Smart Phones of today

Google’s Android OS powered phones were in most of the tech blogs since the past few days with first the sneak peak, and then the hands-on reviews of the phone which first came with T-Mobile. It is said to be one of the best phones around and competitor for the World’s dominating mobile company Nokia, and to the best gadget of the year Apple iPhone.

And am sure its going to beat the Apple iPhone sales and would be really loved, except the design which does not seem so sleek to me. Here are a few reasons why one would love the Android phone when compared to the Apple iPhone

1. The open operating system

The Android OS powered by Google is an open system, which can be played with by the developers and many cool apps and games would be coming in, and there would be everything available for free, unlike the paid apps as in the App store by Apple. And being a Google product, developers would get really handy with Android.

2. Faster than iPhone

iPhone was already fast, but the reviews of Android phone already state that the phone is faster than the Apple iPhones. Speed always counts, and Android beats iPhone.

3. No Jailbreaking needed

Its an open operating system, so there will be no hacking in or jailbreaking needed for its OS. It will be easy to customize too.

4. Online applications integration

Google products like Docs, calender and maps with Street view, everything would be just a small work to integrate into the Android mobile. Apple does not have those kind of apps, so no integration needed.

5. QWERTY Sliding keyboard

The phone does not look too bulky but it still has a QWERTY keyboard, sliding out when u need it. This is not in iPhone, there is a touch-screen there, which is not so user-friendly for people not good at touching the screens.

6. Format supporting better than Apple

Apple OS is something which does not become easily compatible with many file formats which Windows and Linux does. So Google is working well with this, trying to make the Android phone support almost all file formats.

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After over two weeks of using the iPhone 3G, I can fairly say I have become familiar with this mobile device to share some insights on how it fares as a primary mobile phone.

First let me say that Apple has revolutionized the way we use our mobile phones. Before that, we are used to a lot of great phones that do a ton of tricks but often fail us when it?s time to connect to the net. In a way, I regard the iPhone 3G primarily as an internet device and media player that has the cute feature allowing you to make calls and send SMS.

That being said, if you are a heavy SMS user, then the iPhone is not for you. That?s because you will have to unlearn everything you know about text-typing all these years ? and that is a hard thing to do for most phone users. So if you belong to that crowd, you can stop here and move on to the next page.

However, if you are open to trying out a new interface, I?m sure you?ll enjoy the intuitive touch screen of the iPhone.

The Killer Feature: iPhone App Store
With the new iPhone 2.0 software and the recent introduction of the iPhone App Store, extending the features of your iPhone 3G becomes almost limitless. Thousands of applications and games were developed and available for free or a fee (as low as $0.99 each). The wealth of games found in the iPhone via the App Store makes gaming on the mobile phone like the second coming of Snakes on the Nokia phone over a decade ago.

The Good

• The real estate is in the screen and you get 3.5? of that. The large and crisp display is what makes internet surfing and watching videos enjoyable on the iPhone.
• The built-in Safari browser that allows zooming in and out of objects and webpages is a great feature that almost mimics the full browsing experience (minus Flash & Java apps).
• Full-featured connectivity ? WiFi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth, 3G and GPS. You can?t ask for anything more.
• Push and Fetch Data allows you to set the phone to receive email and other data from the server (MobileMe) as well as a fetch options (in intervals of 15 mins, 30 mins,hourly or manually) for other emails that do not support the Push function.
• Ample storage for photos, videos and music the new iPhone 3G comes in 8GB and 16GB.
• Synchronized email, contacts and calendar management. Works best with a MobileMe account.

The Bad

• It?s a battery hog. You can easily drain it up in a single day with all the music, video, WiFi and 3G use. My average is one and a half days so I charge it up almost every day. Always bring your chargers with you.
• It?s close to impossible text-typing with a single hand. I think 90+% of all iPhone owners use both hands when text-typing. You need full concentration and all eyes to use it (unlike the regular phone keypads where people can type without even looking).
• Does not support Flash and Java reliant websites and there are tons of websites that heavily use them.
• Comes with a hefty price.

• Predictive text input is a nice feature. It?s available on almost all phones. Problem is, you can?t turn it off on the iPhone so if you?re texting in a different language, it will suck big time.
• No built-in copy & paste function. Them Nokia phones have it, why not the iPhone?
• Unlike what Steve Jobs said in his announcement, the iPhone 3G is not any thinner than the old iPhone. The curvy design of the back panel gives that illusion but it?s actually thicker.
• The built-in speakers ain?t that loud enough and they?re placed at the bottom end of the iPhone. It works but it?s just regular speakers.
• The 2MP camera takes decent pictures but there?s no flash or autofocus function. You can?t use this on low light.
• In iPod mode, the iPhone makes it a little hard to navigate between songs as controls are done via touchscreen. That means you need to unlock the iPhone from sleep mode everytime you want to skip or move on to the next song. There should be some physical button to do this simple job (just like the regular iPods) but I think a shake control using the accelerometer should do the trick. Apple tried to solve this by using the headphone as the physical control using single or double clicks to navigate songs forward.
• Smudge magnet. Makes you wanna wipe the screen every other minute.

