Samsung Instinct vs. iPhone 3G: which one will be better?

It's not only the battle of two devices it is the battle of two cell phone services providers: Sprint and AT&T. These two phones will be their best and most powerful presenters that they have. iPhone 3G is not out yet but AT&T was successfully selling the previous versions of iPhone for almost a year now. So some people love AT&T and other love Sprint and it's their choice. What we are going to do is compare the features of the two phones.

First of all let's do the comparison of the exterior of Samsung Instinct and iPhone. Instinct is made mainly of plastic which is not that neat today; iPhone has pats made of metal and harden glass to prevent it from scratching.

As to AT&T vs. Sprint there are some advantages and disadvantages; but concerning these phones Sprint is giving very high internet speeds and music store from any point of coverage. AT&T's iPhone can only connect to iTunes store via Wi-Fi, which restricts it to the city limits. Besides, everybody knows about Samsung Instinct's and iPhone's GPS capabilities.

I personally liked the voice control on Samsung Instinct; however not sure if it would work as good as they demonstrate it, so train your speech to be able to control it.
I'm not sure if it was a good idea to have the keyboard only in landscape mode. My personal opinion is that I want to choose what mode to use because it really frustrates me that I need to turn it every time I want to input some text.

One more thing that I love about Instinct is its open platform. I really like to install and use the software I choose. iPhone has made a pretty good job on giving positive experience for the customers but it is closed platform.

Another good thing about Instinct is that they give an additional battery and an external battery charger, which can be very helpful during traveling.

iPhone should be twice as fast in web browsing as the old iPhone is. It supports Bluetooth, GPRS, GSM, EDGE, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, UMTS connectivity and that's what they are proud about. One of the biggest news: it will be able to give you 3G video talks with your friends.

One other big news is that Apple is going to allow third party applications on their iPhone but only those that are approved by them. Not sure how popular that will be. Apple has done a pretty good job on the user interface. And the question I have is: "Will the third party applications be free or they are going to charge the customers for that?" The platform it is running on is Mac OS X Mobile which should bring the customers best experiences.

In the rest of features the iPhone 3G will be just as its predecessor (one of the best phones out there.) It will roll out on July the 11th in 70 countries of the world. The 8GB version will cost $199 and the 16GB version will cost $299.

New Motorola QWERTY slider released - Motorola Hint QA30

Not so long ago we wrote about new unannounced yetsmartphone from Nokia with QWERTY keyboard. Motorola tried to not fall behind its competitor, and officially announced its own QWERTY slider, named Motorola Hint QA30. After all rumors in the past several days, Motorola finally presented its new phone, which is made with text message lovers in mind. Taking in consideration, that Motorola rarely releases something new nowadays, it doubles the interest to its new product.

Phones with QWERTY keyboard have their own piece of market. Modern times developed new type of communication - via text messages and instant messaging applications. It is extremely uncomfortable to type a long message on usual phone keypad, and while many people can live with it, someone can't. This is the audience for QWERTY keyboard enabled phones, like this one. Motorola Hint QA30 is a CDMA cell phone that is a first Motorola slider with full QWERTY keyboard. It has a full set of modern multimedia functions, like QVGA 2.5" display,

video and audio playback (list of supported formats include MIDI, MP3, AAC, AAC+, AAC+ Enhanced, WMA v9 for audio and H.263, MPEG4, WMV v9 for video), microSDHC support up to 8 GB, Bluetooth Stereo, 2 megapixel camera with video recording, and 3.5 headphone jack for true music lovers. Internet functions are also present, and they are greatly done - fully featured HTML browser, integrated E-Mail and IM functions (which take full benefits from QWERTY keyboard - text input is greatly faster than on standard phone keypad). 128 MB of RAM gives great possibilities for multitasking; 256 MB of built-in memory leave plenty of space even if you forgot your card at home. Las, but not least - this model has aGPS support, so if carrier supports this function users will be able to track their position on the map.

Battery life is also quite impressive for a 940 mAh battery - up to 4.5 hours in talking mode and up to 15 days in standby. Phone is quite thick (because of sliding keyboard), but overall its size is not huge, so it will fit in almost every pocket: 82 x 61,6 x 17 mm, 120g weight.

This interesting novelty from Motorola will be released in stores in November 28 in USA, no information about other countries yet. Unfortunately, this is not a smartphone, but is has an impressive set of features for a usual phone and it will be popular amongst young and active people, who like to send text messages and listen music.

