The battle for top end phone supremacy at Christmas 2009? Here are certainly three of the main contenders:
| HTC Touch HD |
Apple iPhone 3G |
Nokia N96 |
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| Form factor | Glass-topped tablet, 3.8" touchscreen, reasonable outdoor contrast, three physical buttons/switches, plastic back |
Glass-topped tablet, 3.5" touchscreen, reasonable outdoor contrast, four physical buttons/switches, plastic back | Fairly robust slider phone, 2.8" screen, reasonable outdoor contrast, 29 buttons, including traditional phone keypad (hidden away when not in use) |
| Price, ex-contract | £545, network-unlocked, very expensive | £350, locked to O2 but with unlimited data for a year - good value, in my opinion | £480, network-unlocked, currently quite expensive |
| Runs | Windows Mobile 6.1 plus TouchFLO 3D | Version of Apple's desktop OS X | S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2, on Symbian OS. |
| Battery life | A 1350mAh battery gives reasonable battery life, allied with an 'auto-brightness' feature on its backlight | Good, but integral, non-removable battery, 1400mAh, replacement is via sending away to Apple | Good-ish, BL-5F battery can be removed and replaced quickly, 950mAh. Onboard video and audio decoding hardware mean that media functions are relatively power-efficient |
| Connectivity | 3.5G. Plus Wi-Fi where available. Automatic joinig of known networks. | 3.5G. Plus Wi-Fi, also where available, seamless changeover (in theory) | 3.5G, plus Wi-Fi where available, semi-automatic access point selection |
| Performance and RAM | Full multitasking, 200MB free RAM, though somewhat confused by the appallingly intrusive TouchFLO interface | Very limited multitasking, but applications start and terminate quite quickly, so you might not notice. Background applications limited to Apple built-in apps. | Reasonable, after v12 firmware upgrade, only 49MB of free RAM after booting, but with full multitasking |
| Built-in Applications | The usual Windows Mobile app set, including Office Mobile, plus a new set of layered graphical mini-apps under the TouchFLO banner | A slightly restricted application set, but graphical and hyper-intuitive. | The usual S60 set of apps and mini-apps, with something of a media/online bent. |
| Web browsing | Pocket Internet Explorer and Opera Mobile are both included, bizarrely. The latter is the best, but neither can match the Webkit-based browsers on the iPhone and N96. Browsing helped here somewhat by the huge screen and the oodles of RAM | A good touch-driven experience using Safari. No Flash support whatsoever though. | A similarly good experience, this time limited by screen real estate and not bandwidth, with very similar browser code (both based on the same open source Web modules). Flash support, including full Flash video. |
| Text entry | A variety of on-screen keyboards are available, including an iPhone-like finger-friendly qwerty one, with word completion. Bluetooth keyboards are available. | Text entry via fingers using an on-screen keyboard. Word prediction software helps to enlarge screen touch-sensitive hotspots for likely followup letters, improving typing accuracy a lot. No option for Bluetooth keyboard, at present, sadly. No way of copying and pasting text between apps or within an app. |
With no touchscreen or keyboard, text entry is relatively inconvenient, using predictive text on the keypad, and mostly impossible when the N96 is in 'landscape' mode (although a separate Bluetooth keyboard gets round this fairly easily). Full copy and paste support in all apps. |
| Imaging/Video | Good 5 megapixel camera, spoilt by the lack of a physical, two-stage shutter button - pictures are taken by touching an on-screen icon. No flash. Very slow focussing in poor light conditions. Video capture at QVGA at 30fps is reasonable. | Acceptable (for casual snaps) 2MP camera, fixed focus, no flash, no video recording (latter partly fixable using a third party application) | Awesome 5MP camera with professional lens, auto-focus, multiple scene modes, effects and settings, bright flash, good, though not yet perfect, quality VGA video recording at up to 30 fps. Plus secondary, front-facing VGA camera for video calling. |
| Music and expansion | WMA and MP3 are supported, with two music players - Windows Media Player is more flexible, but TouchFLO's trivial player is pushed more. 300MB built-in flash memory, so expansion is all via microSD (an 8GB card is included in the box). Music is mainly loaded via Windows Media Player. | Very slick, as you'd expect, and with browsable cover art, MP3 and AAC formats supported. 8GB flash memory capacity (16GB available at extra cost), non-expandable. Music is loaded via iTunes from CDs or DRM-ed purchased music tracks. | Very slick, with two sets of dedicated hardware controls for background playback, although cover art is often hit and miss, depending on your music source. MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA formats supported. 16GB flash memory capacity, expandable using microSD to 32GB. A2DP also supported, for wireless listening. Loading is via PC and an iTunes-like client or via DRM-ed purchases over the air from Nokia's Music Store. |
