Please forgive a link across to another haunt of mine, but yesterday I wrote this head to head between the iPhone 3G and two of its ‘flagship’ smartphone competitors in the marketplace: Nokia N96 and HTC Touch HD.
iPhone 3G vs HTC Touch HD vs Nokia N96
[and yes, I know that I've cheated here and used an iPod Touch in the photo - sorry, I didn't have a physical iPhone to hand]
The article/table’s quite long, but hopefully of interest. Summing up, I said that “The iPhone 3G will appeal to anyone looking for heavy media consumption and gaming – and it’s relatively cheap, SIM-free, especially considering the all-in data bundle”. I’m still staggered that O2 can offer it with unlimited data at £380 all-in, with no monthly contract or further commitments.
The HTC Touch HD is probably the best for Microsoft-centric businesses, despite its truly awful TouchFLO mashup, while the Nokia N96 is the best voice phone and has the best camera. But it’s fair to say that with its value and AppStore and elegant UI, the iPhone wins on most other counts.
mmmm, I sense a degree of “writing to fit the board” here. In your article over on AAS did you conclude that the iPhone wins on most other counts? Thinks not It was strangely Symbian biased.
Now, coming from a very long Symbian line, I too have a degree of love for things Nokia and even a brief foray into Windows Mobile with an ipaq (shudders). However, while I agree that technically Nokia are good at getting the high end stuff out, from a (this) user experience, the iPhone wins. (wasn’t that the subject of one of your articles – user experience? Can’t remember) Though I wish it hadn’t. I’ve spent far too much in the App Store (including music) just because it gets to my phone with the minimum of effort.
But a nice “shoot out” nontheless. However, although everyone harps on about the N97, because its details are out, I’d be interested to see what the next iPhone is like, as that should be due 2009 too, I would’ve thought.
Yes, of course, there’s a degree of writing in a way that’s appropriate to the readership. But the two conclusions aren’t mutually exclusive. The pros and cons of each device remain the same.
There was no overall winner, though for phone fans (over on AAS) the N96 will cover more bases while for iPhone/media/gaming fans (here), the iPhone obviously ticks more boxes.
Ah, so because I bought an iPhone, I’m not a phone fan but have now been neatly categorised as an iPhone fan(boy?). And further slitting out media and gaming for iPhone users – isn’t this Nokia’s market, with Comes with Music, Ovi, Media biased phones (like the N96)?
My whole point is that I am a phone fan (whatever that is) and I like to think a cutting-edge user. I want as user friendly a phone as possible to be able to ditch the laptop as much as possible and have as converged as possible device. Now, granted the iPhone won’t allow cut/paste, doc editing, file saving (on the phone from the phone) but apps are on the way to circumvent a few of these short comings (hurry up QuickOffice). Also granted the iPhone fails miserable in the photographic stakes but even with my N95 I was glad of my Nikon and would use the latter more as the year of ownership wore on.
So what is a phone fan? And sorry, I’ve lost where I was going with this and I’m typing it on my iPhone and am loath to do a mass cut n edit of the preceding text (which would be worse on an N95
)
And as I can’t seem to edit the post above, on the subject of gaming, Nokia’s push of N-Gage. Seems they think they are fully in the market you call the iPhone’s.
No, I disagree. Nokia might think they’re into ‘gaming’, but compared to the iPhone they’re nowhere, to be honest, in this regard. Nokia’s strengths are in telephony, connectivity and imaging/video – and it pains me when they go chasing after competitors in races which they’ve no hope of winning.
In summary, I still see both devices as aimed at slightly different markets.
And there’s the rub. You see them in different markets but Nokia doesn’t. So their device continue to be convoluted to the extreme.
I agree for comms, connectivity, photo/video the likes of N95 are hard to beat. But it all falls over for them with the actual media side of things (music playback/storage/transfer, image/video/ storage/playback/transfer/ etc. PC / Suite was horrible. One of the reasons for my switch was iTunes. And as for N-Gage, enough said. I’ve just been playing Guitar Rock Tour and been blown away that something as accomplished as that possible on a phone.
So I would agree that Nokia should focus on it’s strengths and try and improve the user experience of those. But that brings me on to another point, the S60 interface. I was looking at your screenshots of the N97 and was thinking nothing has changed. Shame.
(written on my iPhone so forgive rambling. One of these days I may fire up my laptop to view these sites
. )
This is yet another silly comparison for many reasons. Adding a non touch screen device (Nokia N96) in the mix can hardly be called a comparision.
I guess we should ask ourselves what is being compared here?
If you are comparing Smart phones, then the iPhone shouldn’t even be in this comparision as it’s not a smart phone. It lacks the basic phone features such as copy & paste, MMS, crappy camera etc. It doesn’t have a SDHC memory card slot, relying only on it’s hard disk.
If you head over to http://www.phonegg.com and compare the HTC touch HD and the iPhone, you’ll see the HTC thrashes the iPhone in almost everything (14 – 6) in features, even though the HTC is running on an awful OS (windoze) behind the scenes.
Now compare the Nokia N96 to the HTC touch HD, and the results are overwhelming in favour of the Nokia N96 even though the N96 doesn’t have a touch screen.
