As every boy could tell you, it’s our toys that keep us kind of young. Because of that and as I work for a telco, I can’t but regularly buy a new phone. Over the years I’ve had a.o. a Nokia 7110, a Sony-Ericsson T68i, a Qtek 9100 and I currently own a secondhand Nokia E61i. But time flies and my E61i is aging fast (maybe if I wouldn’t drop it that often …), so in a few months time I’m buying a new smartphone. Time to start shopping for pics, specs and reviews!
Smetty recently asked for advice on this topic as well, she was thinking about the Nokia E71 as a cheaper alternative to the iPhone 3G. But I won’t be buying Apple’s must-have gadget any time soon; although it has some superb features (OS, browser and that multi-touch interface), it lacks a real keyboard, has not tethering and doesn’t allow applications running in the background. And last but not least; the platform is far too closed to appeal to an open standards and open source minded wannabe-geek like me. All Windows Mobile-based devices are banned from my shortlist as well; I really don’t like the OS and its GUI, it feels too much like Windows 3.11 to me.
I’ll probably end up buying either the Nokia E71, a HTC Dream (the Google-phone) or the Palm Pré. So let’s do a pro&con-list, comparison-tables are always fun, no?
Nokia E71 | HTC Dream | Palm Pré | |
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Pro |
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Con |
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The conclusion: although it still is vaporware, there’s some extreme chemistry going on between me and that darned Palm Pré. It’s the most exciting device by far and if it is for sale in Belgium, it’ll be hard to resist. The HTC Dream doesn’t seem to do it for me, no chemistry on one hand and not the “safe choice” either, as that award is easily claimed by Nokia E71. So Palm Pré if available in June/July, Nokia E71 otherwise?
I don’t want to push you in any direction. I have a E71 for half a year now, and am very happy with it. But it’s not perfect.
Battery life is amazing. Startuptime is great, the full keyboard is great (but the buttons are a tiny bit too tiny), the connectivity is great.
The downside for me is the plain ugly OS. Even with looking for decent themes for ages, I cannot get it right. It’s also not so good usability-wise.
The browser is OK. But there’s a disadvantage for scrolling: there’s not ball/roller on the device. So you end up pressing the down button for seconds and seconds. An action like Reload/Refresh is too far down the menu.
The back panel is also rather tacky.
I find that the Pré is not really that beautifull. But an E71 with a better OS would be perfect for me. So the E71 is a great device, but I’m not convinced with the experience of the OS.
sounds very similar to my e61i experience indeed 🙂
do you suffer from occasional soft-resets as well?
Mooie tabel, maar ik blijf zelf ook twijfelen. Ga ook wachten tot het juni/juli-timeframe, en dan wordt er gekocht. Basta! 😉
interessante vergelijking tss iphone met OS versie 3 en webos op http://mypre.com/palm-pre-vs-iphone-os-30-200918782
Het wordt een spannende race tussen iphone en Palm Pré. Eindelijk wat concurrentie voor fucking-dikke-nek-klantonvriendelijke Apple.
Original post edited with two important reasons why the iPhone doesn’t cut it for me; no tethering and no multi-tasking (you can’t run an application in the background).
Google Android does support tethering by installing an extra app.
Google temporary banned the app from their app store, but now it’s available again for non-US-ers.
De opvolger van de nokia n810 komt eer ook aan. Grootste verbetering is ingebouwwde 3G.
Mooie tabel, maar ik blijf zelf ook twijfelen. Ga ook wachten tot het juni/juli-timeframe, en dan wordt er gekocht. Basta! 😉