I recently lost my iPhone 3GS, and I couldn’t be more miserable. 
My replacement phone? A Nokia E71. While this isn’t a bad phone per se, it’s a far cry from the iPhone, and I’m getting sick of it very quickly.
First off, the Symbian OS is far, far from user friendly. It’s clunky, requires a lot of button presses just to get to certain parts of the OS, it doesn’t even give me a live call timer (for when I’m on a call), it doesn’t have a touch screen, and the screen is limited to 2.4″ and a resolution of 240×320 (which is QVGA). What’s good about it is, that it’s very slim, it’s shiny, and it has a QWERTY keyboard for typing, which helps a lot with texts or IM. While I do have an upgrade available on my at&t account, I could just get another iPhone 3GS; however, come June, there’s going to be a new iPhone, which is supposed to be much better than the 3GS. But what really has me jonesin’ is Android.
Android is the Google mobile Operating System based on Linux. While it took a little while for Android to get on it’s feet, there have been several Android handsets that have come out recently, that have really piqued my interest. One major handset that I’d really love to have, is the Motorola Droid. It boasts a 550Mhz processor, 3.7″ capacitive display, 854×400 resolution, etc… The only problem here is, it’s only on Verizon. While there is a GSM version called the Milestone, it doesn’t have the US 3G frequencies required by at&t, so I’d be stuck with EDGE. The second handset, is the “Google Phone”, or otherwise known as the Nexus One. This bad boy boasts a 3.7″ AMOLED screen, a 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, 800×480 resolution, 720×480 (or DVD resolution) video capture and 512MB of RAM. Only problem here? It’s only available on T-Mobile, meaning it’s 3G frequencies only work on T-Mobile, or in Europe. So where are at&t’s Android handsets you ask? There aren’t any. Verizon has two, T-Mobile has three, Sprint has two, but where is at&t? at&t have been extremely closed lip regarding Android handsets, however at CES, they’ve announced that Motorola, HTC and Dell are all bringing Android phones to at&t. So far, Motorola has announced the “Backflip”, which if you can tell by this link, it’s ugly as sin, not to mention, horrible specs:
http://gizmodo.com/5428379/leaked-att-android-phone-looks-unexpectedly-like-a-crappier-motorola-cliq
If that doesn’t frighten you, I don’t know what will. With Dell’s “Mini3″ phone, that doesn’t have a keyboard, or any exciting specs, that only leaves HTC to bring home the gold, and wow us with a desirable Android phone. at&t also announced that it will bring two Palm webOS phones some time in 2010. They don’t mention which phones they’re bringing, or anything else. So it could be a rehash of the Palm Pre (which, imo, would be very nice), or of the Pixi, or it could be an entirely new device. Some of you may have used an Android phone and hated it, and gone back to the iPhone; while that’s very tempting, I do like the ability to have open access to my phone whenever I want. “Why don’t you just jailbreak the iPhone” you say? I could, but jailbreaking it has the potential of being unstable and slow, especially in the iPhone 2G, and 3G. The ability to multitask is another major thing with Android. Say you’re in an IM conversation with a friend, and BAM, an SMS message pops up. What do you do? With iPhone OS, you only have two options, go to the message, or close the popup. Say it’s an important message and you choose to go to the message. What happens to your IM app? Because of the lack of multitasking, that IM app is closed, and you’re logged out. Now certain IM apps now feature push notifications, which is nice, but you still have to essentially log back in to your IM app when you go back into it. With Android, you don’t get an annoying pop up, and if the message is important, you can go to the message without worrying about closing the IM app, it’s running in the background. Very nice if you ask me.
Seeing as how it’s that time of year when Apple unveils it’s latest iPhone OS, there have been some rumors as to what iPhone OS 4.0 is going to bring. Thanks to Gizmodo and The Boy Genius Report, the rumors that are spreading around, are the following:
• There will be multi-touch gestures OS-wide. (Would make sense for that as the rumored OS for the iTablet is close if not the same as the iPhone)
• “A few new ways” to run applications in the background – multitasking.
• Many graphical and UI changes to make navigating through the OS easier and more efficient. We haven’t had this broken down, but we can only hope for improved notifications, a refreshed homescreen, etc.
• The update will supposedly be available for only the iPhone 3G and 3GS, but will “put them ahead in the smartphone market because it will make them more like full-fledged computers” more than any other phone to date. Everyone is “really excited.”
• The last piece of information is the most vague, but apparently there will be some brand new syncing ability for the contacts and calendar applications.
This is copied verbatim from Gizmodo, so thanks! Apple’s event is on the 27th, so I hope any of these things would make it into the new OS. But that brings us to the possibility of what’s going to be included in the new iPhone. Some people are saying an OLED screen, some are saying a 5MP camera (which doesn’t help if the senor in the phone is crap), better resolution, different casing. Who knows? Honestly, they do need to bump up the screen size, most definitely the resolution, (as the iPhone only has a resolution of 360×480), a better sensor in the camera, completely different case (i.e. go back to metal instead of plastic), and more RAM (as honestly, more RAM doesn’t hurt anything). I honestly can’t think of anything else to go into the new iPhone, unless they want to copy HTC’s HD2 (4.3″ screen, 480×800 resolution, 488MB RAM, 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, 5MP camera), I wouldn’t argue that at all.
When it comes down to it, Nokia is no longer in the smartphone game, even with their N97 or 5800 Xpress Music. Symbian OS just is not consumer friendly enough to be a major player here. I mean, I’d rather use a Windows Mobile phone, than a Nokia. (yeah, I know, I’m using a Nokia now…) Apple has to really step up it’s game if it wants to remain on top of the smartphone business, and not lose ground to Android. Better hardware, better software, that’s all I want, and right now, Android has both!
