Smartphone Shootout

An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek's David DeJean makes the mistake of trying to compare the experience of Web surfing on a BlackBerry, Palm, and HTC smartphones to the experience on the iPhone. According to the DeJean, the three don't come close, but it's very interesting to read about the pros and cons of what can (and can't) be done with current mobile hardware and software."

Comments

how connected do we have to be?

[yagu]

I've posted around this topic before. While it might be an interesting technical and "can we do it" discussion, ultimately (IMO) the "smaller is better" and "everything in one device" approach seems doomed to fail.

I liken it to the early days of cell phones (albeit not tiny) where it was new, it was exciting, and vendors were rushing to flood the market, while consumers were rushing to get their new status gadget.

However, instead of making better and better phones, the trend is to cram more crap into the phones, to cram more threads into the cell compression streams (with increasingly horrible sound quality over the years), all to get the most out of the market before users realize it's just not that great an experience.

Even the revolutionary approach of the iPhone is rife with limitations. The battery life makes it almost prohibitive to venture off the "use it as a phone", i.e., if you want to use it for music and video, you'd better forget about a full day's worth of phone service -- the battery isn't going to let you do that.

Also, while the buttonless interface is cool, the screen is nice, it's still tiny compared to necessary space to really surf in a browser. Even with its cool expansion feature, it sucks.

Do people really need to be that connected? Probably not.

Re:how connected do we have to be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do people really need to be that connected? Probably not.

I think the question you meant to ask is, "do I really need to be that connected." You probably answered correctly.

But what about the question you actually asked? Do people need to be that connected? Well I really need to be that connected and I chose my phone with that in mind. If a lot of other people agree with me, they'll make a similar choice. If no one felt they needed this, these platforms would die out, wouldn't they? But that's not really happening, is it?

Re:how connected do we have to be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the revolutionary approach of the iPhone is rife with limitations. The battery life makes it almost prohibitive to venture off the "use it as a phone", i.e., if you want to use it for music and video, you'd better forget about a full day's worth of phone service -- the battery isn't going to let you do that.

If you're using the features of your iPhone enough to run the battery down in less than 24 hours, you've got way too much time on your hands. Either that, or you're using the iPhone as your primary business phone. In which case it might be a good idea to get an extra cradle for the ole' desk.

Re:how connected do we have to be?

[nine-times]

I have to disagree with you. The problem with the "all-in-one" model has traditionally been that you get a device that's a not-even-jack of all trades, master of nothing. There's a tremendous effort to cram everything possible into one device without any good design on how to have these features coexist. The result, in my assessment, has always been a device that isn't truly worth carrying around.

I've tried using devices from Palm, Blackberry, and Microsoft, and in each case I feel that same annoyance-- it does a lot of things, but does each of them too poorly. And they're big and clunky. Now, I have an iPhone, and it doesn't do everything, but what it does it does pretty well. Many have complained the that the touch screen interface would make it hard to type, but for the most part those complaints weren't made from experience. The touch screen, for the most part, has successfully navigated the interface problem of having all-in-one devices. Instead of trying to come up with one set of buttons that serves all the different functions, you make the buttons change depending on what you're doing.

You complain about the battery, but as an iPhone owner, I'll tell you that I regularly go a full day or two without charging it. That's not the best battery lifetime I've ever gotten, but it's acceptable. Admittedly, I mostly use the phone, PIM, and iPod functions. I don't really use it to watch video very often, and I only use the internet capabilities for the built-in e-mail client. Every once in a while, when I'm caught in a bind and need access to some particular bit of information, I'll use the web browser, and that's it.

As far as mobile web browsing goes, no, you don't really need 24/7 connectivity, and if you need to do very much, it's better to use a desktop client. However, now that I have a web browser in my pocket, I can tell you that I do find it more useful than I would have thought. I've been in situations where I couldn't find the location of something or I needed to find someone's phone number, and I was able to fetch that information on my iPhone web browser pretty easily. I would have otherwise been pretty lost, and had to wait until I found an internet connection to find the thing I was looking for, so the whole thing was really helpful.

