Portable World: Comms: The top-end phones battle it out

The iPhone is huge and i mean absolutely, disturbingly huge. And I don't mean physically. Almost everyone seems to have one, everyone else badly wants one, but i'm not one of them. Apple's OS is pretty good, but overly proprietary. The lack of certain functions irk me, and the Apple-only world the iPhone needs, is just a bit too restrictive. Call me non-conformist, but i'll go for the Android OS everytime.

But, for the time being, there are virtually no Android phones and not many more Android apps (even if some of them are soooooo cool) and so we look the other camp, the Windows Mobile Smartphones. There are plenty of good ones and CNET ran a small comparo a while ago, but it had some notable rivals missing. One of the MIA's was my personal favourite the HTC Touch HD.

Physically, their dimensions are all similar within about a half a centimetre, so not much to distinguish them there. Visually, they are similar, with screens of about 3.5" on a nice gloss black finish, with the odd hard button here and there.

The Touch HD's biggest feature and its namesake, is that screen. Just to set the benchmark, the iPhone has a 3.5" screen running 480x320 pixels. The HD uses a 3.8-inch screen with a whopping 800x480! This actually has a slightly different aspect ratio, the iPhone with a standard 1.5:1, the HD running a tall 1.666:1.

Now to cameras. The HD runs the proper 3G set-up: VGA cam on the front, 5-megapixel on the back. The iPhone? Just the one 2.0 megapixel jobbie.

The touch HD still runs WinMob 6.1, but with HTC's much acclaimed touchFLO system, which is (as i've said before) one of the best ones around, while the iPhone's is quite good, but not to my personal tastes.

Here are some of the more interesting tidbits. The iPhone gets the amazing Apps Store, but the Touch HD? Any app ever written for mobile Windows since the old CE days!

The Touch HD gets real bluetooth, not just basic connection management. The Touch HD has an external memory slot, removing the need for internal flash memory. It has WiFi, and 3.5G internet. It has a 3.5mm jack (about time) and normal USB connections. No proprietary crap here.

And here is one of the big killers for the iPhone. The HTC is sexy, no doubt about it, and anyone who knows their chips can see it's a very similar, if not better machine. But one of the Touch HD's best features. It's not an iPhone...

It doesn't come pre-packed with a superiority complex. People won't earmark you as a non-conformist, a conformist, a geek, an idiot or just about anything else they can think of every time you whip out your HD.

It's not trying to save the world from themselves, and I love it for that if nothing else.

And so i announce the Touch HD becomes recipient of a world first:

PS. It also has a proper virtual keyboard. Hurrah!