The iPhone may reign supreme, but these competitors are fast catching up. In an attempt to outdo Apple’s offerings, they’re aiming for better, faster and cheaper. The iPhone began the revolution, but Apple had better watch it’s back.
Blackberry Torch 9800: Blackberry joins the fray but is clearly reluctant to part with its beloved QWERTY keyboard – which is why we get both. This is also the first smartphone running the new BlackBerry 6 OS. The Torch is a sliding-keyboard smartphone with a 3.2-inch touch screen and a keyboard that slides out below the screen. It packs a 5-megpaixel camera, 3G networking, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS.
The new BlackBerry 6 OS includes universal search, a universal inbox, and a new Web browser, which should be more faithful to desktop Web pages. The Torch can sync with both Windows Media Player and iTunes and it allows Wi-Fi syncing of music, wirelessly, with PCs.
It uses a 624 Mhz processor with 512 MB Flash memory and 4 GB built-in, plus a 4 GB card microSD/SDHD memory card slot that supports up to 32 GB cards, giving users 8 GB of storage out-of-the-box.
Nokia N8: Nearly as good looking as the iphone, this one has already been dubbed the iphone killer. It’s sure to be a hit with the amateur photographer brigade - a 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, Xenon flash and a large sensor rivals those found in many compact digital cameras. You can take HD-quality videos and edit them with an intuitive built-in editing suite. It also offers a true home theatre experience and in a nice touch, you can plug the device to your home theatre system with an HDMI cable.
The company has said the phone will enable access to local and global Web TV services and in addition, to the internet. Packed with info, many will find the home screen an improvement. A single app allows you to share status, location and photos, and view live feeds from Facebook and Twitter. Calendar events from social networks can also be transferred to the device calendar. It’ll even help you get to your appointment – it comes with free global Ovi Maps walk and drive navigation.
The phone has been generating a lot of hype especially because it marks the debut of the new Symbian^3 software, featuring several major advancements including including multi-touch. The Nokia N8 has 16GB of in-built storage space, expandable up to 48GB with a Micro SD card. Large files can be easily transferred to a memory stick with the USB On-the-Go.
Samsung Wave S8500: Crammed to the hilt with high end features, such as HD video recording, a 1GHz Samsung-own Hummingbird processor, a super-slim chassis, the latest Super AMOLED screen and multi-touch support right out of the box, here’s another phone vying for a share of the iphone market.
The Wave has a 5Mp Camera and a 3.3in QLED display. It also features both Bluetooth 3.0 and 802.11n Wi-Fi, a combination currently unique to Samsung. After tripling the size of its apps store to coincide with the launch, Samsung hopes the much hyped Bada platform can become a serious rival to the iPhone iOS.
HTC Desire HD: The HTC Desire HD is a scaled-up version of the current HTC Desire with a bigger screen, more powerful processor and support for Android 2.2 out of the box. Still, its bigger and heavier than its predecessor. A cinematic 4.3-inch display is accompanied by Dolby Mobile and SRS virtual surround sound. Like the Nokia N8 it also comes equipped with maps. However, being a some careless person, the new feature that has the most appeal is the HTC sense – simply log into HTCSense.com and it will tell you where your phone is. If it’s at home, you needn’t rush back.
You needn’t miss anything. Use HTCSense.com to send and receive texts and to forward your calls to another number. Frantic about personal data on your phone that’s been lost or stolen? Log into HTCSense.com to quickly lock and wipe it remotely. How cool is that?
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