Smart Phones of today

After a whole week in possession of my precious (Apple iPhone 3G), time for my personal first impressions on it.? Scale goes from 1 (BAD) to 10 (EXCELLENT). Here’s how I rated it… ** DRUMROLL **

8/10? In store experience

The Apple employees are always so friendly, and last Saturday was no exception. ?Once I had an employee assigned to help me, the process was quick. ?He retrieved the phone from the back quickly, and used his handheld device to ring me up on the spot.

6/10 Availability

I stood in line the day after the phone came 0ut for about 2 hours. ?I jumped in line about 3pm and was able to get a white 16GB phone. ?They were out of the 16GB black. ?Today, I went online to check availability and availability looks spotty?..Apple Biltmore did not have any in stock today. ?You can check their website after 9pm to see which stores have which colors/sizes before you go to shop. ?I spent this morning trying to call the Apple Biltmore store, but there was no answer (after 10am).

10/10 Switchng Services

The Apple employee that helped me took me thru the process of switching my service from Verizon to AT&T. ?Since I did not have a contract with Verizon, this made things very simple. ?I must say that Verizon gave me great customer support in explaining the process before I went into the Apple store.

9/10 Activation

Despite the horror stories in the news, this process was pretty simple for me. ?There was one hitch though. ?At the end of my sale, the Apple employee pointed me to one of Macbooks in the store to activate my phone. ?I plugged in, and iTunes found my phone, displayed an error, then said that I had activated successfully. ?I was a bit worried since it never asked me for my Apple ID and wondered if it may have activated under the last guys Apple ID. ?I went home and plugged into iTunes, I entered my Apple ID and it really activated this time?.quickly.

10/10 Ability and ease to add new applications

to your iPhone. ?This is one of the cool things with the App Store. ?And you can add apps to your new or old iPhone or iTouchApp Store. A lot of cool free apps, but I haven?t tried any apps yet that you have to buy. ?Beer lovers check out iPint, and Star Wars fans check out PhoneSaber. Control your PC with VNC. Other great free apps are Where, Yes/No Free, Pandora (this ROCKS), RotaryDialer, YPMobile, Showtimes, FlatLux, Shazam. The extendability is limitless.

3/10 Navigation Software

This is a big disappointment for me. ?Having had Verizon?s navigation on my previous phone, and used the Navigation system in Hertz rentals, there are some key shortcomings with the iPhone navigation. ?First, there is no turn-by-turn audio which means if you are driving, you have to look at your phone. ?Second, even the turn-by-turn instructions on screen are difficult to use on the phone. ?I believe that this can be corrected with software enhancements and am seeing articles on the web that show companies are developing better software. ?I am optimistic that this will get better. There are other location based applications that look like they work pretty good.

9/10? Syncing

I am now using a Macbook and have MobileMe. They tout that you can sync with PCs now with MobileMe, but I haven?t tried it. iTunes works like a pro and the same as an iPod. Applications can be retrieved from iTunes and synced. Address Book and iCal do a great job syncing. This is great since you don?t have to enter all your contacts from your phone. I have 4 POP3 email accounts set up to send/receive directly to my iPhone. Syncing with iPhoto is great! I set up 2 smart albums (one with photos 1 year or newer, and one with rating = 5) to give me all my favorite and recent photos automatically synced to my phone.

9/10 Multitouch User Interface

This is an awesome user interface and meets my needs in almost every way. I do not use this phone for work email. The keypad can seem slower to type on and a bit more inaccurate than something like a Blackberry at first. But eventually you will get the hang and most likely perform just as good if not better.

7/10 Making and receiving calls

The biggest problem is no voice dialing. The closest thing I could find is a free app called SpeechCloud that you can download. It will let you say the person you want to call from your Contacts. But, you will need to still choose the number manually.

I could set my old phone to use a single digit for speed dialing. This was very easy to use for driving. Now, I have to unlock my phone, hit the phone icon, hit the Favorites icon, then tap a contact that I put in favorites. Receiving calls are pretty simple. Muting, taking and call waiting are simple taps on the screen. Setting on vibrate, silencing a call and sending to voicemail are all easy using hard buttons on the edge of the phone.

9/10 Phone Service

I have been a Verizon (Cellular One previously) customer for about 15 years. ? Frankly this was my biggest worry about switching. ?Verizon has given me great service, and would have preferred to have an iPhone with them. ?But, so far, I don?t have any AT&T complaints. ?No dropped calls yet, but I only get 1 bar at my house in North Phoenix (I-17 and Dixaleta).

8/10 WiFi

I have a wireless N network at my house and I have no problems using this with encryption. ?The only annoyance is if I am someplace on the 3G network because I cant authenticate to an exisiting wifi, I get popups about wifi availability.?But, you can disable this.

