Todor's Smartphone Blog

iPhone 3GS (iOS 3.0) [I know, I know, this is outdated...]

• Touch screen
• Feels slick, lots of animations, everything slides nicely, lots of flash and flare
• App availability - everyone seems to write an iPhone app first, then maybe other platforms
• Confirmed app authenticity/security and stability - Apple's approval process rejects viruses/hoaxes/etc. and overwhelmingly buggy apps
• Has compass - useful for maps
• Good graphics hardware, supports all the flashiness nicely, also good for games
• Excellent web browser - web pages usually look like they do on a PC
• Multi-touch zooming
• Network selection is great, switches between wifi and cell seamlessly
• Slim physical dimensions
• Synchronizes Exchange email, calendar & contacts via ActiveSync (using push)
• Alphabet displayed on right for fast scrolling in lists (allows jumping)

• Closed platform - Big Brother must approve all apps that you use
• No multitasking (except some built-in apps like iPod, Safari, etc.)
• No Bluetooth data transfer (this includes file transfer, A2DP, AVRCP, Dial-up networking, etc.). In simpler terms, you can't send pics, you can't play music from the iPhone to a stereo system or wireless headphones, can't use the iPhone as a modem to connect your laptop to the internet, etc...
• No tethering (USB/WiFi/Bluetooth)
• Battery life is pathetic... 1-1.5 days w/ normal use
• No push for IMAP/POP3 email, must poll periodically, and if you set the interval to anything even close to reasonable (such as 15min, which is the minimum and is not even reasonable), it drains the battery like crazy
• Reading email is cumbersome - must go through multiple menus to reach your inbox, esp. if you have multiple accounts
• No flash on the camera, makes it useless in anything other than bright daylight, esp. for video
• Can't attach files to email (except videos and pictures [only 1 per email], which get scaled down without asking you, and you can't configure it not to do that)
• Can't play videos/movies (except in MPEG4 and H.264 formats - but no MPEG1, MPEG2, DivX, Xvid)
• No physical keyboard - especially important when in a car - your fingers tend to move randomly
• No way to turn off default auto-correct - i.e. I want to be able to configure it such that it's there, but it doesn't correct my typing unless I click on its suggestion.
• Can't be used be used as USB drive to copy files
• No removable/upgradable storage
• No replaceable battery
• US version locked to AT&T, even if you buy it from Apple without a contract

All Android Phones

• Touch screen
• Voice control for almost everything (and excellent voice recognition!)
• Multitasking/background apps
• Can use any app, no centralized approval necessary
• Android Market has a pretty good selection of apps
• Excellent turn-by-turn navigation w/ Google Maps
• Excellent web browser
• Web browser reflows columns of text to fit current screen width when zooming
• Multi-touch zooming (OS v.2.0.1 and up)
• Can be used for tethering over WiFi, Bluetooth, or USB (with varying levels of ease of setup and 3rd-party apps required)
• Network selection is great, switches between wifi and cell seamlessly (although it does drop ongoing connections in the process)
• Can change default keyboard, install 3rd-party keyboards, language packs, etc. (this is crucial for me, even for typing just in English!)
• Support for Swype keyboards
• Push-based synchronization for any email type: Exchange, IMAP, POP3, Gmail
• Supports most popular video formats natively - just transfer movies to the phone and play them
• Supports Bluetooth file transfer, stereo audio (A2DP), etc. right out of the box
• Has real file system, accessible by the apps, PC via USB, Bluetooth, etc.
• Removable SD card
• Synchronizes Exchange email, contacts, & calendar via ActiveSync (some earlier versions didn't synchronize calendar)
• Fast scroll interface - when scrolling through a list, a tab/slider appears on the right, allowing you to move fast along the list (although if you have lots of items in the list, it's impossible to position it precisely, so you still have to scroll after you get the slider "close enough")
• Notification interface is useful and unobtrusive - notifications show up on top status bar, you can pull down the bar when it's appropriate for you to look at them
• Makes a distinction between "unread" and "new" email - only notifies you of new (also applies to other stuff like Facebook messages, SMS, etc.)
• Tracks/displays battery usage by app or activity
• Adobe Flash supported natively (only Flash Lite before OS v.2.2)
• Text-to-speech and speech-to-text supported natively and open for apps to use
• Apps can integrate w/ OS - e.g. you can make calls or send/receive SMSs via Google Voice seamlessly
• Can have active backgrounds
• Can have custom widgets

