( Heavily expanded and updated - for reference, here's the original article )
In the battle of top end, large-screened smartphones, the Symbian-powered flagships have a new competitor: the Google Nexus One, selling across the world and offering the unadulterated Google Android experience. And this being the start of 2010, it's also a good moment to pitch the two open source operating systems against each other. But how mature is Android (2.1)? And how do the device and its software stand up to two of the flagships from the Symbian world, the Nokia N97 and the Samsung i8910 HD?
From the Symbian world, the latter is the standout obvious device to compare the new Nexus One to, having virtually identical specs and form factor. However, Samsung's continuing lack of support for their Symbian flagship has rendered the i8910 HD something of a niche device and almost unknown, seemingly, outside of Italy - or Orange in the UK, in crippled form - and geek circles. Which is why I decided to add the Nokia N97 into the mix as well. The screen's almost as large as that in the other two phones, the price tag is similar, plus you do get a workable physical qwerty keyboard, albeit (understandably) at the expense of extra thickness.
(As usual, I've tinted with green the cells in each row that indicate a 'winner' for that attribute, for interest sake. I've also used yellow for a 'second place', where appropriate)
| Samsung i8910 HD | Google Nexus One | Nokia N97 | |
| Latest firmware | XXJB1 | 2.1 update 1 | 21 |
| Form factor, materials | Plastic, but very solid full-face glass capacitive touchscreen, 148g | Part plastic, part metal, solid full-face capacitive touchscreen, feels smaller than it is due to curves on every side and corner, 130g, the smallest and lightest device in this group by some margin | Mainly plastic, with metal bezel around front face, resistive touchscreen and alloy-hinged keyboard mechanism, 150g |
| Input mechanisms | Virtual qwerty landscape keyboard (with no writing aids), plus virtual numeric and handwriting options | Virtual qwerty keyboard in both portrait and landscape modes, with basic writing aids. Voice input also an option, but unreliable so far. Shows promise for the future though | Physical QWERTY keyboard, plus virtual numeric and handwriting options |
| Display | 3.7" AMOLED, gorgeous indoors, but hard to read in sunlight | 3.7" AMOLED, gorgeous indoors, but hard to read in sunlight | 3.5" transflective TFT, paler colours indoors, but better (though nowhere near as good as the iPhone's or N95/E72's) in direct sunlight |
| Interface | S60 5th Edition basic, some kinetic scrolling in apps, finger control only | Android 2.1, five homescreens, heavy widget and shortcut customisability, finger control only but designed for finger touch from day one | S60 5th Edition plus some Symbian^2 modules, including full kinetic scrolling in applications menu. Finger, stylus or keyboard/d-pad control |
| Speed | Symbian flies here, with an OMAP 3430 chipset to power all the graphics, transitions, etc. and with 150MB free RAM for the OS to work in. Video playback is terrific, with a wide range of codecs supported. | Surprisingly hesitant for something with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor under the hood, it's obvious that Android is still not completely optimised. Still, you're rarely kept waiting for long. Graphical effects fly, though video playback is disappointing, with limited codec support so far. | Often sluggish, even with latest RAM-friendly firmware. |
| Memory capacity (storage) | 17MB only of (C:) system disk, a huge limitation. Plus 8GB (or 16GB) mass memory and microSD expansion | Around 200MB of internal storage is plenty for most purposes. A big microSD card is essential for media though | 60MB or so of system disk, a serious limitation because so many Nokia patches and apps insist on installing to this. 32GB of mass memory, plus microSD expansion |
| Camera | Great 8 megapixel stills, but only LED flash. Exposed camera glass. HD video is jerky, but capture is good on the whole at most supported resolutions | Average 5 megapixel stills, LED flash, very exposed camera glass. Video capture is OK at 720 by 480 but ruined by poor audio, as mentioned above. | Super 5 megapixel stills, with dual LED flash and covered camera glass. Video capture is high quality at VGA with good audio, but the pre-focus of the N95 and N96 is missing. |
| GPS and navigation | Great GPS, but let down by poor support of the initially-offered Route 66 software. Most users resort to Google Maps. | Great GPS chip, backed up by Wi-Fi location and the latest Google Maps and with voice navigation rumoured for some point in the future (hmmmm). | Poor GPS chip and antenna, so you'll be wondering why this cell is green(!), but these are compensated for by the super Ovi Maps with free voice guided navigation. And free traffic, guides, etc. And all worldwide. Forever. Positioning accuracy is enhanced by many users by adding in the commercial Maps Booster Wi-fi location utility. |
