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!

Portable World : Part 1

Announcing a new (and hopefully recurring) segment to FerretTech : Portable World
I will (somewhat) regularly report on what's happening in Portable Gaming, Computing and Communications.

First up is today's topic: Portable Gaming.

Portable Gaming has positively exploded in a few short years. With the release of ever better and smaller GameBoys, then the DS, Apple's App Attack, and of course, Sony's heavenly PSP.

It is no secret that I think the PSP is the best by far, especially in its latest PSP-3000 guise. Nintendo has also been improving on their success with the new DSi (which has controversially dumped the old Gameboy cartridge slot!)

But there is one thing i want to focus on and that is the Apple products : The iPod touch and iPhone (which i can't be bothered typing out twenty times, so if you see iPhone, chances are i'm talking about both...)

Everyone has been talking about how it is the new king of portable gaming. But, as i see it, it's not even part of portable gaming. About as advanced as gaming gets on the iPhone is Air Traffic Control (legendary!), as opposed to the PSP's headliners like Resistance:Retribution (even more legendary!) and MGS Portable Ops etc etc.
Sure, an iPhone is a good enough all-rounder when it comes to portable gaming, communications, connectivity etc. But saying it is a good Gaming machine is absolute crap. A PSP is a gaming machine, a DSi is a gaming machine, but an iPhone is not!

And that brings my first Portable World post to an end.

Now that is out of the way, let me explain why a PSP will always be better than anything Nintendo can throw at the DS.
1. PSP's are powerful. 333MHz in a device that fits in your pocket! That's pretty impressive. Up until recently, most PSP games (which are technological masterpieces in their own way) have only usually used 222 MHz. I don't actually know the exact figure for a DS, but i know it is less.

2. PSP's can do anything. They play video, they play music, they show photos, they play games, they browse the internet, and given some eggs, and a whisk, i'm sure they could whip up a damn fine omelette, too!
Yes, there are better ways of watching videos, there are better ways of listening to music, there are (probably) better ways of looking at photos (someone once described the PSP as the modern-day 6x4 print), but there is nothing else that can do all of these, and definitely nothing that can do all of these as well as the PSP...

3. PSP's are supported. Apart from Sony's brilliant team sitting in a dungeon somewhere constantly making little tiny variations to improve the PSP, third parties everywhere are jumping on the PSP. From hacking and downgrading to themes and downloadable wallpapers, you can make a PSP do whatever you feel like with a little digging on the Net, which you can do straight from the PSP.

There are plenty of other reasons, but that would run the risk of RSI from the furious rage-typing so i'm gonna leave it at that...