• Default music player is practically unusable for anything other than playing 1 song at a time (or manually enqueuing individual songs to a playlist), unless you always want to browse by album (and all your music is ID3-tagged with the correct album info); can't browse by artist because when you do, it shows you a list of the albums and when you click on one, shows you all songs in the album even if most of them are by other artists; more importantly, if you don't have correct album info on all your music, it just puts all your music in the same "album", i.e. when you try to browse by artist, it shows you your entire music collection... useless
• Can't search in email (seriously, Google???) [Note: you can search inside the Gmail app, but not in the native email client]
• When typing in landscape mode, all you can see is a text box, even on a web page
• Can't get a list of running apps... also, most apps never exit, and there's no UI to tell them to exit; have to get a "task killer" app to kill apps
• When switching between WiFi/cell, ongoing connections are dropped

Nexus One (tested with OS 2.1-update1)

• Has compass - useful for maps
• Has a flash for the camera (although it's pretty weak)
• Has trackball - useful for fine positioning of cursor when typing (and pretty much nothing else)
• Slim physical dimensions
• It's a Google-branded device, so it's the first one to get the latest OS updates
• No carrier customizations (which usually result in cluttered UIs and bloat-ware)

• Using it as a phone is cumbersome - no dedicated phone button, finding a contact is slow (except if you use the voice control - in which case it's reasonable, but it still requires a lot of steps); also, phone app always starts in number pad mode... whereas I'd want it to start in the recent call log or at least in contacts: dialing a number manually is a very rare scenario... and this is not configurable
• Dropped/unsuccessful/muted phone calls - frequently have to redial because connection failed (granted, it may be a carrier issue)
• No physical keyboard - especially important when in a car - your fingers tend to move randomly
• Touch screen is too sensitive around the edges - sometimes thinks you're pressing stuff just by holding the phone and not touching the screen
• Touch detection is a bit weird - seems like you always have to tap a bit above the thing you really want to tap
• Landscape on-screen keyboard has very thin keys - thinner than the iPhone's - and you often hit the wrong one; one-handed typing is very difficult
• Doesn't sync corporate calendar over ActiveSync (but it does sync Google Calendar)
• Battery life is pathetic... 1-1.5 days w/ normal use, or even less when using as navigation
• Can't use camera flash in video mode
• Crappy speakerphone sound quality - both for calls and for music
• Can't rotate right for landscape mode - only left... sometimes inconvenient, esp. for left-handed people (fixed in v2.2)
• Can't hit "Enter" when typing in a text box on a web page - instead, you have a "Next" button that moves you to the next input field on the page, which is usually NOT what you want (e.g. google search box - you want to just tell it to search, not to jump to the other search box at the bottom of the results page)
• OS 2.0 was buggy... but has been fixed since then:
  • Sometimes gets in a mode where it thinks all touches are at the bottom of the screen; have to lock and unlock screen to reset
  • Music player starts and stops playing randomly, even when in background
  • Music player progress/seek bar is buggy - doesn't always respond or show the correct position

Samsung Galaxy S (Vibrant/Fascinate/Captivate/Epic)