| Durability | Pouched/cased by necessity, to protect the touch-screen from damage. | Pouched/cased by necessity, to protect the touch-screen from damage. | Pretty durable, with a hard plastic covering over the screen. The camera is not mechanically protected (as on the original N95) and picks up small day-to-day scratches which slightly impact photo quality. |
| Real world experience | In use, requires two hands to use most of the time, proving a little restrictive | In use, requires two hands to use most of the time, proving a little restrictive | Almost all operations are easy to accomplish one-handed, so other activities (shopping bags, driving(!), child's hand, tube strap) can be undertaken during use. |
| Messaging | More duplicity, with TouchFLO's Message viewer and Windows Inbox uneasy bedfellows. No functional issues though. | Slick email and SMS clients, but no MMS support. Emailed photos are all downsampled to VGA. | Functional plain text email, SMS and MMS client. Attachments possible for any file with no transcoding or reduction. |
| Office work | Office Mobile is good and now includes OneNote, full document editing throughout | Word/Excel/Powerpoint/iWork/PDF viewers built into the email client. No editing options, although workarounds using Ajax applications on web sites are possible | Quickoffice 4.1 viewers (upgradable to v5.0 round-trip-perfect editing, including Office 2007 formats), plus Adobe Reader LE 1.5 |
| Navigation | Native version of Google Maps, with cell tower and GPS location support. |
Native version of Google Maps, with cell tower and GPS location support. | Native Nokia Maps 2.0, with ad-hoc upgrades for voice guided navigation, with all maps pre-loadable via a PC to enable operation in areas of low data signal. Google Maps is free and a native S60 application, as an over-the-air alternative. Both use both GPS and cell tower data. |
| Video consumption | Poor experience in both TouchFLO's video player and Windows Media Player. MP4 and WMV support is patchy. A YouTube client is built-in and works well, if rather slow to load and work | Super for Youtube videos (a client is built-in), for BBC iPlayer streaming or for video podcasts from iTunes | DVB-H receiver built-in, for mobile TV in compatible countries. BBC iPlayer also works very well and includes downloading programmes for watching later. YouTube watching is possible through Web in-page or via a Java-based mobile client |
| Extra applications | Most apps in the Windows Mobile world will load and work, although there are some screen compatibility and TouchFLO issues. Still a good choice. | Extensible using Widgets and Web applications in the Safari web browser, plus third party apps via a slick built-in AppStore/portal, with 10,000 or so apps already contributed. | Plenty of native S60 applications and games, plus thousands more Java apps/games and Widgets. Python, Ruby and Flash Lite applications are also supported. Download! on the device offers a similar service to AppStore, but with nowhere near the same scope and consistency. |
| Bluetooth | Full A2DP stereo support, plus object exchange, dial up networking and many other profiles. | Just headset/mono-handsfree functions. | Full A2DP stereo support, plus object exchange, dial up networking and many other profiles. |
| Extra connectivity | Flush 3.5mm headphone socket. | Flush 3.5mm headphone socket. | Flush 3.5mm headphone socket, also with integrated TV-out facility (sending screen feed or full res photos or videos to any TV or video equipment). There's also UPnP support via WiFi and direct printing support with Pictbridge. |
| Desktop integration | ActiveSync handles syncing to Microsoft Outlook on the desktop. Mac connectivity via third party solutions | Seamless integration with iTunes on Mac or Windows desktops, for all PIM data, settings, etc. | Full functioned but messy integration with several versions of PC Suite and other tools on PC, Nokia Multimedia Transfer, iCal/iSync on Mac, etc. |
| Online sync/backup | Windows Live works and is free, but is arguably in the same fledgling state as Nokia's Ovi and nowhere near as comprehensive | $100 a year 'Mobile Me' PIM data, plus email and photos. Slick and full realised, but proprietary to Apple. | Free Ovi Sync, plus sync offerings, both free and commercial, from the likes of GooSync, Zyb, Mobical, etc. |
| HTC Touch HD |
Apple iPhone |
Nokia N96 |
Picking an overall winner is pretty pointless, tempted though I am, since each device plays to a different target market. The Touch HD will appeal to anyone already committed to Microsoft solutions or with an existing Windows Mobile application portfolio, e.g. within enterprises. The iPhone 3G will appeal to anyone looking for heavy media consumption and gaming - and it's relatively cheap, SIM-free, especially considering the all-in data bundle. But the Nokia N96, from a 'phone' point of view, is perhaps the best of the three featured, for 'all round' use. Your comments welcome!
Steve Litchfield, 10th Dec 2008