| Audio | Loud stereo speakers, 3.5mm jack, good microphone for video capture but let down by noise | Tinny, badly positioned mono speaker, 3.5mm jack, good microphone for video but let down by appalling codec choice (AMR) by Google | Tinny stereo speakers, 3.5mm jack, great microphone and good audio capture quality, great FM transmitter for sending audio to car radio |
| Web browsing | S60 Web (webkit-based), functional without ever really impressing, though there is Flash support if needed. Touch interface is klunky | Browser is also Webkit-based, but with no Flash support (this is 'coming soon'). Page zooming is handled better though, there's full multitouch (pinching and splaying), and speed is generally good. | S60 Web (webkit-based), functional without ever really impressing, though there is Flash support if needed. Touch interface is klunky |
| Other application highlights out of the box | Quickoffice viewers, Google Mail client, Smart reader (business cards), Dictionary, Zip manager, Converter, RoadSync (MS Exchange) | Facebook client, native Google Mail client, excellent little Weather/News utility, YouTube client, Google Talk client, Google Goggles, office viewers, Amazon MP3 store | Quickoffice viewers, Dictionary, Zip manager, Converter, Mail for Exchange, Nokia Music store, Podcasting, BBC iPlayer, Facebook widget |
| Application store and ecosystem | No on-device store, but many S60 5th Edition apps will work fine. Some trial and error needed. See also our freeware guide | The Android market boasts many thousands of applications, the majority of which are free. Quality is variable, but there's no shortage of choice. Application updates are automatically checked for. | Nokia's Ovi Store is now very usable, with a good choice and with some very high quality apps. There's no automatic checks for app updates though - individual apps have to 'call home' to check for themselves. |
| Battery | 1500mAh, microUSB charging, two days with careful use | 1400mAh, microUSB charging, nightly charging needed | 1500mAh, microUSB charging, two days with average use, uses common BP-4L battery, so easy to swap out, too, among many other Nokia phones |
| Ongoing firmware support and updates | Via PC Studio only. Infrequent, disappointing, Samsung's heart seems to be with Bada, Android and even Windows Mobile | Over the air updates. Too early to comment on schedule, but we've already had a big update adding multitouch to the browser/gallery/maps applications. A genuine 'With Google' phone and should get frequent updates | Updates Over the air and Nokia Software Updater. Updates every couple of months have brought significantly better performance and many bug fixes |
Attempting to be objective, and assigning 2 points for a green and 1 for a yellow placing, gives:
- Google Nexus One - 14pts
- Nokia N97 - 13pts
- Samsung i8910 HD - 9pts
It's at this point that the hack-loving i8910 HD freaks (and I use the term 'lovingly') will be crying foul, but the fact remains that a modern smartphone is so much more than collection of silicon chips and bits of plastic. The Nexus One and the N97 both leap ahead of the Samsung by virtue of far better support from their manufacturer in terms of updates and software.
The almost identical scores between Nexus One and N97 reflect that they each have their strengths, with one being strong in areas that the other is weak. Technically, the Nexus One comes out the winner, but it would only take a single preference (e.g. "I must have a camera protecting shutter") to flip the scores right around. In truth, both are flawed 'superphones' and the only irony is that the Samsung i8910 HD would easily come out on top of the group test if it had Nokia's software, updates and services plus Google's cloud integration.
Which means, yet again, that we're back to 'build your perfect phone' territory - the staple of conversation down the All About Symbian virtual pub....
One useful way to look at the three smartphones here is that they're aimed at different markets:
- Samsung i8910 HD - pitched by networks as a high end camera and media phone, this has ended up being suitable for hard core geeks willing to put lots of effort into tweaking and customising.
- Nokia N97 - pitched as the Nseries flagship, the N97 turns out to be a pretty good all-rounder, but newcomers to smartphones shouldn't apply - quite a bit of effort and setup is still needed if you're going to have a trouble free experience.
- Google Nexus one - provided the new user has a Google account and uses it, setup is trivial and there's almost nothing to go wrong.
Comments welcome if you've tried more than one of the handsome group on show here!
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 17 Feb 2010