Which brings us to the final comparison between the Nokia N96 and the Apple iPhone 3G and sadly the iPhone is no where compared to the Nokia N96.
It seems the iPhone can only win on it’s own website. Isn’t that a bit biased?
As for the comment above about N95. Chrsfrwll you are so far from the truth about Video, Music, Storage, Photo, Transfer…. that I am only guesing you are a typical non N95 user who knows nothing about this phone, but only from what you have read.
The N95, which has been around for almost 2 years has one of the best cameras on board for photo and video (5MP). It supports SDHC memory cards up to 8GB or 16GB, so storage is not a problem (something the iPhone lacks completely). I can write from personal experience that it plays music and video just fine and supports DivX, Xvid and H.264 codecs. It has excellent bluetooth connectivity (A2DP, which isn’t even supported on an iPhone). I have various music and video applications on my phone and playback is perfect. The PC Suite is not as bad as you make out, is reguarly updated and improved, but then again you don’t have to use it, as the phone can connect via data transfer just like any USB hard disk or key in any operating system. At least one is not tied to one application like iTunes.
Personally, if this comparison added the Nokia N95, I would put it second or tied 1st place with the Nokia N96, with HTC Touch HD 2nd or 3rd and the iPhone last.
Mike: 10,500 apps! The iPhone should be first on that list because of the App Store. How long will it take for people to realise that this is a MASSIVE deal. Only Android stands any chance of matching that figure (through a dedicated app store) before the end of 2009, by then iPhone owners will have well over 25,000 apps to choose from.
In my opinion, the chance of Mobile OS X not being the most important mobile operating system on the planet by 2010 is about 10% The rate of innovation on Mobile OS X is almost without comparison. Noice.io Pro, Colors!, Guitarist, Google Earth, BeatMaker, Fieldrunners, Classics, even Ocarina, all amazing apps that point to a rich future for the iPhone. But hey, that’s just my opinion, not necessarily the opinion of AAi.
Do you want power without control, or control without the power? Right now my money is on Apple being the first manufacturer to supply both power and control. And when they do…
James, more apps is not necessarily better. With 10,000 apps, finding decent ones is actually quite hard. And then you’ve got to store them on your iPhone (max 144?) and find them on the flat home screen structure. It’s not an ideal situation and won’t ensure world domination on its own…. See also my http://www.allaboutiphone.net/2008/12/app-store-help-i-want-my-life-back/
Steve: Agreed, more apps is not necessarily better, but it probably does increase the chances of there being more great apps (that certainly seems to be the case so far)… even if we can’t find them! ^_^
More apps is not necessarily better; more FEATURES are not necessarily better. In the end it is about how these apps, and indeed these features are implemented.
I’m lucky enough to have a great experience of all three operating systems underpinning the three handsets in this report, and I don’t dislike any of them. As it happens I prefer the iPhone to anything else out there at the moment simply because it brought the fun back into phones for me. I still love my N95, and when I had it I loved my Touch Diamond (amongst a great many other WM and Symbian handsets I’ve owned) but the iPhone simply offers me the best experience as a browsing addict (mainly owing to the smooth scrolling and multitouch) and the ever-updating App store is a constant source of suprises.
The ignorant point out that it has no MMS (it does) or video recording (again…), and sure it has no Bluetooth – but I really don’t miss this feature, or at least the great enjoyment the phone brings greatly outweighs this deficiency.
And with respect to the lack of copy and paste – yes, handy it would be BUT there are copy/paste workarounds available on Cydia AND even with its ability to copy and paste I can be damn sure u wouldn’t have been able to type this reply so quickly and enjoyably on my N95….
This separate paragraph for example wouldve been impossible.
And web browsing on Opera Mobile 9.5 while admittedly very good was/is far more glitchy than Safari, particularly when it comes to replying in Forums such as XDA developers.
Lastly, the oft-slated camera of the Iphone, despite its fixed focus offers MUCH better quality pictures and a wider aperture than devices like the Touch Diamond (and I suspect the Touch HD), which by contrast produces wishy-washy over-saturated monstrosities. The iphone is not sold as a camera phone and the smaller filesizes its 2mpx camera produces are perfect for direct uploading to social networking sites such as Facebook.
Many of my friends now have iPhones and the amount of enjoyment these handsets bring to them cannot be overlooked.
I like my N95…I liked my Diamond, TyTn 2, E90, N95 8gb and HTC Advantage and Google G1
But
I couldn’t go back to them without feeling like I was missing out on something.
So mock the iPhone for its lack of Bluetooth stereo and out-of-box mms support till the cows come home, but if the doubters just tried using an iPhone 3g for a month then going back to a Nokia I’m sure the vast majority would at least develop a realization that there is more to a good handset than Bluetooth and x megapixel cameras.
I
Leon, you just put into words exactly the way I feel about the iPhone.
After being a Nokia user for soo long (my latest is an N85), the fun in using an iPhone outweighs any of the so called “disadvantages”.
People need to stop reading reviews and go and buy one like I did. I had full intentions of taking it back within it’s 14 day period as I was convinced it wouldn’t replace my N85, but not now, I’ll be selling the Nokia!
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