• Extremely bright SuperAMOLED screen, also has excellent colors and is pretty large too (4.0")
• Feels slick, like the iPhone (Fascinate and Vibrant only; Epic and Captivate feel bulky)
• Slim physical dimensions - Fascinate being the thinnest, followed by Vibrant, then Captivate, then Epic (which is not slim at all)
• Very light weight
• Fast processor - animations/scrolling are smooth, apps run fast
• In Contacts, you can swipe left to call or swipe right to text (which is a pretty cool UI)
• Music player controls integrated into notification area (when playing music) - very convenient
• WiFi/Bluetooth/GPS/Airplane controls integrated into notification area - very convenient, especially for turning WiFi on/off
• Bright camera flash (Fascinate and Epic only)
• 5.0-MP camera takes very good pictures (better than Droid X)
• Records HD video
• Has TV output (although it's analog...)
• Epic has a physical keyboard with a great layout
• On-screen keyboard allows quick, almost simultaneous taps on the keys and correctly recognizes them as separate key presses (I'm talking finger 1 down, finger 2 down, then finger 1 up, then finger 2 up). In other words, allows very fast typing.
• Good, loud speakerphone - works well for both music and calls
• Epic has 4G data speeds
• Vibrant and Capitivate have tri-band 3G radios, which means they get 3G speeds on any GSM carrier, including in Europe/Asia
• Comes with 16GB microSD card and 2GB internal memory
• DLNA support for wireless media playback/sharing/control
• Supports Windows File Sharing
• Cool and functional interface for receiving/rejecting/silencing incoming call: just move the correct piece of puzzle to the empty spot
• Samsung TouchWiz UI keeps 4 icons at the bottom of the screen, regardless of which "home screen" you're on. Very useful for the phone button, texting and other common functions.
• microSD card is hot-swappable without turning the phone off (or pulling the battery)

• No camera flash on Vibrant and Captivate
• Camera flash doesn't work in video mode on the devices that do have it
• Not a perfect phone experience - no dedicated phone button, phone app always starts in number pad mode (although you can start typing names using the numpad letters and it brings up matching contacts). I almost never dial digits directly, so the numpad is a very crappy default. Phone app is tweaked by Samsung though and is slightly better than the stock Android one.
• No physical keyboard on all except Epic - especially important when in a car - your fingers tend to move randomly
• Battery life is pathetic... about 1 day w/ normal use, or even less when using as navigation
• GPS takes about a minute or more to get a lock/signal. This is presumably a software issue and people have found fixes for it, but most carriers haven't released an official update that fixes it yet.
• There's a lag between actions sometimes: the phone seems to pause upon arbitrary interactions - i.e. some button presses, etc. don't feel "snappy". Also, sometimes lags when you try to pick up an incoming call.
• Power button is kind of hard to press, esp. on Vibrant and Captivate
• Default search provider is Bing and there's no easy way to change that
• Doesn't have Android 2.2 yet

Motorola Droid X

• Excellent phone call quality, 3 separate microphones for noise cancellation
• Large 4.3" screen
• Good, loud speakerphone - works well for both music and calls
• Bright 2-LED camera flash
• 8.0-MP camera takes very good pictures
• Records HD video
• HDMI output
• Comes with 16GB microSD card and 8GB internal memory
• DLNA support for wireless media playback/sharing/control
• Has dedicated hardware button for camera

• Feels big, bulky and heavy - it's not that much larger than a Galaxy S, but it just feels really bulky in one's hand or pocket. Has a bulge at the top that makes it even worse. This alone made me not like the phone.
• Screen can be a bit dim in bright sunlight
• Battery life is crappy - lasts around 1 - 1.5 days
• Power button is in the middle of the top of the phone - kind of hard to get to - you have to shift the phone in your hand to get to it
• You have to take out the battery in order to take out or put in a microSD card