8/10 3G network and availability

I have had it when I wanted it, but I have noticed places where it is not in range of 3G.

9.5/10 Using Safari.

Simply the best phone I’ve ever tried to browse on. The browser is a version of Safari, Apple’s desktop browser, and because the iPhone is based on OS X this browser is closer to the software running on your Mac or PC than the stripped-down browsers found on most smartphones. Instead, with the iPhone you can visit nearly any website and the browser acts just like a normal PC-based browser. Great experience!

5/10? Battery Life

Man, this thing eats the battery. My typical day over the last 7 days had me listen to the music for my 1 hour commute each way. Once at work, I may spend up to 30 minutes farting around. Maybe another 30 min showing it off to co-workers. I also spent about another 30 min on the phone throughout the day. Once I got home and showed it to my neighbor, I had gone through 75% of the battery. Plan to tote your car charger and USB charger around with you. to save some battery life try this:

* Go to Settings > Fetch New Data. Turn Push off. Set Fetch to Manually.
* Go to Settings > Wi-Fi. Turn Wi-Fi off when not in use. Turn Ask to Join Networks off.
* Go to Settings > General > Network. Turn Enable 3G off when not in use.
* Go to Settings > General > Bluetooth. Turn Bluetooth off when not in use.
* Go to Settings > General. Turn Location Services off when not in use.

10/10 Form Factor

Apple has this mastered. This thing slides into my pocket so easily. It is stylish, with curved edges.

5/10 Speakers

Too low and ONLY in mono! Really a draw back coming from a Nokia N95

9/10 Video

Quality of video stored on your phone is awesome! Rent a movie from iTunes to check it out. Connecting to YouTube to watch videos is not very good quality (especially on 3G).

10/10 Cool Factor

Need I say more?

8.5/10 – Overall Rating

Overall, I love this thing. Making and having phone conversations work well. The range of applications let you carry just one device. The navigation application is not usable if you are the driver. Battery Life is poor.

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Steve Jobs and his? stormtrooperfanboys to the rescue…

I?ve only read about what seems to be a million comments and reviews about the new iPhone in the last week or so. There is the group of commenters that loves the iPhone and everything about it. Then there?s the group that hate Apple, iPhone, and the ?fanboy? atmosphere of the iPhone adulation.

Then there are the militant Apple fans that get on forums and rip apart anybody who says anything bad about the iPhone. To those who comment about the poor battery life, the Apple Army replies: turn off the 3G. Then the anti-Apple crew says, ?Why offer a 3G phone if you can?t use it?? There are similar complaints about push email, cut and paste, the camera, bluetooth/handsfree usage, slowness, email search, etc.

Most of the big complaints appear to be coming from experienced smartphone users, especially those who are addicted to the BlackBerry and rely on it for business use. But this isn?t a universally shared sentiment.

I just don?t know. I?ll admit I find it hard to believe the Apple uberfans sometimes because they?ve been touting Apple for so long, Steve Jobs could put out a ham sandwich and people would wait in line for it. I got a Mac after 17 years of PC use, and it?s a great computer but wouldn?t say it?s significantly better than a PC. I?m sure as I get to know Mac better, I?ll enjoy it more, but having seen Vista on high-end PC?s, I know it?s not as bad as everybody says.

Who to believe when so many have taken sides beforehand? It?s like getting information about Derek Jeter from nothing but Red Sox and Yankees fans.

I?m going to wait for the dust to settle. Also, I?m a cheapskate. Perhaps, in the end, that?s the most relevant point.

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The Design

In truthful Samsung style, the Omnia owns an absolute solid feel to that. It has a silver bezel round the widescreen format presentation which is even on the screen?ideal as finger tapping and scrolling. Beneath the silver screen are 2 push button*, Call and End, with an optic directing pad between them which may likewise make up depressed to choose items. On the far side that, there are merely some additional buttons along the right bound for the photographic camera, volume controller and single shortcut key out.

Merely single I/O port is useable along the left bound, a Samsung proprietorship connecter for charging, synchronising and linking up a wired headset. Although we generally do not alike such as an arranging, the good element is that an adaptor is enclosed with the Omnia which grants you to connect regular 3.5mm audio earphones, a nice feature to take looking at Samsung anticipates these device to comprise in use for a media player.

Almost from the backward from the i900 is it has battery cover. Although produced from plastic, it gets a groomed metallic element feel to that which is instead enchanting. As well got around the backward is the lense for these PDA-phone?s 5-megapixel photographic camera along with it has LED light as photo-taking in darkened sites. There has as well a lower-resolution photographic camera at the forepart as video calls.

Moving out the backward cover will expose a little battery, a SIM card slot and a microSD card slot. The irritating matter is that you require to take away the battery to switch the microSD card, a modest inconvenience as those using a lot of memory than the built-in 16GB memory.

