The Times' Testbed section today looks at five touchscreen based rivals to the iPhone (leaving unspoken the idea that the iPhone is the one phone that every other phone must be measured against) and fails to appoint a clear winner - each phone is good at a few tasks, and poor at others - but it certainly points out a loser... the W960i.

Although Apple’s iPhone wasn’t the first touchscreen mobile, its launch last year galvanised other phone makers into releasing their own touch-sensitive handsets. The result is that there are now touchphones to suit all tastes "if not all budgets" so the new 3G iPhone finds itself up against some stiff competition.

What should be worrying for Nokia and Symbian is that the one phone representative of the Symbian platform in the 'Five rivals' was that low scoring (two out of five stars) Sony Ericsson W960i, which was panned for it's slow and poor menu system, dull screen and low battery life.

The Nokia N95 wasn't included in the line-up, I suspect because it doesn't have a touch-screen, and yet again we're drawn back into the argument that while the sales may be relatively low, the Apple iPhone is winning the argument over what the feature set should be, rather than be drawn into a specification battle; a strategy that Palm used successfully in the nineties against the then new Windows CE devices... and the Apple Newton.

Read the full article is here.