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!

Hurrah! HTC second gen arrives

Yay!

HTC's much beloved Touch range of smartphones has been revitalised with the arrival of three new phones.

HTC Touch HD
Hailed as the next messiah when it was announced, it took forever to get here, but still looks pretty good. HD screen on a smartphone, of course it makes sense.

HTC Touch Pro2
HTC's business smartphone has been re-released and against my gut feelings, has in fact become more business-oriented. Now with god-knows-how-many productivity tools and a neat keyboard, it is an attractive proposition indeed for any savvy business person.

HTC Touch Diamond2

Now getting into the business end of said HTC Range, the much-loved Touch Diamond has also been refreshed with a new face, new design and new gizzards. And it's gotten bigger (probably not a bad thing)

Interestingly, however, it was released with an old OS. Yes, the HTC range is still running Windows Mobile 6.1. Maybe they were too late to the market to get WinMob 6.5, but my bet is on the other explanation: HTC's version of 6.1 (with TouchFlo, and other mods) was better than 6.5 anyway! I have always thought that HTC made such an awesome version of 6.1 that even Windows would struggle to improve on. I have always thought that HTC's WinMob was better than Symbian, better than, say, Samsung's negligible improvements and, my god, for someone who grew up with a Windows CE PDA (got the Jornada 450!), it's better than any previous iteration of Windows Mobile. Not that that's real difficult...

Android picking up speed, and various other phone news

Google's own phone OS, called Android (?) is now picking up speed, with another Android phone released recently (built by a no-name Taiwanese company) to arrive in Australia soon. Remember this is just weeks after its release, and there are already HTC phones to add to the other two Android handsets, and the new Lenovo-badged OPhone up against the mammoth Windows Mobile OS. Yeah okay, this isn't Google's first time taking large bites out of Microsoft, but it's like opening up the Twenty-Sixth Front...

Also making noises in the phone area is Palm (yes, remember them) who are set to unveil their new 'Nova' OS on January 8. Unfortunately, we won't see customer products until mid-2009

And now Garmin has jumped on the Smartphone bandwagon. Yes, it's a satnav maker, building phones. Their nuvifone is still coming, but has just passed FCC testing, so it's getting closer, (and we're all holding our breath, yawn!).

And to add to this huge pile of phone news, the rumours about the iPhone nano have resurfaced with possible case sizes surfacing on Crave showing a smaller iPhone in basic dimensions., which is to be expected, and apparently accessory brand XSKN has already produced a silicon style case for a shorter thicker iPhone. One month until MacWorld. Hmmmm...

And if you thought of the one country that would embrace phones and technology into every part of their life, it probably wouldn't be Estonia would it? They have decided to allow citizens to vote in their 2011 parliamentary elections on their cell phones! They buy a special chip for their phones that verifies their identity, then once installed, Estonians can use their phones to vote, without going to a ballot. Genius! From Estonia!??