Single matter that?s conspicuously missing is a stylus slot. Whether it?s a space restraint or a consider exclusion, these will not come down fine on several users. A stylus is enclosed tho?, and these gets a clip on the end which matches into an elective leather pouch merely not anyplace on the device itself. As almost users, this Is not a applicable solution, then a third-party stylus pen could suit part of the Omnia user?s armory.

The Features

Samsung Omnia SGH-i900 is deficiencies in styles, the Omnia can not fitting on the default Windows Mobile 6.1 interface as it Is not optimised for consumption with finger pats unless your fingertips taper is as thin as toothpick. By default option, it characteristics a gadget interface is quite similar to Nokia?s Internet Tablet devices. You could drag and drop mini application programs of off a bar on the left onto the screen, permitting you to customise what you would like to see. Although beautiful, this Is not in particular valuable as every widget draws quite a bit of memory space and the different items do not precisely match together like a jigsaw, which wastes even a lot of memory space.

But we felt to be better in displaying important info. These includes a huge clock, a submenu to basic settings and 3 ikons indicating your call log, messages and email status. Tapping upon the main menu will hand you a twelve ikon page on roughly common used application programs. By there, you could pat on other Shortcuts page which is customizable by the user.

There has a Programs page which sort the whole installed application programs in a scrollable list. Lifting your finger upward and downward this list will move it, such alike the way using the iPhone. The Omnia?s finger scrolling works only in absolute limited application programs. It will not work in the default programs list and settings pages. For instance, these possibly confusing for the user and for certain does not bring better User Interface design due to lack of consistency.

Among the most advanced matters about the Omnia is the implementation of haptic feedback. This mean that each tap of the screen is came with a little vibration which like saying to you the phone has read your input. The excellent is especially while typing out messages using the onscreen keyboards as you?re not got out wondering if the software has ?sensed? your touch.

The Samsung Omnia SGH-i900 is build in with motion sensor which is used for shifting the screen between landscape and portrait modes (something like Sony Ericsson W910i). A slight vibration is sensed once the mode switches and the screen reduces down and re-expands into the new orientation, granting a visual feedback like notification that something is happening. The sensibility of this sensing element could be set in the settings page. We felt the lowest setting to be the only useful one as anything greater induced the device too sensitive to motion and movement, causing alterations in screen orientation while we did not need them. Some other annoying thing was that the motion sensor continued active although the phone was keylocked. So if you do not turn the phone off using the power button, the screen orientation keep switching again on a vibration when you?re placing it in your pouch.

FULL SPECS:

Physical Attributes

Dimensions
(width x height x depth): ??? 56.9 x 112 x 12.5 millimetres
2.2 x 4.4 x 0.5 inches
Bounding Volume: ??? 79.7 cubecentimetres

Software Environment

Embedded Operating System: ??? Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Operating System Kernel: ??? Windows CE 5.2

Microprocessor, Chipset

CPU: ??? Marvell PXA320
Width of Machine Word: ??? 32 bit
CPU Core: ??? Intel XScale
Level 2 cache: ??? 256 KiB
Instruction Set: ??? ARM

Memory, Storage capacity

ROM type: ??? Flash EEPROM
ROM capacity: ??? 16000 MiB
RAM type: ??? DDR SDRAM
RAM capacity: ??? 128 MiB

Graphical subsystem

Display Type: ??? color transflective TFT display
Display Color Depth: ??? 18 bit/pixel (262144 scales)
Display Diagonal: ??? 3.2 ” (81 millimetres)
Display Resolution: ??? 400 x 240 (96000 pixels)
Viewable Display Area: ??? 2.7″ x 1.6″ (69.46 x 41.67 millimetres)
Dot Pitch: ??? 0.1736 millimetre/pixel
Video out: ??? Supported
Proprietary connector

Audio Subsystem

Audio Channel(s): ??? stereo sound
Analog/Digital Converter
(Recording): ??? 16 bit nominal quantization
44100 Hz sampling frequency
Digital/Analog Converter
(Playing): ??? 16 bit resolution
44100 Hz holding frequency
Microphone(s): ??? mono sound
Loadspeaker(s): ??? mono sound
Audio Output: ??? Proprietary plug

Cellular Phone

Cellular Networks: ??? GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900, UMTS2100
Cellular Data Links: ??? CSD, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA
Cellular Antenna: ??? Internal antenna
Call Alert: ??? 64 -chord melody (polyphonic)
Vibrating Alert: ??? Supported
Speakerphone : ??? Supported

Control Peripherals

Positioning Device: ??? Touchscreen & TouchPad
Primary Keyboard: ??? Not supported
Directional Pad: ??? Not supported
Scroll Wheel: ??? Not supported

