2008 Smartphone Roundup
Rounding up the best smartphones of 2008 is a difficult task, as there were many great products, and everybody is going to have their own favourite.
HTC released four contenders for the top spot, with the Touch Diamond, G1 Android, Touch HD and Touch Pro all being fantastic phones in their own right.
Other contenders include the Nokia N96, BlackBerry Storm, Samsung Omnia and Sony Ericsson Experia X1.
With so many to choose from, three smartphones really stood out from the rest.
Third place: Apple iPhone 3 G
Although the iPhone is flawed in many ways, it compensates by doing what Apple typically do very well: unbeatable design and an innovative, slick interface.
It also offers fantastic value as it doubles as an iPod with either 8GB or 16GB of onboard memory.
Other cool innovations include the ambient light sensor and accelerometer. The iPhone offers a fantastic web surfing interface, with a responsive and intuitive-touch pad control system.
The massive 3.5-inch 320×480 pixel display is a standout feature on the iPhone.
It features a rather mediocre 2 megapixel camera that cannot record videos which is a bit disappointing.
The iPhone also misses out on some important interface functionality, such as the ability to send MMSes or forward regular SMSes. It also has no copy/paste functionality and the touchpad keyboard is not ideal for heavy email users.
Incidentally, there is a software update now available which apparently enables MMS sending.
The iPhone is a great toy, and one of the stand out smartphones of 2008 because it is a lot of fun to use. If you are looking for a more serious smartphone, then you are better off moving further down the list.
Second place: BlackBerry Bold
The Blackberry bold is the full package.
It covers all the bases in terms of user functionality, with all of the now standard features that any self respecting smartphone has such as 3G, WiFi, Blutooth, 2 megapixel camera and GPS (BlackBerry Maps).
It also has a fantastic 65k colour screen featuring the same impressive resolution as the iPhone: 480×320.
In terms of looks it holds its own, although we would have to say that it is not the sleekest looking smartphone, nor is it the smallest at 133grams and 114mmx66mmx14mm.
The battery was also a weak point with the BlackBerry Bold, offering just five hours of talk time. Expect to have to charge it at least every second day.
A real deal clincher for the Bold, apart from its general all round functionality, are the data inclusive packages available for contract subscribers. For R69 a month on Vodacom, users can take advantage of unlimited data on their BlackBerry Bold. This includes emailing, web browsing and GPS usage.
This makes the BlackBerry a fantastic value proposition.
The winner: Nokia E71
The Nokia E71 wins marginally over the BlackBerry Bold. Its sleeker design and finish, along with its impressive battery life is what makes it for us, a superior piece of hardware.
Just six grams lighter than the BlackBerry bold, and slightly smaller (114mmx57mmx10mm) the Nokia E71 features a minimalist design that oozes style.
There was nothing that the E71 could not do in terms of functionality. The camera isn’t anything special, but is a bit better than the Bold’s featuring 3.2 megapixels (2048×1536 resolution).
The screen is the biggest down side to the E71. At just 2.36 inches, the 320×240 16m colour display does not hold up well against that of the iPhone or even the Bold. Having said that, it does do the job and is by no means a poor performer, it just could have been better.
Quick and responsive thanks to the lightweight Symbian operating system and 369MHz ARM 11 processor, the E71 works well as a web Browser and is great for emailing with its Qwerty keyboard.
Overall, the Nokia E71 wins simply because there is no real fault to be found with it.
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