What Smartphone, Jan - March 2008 edition

The cellphone is dead, long live the smartphone! In all fairness, despite the advent of the iphone and the many Windows mobile devices, the smartphone is not quite there yet.

My old smartphone - a Nokia 6120 is taking a hike to greener pastures, so a new one is needed.

The options are, in table form:

	Iphone	Nokia N82	Nokia N81	Nokia N95	Nokia E61i	BB 8310	HTC Touch
Image
Screen Size	3.5	2.4	2.4	2.8	2.8	?	2.8
Coolness	Very	Somewhat	Pretty Cool	Cool (just)	Ugly	Ugly	Hmm
Usability	Wow!	Damn Usable.	Ditto	Ditto	Usable	It’s a BB. Semi-Usable.	More a PDA than a phone
Quirks	Unlocking, updating	Looks a bit ugly, biggish	Size is nice, but too fat	Too thick	It’s wiiide	Office phone, keyboard	Freezes on and off
Use as Actual Phone	7/10	9/10	9/10	9/10	6/10	5/10 - hard to type numbers	6.5/10
Camera	2MP, Sucks but usable	5MP, brilliant camera, can replace a phone	2MP, so so camera	5MP, Brilliant camera, but no lens cover	2MP, very so-so camera	Shit, basically unusable	Shit, unusable
Memory	8 GB	2GB	8 GB	8 GB	Close to Zilch	Close to Zilch	Close to Zilch
Price	32,000	31,500	28,500	41,000	24,500	27,000	34,000

These phones represent the current top of the pops smartphones available in Karachi. The ones not on this list don’t belong here, especially the high-end Sony’s as all the good ones like the P1i and the W960 don’t support Edge. All the above phones support GPRS Edge AND Wifi.

Here is a short overview, gathered from reading many reviews on the internet, and encounters in the wild with these phones:

Apple Iphone

This, frankly, is both overrated and underrated at the same time. The interface is amazing, but where the Iphone falls short is the lack of native apps. There are no ebook readers, no Opera Mini (the best browser for the small screen), and a whole laundry list of other features which any other smart phone has.

But where it bets them all, is the wonderfully responsive touch interface, which leaves other touch phones choking on so much dust that most of them have checked out of the race into a asthma ward.

Have you ever seen anyone showing off a picture album on any other phone? No, even though Windows based phones have had very nice large screens for years - cause it’s just so bloody hard that it takes all the fun out of it!

Nokia N82

This is a brilliant phone, and the most phone like phone out of all the smartphones on the market - and on top of all that, has a proper 5MP camera with xenon flash bolted on.

The screen size is the only drawback here. It’s just not that much bigger than a regular phones.

Drawbacks: Flashy color, large size - looks too much like the cellphones of ages gone by.

Nokia N95 8GB

Same as the N82, except a slider with a much bigger screen.

Very nice, but there is this little something missing. The phone feels too much like a child’s toy, which is a serious downer considering it’s for 42K!

Nokia N81 8GB

This is a good option for a phone + music player all in one. The drawback compared to the two phones above is the camera - it’s the normal sucky cellphone camera. Oh, and there’s no GPS either, but in Pakistan that’s a useless feature anyways.

All the three Nokia’s are very similar, sunning the same software, with the only difference being the form factor and screen size.

Nokia E61i

The most sensible phone of the entire lot. It easily out blackberries the blackberry, and does just about everything a pc can do.

This would be the perfect phone, but then you have to join the cult of the qwerty keyboard. There are people who swear by them, and can do wondrous things with them, but pecking away at those teeny tiny qwerty keys isn’t for everybody!

the not-really biased conclusion: The Apple iPhone!

Screen size and quality is important, very important. The iphone has the most crippled software out of the box of any smartphone, even going back to the Jurassic age of smartphones, but the 160 DPI screen is wow! For consuming content, it can’t be beat. If you’re not a geek, than the iphone is the only phone which you’ll actually be able to use all the advanced features, so that’s a pretty big plus point right there.

The only issue (read pain in the ass) is the fact that it has be unlocked, so everytime Apple releases a new update you have to jump though a few hoops to update the device.

The phone I ended up buying: Sadly, monetary reality intervened, and I’m sticking with a 5000Rs. Phone for now. After all, they do practically everything these more expensive flashy phones do, don’t they?

Um, No.

They don’t.

If you actually use the many whizbang features of today’s phones, then they’re so far better than the el-cheapo models that it’s definitely worth the price.

But the bling, oh the bling! My next device will the iPhone v2.0, which either Nokia or Apple should be coming out near the end of this year.

The perfect phone isn’t out yet, but the iphone is close, oh so close.

The biggest reason to wait till the summer is the upcoming Google Android, which is going to shake up the cell phone market. The release of the Apple SDK for the Iphone should lead to a lot of new hotness for the Iphone.

Exciting times ahead for cell phone toting humans, as the cellphone becomes increasingly usably useful.

After such a long review, the best value for money smartphone remains the Nokia 6120 Classic at 13,500 Rs, doing everything the phones above do, and at a much nicer form factor. The only drawback is the screen size, which is a smallish 2 inches, but the screen quality comes in a second, before the Iphone, and after all the other phones listed above.

Other websites

http://whatmobile.com.pk/ :: This is the website I use to look up cell phone prices and availability in Pakistan. I’ve found the shops are generally selling at these prices, or in some cases lower. So it’s pretty accurate.

http://www.mobileburn.com/ :: Comprehensive reviews of cellphones