“A smart phone’s power comes as much from its operating system as it does from the capabilities the vendor builds in. To help you at least narrow down your choices, we tested four smart phones, each based on a different operating system, to find out which platform is better for particular tasks,” David Haskin and Ryan Faas report for Computerworld.
To represent their different platforms, Haskin and Faas tested:
• Apple’s iPhone 3G, based on a mobile version of OS X
• HTC Touch Dual, based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.1
• Nokia’s E71, based on the S60 variant of the Symbian platform
• Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Curve 8310, based on BlackBerry’s proprietary operating system
Haskin and Faas report, “We compared how well these phones performed four common road-warrior tasks: browsing the Web, sending and receiving e-mail, taking a photo and emailing it, and playing music and streaming video. We felt these tasks were typical of what most smart phone users need to do, and would also test the power and usability of both the devices and their operating systems.”
Here’s what Haskin and Faas report they found:
• “Browsing the Web” Winner: Apple iPhone
• “Email” Winner: Nokia E71 (With its excellent keypad, was the most satisfying smart phone to use for writing e-mail messages, even though it doesn’t auto-suggest names when addressing messages. The iPhone was a close second in this test simply because, subjectively, we preferred the Nokia’s keypad.)
MacDailyNews Note: Remember when word processors came on the scene and some clung to their typewriters for way, way too long? Someday we’ll all look back on these mobile device plastic key clingers as the Luddites they are.
• “Photography” Winners: Apple iPhone and BlackBerry Curve 8310 (tie)
• “Entertainment” Winner: Apple’s iPhone (Easily the most entertaining of the four smart phones.)
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
“Suckage Factor” – Winblows Mobile, hands down.
Just got back from the Phillies parade. What a mad house!
I used to own the BlackBerry 8830 and now own the iPhone. I got it mainly for its multi-media capabilities and web browser. Nothing comes close to the browser on the iPhone for me and I love having my iPod with me all the time without having to carry my Touch along with my BB. I love the iPhone.
Having said that, the iPhone is no match to the BB when it comes to e-mail push. Sure, MobileMe has really improved recently but with the BB, all my e-mails were instantly pushed and I miss that. Would I go back to the BB, NO WAY. I can live with the 15 min delay.
I also prefer typing on my iPhone over the BB now that I have gotten used to it. I can type much faster with two thumbs.
iPhone Biatch!
PK… what delay? I get my emails instantly. I just email a picture from my work email and a few seconds later my iPod said I had a new message. Did you enable Push?… because you can.
Jesus, I am talking about instant push to Hotmail, Gmail etc. Those are still fetch with a 15 min delay. MobileMe is the only push. With the iPhone, I can’t even get Hotmail to work easily (without 3rd party options) and in the BB, I got instant push.
Do you have something that I don’t have?
I find mobleme still weak. I have push enabled on my iPhone and still have to force to check for new mail at times. Very inconsistent 🙁
@ PK. I hear ya! Same issue here… I still have to use a Blackberry for work, but if I could ditch it and just use the iPhone I would…
@Cubert…
How many cars did you overturn?
@PK…
Set up your iPhone to receive email from your mac.com or me.com email, and then have gmail and hotmail forward mail to that account. Should solve most of the delayed push issue.
MobileMe had a rocky start, I’ve been along for the ride the whole time. Anyone still having issues may need to start from scratch and set up MobileMe again on your iPhone, Mac, etc…
These last couple weeks MobileMe has been rock solid doing everything it should be doing. Maybe its the drugs, but I could swear my Mac Mail.app is pushing with MobileMe and not waiting for the 15 min interval. To test this, if I have Mail.app open and access Mail on my iPhone, I delete a message, and a second or two later, its gone from the Mail.app, and vice versa. Tells me true push has been implemented all around.
Funny that the Windows mobile device consistently placed last and was most cumbersome. I guess it’s a good thing that MS is stubborn and doesn’t “get it.”
For some weird reason I like using the WritingPad app for e-mails, around 40 words per minute is much nicer than 15 words with any small keyboard.
Time to stop calling it a SmartPhone.
There’s smart phones for others, but there’s intelligent for the rest of us. iPhone – the INTELLIGENT Phone.
@ wjw1
Soooo, then….
How would you call Windows Mobile?
A Dumb Phone?
@Spark,
Only 6. The ones with Florida tags, of course
“Remember when word processors came on the scene and some clung to their typewriters for way, way too long? Someday we’ll all look back on these mobile device plastic key clingers as the Luddites they are.”
Great Line, Great Quote. Nice article!
I used to get push; but it seems like since a recent restore, nothing gets pushed until I wake up the phone. That goes for Yahoo and MobileMe mail. Very odd.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1672?locale=en_GB
I love my iPhone but its camera is one of its weakest features. Like to see it improved.
@AC agree the Camera is a waist of space on the iPhone.
As Steve Jobs said we don’t make crap it’s not in our DNA, well then you should have left the Camera off my most excellent iPhone.
all these ‘side by side’ smartphone comparison articles from PC-oriented web sites always leave out the one other major category of major consequence for users – applications. there are the basics, like calendars, and then games, and then all the rest. of course this omission is purposeful – the iPhone/App Store blows all the others away in quantity, variety, quality, easy installation, and price.
“Remember when word processors came on the scene and some clung to their typewriters for way, way too long”
That’s not a valid comparison, because typists didn’t have to go from typing exactly the key they wanted to trying to press an image of it smaller than their finger, missing and perpetually correcting. The interface remained fundamentally the same.
You can bet if all word processors had iPhone like touchscreen interfaces for typing we’d still be using typewriters today.
This review seemed more like a review of four phones than any meaningful review of the operating systems.
So if you’re going to review phones rather than phone OSs, why not expand the list a little.
Want a Blackberry or WinMobile device with a decent physical keyboard? Many exist.
Want a good browser on WinMobile? Don’t use IE.
Photography? Seriously, not one 8 megapixel phone in the test?
Music, why not test some music phones? many have better interfaces than the iPhone (Sorry the iPhone is a big step back compared to any clickwheel iPod when it comes to use as a music player).
Also add in gps/mapping.
And application choice.
Then when you’ve found the actual best phone in each category (not just the best among what they chose to test), perhaps you could total up what OSes each one ran…
A good browser on Windows Mobile would be Safari on an iPhone – or do you know of a browser that has the same capabilities as the iPhone? (hint – there isnt one)
The iPhone may not do music as good as your older iPod, in your opinion, but is there some other PHONE that comes even close to the brilliant iPod within the iPhone? (hint – there isnt one)
Application choice? The app store is easily the best out there.
And BTW, WTF is a ‘music phone’ when its at home?
Like most people, I find the iPhone to be so much better than ALL the rest, that to put it in the same product category as Blackberries etc. seems very wrong.
Look, face it, oh thou from Winnipeg. Your North American phones simply don’t compare to most phones in the UK, where a lot of them – even the most basic ones – have MP3 players and headphone sockets. That’s a music phone. Oh – I’m sorry, do you not know what MP3 is? Let me explain…
Sorry to be a little sarcastic but the USA and Canada are not the only tech-savvy nations in the universe. Mobile phones were first marketed in Scandinavia (e.g. Nokia and the old Ericsson) before spreading to the UK, Europe and only then to Canada.
P.S. I do agree with your point about browsers and the iPhone’s built-in iPod.