And though I wouldn't advise using the iPhone on EDGE for heavy everyday surfing, it really will work in a pinch. You'll be able to load a real website, the website will render properly most of the time, and it isn't entirely frustrating to browse around a little. Using the web browser in short bursts won't drain your battery too terribly quickly. EDGE is slow and uses more battery than WiFi, but like I said, it'll do if you really need a web page or two right then.

So if all you're saying is that the iPhone isn't a good replacement for your laptop or desktop computer, I'll go along with that. But if you're saying it isn't useful to have your e-mail client, MP3 player, web browser, calendar, address book, Google maps, digital camera, and cell phone be all in one slim, easy to use device, then I think you're crazy. If you think the iPhone doesn't execute this decently well for most people's uses, then I think you're either biased or ignorant.

I guess you could also argue that we should all slow down, stop using our fancy gadgets and doodads, and just not be "connected" most of the time. Do most of us absolutely "need" a cellphone? I guess not. Human civilization went for a long time without any internet or telephones at all. But all things considered, I'd rather have a cell phone than a landline, and I'd rather have mobile e-mail than not. Ideally, in my mind, I wouldn't have to have a "phone" at all, but I could have a wireless IM/VOIP/e-mail device. However, you need ubiquitous wireless internet access in order to do that, and nobody is really providing that yet except cell phone companies. Cell phone companies won't sell a IM/VOIP/e-mail device unless it's also a phone.

Re:how connected do we have to be?

[abes]

How useful such a device is to you definately depends on your lifestyle, where you live, and personal preferences. With that said, while I do not expect to do the same type of work on my iphone as my laptop, they both occupy two different needs of mine. Living in NYC requires me to look random things up when I'm walking around. The iPhone is perfect for this. Or random conversations where some rnd factoid was needed, it sre beats pulling out a laptop.

So, yeah not as good as a full-fledged computer for some things, but it's not supposed to be a replacement. That's one of the reasons I never understood all the complaints about the speed of edge. Sure, faster is better, but realistically the amount of web browsing you are going to do is more limited by the small size of it than anything. If you are doing a massive amount of web browsing, then do yourself a favor and get a real computer. If, on the other hand, you are waiting for someone who is late (everyone is around here), if's f'ing great.

Also, in my personal experience, the battery life is great. Which in part due to the lower speed edge chip.

Re:how connected do we have to be?

[prockcore]

Yeah I can make phone calls with my iPhone with no compromises on the phone experience

I'd say lack of voice dialing is a compromise on the phone experience.

Re:how connected do we have to be?

[Gadget_Guy]

Do people really need to be that connected? Probably not.

And do those same people really need to be contactable 24 hours a day? If not, then they do not even need a mobile phone in the first place.

Seriously, this is the same argument that people use against mobile/cell phones before they actually own one. But once they get used to having one (and to leaving it turned on all the time - yes Mum, I'm talking to you) then most people get dependant on the technology. I find now that I feel terribly isolated if I ever go out without my phone - especially if I am meeting friends somewhere and have no way of letting them know if I am running late.

I started using the internet on mobile phones years ago when I was into auction sites. I find that it puts you into a different mindset to be permanently connected to the net. It seems natural to always have access to the phonebook, or street map, or to look up a movie review while browsing in the DVD shop, or read the newspaper on the train, or grab the train timetable, or fill in a spare 5 minutes by checking out slashdot. Yes, it is all stuff that you can live without; at least, until you get used to having it.

There are ways around the screen resolution issues. I have a Nokia 9300 with a screen resolution of 640x200 which, when combined with Opera's Fit to Screen mode, does a really impressive job. However, if I find a site that still doesn't fit well - or is too slow to download - then I use Skweezer to reduce the amount of clutter in the HTML source code. Have a look at the original article when skweezed. Not quite as good as the print page version as linked by _PimpDaddy7_ below, but still a great improvement. There are some sites that I skweeze when browsing them on the desktop just to clean up the crap. I imagine even MySpace pages might look almost viewable using this site.

