My quest to find a new phone continues, despite a long interlude, and I intend to use any money I have after Christmas to buy one. However, in the immortal and ever true words of Natalie Imbruglia, I’m torn – as there are a plethora of smartphones to consider. Which one to choose?

 

iPhone 3GS

Yes, I went for the obvious first, but given it’s the best smartphone on the market, can you really blame me? It has the most responsive touchscreen, most intuitive user interface and biggest app store on the market, perfecting technologies in ways no other manufacturer has, such as multi-touch gesture inputs. As a phone, however, it’s lacklustre, and many agree that Apple spent so much time working out all the other functions that they let standards in being an actual phone slip, much as calls often will. As with any Apple device, this isn’t a flash-in-the-pan purchase, it’s initial cost aside, sinking all your money into a two year contract and billions of apps, all of which locked into Apple, means that it’s far too much effort, when you have one, to begin using any other type of device, but if it remains the market leader and one of the most innovative products to date, is it a price worth paying (literally and metaphorically)?

Palm Pre

2009 saw the regeneration of the Palm brand from an unchanging, un-innovative device plopper to a sleek contender in the smartphone arena. It’s a testament to Palm that they have so quickly managed to garner the same amount of press, publicity and popularity so quickly when it took Apple several years of build-up and tweaks to get there. If the iPhone is the Jesus-Phone, then the Pre is undoubtedly the anti-Christ, taking in many complaints of the iPhone that Apple have failed to note and patched it up, such as running multiple applications in parallel. Though criticised for it’s looks being almost identical to that of the iPhone, the inclusion of a physical keyboard, hidden behind a sleek slider mechanism, and it’s entirely different interface makes it the iPhone’s distinguishable, if still comparable, nemesis. However, as this segment itself has shown, it’s a major point of comparison with the iPhone, but lacks the brand name synonymous with style, as Palm dusts off their dinner jackets, as well as the prolific app store, meaning that the Palm Pre will, alas, always remain with it’s space in the corner of the O2 store, while the iPhone has a table in the centre.

Samsung Galaxy

Not so much a well-known phone as simply a phone I’m seriously considering. This relatively new handset promises the infusion of Google’s Android OS with a trusted manufacturer, taking away some of the limelight that HTC has held with a new Android handset every three seconds. This is another of the more recent line of Android handsets to lack a physical keyboard and rely solely on the onscreen keyboard, which is often a dealbreaker for consumers, but with it’s large and vibrant touch-screen on an AMOLED screen, Samsung hope to make the transition easier. Samsung have also, apparently, attempted to remove the idea of smart-phones being a premium product, by tailoring the look and feel of the device to be similar to their past phones (the Galaxy looks remarkably similar to my current phone, the Samsung U600), alas the effect is some peculiar and hard to use button placements, as well as a mildly less responsive touch screen. Overall, this seems like the ideal phone for a more open developer experience, an intuitive yet simple interface and freedom from the software complexity of having a device locked into one companies software (i.e. iTunes).

HTC Hero

For the average person, you’ve probably seen HTC devices around but not really known much about them, for that very reason HTC relied on Google’s Android OS to get them off the ground, for a while being the only manufacturer to carry the software and hoping that a good user interface would precipitate a good reputation for the device itself and, by extension, the company. This was a rousing success and, keen to keep up, HTC regularly bring out new devices to bring variety. The HTC Hero is often considered the best Android phone to date with it’s own patch on the core OS allowing far more customisation that Google included natively, with multiple home screens that house apps tailored to your current status, like a businessman might need his calendar and work e-mail on one screen, then at the weekend he can brush it aside with one stroke of the finger and see his weekend screen with his Facebook feed and pictures of his kids. It’s peculiar jutting chin, a trademark on most early HTC-Android phones, can be somewhat off-putting, however, and at least for now, HTC remains the unknown brand that needs more publicity to get a louder consumer reputation.

Blackberry Storm

Whilst the HTC Hero may be, like ‘Right Guard’, for every man you are, the Blackberry brand, as ever, keeps it strictly business. This year saw their first attempt at a functional device that lacked a physical keyboard and carried, in any capacity, a full touch-screen. Overall reaction to the Storm has been a collective ‘meh’ as after the iPhone this device was neither over, nor under, whelming, I’d go as far as to say that the general public were well and truly whelmed with the Storm. Evidently, RIM had hoped that this device would be a huge hit by sinking cash into the huge redesigns and additional software and tech required, and given it’s relative lack of success, they decided it wasn’t worth the effort, as all subsequent Blackberry devices have reverted to the standard screen/physical QWERTY keyboard design. That is not to take away from the Storm, however, as it’s still a pretty intuitive and useful device, but more suited to a business environment and not really suited to bored tweeting during lectures, lacking third-party apps and lack of customisation options.

Conclusion

Oh please, I wouldn’t be so hypocritical as to give a final decision on this, if I did then I would have no trouble deciding on a new phone and probably wouldn’t bother to write this article. It’s a matter of taste, some want the style and functionality of the iPhone, some the niche feel of the Palm Pre or HTC Hero, some want the efficient, business-like feel of the Blackberry Storm and others, many of whom will go for the Samsung Galaxy, just want a fucking phone that they can use to get onto Wikipedia and win pub quizzes.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.