BlackBerry Bold 9700

• Physical keyboard - typing is considerably easier and faster than on touch-screen
• Dedicated call/end call keys - makes calling very easy, regardless of what you're doing
• Finding contacts is easy - either select from recent calls, or start typing contact's name (both done from 1 screen - the one that comes up when you press the dedicated call buttin)
• Excellent 3.2mp camera w/ flash; picture quality is better than iPhone/NexusOne, and flash is very bright
• Multitasking/background apps
• Can run any app, no centralized approval necessary; if you want "approved" apps, you can use AppWorld, but you're not forced to.
• Push email, including IMAP/POP (besides Exchange, etc.)
• Great battery life optimizations - for example, you can leave WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and push email on, and they don't seem to affect battery life in any noticeable way
• Apps can integrate themselves into the OS (e.g. Facebook, Pandora, etc.)
• VPN access to corporate network - allows you to browse internal web sites, connect to internal servers, etc.
• Has real file system, accessible by the apps, PC via USB, Bluetooth, etc.
• Removable SD card
• Windows File Sharing support (SMB protocol) - allows you to easily copy files between you PC and phone wirelessly
• Plays most common video formats - you can just copy a movie file to the BlackBerry and it will play it
• Excellent Bluetooth support: file transfer, stereo audio (A2DP), remote control (AVRCP), dial-up networking (for tethering), hands-free, etc.
• Great customization/personalization of profiles, w/ precise settings for ringtones and duration/pattern of vibrating alert for each type of event
• Security settings enforceable by BES admin, makes companies more likely to "approve" BBs for use on corporate network (although this can also be a "con" if the policy is too restrictive)
• Great notification interface - LED blinks if you have new notifications, also you can see little icons for new email, SMS, Facebook, etc. (which are visible even when phone is locked); also, BB distingushes between "new" and "unread" messages - useful if you keep emails in "unread" state because you don't care about them or because you want to remind yourself to reply to them - but in any case, you know about them, so the phone shouldn't keep notifying you about them or report them as new.
• Great high-resolution screen, images and text both look very sharp
• When viewling lists of things, you can start typing the first few letters of what you're looking for and the BB will jump to it
• Network traffic indicator - give you better visibility into what's going on

• It's slow. You frequently get the "clock" icon when the phone is busy or doing a garbage collection or something. It sometimes takes up to 10 seconds at a time, during which time you can't do anything at all.
• Crappy network selection - seems to prefer cell over wifi, even if you tell it otherwise in the settings; also, difficult API for apps makes practically all apps use cell even if wifi is available; also, non-corporate network traffic goes through Canada, which slows it down
• Sub-par web browser - some pages don't look right, others can't be opened at all (the infamous error 413)
• Web browser is slow. Seriously slow. And it's not because of the network.
• Smaller screen, compared to touch-screen devices
• App discovery is lacking - AppWorld has much fewer apps than Apple's AppStore, also lots of vendors don't put their apps in the AppWorld, so you have to discover them on the vendors' web sites instead.
• Must use more expensive data plan for enterprise email/VPN. Even if you don't need enterprise connectivity, you still need a special (BIS) data plan if you want to get push email and some other features (although that plan is usually the same price as normal data plans).
• Trackpad is too sensitive, so you often end up clicking the wrong thing. Sensitivity is configurable, but if you turn it down, then scrolling through large lists of things becomes very slow and annoying.
• Can't open folders (other than Inbox) on coprorate email
• There are different "browsers" that differ by the type of connection they use (BES, WiFi, direct connection)... it's a pain to switch between them - the BB doesn't automatically use the connection that's available; also, even if you have BES, the BES browser can't really be used as the default one because it can't open some web sites due to some very low download size limits imposed by default by BES policies.
• Crappy zooming interface for pictures - click trackpad to zoom in one level, but when you click "back", you zoom all the way out; also, panning around the image when zoomed is very slow
• When the screen goes black (to save battery), if you press a button to wake it up, that button's action is actually taken, even though you had no idea what you just did because the screen was blank. The "Back" button is the only one that doesn't behave that way, but if you click that one while the screen is in the process of dimming, it does execute an action... so it's inconsistent and annoying, and the best way i've found to keep the screen from darkening is to press the camera button on the side to the first level.

BlackBerry Storm2 9550

Good features of all:

• GPS
• WiFi, 3G
• Play music via speaker or 3.5mm jack
• Device swap tool that allows you to move all your data & settings to a new device of the same type seamlessly (except Android phones)