modern means of interaction, Facebook ranges from barely usable to overtly frustrating and it is only recently that it managed to clear out various old annoying bugs.

2. Applications: With loads of experience with application development, Google will be offering a strong API for Google+. It already has Google Docs integrated, a browser that is sure to pack social networking goodies ready to go. In fact, Google+ has working for it the ubiquity of Google as a whole (search, email, browser, mobile platform, operating system, etc) which even as the closed system as it is, doesn’t feel encroaching. Facebook on the other hand is very closed and has to struggle for interactivity. Its Facebook apps platform is messy and sufficiently difficult to use that more often than no developers prefer to build their apps outside of Facebook and throw an interface that simply accesses outside resources.

3. Video Conferencing: the Hangout place in Google+ is the real novelty. Here you can meet-up with friends in a virtual reality environment put together with a webcam and a microphone. Facebook offers nothing like that and though Microsoft will soon be offering Skype conferencing to Facebook, it’s a long way until there.

4. Interoperability: From Chrome and your Android smartphone/tablet to Google+ there is less than a step. It’s conceivable that Google+ will be closely interoperable with these. Considering Android, I can definitely see Google dropping Facebook support (as it dropped Twitter from the real-time Google service).

Personally, I do look forward to the UI improvements and the interoperability bid. After all, the most used Facebook features are the news stream (Wall), photo sharing and the profile itself. But will the fact that Google+ will offer them in a more accessible and easy to use way be enough to sway users? Will users really want to make another profile and start it all over anew? Does that mean Facebook will fall? The intuitive answer is a big NO. Google+ will easily draw the Google fanbois and those (like me) frustrated with Facebook’s messy and frustrating features. And the interoperability bid is definitely fun and useful.

Other than that, I know people who are always keen on trying social networks and who have a profile everywhere just for kicks. But how many people will actually use Google+? Let’s wait and see.

But some people still claim to have found loopholes or procedures. The procedure is simple: advertise the giveaway on Twitter or Facebook, give your email and get your Google+ invite. Sounds great, right?

The cheap scam works, however, as it is the easiest way to get your private emails, names, Facebook accounts into someone’s spam list. Even if the intention was so noble (if you believe in fairytales), tweets and Facebook pages are public so anyone with a simple bot can (and will) get your contact information in a second.

My observations will be largely made against my Acer Liquid experience, but might eventually include considerations against Apple’s iPhone 4 as well as Motoral Droid and Sony-Ericsson’s Xperia X10.

1. The display: is what one first notices about any phone. The Super AMOLED is the pinnacle of today’s mobile display technology. Great looking, responsive, easy on the battery, what more could one want? Samsung pioneers AMOLED into the consumer market, making a pretty giant leap in terms of quality. However, the technology is fairly expensive and with only one factory currently making AMOLEDs, Samsung Galaxy S has been having serious availability issues, underlying the great demand. The display is amazingly crisp, clear, beautiful colors. It is well on par with Apple’s iPhone, perhaps better on some accounts. However, the fact that AMOLED is much easier on the battery than Apple’s technology, makes the Samsung well superior (compare the 720 hours of standby on the Samsung Galaxy S with the 350 on Apple iPhone 4 – it’s a different galaxy, so to speak). Size isn’t everything but given that Galaxy S has 4 inches and iPhone 4 only 3.5, the fact that iPhone 4 spits its battery guts so soon is hardly good.

2. Performance: Google’s Android 2.2 dubbed Froyo has pushed in some performance updates that makes the system much easier on the resources. This finally makes Android competitive against Apple’s iOS which has been largely superior in responsiveness. Sure, one can blame this on the fact that there’s only one hardware platform the iOS needs to look at, but then again Android has been conceived as a hardware-independent system therefore this kind of optimization should’ve happened since day 1. Now, the game is a tie.

3. Connectivity: Samsung’s Galaxy S comes with several things over the iPhone 4. Among them, I will mention the presence of a radio, using Bluetooth v3 (instead of 2.1 on the iPhone), a micro SD card expansion slot, bringing the total maximum storage to 40Gb (more space for much cheaper over the iPhone).

4. Media: the camera doesn’t have flash. I repeat: the camera doesn’t have flash. Although good performance in poor lighting, a led wouldn’t have been the end of the world for Samsung. Oh well. However, the Samsung Galaxy S scores again with Picasa integration (and unlike with the Acer Liquid, this time geo-tagging actually works … and it’s so cool!) and with Flash support. Sure, you can have Flash on Apple iPhone, but you need to do a bit of hacking. The packed goodies include an Internet TV tuner (implementation depends on the market, I got one from Bouygues) which I haven’t tried yet and I don’t plan to do that soon (but it’s good to have the option).

5. Battery: even with the optimizations in Froyo, Samsung Galaxy S fails to beat my Acer Liquid (this bears note since my Acer Liquid only has 1350 mAh on its battery while Galaxy S has 1500 mAh). My good ol’ Acer Liquid took at least three days to discharge under average use, while the Samsung Galaxy S coughs at three. Sure, I wasn’t using 3G on my Acer Liquid, but I was talking on it (something I haven’t done much of on Galaxy). Granted, Acer Liquid greatly benefits from Liquid Community ROM, a Froyo modification which doesn’t have the visual appeal of the original Froyo but adds a lot of goodies and removes a lot of garbage (the battery-draining kind). Apple iPhone 4 is well below on this chapter, despite a competitive 1420 mAh charge.

I’m not going to make this a Samsung vs Apple fight, although if any smartphone out there deserves to be called an Apple-killer, then it must be the Samsung Galaxy S. In the Android world, The Samsung Galaxy S is the new king and it will reign alongside Google Nexus S for a while. HTC loses across the board while Sony Ericsson seems content with a spot in the average shady zone.

There is a lot to like about the Galaxy S. The Touch UI is great, the multitouch is usable, it is speedy and responsive, it has WiFi N as well as bluetooth 3, HD video, decent camera (a lot of megapixels aren’t always good). Most importantly, not onlt does it have a good battery, but you can also get spares (something Apple fans can’t do). Since smartphones should be mobile, this counts a lot while traveling.

Given today’s galaxy of smartphones, giving Samsung 5 stars is an understatement. Nitpickers will poke Samsung for more originality in design and UI but the bits under the hood and the bits over the hood pack a punch that while it doesn’t make Apple KO, the Android family and the Symbian family are left bleeding profusely.