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.

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