But you really should not get too hung up on the screen size issue. They are not intended to be desktop replacements. But if you need to make a last minute bid on eBay, then you can live with the slight inconvenience of having to scroll a bit more. It is more about connecting the internet with your life away from the computer, rather than reproducing the experience of sitting at your desk.

Re:how connected do we have to be?

[mattatwork]

If I want a new ringtone I just bluetooth the mp3/4 across. I can't believe that *all* those phones aren't available in the US. Ringtones are a big money maker for the cell companies and for the recording industry. My wife and I upgraded our phones with verizon and were shocked at how much it cost to download one simple ringtone (it was like 2 or 3 dollars!). I'd imagine with all the P2P sharing/piracy of music, the RIAA or someone else related to the recording industry has probably shut down the possibility of freely sharing music between your PC and your phone in the US....

Re:how connected do we have to be?

[mrchaotica]

This situation is bullshit, but what can I do?

What, are you kidding? Quit buying ringtones, stupid!

Consumer whores like you are what enable the industry to be as screwed up as it is!

Re:how connected do we have to be?

[mrchaotica]

How much shit do you own?

I own a reasonable amount of stuff, if that's what you mean. However, none of it was "shit" when I bought it.

Anyway, back to the point: nobody needs ringtones. My phone, for example, sounds -- gasp -- like a ringing phone when I get a call! If you don't like the phone company's business tactics, then don't support them. Deal with not having a ringtone, or get yourself a phone that you can load them on yourself. But don't reward the assholes for attempting to screw you! You're already bending over for the basic monthly plan; buying extra crap that you, by all rights, should be able to copy from your computer for free is equivalent to saying "thank you sir, may I have another?!"

And you know what? Like xENoLocO, I don't like paying for my phone to access the Internet. So, what I did is call up the phone company and told them to turn off the functionality. Now, even if I hit the little globe icon button on my phone by mistake, it tells me "connection unsuccessful" and doesn't charge me. Amazing!

Re:how connected do we have to be?

[mrchaotica]

You're assuming I purchase ringtones frequently.... I've purchased 2 ring tones in the last year.

No I'm not; twice is enough! (Once is reasonable, because you don't see the bandwidth charges until afterwards. The second time, though, you should have known better!)

In fact, you've gone beyond assumptions and preemptively called me stupid, and a "consumer whore".

Maybe it hurts, but nevertheless it continues to appear to be the truth.

If I do want new ringtones, though, I have no option but to buy them at $2.50 a pop.

False! You have three other options:

• Deal with not having the ringtone, even though you want it, because you realize it's a rip-off
• Get a different phone, one which can be connected to the computer and have ringtones loaded on it that way. (Or it may be that your carrier has crippled your phone; in that case, get a different carrier.)
• Hack your phone to un-cripple it (although from a "punish-the-assholes-responsible" perspective, switching carriers would be better).

Personally, I don't care about ringtones (as I prefer my phone to sound like a phone). But I do care about games. As such, I would like to get some for my RAZR (on Cingular). However, I refuse to do so on principle, because I ought to be able to download free ones to my computer and transfer them to my phone. Sooner or later I'll figure out how to accomplish that; meanwhile, I'll simply not play games on the phone. It's really Not. That. Hard!

Look, if you want to complain about the phone company being a rip-off, that's fine. In fact, I encourage it! If you want to buy ringtones and assorted other crap (e.g. 2kb "wallpapers" for $30, hyperbolically speaking), that's fine too (but I don't encourage it). However, if you try to do both -- that is, complain about how they're ripping you off while continuing to reward their behavior by buying their shit, then you are indeed a consumer whore, whether you like it or not!

Conclusion

[_PimpDaddy7_]

Print page:
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArt icle.jhtml?articleID=201202372

Funny:
One thing that became obvious to me as I looked at these various Web interfaces is that data speed isn't as important as good software.

You think????

The good news, as you might expect, is the Apple iPhone. The genius of Apple is its ability, over and over again, to completely reinvent, from the ground up, the user interface for hardware, and to support it with brilliant software. Web browsing on the iPhone is a paradigm shift, a completely different experience -- just as the BlackBerry was, in its time, a paradigm shift.