Apple iPhone 4 vs. HTC EVO 4G

Apple iPhone 4 and HTC EVO 4G are by far the two most exciting smartphonesthat money can buy to date. And in many ways they are very similar: both have big full-phone-size touchscreens, smart operating software, lots of free or cheap applications, high resolution photography and video recording, video call capabilities, etc. I imagine for a consumer who is not technically sophisticated it will be an absolute guess whether iPhone 4 or EVO 4G will work better for him or her. But yet somehow Apple and HTC have managed to design two completely different smartphones despite playing on the same field by the same rules. So I decided to try and look at both of them as if there was no such criteria as price, carrier, data plan, or even quality issues iPhone 4 and EVO 4G users have already experienced.

HTC EVO 4G

First up the EVO. It has been around a bit longer than the iPhone and it’s a first ever mobile phone to support 4G network. In plain English it means your Internet connection will be faster when Wi-Fi is out of access – exactly what iPhone 4 owners will be jealous of considering video calling (iPhone 4 can only do FaceTime, as they call it, on Wi-Fi). In hardware respect EVO 4G is brimmed up with latest technology (check out the specification list below). One of the few things one might not be completely satisfied with is the display. Yes, at its 4.3 inches it is quite big, but it is a standard LCD technology which compared with AMOLED or indeed high pixel density Retina opposition doesn’t perform just as good. On personal note, I also don’t like EVO 4G’s shape at the back of it. iPhone 4 is flat whole round witch most people like better – it feels nicer in a pocket and in hand as well. Still, half of the reason to buy EVO 4G is Android. At the moment of writing it is shipped with Android 2.1 but 2.2 Froyo update is cooking as we speak. And that is very important for the EVO 4G. You’ll expect this kind of smartphone to offer some of the best Internet experience in the market. It does. Android claims to have the fastest mobile browser whilst along with further enhancements Froyo quadruples Flash performance. Mind you that Safari doesn’t support Flash at all. Plus Android has true multitasking but will run its battery flat faster. All things considered including the audience that has actually bought HTC EVO 4G I’d recommend it to someone who captures and enjoys the sweet spot of the latest technology and extremely capable operating system. If you are not among them but you like the HTC EVO 4G, don’t worry – it will still fit you well.

HTC EVO 4G specifications:

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon @ 1GHz
RAM: 512MB
Operating system: Android 2.1 (2.2 update this year)
Display: 4.3" TFT LCD, 800 × 480 resolution
Storage memory: 8GB, up to 32GB w/microSD
Rear camera: 8 megapixel
Front camera: 1.3 megapixel
Video recording: 720p @ 30fps
Battery capacity: 1500mAh
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g (/n w/Android 2.2)
Cellular network: 4G
Size: 4.8 × 2.6 × 0.5
Weight: 6oz

Apple iPhone 4

This, in my opinion, is the most charismatic smartphone if you accept this kind of description for a device. It certainly has the X factor that makes you take it out of your pocket just to let the others see it. EVO 4G will never be able to pull that off anytime anywhere. In front of tech enthusiasts – yes, absolutely, but that’s almost about it. Another feature peculiar to the all of the iPhones so far is that somehow they remain modern and up-to-date through all their lifetime and right up to the moment when the next-gen model is presented. I mean this time last year we could hardly wait for HTC Hero to come out. But after it did, it didn’t stay long in our hearts. iPhone 3G S on the other hand kept its positions till June. Even now I can tell the same will happen to the iPhone 4 – everything coming out next year or so will be put up against it. Should this affect your choice? – Yes, at least at some degree. It receives that kind of treatment for a reason. iOS 4 and hardware that runs it are not any less capable than the EVO’s and Apple app store does offer more apps, but unfortunately iPhone 4 also has a problem or two. As I said above Safari doesn’t support Flash and the operating system itself doesn’t have full-flesh multitasking but runs a number of services instead. However, running services in the background rather than processes improves greatly on battery life while keeping usability basically on the same level. That’s a small price to pay for some features you get with the iPhone 4 that others can’t match. One of them is, of course, Retina display. Enlarging pixel density is really a path to follow for all upcoming devices because physically they cannot get much bigger while display resolution has to grow. All in all if you for some reason didn’t like HTC EVO 4G you will almost certainly like iPhone 4, but it won’t necessarily work vice versa.

Apple iPhone 4 specifications: