With so many new smartphones to choose from these days, it can be difficult to sort through the available options to determine which phone is best for your needs. Phones based on Apple's iOS are extremely popular as well as Android based phones. Once you get past the high level features, the success of a smartphone often comes down to little things, intuitive, easy to use features that may not be apparent up front.

Here are five features of the Android operating system that make these phone easier to use:

1) Device and app power management – The Android operating system takes an active role in managing apps that keep the device running for too long and consuming CPU usage while they run in the background. By closing apps when deemed appropriate, Android helps ensure better overall performance and battery life, which is great since battery technology is lagging as smartphones and other tablet devices continue to become more powerful.

2) Home screen double tap screen button to view preview of all home screens – A nice feature of Android is the multiple home screens that can be set up for your personal needs. It can vary from phone to phone, with some having several home screens that can be customized to sort your various apps and widgets. Not all smartphones have the ability to do this double tap function, you can find third-party software that will give this same functionality. Once in preview mode, you can simply tap the specific home screen you want to full in full.

3) Drag app icons on top of another to organize them into folders – Starting with the Ice Cream Sandwich version of the Android OS, this feature has become available. Previously, you had to use a third-party app for this functionality. Having several home screens makes it possible to have numerous app icons available, but putting similar apps and widgets grouped together in separate folders makes better use of space, giving you more room to add additional apps assuming you have the available space on your device.

4) Single touch word selection for copying and pasting – With Android devices, When entering text in some app or viewing a web page, you can quickly select a word by press / hold, then copy to the clipboard and paste elsewhere. Pressing on a word enters a free selection mode – the user can change the selected area as needed by dragging a set of bounding arrows to new positions, then copy the bounded area by pressing anywhere in the selection area. For a text entry, you can slide / press to enter a cursor mode, then reposition the cursor easily and accurately by dragging the cursor arrow. The trackball isn't needed With the selection and cursor modes being available.

5) Removable battery and expansion storage card – Android's open system allows for some hardware related advantages, primarily the ability to remove and swap out or upgrade the device's battery and SD storage card. With iPhone's, if you've reached your limit on storage, that's it, there's not much you can do. With an Android phone you can put in a new SD storage card giving you additional storage to work with. Also, you can insert a spare battery as needed, great for long trips where charging your phone might not be an option.