The elements of the technology that makes the iPhone so different will find their way into other devices, just as the BlackBerry's thumbpad and push e-mail have become more or less standard on smartphones. Touchscreens and direct interaction with the Web page will become standards of their own sort because they've come along just in time as computing, both personal and business, moves to the Web.

I've stated this to many people who've asked me about the iPhone. Even if it FAILS, it's technology, features, etc. will be copied into many other phones.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Browsing the internet on a phone is like taking a road trip on a moped.

Biased

[DesertBlade]

I only use mobile browsing to look up addresses and checking the news. Using beyond411 on the blackberry makes searches fast and easy.

Even before the review starts it defends the iPhone with it's virtual keyboard and then how it's screen is in a class by itself.

Opera anyone?

[Rayonic]

I love how the article glosses over Opera. It's barely mentioned once, and certainly not looked at.

I guess the ability to run a third-party browser would be an "unfair comparison" to the iPhone.

Leader of the Pack

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even if it FAILS, it's technology, features, etc. will be copied into many other phones."

This is a very good point. Even though the above article was obviously written by an iPhone fanboi of the nth degree, you must admire Apple for creating such a media marketing blitz to drive technology. Tech companies want to emulate and then we only reap the benefits. I bought a Creative Zen instead of an iPhone, but I admire Apple for pushing the competition.

The cell phone offering is truly sad in North America. The same old phones with the same old features churned out with no real mashing of the technologies that we all want. How hard is it to truly create a phone with a camera, mp3 player, POP, and instant messenger? Not hard? Why then can you only usually find 1 out of the 30 phones through a cell provider have those *basic* features?

I don't like the iPhone. I've never liked the Apple interface. I'm not a big fan of touch screens. I don't find the need to browse via a cellphone, although eventually it might come in handy. I don't like the proprietary expensive monthly charge via AT&T. It's a moot point to even talk about iPhones as a Canadian anyway, Rogers - what a choice. With the price of an iPhone, you can buy a used laptop and wifi card with infinitely better performance, toss in skype for the hell of it.

But there's an upside .. I'm waiting for other companies which will make better hardware with better choices.. cheaper. I'll let the fanbois and hordes of non-thinking automatons that gobbled up the iPod have their equally as retarded iPhone. God bless innovation and competition.

Re:Leader of the Pack

[bjourne]

"Even if it FAILS, it's technology, features, etc. will be copied into many other phones." This is a very good point. Even though the above article was obviously written by an iPhone fanboi of the nth degree, you must admire Apple for creating such a media marketing blitz to drive technology. Tech companies want to emulate and then we only reap the benefits. I bought a Creative Zen instead of an iPhone, but I admire Apple for pushing the competition.

That is certainly the optimists view. What tech companies want is profit, and Apple certainly has generated quite a bit of that, so yes, other companies will definitely imitate Apple. But it is not technological innovation that is selling the iPhone, it is marketing. Apple spent hundreds of millions of dollars before the iPhone was launched trying to hype its phone and they are probably spending even more now when it is on the market.

That is the lession other mobile phone manufacturers will learn from Apple. Expect many more lame attempts to create "buzz" in the future. People, even technology enthusiasts, are sheep and it works. Paying Madonna, Brad Pitt or whatever the cool dudes are called these days millions to flash your phone is a much better investment than paying those millions to Q&A engineers. And that is what we're seeing with the iPhone. The software is of beta quality and updates are pushed through iTunes. Safari crashes frequently. Well I have a three year old Sony Ericsson K608i phone whose browser has never ever crashed and I have never had to install any stupid update.

Re:Nokia E70

[duranaki]

What? What is this strange Symbian and Series 60 you speak of? The most prolific smart phone in the world based on an OS designed from the ground up as a mobile connected OS? Never heard of it.

Re:What about the nokia n800?

[Paul Carver]

I just bought a Nokia 770, the previous generation of the n800 but with a much more reasonable price. It works ok on many sites, but struggles with Slashdot's commenting system. Collapsed comments don't open up when you click them. Any iPhone owners want to comment on how the iPhone handles a slashdot comments page with a couple hundred comments?