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TechCruch and GigaOm both commented the Symbian quarterly results. Both blogs compared Nokia?s OS to iPhone and reached two opposite conclusions.

Facts by GigaOm:

• Symbian shipped 19.5 Million units in Q2, 5%?year-on-year?growth.
• iPhone shipped 0.77 Million units of its 2G model in Q2, a 166% year-on year?growth, considering iPhone only sold during last month of Q2 last year.??It is easy to grow from nothing? GigaOm says.
• Gartner estimates 304.7 million phones shipped during the second quarter, giving Symbian a 6.4% market share and iPhone a 0.2% share.
• Symbian has more than 9800 applications available, while App Store has only 2500.

Conclusion: Symbian is still the market leader in mobile phones by far, and iPhone, despite the hype, is almost a negligible anecdote. At 19.5 Million Symbian units in Q2 the glass is half full for Symbian, according to GigaOM.

Facts by TechCrunch:

• Symbian shipped 19.5 Million units in Q2, 5% growth year-on-year.
• iPhone has sold 6 million units of iPhone since the 3G model launched less than 2 months ago.
• iPhone is selling 800.000 units per week. At this pace, Q3 unit sales will have a year-on-year growth of 900%.
• At one third of that growth rate, iPhone will surpass Symbian shipped units by Q3 2009.

Conclusion: It is just a matter of time that iPhone beats Symbian.?At 19.5 Million Symbian units in Q2 the glass is half empty for Symbian, according to TechCrunch.

Both posts report that 159 different Symbian models have been shipped ?compared to just a handful from RIM and one from Apple?. But is that really good news for Symbian?

Despite maintaining the market share leadership, Nokia is no longer the object of desire for Smartphone users. iPhone is. Blackberry Bold is too. Nokia might have not lost the lead in market share yet, but they sure have in user?s mindshare.

I tend see the glass half empty for Nokia?s OS.

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For my not-too-techie readers, you will not enjoy this post.? I?m going to seriously dork out on you.? I?ve now had my iPhone for over three weeks and I?m still can?t say I?ve completely moved my life off of my Treo 650 and on to my iPhone.? Here?s what I?ve done so far and how I feel about things:

Initial Impressions – It?s Awesome!

Shortly I?ll detail some of the shortcomings of the iPhone and the challenges I?ve faced as I?ve tried to move all of my ?stuff? from my Treo to my iPhone, but the overall initial impression remains – it?s awesome.? I am aware of the shortcomings, but I?m not really annoyed by them because of how freaking cool the iPhone is.? It?s a lot like how hot girls can get away with a lot more crap than not-as-hot girls.? Such is the iPhone.? Let?s look at my details of the switch:

Double Move

I wanted to move all this data not only from the Palm platform onto iPhone, but I also wanted to switch from my slow and dying PC laptop onto my iMac.? An ambitious move I realize, but I moved my iTunes home base for my iPod to my Mac a few years ago and it just seems happier there.

Relocating Contacts

I thought the contacts seemed like the most important thing to move, and they also wound up being technically the easiest.? I was able to export all of my Palm contacts into a CSV file, email that to myself, and then download them and import them into the Address Book on my Mac.? It still wasn?t easy though – I don?t know if I did every thing right, but I lost all of my Categories from palm and all of my contacts were just dumped into one big list in Address Book.? I knew I should probably go through them – I had over 900 contacts and I?d pretty much never erased a contact that wound up in my treo.

The great thing about Address Book on Mac is that you can create ?smart? groups.? For instance, I set one up where the conditions said to include everyone who had a phone number that started with either 404 or 678 or 770 or whose city was Atlanta or state was GA.? Voila – my Atlanta group was instantly created.? The big downside?? iPhone won?t import smart groups – VERY ANNOYING Mr. Jobs!!!? There?s still a decent workaround – just copy all of the contacts in the Atlanta Smart List and paste them into a static list.? Sure the group won?t update dynamically over time, but it?s still pretty quick and easy.

Calendar – easy and yet not so easy

First the easy part – when I set up my work email (MS Exchange), all I had to do was check a box to sync the calendar and instantly all of my work stuff was on my iPhone and synced back and forth.? I had been led to believe that you had to pay extra for an exchange sync, but it does everything I want with the setup I have – it even maintains which messages are read/unread between my work laptop and my iPhone.

The? problem was getting my old calendar items off of my Treo and onto my iPhone.? Long story short, there was no easy way to do this (that I could find).? What I wound up doing is using Yahoo Auto-sync (a free feature in Yahoo?s calendar) to upload all of my calendar info from Palm Desktop up to Yahoo Calendar.? I was then able to export from Yahoo to a CSV file, and then (after some cleanup) import that CSV into MS Outlook.? It was still a pain in the ass, and a lot of the details were lost.? As I understand it, there is a way to have two calendars on the iPhone (work and home), but I haven?t got that figured out.? It also doesn?t seem possible to me to sync the calendar in two places (like a work computer and a home computer).? That surprised me.? I was also surprised to see that Google Calendar doesn?t easily sync with iPhone – I just would have expected two cool thing such as these to get along.? Maybe someday.

