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

From personal experience...

[Shoeler]

I've got both a Blackberry 8700g and an iPhone - the former used for work e-mail and the latter for personal stuff. Before I got the iPhone, I loved my Blackberry. It was a big improvement over my RAZR at the time, and fairly fast due to the server-side processing of the websites I visited with it.

Then I got the iPhone and now I'm probably going to dump my Blackberry. Having and using the iPhone has soured my Blackberry experience. I'm now tired of seeing the HTML in e-mails instead of viewing the full e-mail. (For those of you without a Blackberry, it absolutely sucks at HTML mail - it displays all the code instead of stripping it out, FWIW, I use the client-side push instead of server-side push so that may be the problem) Having the iPhone and seeing e-mail as it was meant to be seen changed that.

Similarly the mostly-full version of Safari has changed my usage of the Blackberry's crippled browser.

As the article states, the iPhone is not without its problems. Safari crashes (I've never seen the Blackberry browser ever crash) semi-often, say once every 2-3 days in my usage, and its lack of Flash support is annoying. I haven't missed Java yet.

Data speed is it's albatross, but with the "real" web, I've personally been able to look beyond its mobile speed deficiency. When it's on a fast Wifi network, it REALLY shines and I'm still amazed by how well it does in rendering sites. Youtube has never looked better.

Re:how connected do we have to be?

[Zelos]

There are hundreds of phones that basically just make phone calls. And there are plenty of phones that can do most of the fancy stuff, but are still small, simple and easy to use (like my Nokia 6300). 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.

iPhone vs N800

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, the iPhone is easily the best browser on a phone. But has anyone compared the browsing experience with a Nokia N800? I realize they're not direct competitors since the Nokia is not a phone, but I don't call much an my cell phone and I usually have Wifi access anyway. So I'm looking for a comparison of the internet-only functionality between these two. The N800 might edge out the iPhone here thanks to its higher resolution display, but it doesn't have the nifty zooming and panning functions. Has anyone here used both of these?

Re:What about the nokia n800?

[theManInTheYellowHat]

I am very interested in OpenMoko and the Nokia Maemo Garage. Both the Nokia Internet Tablet and the OpenMoko are Arm based and perhaps the leap from one to the other would not be so great.

If the openmoko could run the apps that have been ported to Maemo it would be awesome.

I use my 770 for GPS primarily, but it is a pretty decent gizmo for quite a few different apps.

Pocket Space

[brunes69]

Because real people like me who don't wear jackets don't want to have to have TWO things on their belt. One is bad enough.

Re:Ya nice benchmarks

[npsimons]

You offended the cult of Apple by insinuating that the iPhone was anything less than perfect. Thats why you got marked troll.

Slashdot, a site originally all about Linux and similarly geeky things, has been overrun with Apple fanboys, Microsoft apologists and all around assholes. There a few who are extremely insightful (most of them I have marked as friends), and you learn to try to ignore the Apple hype articles. What annoys me (besides the Apple hype) is that I have the Apple section turned off, yet I still see hype about the iPhone.

I've discussed this problem before, and I've been down-modded for pointing out the obvious and saying anything but nice things about Apple. I'm no longer surprised or amused. My best advice: avoid like the plague any article with the words "Apple", "iPhone", or "Mac OS" in them. Look elsewhere for intelligent discussion.

Re:Opera anyone?

[A Friendly Troll]

I love how the article glosses over Opera. It's barely mentioned once, and certainly not looked at. Yeah, it's silly. Of course mobile browsing comes on top using - surprise! - the iPhone, when the other tested alternatives are absolutely horrible. Makes me wonder about the article's agenda, especially with the mention of "trouble installing a third-party browser"...

Opera Mini already has 0.24% of the entire browser "market share", according to some statistics. Now, that's impressive, especially when you convert that percentage to something more absolute. For example, there is one Opera Mini user for every 19 Safari users, or one for every 60 Firefox users.

But is it surprising? No. Opera Mini has become the mobile browser of choice for a lot of people. It was the first browser to make a real push on the mobile market and truly bring the web to mobile phones. And it shows - not only does Opera Mini often come preinstalled on a lot of phones (as does its more capable older sister, Opera Mobile), but you have people wanting to install it before anything else.

It's a work of wonder. I love it.