The Nokia 770's sceen resolution blows the iPhone away, but the screen is physically much smaller than I had thought it would be. It's actually almost identical in size to the screen on the Palm TX although much higher resolution.

My thought EXACTLY

[scuba_steve_1]

Opera Mini 3 and beta 4 are very impressive browsers...and beta 4 shares many of the same features of Safari, including page zoom.

A HUGE advantage of PalmOS-based and Windows-based phones is that you can actually add software to them. Thus, such a comparison is meaningless. Don't like Blazer? Replace it with Opera. What are you doing on the iPhone? Sure Safari is great...but let's talk about the datebook application that takes half a dozen clicks to set the time of an appt (rather than me just clicking on the time band on a PalmOS unit)...or being forced to delete email messages one at a time (unlike a PalmOS unit...on which I frequently hit "select all" and then "delete" if I have read all the message already on my desktop). Even those advantages to palmOS are against the DEFAULT applications...and both applications can be replaced with countless other commercial, shareware, and freeware alternatives. Extrapolate to all of the other applications installed.

Yes, the Palm Blazer web browser is insanely lame...and most users will not replace it. I am not making excuses for Palm. They should have replaced this application with something more powerful years ago...and Apple is innovating...and I welcome our new overlords...if only to motivate the other slackers, but let's be fair. These love letters to the iPhone masking themselves as fair and unbiased reviews are getting tiring.

Here's my distilled version of the article...made objective...at least for the PalmOS:

- The iPhone browser rocks...and it is a good thing because you are locked into it. Oh yeah, connection speed is horrible unless you are using wifi. Not exactly a browser issue, but hard to ignore.

- Palm blazer is okay, but has problems with many sites and takes awhile to render pages.

- You can replace Blazer with Opera, but you'll have to find a JVM first, install it, and then twiddle settings forever to make it stable. Why the heck does Palm make Java apps second class citizens? Oh yeah, that is a business decision. Nevermind. Like most Palm users, I can't wait until "universe" gets out of beta...and, unlike the iPhone, I'll actually be able to install it.

Man, if Apple would just open up the iPhone and obviate the need for folks to reverse engineer every application, I would just shut my pie hole. The availability of one terminal application isn't cutting it for me. Guess I'll see what the future holds...and hopefully it's going to be a 3G future.

Re:My thought EXACTLY

[Paul Carver]

You make a good point, but my experience with Opera on Palm TX is that it just doesn't work. I tried everything. Followed lots of howtos on the Internet. Tweaked lots of settings. It does nothing but crash.

I can think of no company that is as utterly disappointing as Palm. I suppose there's probably some behind the scenes story of how someone pillaged the company in the manner of the 80's corporate raiders who bought companies for the purpose of stripping them down and selling the parts. I can think of no other explanation for how any company that had as brilliant a product as the Palm Personal/Professional, could so completely bungle every single step of the way.

Re:Ya nice benchmarks

[svendsen]

Man moderators are on crack today. Look did you read the article?

He starts off saying both virtual and normal QWERTY are bad. No examples, no proof, nothing. BUT yet then in another part states why the iPhone screen is so much better giving specific pixel info.

So how come he doesn't go into detail then about the pros and cons on the keyboard? Why spend so much detail in one section (display) but not really any details at all about the input?

His rules that he created are biased. You can;t use the devices then create the rules. He should have gone out and asked people what they expected, used that for the rules then compare. He made the rules when he already knew the answer. That has 0 value.

Why didn't he put other browsers on the smart phones that accept them and give feedback on those? If he was going to go on what is the default fine, but since he gave so much detail on the screen size why didnt he say things in the browser review about 3rd party options may solve the issues.

He does all the real details on the thing the iPhone is very strong on (display) and doesn;t put the same detail to his other rules. Something does not add up.

So please tell me how my post was a troll?

Direction of Connection

[SuperKendall]

How connected do we have to be? I would say, not very as I hate other things in the outside world arbitrarily connecting to ME.

