The right smartphone choice
The market for full-function internet-connected mobile phones has boomed over the past couple of years as a growing number of people need to both be on the road and still in contact with the office and colleagues. As a result there has been a boom in the supply of “smartphones” or phones that go well beyond simply taking voice calls and snapping grainy mobile pictures.
The new generation of mobile office phones include everything from 3G connectivity to mini office suites. Choosing a mobile phone to manage email, documents and do limited web browsing while on the road is not completely straightforward, however. Here we look at some of the better options available to users.
Nokia’s E71 and E75
Nokia’s E71 is something of a benchmark when it comes to mobile office phones. The E-series phones have long been among the most favoured of the mobile office phones and with the E71, and soon the E75, the tradition continues. As something of a benchmark for the sector, the E71 sports just about everything a good mobile productivity tool should: It has 3G connectivity as well as WiFi support. It also has a full QWERTY keyboard which is essential for real text productivity while on the move. It also has a decent calendaring application, a mediocre default email application which can be improved with the addition of the Nokia’s Email suite, and the ability to change between work and personal profiles. Which makes avoiding after hours work demands just a little easier.
What the E71 doesn’t have, which many others in this category do, is a touch screen. Input is through the QWERTY keyboard which, despite impressions, is quite usable.
While the E71 is still an excellent choice for a mobile productivity tool users should bear in mind that Nokia recently released the E75, the successor to the E71, and it sports a much bigger, slide-out, QWERTY keyboard. The E75 also sports a traditional numeric keypad so there is no shortage of input options. The E75 also includes Nokia Email by default which is a significantly better tool for managing email on the E-series than previous defaults.
A lesser-known phone already available locally is the SonyEricsson Xperia X1. Just like the E71 and E75 the X1 includes 3G HSDPA connectivity as well as WiFi. The X1 also sports a slide-out QWERTY keyboard not unlike that of the E75. The one differentiator for the X1 is the 3-inch wide VGA touchscreen. The X1 also includes an optical joystick for navigation as well as four-way keys for controlling functions. On the software side, the Xperia runs Windows Mobile and which includes the full Microsoft Office Mobile suite for managing documents while on the road. And with the wide screen and sensibly-designed keyboard, working on documents while mobile is actually possible.
Android
Possibly the most exciting option for the mobile office is the HTC Magic, otherwise known as the Google Phone. The HTC Magic runs the open source Android operating system created by Google and over the coming years could well find its place as an operating system of choice for a range of mobile devices. The HTC Magic is the second phone released by HTC running the Android operating system and, running an updated version of Android, fixes many of the bugs in the earlier release. The Magic is aimed squarely at the iPhone market with its full touchscreen and on-screen keyboard.
Being based on an operating system developed by Google, the Magic is understandably reliant on the various online applications offered by Google including the likes of GMail.
One of the complaints generally made about the Android operating system is that it’s synchronisation capabilities – between PC and phone – are fairly limited. The reason most probably that Google has significant investments in “cloud computing” and hosts all of its applications online. For Google users do not need to synchronise desktop applications but rather access them online.
Palm Pre
One of the more anticipated smartphones of the year will be the Palm Pre, which has been released internationally and is is likely to surface locally later this year. Palm has long been a maker of digital information managers – the Palm Pilot was significantly popular a few years back – and recently entered the mobile phone market.
The Palm Pre, its latest release, has been widely touted as the iPhone killer phone and early reviews have been mostly positive. In its favour are a significantly better operating system than most other phones that make it easier and more productive to use.
On the downside, however, the Palm Pre does not yet support HSPA connectivity and is limited to just 8GB of memory, unlike most of its competitors which can have their storage increased. These two factors alone may well undermine the otherwise very promising Palm Pre.
The best smartphones – give your views
Loading ...