Yesterday, the iPhone 3GS was officially announced. Today, the Nokia N97 NAM edition began shipping. A few weeks ago the Samsung OmniaHD i8910 began selling. Those are currently the three most advanced “phones” on the market today. Actually the N97 and the i8910 are really the most advanced devices and the iPhone is in that list because of the vast number of developers, services, and apps it has.
Nokia N97
What I like about this device is the 3.5″ touch screen, 32GB of internal memory + microSD card slot ( I just got my 16gb card which would be 48GBs of storage in my mobile device). It has a 5MP camera with dual LED flash, VGA video at 30FPS. And it has 3.5G in the USA. The best feature is the slide-out QWERTY keyboard, the only 1 of the 3 devices here which has that. The most appealing factor of this phone for me is the live widgets on the phone’s homescreen. The webbrowser has built in Flash support so sites like YouTube work.
What I don’t like about the device — it’s screen is resistive and the other two devices have capacitive screens. It has the slowest processor (Single ARM 11 434MHz) of all three devices. If you want to watch movies on the device they have to be transcoded or you have to buy a separate application to play straight DiVX movies.
iPhone 3GS
What I like about this device: My absolutely favorite thing about the iPhone is the App store which allows you to download over 50,000 applications. The beauty of the App store is how well integrated it is into the phone as well as into iTunes (even though I hate iTunes because its 80MB for a music player update). Although I like having devices that are different from everyone else’s, the iPhone’s popularity appeals to me because the GPS apps which show you where your friends are, would be much more useful to me because my friends actually have iPhones.
What I dislike about the device: It only has a 3MP camera, no flash whatsoever, no keyboard, no webbrowser flash, you have to transcode your movies, no memory card slot, no access to the filesystem.
Samsung i8910
What I like about this device: Where to start? It records HD video (1280×720) at 24FPS. It has an 8MP still camera. This device has the largest screen, 3.8 inches, it is AMOLED, and it is capacitive. The device has a 600MHz processor and a dedicated 3D graphics chip. It can play movies without transcoding them. According to reviews, the colors which the device shows are amazing. The OmniaHD runs S60 5th edition, which is the same operating system that the N97 has, and some of the applications for the N97 work on the i8910
What I dislike about the device: It has no 3/3.5G in the USA….seriously…WTF…it’s 2009… Besides the lack of a fast cellular data connection, the device lacks a physical keyboard (and I am not fond of the onscreen keyboard for S60 5th). Another issue, for such an imaging/video centric device, why does this only have a single LED flash?!?
So, to sum everything up, all 3 devices are very technologically advanced. They all have awesome features, as well as drawbacks. I like the iPhone for its community, but I like the N97 and the i8910 for their hardware. The i8910 is the most technologically advanced device, but it falls short for me because of its lack of 3G. Having been using the N85 for the last 2 months, I can’t see myself going back to a non-3G device even if it does shoot HD video. I am also not really impressed with the N97 because of its camera (same one as the one in the N95 from 2 years ago), and also the same processor, and no 3D hardware. The iPhone’s hardware is not very impressive when compared with to the likes of the other discussed devices, in the photo and video department because it has no flash and only a 3MP camera.
Ultimately, I would likely buy an iPhone 3GS simply because it would be the cheapest device to buy (without factoring in the montly AT&T fees). For $299 you get the 32GB version, where as the N97 costs $699 from Nokia (granted it is unlocked).