However - the thing I find useful about devices like the iPhone is being able to arbitrarily connect to the outside world at a time of my choosing. I love to be able to review maps, or do quick lookups, or glance at email (again when I want - I have even disabled automatic updates of email as I don't like the hourly chime that I have new mail). That is what connectivity was supposed to be all about, a tool to augment our abilities - not a source of arbitrary bother.

However, instead of making better and better phones, the trend is to cram more crap into the phones

A trend which the iPhone breaks by giving you functions that are completely separate, and can have interfaces that make sense thanks to an all virtual UI. What we all hate about convergence is usually how poor either presentation or input is for any one of the myriad functions, which a virtual interface nicely sidesteps. Even the keyboard corrects problems with interface, when you are entering a number in a phone field for a contact the number keyboard is primary, and when entering a URL space is replaced by "/" and ".com" since you're probably going to need those more.

Even the revolutionary approach of the iPhone is rife with limitations. The battery life makes it almost prohibitive to venture off the "use it as a phone", i.e., if you want to use it for music and video, you'd better forget about a full day's worth of phone service -- the battery isn't going to let you do that.

Actually that's plain wrong. Music uses almost no power at all, and even video can go for quite some time - you can easily watch a few hours of video and have power enough left for the rest of the day as a phone. If here you are really thinking "plane flight" (for who really watches hours of video in a normal day on a small device?) then you can use one of the myriad iPad external battyer packs that keep the iPhone topped off while you watch video or listen to music.

Also, while the buttonless interface is cool, the screen is nice, it's still tiny compared to necessary space to really surf in a browser. Even with its cool expansion feature, it sucks.

What you got wrong here is that you do not realize now much better a tiny screen can be if you increase the resolution. A full web page is readable sideways (I can read any text on the Slashdot homepage without zooming in with teh phone sideways, and can read all the article and story text with it upright). Also with teh ease of navigating around a page and quickly zooming it's just about as easy as reading a full screen - I have found myself simply browsing on the iPhone a lot without bothering to go get my laptop, when I just want to browse for a while.

1280x1024 on a 15" monitor?

[smurfsurf]

Most webpages are designed to be shown in 1280x1024? And these fit on a 15" monitor?

Yeah right. What wonderland is he living in?

Mobile communications and PDAs

[mritunjai]

Looking at comments about PDAs and their functionality (or the lack of it), I'd like to share my experience too.

I'm a software engineer and need to be connected most of the times. Recently, I was in a situation where I had to be in hospital for around a month to attend to my father, and let me tell you, the laptops don't really last much without a power outlet and Wifi isn't ubiquitous. Its anoter thing in normal life to drive to starbucks and check news and mail while sipping coffee, and its another thing to attend to client calls and mails while sitting at place you don't want yourself and your family to be in! The irony is, it is these places that you'd need the connectivity the most! You can drive to another coffee shop, if the connectivity sucks, you can't go around shifting to other hospitals for the same reasons!

I have a Sony Ericsson W800i NON-smartphone. The phone only supports basic GPRS (think 48kbps, yep thats bits), and I'm glad that I'd found the combination that served me well for all my business needs and enabled me to attend the family at the same time.

1. Get Gmail mobile app: Its a Java MIDP application, and it just bulldozes all email clients out there. Nothing like to be able to access all your mails even if you have low speed connecivity.

2. Get Opera Mini: This (Java MIDP) application lets you use even secured sites. Can't tell you how many times it saved my ass. Being able to watch Youtube in free time is one thing, being able to access online banking site when you most need it is another!

3. Inbuilt IMAP/POP email client with SSL: You want instant email, its there. The client doesn't suck that much and it gets the job (notifying you of mail) done pretty well. You can use it to have always on access to your corporate account.

In short, Java on mobiles absolutely rocks and serves pretty well. iPhone has that one down for me (and the reason I'd stay away from it). Get the basic "life-saver" apps first and setup well, and *only* then look for frills like flash, 3G (basic GPRS is ubiquitous, never found a place where it doesn't work!) and touch screens.

Oh, and choose your phone well. If your phone has tendency to lock-up thrice a day, or your browser crashes randomly, you might find it very disappointing on the rainy day!

- Akhilesh