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The iPhone 4 is here and Apple claims that the new version plans to "change everything, again". Anticipated features like the high resolution screen, 5 megapixel camera and HD video recording have all now been included . The iOS 4 fixes certain loopholes, like the lack of multitasking on previous iPhones, along with many new feature additions. All this talk by Apple about their new product sometimes reaches such dizzying levels, that one tends to believe this is the best phone to get. But skeptics and anti-Apple people around the world are of the opinion that the iPhone 4 is nothing great. Instead they think that Apple is only trying to catch up with some of the smartphones already selling in the market today.
Are you convinced that the iPhone 4 has everything you would want? Or do you still feel there's something more they could've added? There are many who don't like the idea of being shackled to Apple's ecosystem, where the company controls the way you should use your phone in certain respects. Like the apps you can download or the way you transfer media to your phone, or even the refusal of sharing media with other phones over Bluetooth. Check out our list of Top iPhone 4 alternatives. Also, cast your vote in the opinion poll to the right.
Google Nexus One/HTC Desire
These two are very similar phones, and both are manufactured by HTC. It's just that the Nexus One is a "Google-powered" phone, while the Desire has HTC's interface customizations over the same Android OS. Secondly, the Nexus One has a BlackBerry-esque trackball, while the Desire has an optical trackpad.
So how do these phones compare to the iPhone 4? Both have a slightly larger capacitive AMOLED screen (AMOLED delivers vibrant color reproduction). Its resolution is not as awesomely crisp as the iPhone 4's, but is fairly high at 800 x 480 pixels. The Nexus One can already be updated to Android 2.2 (a.k.a Froyo), which is Google's latest version of their mobile OS. It enables some cool new features like Internet sharing over Wi-Fi and better support for Adobe Flash, along with faster performance. Android has also become, in our opinion, very close in terms of usability to the iPhone OS, give or take a few things from both parties.
Both have a microSD card slot, which has scope for a lot more memory storage than the iPhone 4's 16 or 32GB fixed space; depending on how many cards you can buy. You can transfer files to other Bluetooth devices, something that even the newest iPhone doesn't allow you. Both feature a 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash. It can't shoot HD (1280 x 720) videos like the iPhone 4, but rather shoots at DVD resolution (720 x 480), which isn't so bad.
The Nexus One is sold in Indian grey markets for about Rs. 30,000. We hear that the Desire should be officially available here by the end of the month.
Nokia N8
Comparing Nokia's current range of resistive touchscreen based, Symbian Series 60 5th Edition laden phones to most of the phones in this list is nothing short of a JOKE. Once you've used the smooth maneuvering ability of a capacitive screen, coupled with OSes like Android or iOS (that were built from ground up to work with such screens), the rest just feels kinda pathetic.
Nokia realized that all too well and had to do something radical to break away from this mediocre image. Their fitting answer was with the N8. To begin with, the phone has a sturdy aluminum casing that will protect it in case you drop it. Feature-wise the N8 is as loaded as the rest of these bad boys. An AMOLED capacitive screen that supports multi-touch will display Nokia's redesigned Symbian ^3 OS. The star feature of the N8 is its 12 megapixel Carl Zeiss branded camera. For all those people who are put off by that tiny LED light on many phones, the N8 has a proper Xenon flash - delivering the same blinding strobe you'd get from a digital camera. It also does HD (720p) video recording, just like the iPhone 4. Now many of these modern phones do 720p, but other than a great view on the screen, wouldn't it be nice to directly hook the phone up to your LCD HDTV? Guess what, the N8 has TV-out support via HDMI and composite - pretty awesome, we say!
The iPhone 4 comes in two colors; black and white. The N8 has a wider variety; including Dark Grey, Silver White, Green, Blue and Orange. Nokia's quoted 370 Euro (approx. Rs. 22,000) pricing for the N8 is very reasonable for a phone that packs in so much. Nokia's always won hearts with phones that don't want to make you sell your bodyparts! If Nokia has been able to achieve that with the N8, it'd be one heck of a smartphone.
Samsung Galaxy S i9000
Leave it to Samsung to create some of the most feature-crammed phones that ever existed - the Omnia HD being a prime example. While the Omnia HD was great, its Symbian Series 60 OS isn't up to speed with today's Android OS. Move over Symbian, the Samsung Galaxy S i9000 has set Android 2.1 in its heart. It sports a large 4-inch "Super AMOLED" screen, which Samsung claims to have 20 percent more brightness, 20 percent less power consumption and more importantly 80 percent less sunlight reflection.
It has 8/16GB internal storage, with a microSD slot for further expansion. And you're going to need a lot of memory on this one, since not only does it playback standard def DivX/XviD videos, it also plays back 720p videos directly. So all those movies on your PC can directly be viewed on the phone, no down-scaling/conversion needed. Try pulling that off, iPhone! The 5 megapixel sensor as expected shoots 720p videos too.
Acer Stream
Acer did a nice job with the design of the Liquid phone, it looked cute. Why they chose this design for the Stream, I don't understand but yuck, it looks fugly! Ok, looks apart, the internals of this phone are pretty decent - very similar to the Nexus One. Differentiating specs include a micro HDMI port and XviD playback. I'm still not over the unappealing design, but hey, you've got to know all your options, right?