To Do List

I cannot find a simple ?to do? list in the App store.? This seems crazy, but for me it?s true.? I?m waiting to figure out how to transfer my ?to do?s.?? Surely someone can create an easy to use ?to do? list?

Memos

A very annoying feature of the iPhone is that there?s no way to syncronize memos between the computer and the iPhone.? So if I wanted to copy a long chunk of text and have it in my iPhone? no dice – at least not for memos.? My workaround here is to copy all of the memos I had on my Treo into draft emails in gmail.? Gmail works great on the iphone, and it?s pretty easy to access and edit drafts, so that?s how I?m currently rolling with my Memo substitute.

Other Stuff

• No MMS on iPhone – just retarded.? Fix that already, will you?
• No Vindigo for iPhone – so sad.? I feel like Vindigo has just stopped trying (kind of like Palm, though Palm isn?t quite as bad).? I still haven?t found an app that shows local bars/restaurants and lets me keep a ?my favorites? list.? Somebody help me out!
• YouTube on the iPhone – so much cooler and handier than I anticipated.

There?s more to be said, but it?s taken me a long time to write this much, so I?m just gonna go ahead and click ?publish.?? Feel free to pipe up in the comments if you?ve got an iPhone and/or an opinion.

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Samsung i900 OMNIA

First, the touchscreen. I?m fond of touchscreens, and the OMNIA?s touchscreen is good. It doesn?t come with a stylus (the Samsung people said it will come with a stylus, but the phone does not have a slot for one, so that?s doubtful; they did provide stylus during testing), so you have to use your fingers. The TouchWiz user interface is a Samsung custom UI for Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. The icons are large enough so that you can easily point to the right icon. What I like about the custom UI is that Opera Mobile is available as an alternative to IE Mobile. This is a great addition. More on this later. Of course, you can revert to the traditional WinMO UI.

Haptic feedback is available, but I had it turned off, as I find it annoying. Basically, the phone vibrates every time you press an icon. It is not a useless feature, but as I have said, I am annoyed by haptic feedback, and I felt it is a waste of battery.

There is a mouse pointer that is controlled by an optical touch pad below the screen. It is like having a touchpad on a phone. I find it odd, but it has its uses.

The on-screen keyboard remains a lot to be desired; people with large fingers will have to get used to it. The keys are too narrow for the thumbs. That is why I think the lack of stylus is a drawback.

It has an accelerometer on board, so that when you turn the phone, the UI changes its orientation. The orientation can be sluggish when, for example, Opera Mobile is running and showing Plurk in mobile mode, for example. But that is hardware limitation, which is understandable.

Probably one of the best features of the phone is its camera. It has a 5-megapixel camera, though the flash is just LED. It has camera functions that are not found in other camera-enabled phones. For example, you can take a panoramic shot with the phone, and you can stitch up to 8 images for a panoramic shot IN THE PHONE. There are other helpful features for taking shots, and I think some of them are quite useful.

One problem that I had found with OMNIA is that it runs out of memory that fast. For example, using Task Manager, the apps that were currently running were Main Menu and Task Manager, which consumed less than 1MB of memory combined. But when I tried launching Camera, I got the insufficient memory error message. Good luck running the Camera app while Opera Mobile is loaded.

I have not tested the multimedia capabilities of the phone – these features are not on top of my preferences for a phone, and there were no available video files for viewing.

The phone is nice when held, though it is shiny and fingerprint magnet. It does not feel flimsy, and you will not be embarrassed to be seen using it. Heck, I?d want this as a phone, though the lack of stylus and keypad would make me pause.

HTC Touch Diamond

What I like about the HTC Touch Diamond
• At the outset, HTC is already pretty well-known for producing reliable and function-rich PDA phones.
• It looks really sleek, with a glossy piano black surface and, as the tagline proclaims, is ?not too big, not too small?.
• It runs on HSDPA for Internet connectivity and is the fastest you can get on mobile phones right now. I tried it. It?s really fast.
• The interface is kinda like the iPhone. You can use your finger or the attached stylus to grab stuff on/off the screen.
• It has a graphics processor! Which means watching videos on this phone is really sweet.
• When surfing the net, you can zoom in to read passages of text and the phone automatically wraps the text for you so you don?t have to scroll left-right!! And the zooming is instantaneous, no waiting for the browser to reload the page.
• It doesn?t allow external memory but has 4GB of storage, which I think is enough.
• When you?re in a phone conversation and pull out your stylus, the phone automatically displays a notepad so you can take notes.
• It has a built-in Google Maps GPS program so you will never need to get lost again!

What I don?t like about the HTC Touch Diamond
• The interface is kinda sluggish, with a 1-2 second delay, when you navigate the touch screen with your fingers. That problem seems to be minimised when you use the stylus, though.
• HTC claims that it has an intuitive interface that mimics tasks you do daily so you won?t need to read a menu to learn how to use the phone. But I wouldn?t say it?s immediately intuitive. Like, when I wanted to scroll through the phone book to watch the nifty animation, I ended up calling some guy, instead. Then I couldn?t figure out how to stop the call and go back to the phone book.
• It?s too expensive.

TALE OF THE TAPE:

Samsung i900 Omnia

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