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New year, new phone?

Posted on 3 Mar 2009 at 18:03

As we head into 2009, Paul Ockenden decides it's time to pick out a new smartphone from a stellar line-up.

However, the real problem I have with both these HTC devices is that they run Windows Mobile, and that operating system and its user interface (at least in its Windows Mobile 6.1 guise) are beginning to look terribly long-in-the-tooth, post-iPhone. HTC might well slap on copious amounts of make-up in the form of the finger-friendly Touch-Flo front end, but underneath all the lipstick it's still a pig. Touch-Flo is fine for stuff such as listening to MP3s, watching videos, even sending texts, but as soon as you attempt to do anything vaguely "businessy" such as connect to a VPN, edit a document, or run a business application then you get unceremoniously dumped back into the ancient and stylus-based raw Windows Mobile OS - and frankly, it's an interface that doesn't cut it nowadays. Perhaps if Windows Mobile were all you'd ever used then you might accept it, but seen alongside the other contenders here on my desk Windows Mobile merely scribbles a cross in the "fail" box for both of these devices, and that's a real shame when the underlying hardware (at least on the Touch HD) is so good. If only HTC would release a version of Touch HD running Google's Android, that really would be a killer smartphone.

That brings me to the next device in my line-up, Nokia's E71. Again, this is a phone that sat for some time at the top of our A List, and it certainly has much to recommend it. The keyboard is good and the screen is brilliantly clear, even in bright sunlight. But there are a couple of flies in the ointment. The display is only QVGA resolution (320 x 240 pixels), which is totally overshadowed by many of the other devices I'm considering. In fact, it's the same as my BlackBerry 8310, so it wouldn't represent an upgrade at all. You might ask why such a small screen would need any extra pixels and I'd answer that for most tasks it doesn't, with one huge exception - web browsing. Scrolling and zooming around a web page on a high-resolution screen is a joy, and the first time you do it is one of those "wow" moments. Which brings me to my other gripe about the E71, and that's its navigation. There's a rocker button to select left, right, up and down, but using this now feels absolutely stone-age compared to the touch interfaces of the iPhone and Touch HD, or the trackball on the BlackBerry Bold. So although the E71 is a good phone with great build quality - possibly the equal of the phone I've been using for the past year - it just isn't really enough of an upgrade.

There now remain only the two BlackBerry devices on my desk, the Bold and Storm. Taking the latter first, you'll probably know that it's the first BlackBerry without any physical keyboard: it employs an iPhone-style onscreen keyboard, but as an aide to accurate typing the whole screen depresses like a large button whenever you touch a key. It's one of those Marmite things that you'll either love or hate, but I'd have to admit that the more I use a Storm the more I'm starting to hate it. It's certainly better than the iPhone's keyboard, but not hugely so. The other problems I have with the Storm are that it has no Wi-Fi, which is a real pity, and it's exclusively tied to Vodafone's network. Actually, it's this last point that rules out the Storm as a choice for me, because there's no Vodafone reception at all sitting at my desk in CST Towers (which is actually in a basement, rather than a tower!).

That just leaves the BlackBerry Bold, and although it doesn't have the touchscreen capabilities of the iPhone and Touch HD, its trackball works well for both navigation and web-browsing facilities. The screen is high resolution - at 320 x 480, it's the same as the iPhone - and video playback quality is excellent. Combine all of this with phenomenal battery life, great security and the easy-to-use OS, and it looks as though I've found my new phone for 2009. But actually, no...