Thanks for testing out the crappy ones

[Com2Kid]

Heaven forbid anyone ever compare Apple's $500 wonder to a like-priced device from another manufacturer. Why does everyone coo over the cruddy screen, when I can get 640x480 and 800x480 screens on other smart phones?

T-Mobile Ameo, 640x480 screen and real 3G broadband speeds.

Or wait awhile and pick up a phone in the I-Mate Ultra line. They all look sexy, and they all have a screen that blows the iPhone out of the water. And of course they all support real 3G speeds as well.

Or heck, just never get lost again.

All those prices by the way? Unlocked phones. If you are going to sign up for a contract, why pay $500 for a phone, when you can get a high quality (albeit not top of the line) Windows Mobile phone for under $100.

Hell, don't like Windows Mobile? Go with Symbian. They have some high-res devices that are a lot cheaper than $500.

For $500 you could almost BUILD your own cell phone and get something far more capable then what Apple is dishing out. Does anybody know of an after market supplier of GSM or CDMA chips? :-D

Re:What about the nokia n800?

[electricalen]

Any iPhone owners want to comment on how the iPhone handles a slashdot comments page with a couple hundred comments?

I am away from home a lot and got the iPhone in part to keep up with Slashdot, CNN, etc. It's great if you keep in mind that it's not supposed to replace a laptop or desktop for browsing. The browsing experience in my opinion is far better than other smartphones I have used.

To answer your question about large Slashdot pages, it has some strange behavior when loading any large page. It brings up the page quickly, but then takes an unusually long time to finish loading the page, even on WI-FI. It does let you scroll and zoom while it's loading, but it's terrible. Sometimes it ignores your finger scrolling, and other times it thinks you clicked when you clearly scrolled. You sometimes have to try scrolling 2 or 3 times for it to respond. Double tapping is also not a good idea while it's loading, it mistakes it for a click a lot. If you wait for the page to finish, it works great.

I'm not an iPhone apologist, even though I own one, I know it's flaws and work around them. Before I bought one, I had no ties to Apple and didn't care about the company, only the phone usability. I can say that after spending some time at a Nokia store trying out the N95, N800, working with my Friends' Treo 755p and Blackberry (recent one), I was amazed at the iPhone when I went to the Apple store. I'm just giving my opinion, but I suggest people try one out with an open mind and see it for yourself.

I was disappointed to see that this article appears to be biased to the iPhone. From the very beginning of the article, it doesn't put all the phones on an equal level and just compare them. It puts the iPhone on a pedestal and hypes it up. I would like to see a good unbiased article that really compares the usability, clarity, features, and efficiency of browsing the web on the different phones.

Re:Leader of the Pack

[rsborg]

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?

Why are POP and a camera "basic" features? I never use my camera in my phone and in my last one (T610), I would inadvertently click the camera button during a call and it would crash the OS.

What you consider "basic" is "irrelevant" to others, and that's why you don't see them on all phones.

The part where I agree with you is that most phones that do offer some of these features either do them so poorly or make the UI/OS so unworkable that the features becomes drawbacks to the product (Motorola, I'm looking at you).

btw, while we're listing our "fav features"... here's mine (that most phones still don't get right):

• Clear crisp voice calls
• A good SMS client
• A good call history with no artificial limits on the storage (that reports incoming unlisted numbers as "unlisted" or "unknown", but with a call timestamp (yes some phones still fail this test)
• A good contact manager that allows me to enter at least the street address of the person calling in addition to a number
• A good synchronization system
• Bluetooth for earpieces and car integration

Notice I said nothing about cameras, mp3s or POP access. I prefer to use devices that do those functions well, and I would much rather have my phone do what IT does well (ie, some PDA features are a natural convergence). Do I expect all phones to have my features... NO!

Re:Nokia E70

[caluml]

Want to track yourself for the world to see?

Re:Nokia E70

[popo]

I have a Nokia E61 (Symbian60) running Opera (not Opera Mini, which blows except for the speed increase of the proxy servers) and I have to say IMHO it beats the pants off anything on Blackberry or Treo. The wifi+ smooth scrolling and fullscreen options makes for an amazing browsing experience -- and it does a great job re-rendering pages for the small screen.

I'd also like to point out that the year is 2007 and I just PURCHASED MY FIRST WEB BROWSER (Opera for the E61). I never in my life thought I'd actually pay for browser software, but it's a damn nice browser.