The iPhone 4 will start selling in the US by June 24. Roll out for the rest of the world will follow and India should hopefully be at least in the last leg, which is September 2010. Some of the phones mentioned above are selling currently, some will start selling in a few months.
Are you convinced that the iPhone 4 has everything you would want? Or do you still feel there's something more they could've added? There are many who don't like the idea of being shackled to Apple's ecosystem, where the company controls the way you should use your phone in certain respects. Like the apps you can download or the way you transfer media to your phone, or even the refusal of sharing media with other phones over Bluetooth. Check out our list of Top iPhone 4 alternatives. Also, cast your vote in the opinion poll to the right.
Google Nexus One/HTC Desire
These two are very similar phones, and both are manufactured by HTC. It's just that the Nexus One is a "Google-powered" phone, while the Desire has HTC's interface customizations over the same Android OS. Secondly, the Nexus One has a BlackBerry-esque trackball, while the Desire has an optical trackpad.
So how do these phones compare to the iPhone 4? Both have a slightly larger capacitive AMOLED screen (AMOLED delivers vibrant color reproduction). Its resolution is not as awesomely crisp as the iPhone 4's, but is fairly high at 800 x 480 pixels. The Nexus One can already be updated to Android 2.2 (a.k.a Froyo), which is Google's latest version of their mobile OS. It enables some cool new features like Internet sharing over Wi-Fi and better support for Adobe Flash, along with faster performance. Android has also become, in our opinion, very close in terms of usability to the iPhone OS, give or take a few things from both parties.
Both have a microSD card slot, which has scope for a lot more memory storage than the iPhone 4's 16 or 32GB fixed space; depending on how many cards you can buy. You can transfer files to other Bluetooth devices, something that even the newest iPhone doesn't allow you. Both feature a 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash. It can't shoot HD (1280 x 720) videos like the iPhone 4, but rather shoots at DVD resolution (720 x 480), which isn't so bad.
The Nexus One is sold in Indian grey markets for about Rs. 30,000. We hear that the Desire should be officially available here by the end of the month.
Nokia N8
Comparing Nokia's current range of resistive touchscreen based, Symbian Series 60 5th Edition laden phones to most of the phones in this list is nothing short of a JOKE. Once you've used the smooth maneuvering ability of a capacitive screen, coupled with OSes like Android or iOS (that were built from ground up to work with such screens), the rest just feels kinda pathetic.
Nokia realized that all too well and had to do something radical to break away from this mediocre image. Their fitting answer was with the N8. To begin with, the phone has a sturdy aluminum casing that will protect it in case you drop it. Feature-wise the N8 is as loaded as the rest of these bad boys. An AMOLED capacitive screen that supports multi-touch will display Nokia's redesigned Symbian ^3 OS. The star feature of the N8 is its 12 megapixel Carl Zeiss branded camera. For all those people who are put off by that tiny LED light on many phones, the N8 has a proper Xenon flash - delivering the same blinding strobe you'd get from a digital camera. It also does HD (720p) video recording, just like the iPhone 4. Now many of these modern phones do 720p, but other than a great view on the screen, wouldn't it be nice to directly hook the phone up to your LCD HDTV? Guess what, the N8 has TV-out support via HDMI and composite - pretty awesome, we say!
The iPhone 4 comes in two colors; black and white. The N8 has a wider variety; including Dark Grey, Silver White, Green, Blue and Orange. Nokia's quoted 370 Euro (approx. Rs. 22,000) pricing for the N8 is very reasonable for a phone that packs in so much. Nokia's always won hearts with phones that don't want to make you sell your bodyparts! If Nokia has been able to achieve that with the N8, it'd be one heck of a smartphone.
Samsung Galaxy S i9000
Leave it to Samsung to create some of the most feature-crammed phones that ever existed - the Omnia HD being a prime example. While the Omnia HD was great, its Symbian Series 60 OS isn't up to speed with today's Android OS. Move over Symbian, the Samsung Galaxy S i9000 has set Android 2.1 in its heart. It sports a large 4-inch "Super AMOLED" screen, which Samsung claims to have 20 percent more brightness, 20 percent less power consumption and more importantly 80 percent less sunlight reflection.
It has 8/16GB internal storage, with a microSD slot for further expansion. And you're going to need a lot of memory on this one, since not only does it playback standard def DivX/XviD videos, it also plays back 720p videos directly. So all those movies on your PC can directly be viewed on the phone, no down-scaling/conversion needed. Try pulling that off, iPhone! The 5 megapixel sensor as expected shoots 720p videos too.
Acer Stream
Acer did a nice job with the design of the Liquid phone, it looked cute. Why they chose this design for the Stream, I don't understand but yuck, it looks fugly! Ok, looks apart, the internals of this phone are pretty decent - very similar to the Nexus One. Differentiating specs include a micro HDMI port and XviD playback. I'm still not over the unappealing design, but hey, you've got to know all your options, right?
The iPhone 4 will start selling in the US by June 24. Roll out for the rest of the world will follow and India should hopefully be at least in the last leg, which is September 2010. Some of the phones mentioned above are selling currently, some will start selling in a few months.