Interfaces

Expansion Interfaces: ??? microSD, microSDHC, TransFlash, SDIO
Supports High Capacity (SD 2.0/HC) memory cards with capacity of up to 32GB
USB: ??? USB 2.0 client, Full-Speed (12Mbit/s)
Proprietary connector
Bluetooth (802.15): ??? Bluetooth 2.0, Internal antenna
Wireless LAN/Wi-Fi (802.11): ??? IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, 54 Mbit/s
Internal antenna
Infrared Gate: ??? Not supported

Multimedia Telecommunication

Analog Radio: ??? FM radio (87.5-108MHz) with RDS radio reciever
Proprietary headset as antenna
Digital Media Broadcast: ??? Not supported

Satellite Navigation

Built-in GPS module: ??? Supported
GPS Protocol: ??? NMEA 0183
GPS Antenna: ??? Internal antenna
Complementary GPS Services: ??? Assisted GPS

Built-in Digital Camera

Sensor Type: ??? CMOS sensor
Resolution: ??? 2560 x1920 pixels (4.92MP)
Autofocus (AF): ??? Supported
Optical Zoom: ??? 1 x
Macro Mode: ??? Not supported
Built-in Flash: ??? real flash
Camcorder: ??? 320×240 pixels
Recordable Image Formats: ??? JPG
Recordable Video Formats: ??? 3GPP, MPEG4

Built-in Secondary Digital Camera

Sensor Type: ??? CMOS sensor
Resolution: ??? 640 x680 pixels (0.44MP)
Camcorder: ??? 320×240pixel
Recordable Image Formats: ??? JPG
Recordable Video Formats: ??? 3GPP, MPEG4

Power Supply

Battery Technology: ??? Lithium-ion battery
Battery Build: ??? removable
Estimated Battery Life: ??? 11 hours
Battery Capacity: ??? 1440 mAh
Estimated Avarege Current: ??? 131 mA
Additional Details
Built-in accelerometer: ??? Supported

Additional Features:

* GPRS Class 10
* Samsung TouchWiz UI
* Bluetooth stereo audio profile (A2DP)
* voice command

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Apple lately has done a great job hyping the world about their new 3G iPhone The advertising has worked and the iPhone is one of the hottest cell phones to own. For those interested in keeping up with the Jones’ the iPhone is a must have item this year and probably next year too. The question is does the Apple iPhone live up to the hype. Is the iPhone really worth top dollar? What do the users say? Here are the top 4 reasons not to own an iPhone.

The first reason is the price. This is a very expensive cell phone. The average price for an iPhone is between $500 – $600. That is a lot of money for a phone. At this price it is really a luxury item as there are phones that offer similar features for a lot less money. For Internet and email capabilities you can get a Blackberry or Motorola Q for a lot less than an iPhone. If you are looking for touch screens and music, there are hundreds of phones that will suit these requirements without having to shell out so much money. Although the iPhone’s advertising is geared toward teens and young adults, does a teenager really need a $500 cell phone? This is the fist reason in our Top 4 reasons not to own an iPhone: Price.

Reason number two in the top 4 reasons not to own an iPhone, the battery. Did you know that you cannot replace the battery in your iPhone? If that battery dies, you are out of luck. Even if Apple decided that it shouldn’t be soldering in like the first version the battery still isn’t user replaceable! A huge miss IMHO since this isn’t an iPod that you have to recharge only once a week. It’s power hungry device that will often needs daily full cycle charges. This way when your battery dies, and without a doubt it will in under two years, you have to get a new iPhone or pay big bucks to get it fixed. Apparently many users did not realize this as Apple made no effort to make this common knowledge. Now they are in litigation over the battery issue. Therefore, if you are considering buying an iPhone be sure to get a warranty that covers the battery if you can. Otherwise you will be paying for another phone within 24 months which is the average life of a cell phone style battery.

Reason three not to own an iPhone is memory. You can purchase a 8 GB? or 16 GB model. When you use up all of your available space on the iPhone, you must delete or back off content to another device like your PC or Mac. Many iPhone proponents claim that this storage capacity removes the need for a separate MP3 player, such as an iPod, therefore saving you money. In reality, teens can download 16 GB of music and video in an amazingly short amount of time. This leaves no memory for other applications or photos. You will still need a separate MP3 player so there are no real savings to be had here. There is no ability to upgrade the memory via a memory card or flash drive. This is another area where the iPhone is lacking.

Finally, reason number 4 in our top 4 reasons not to own an iPhone is the service provider. You are limited to AT&T’s cell phone service packages for the iPhone if you wish to use it. These packages are expensive as they all include data and internet. AT&T has no incentive to change their iPhone service pricing because they have exclusive rights to provide service to the iPhones. This has led to a great number of hacked iPhones on the market that can be used on other networks. As long as Apple and AT&T’s agreement stays exclusive, you will have hackers.

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