Which is the best 1st generation smartphone??

For sometime now I have been carrying two smartphones with me, thanks to me being a Mobile Developer. Till yesterday there was a HTC Mozart(Windows Phone 7) and a Nexus One (Android Froyo), but today I had to swap my Nexus One for a iPhone 2G(iOS 3.1.3). While playing around with these phones, I realized both the iPhone and Mozart are first generation phones of their respective platforms. In that aspect, I have also used HTC Dream (G1, Android) for quite sometime. So the thought came to my mind, Amongst the 3 first generation phones, which is the best?

Before going into my opinion let me tell you that, I have traditionally been a Microsoft fanboy, and an Android lover, and a bit of Apple hater ;). But I will try to be fair on my judgement. 

The iPhone2G is a first generation phone in terms of hardware, the OS is not. My 2G is running iOS3.1.3 which is almost 2-3 years younger than the rig. Also, it has a million+ apps base now backing it. But to even this advantage out, the 3 year old phone is compared with a new Phone that was launched few months ago, and another a little earlier.

User Interface 

iPhone has a child-like user interface with embossed, glossy icons placed on a low screen resolution display, though many people say it is very intuitive and simple. 

Windows Phone has an unbelievable and revolutionary user interface. Everything looks so aesthetic, and eye pleasing. Giving much importance to the actual content than Chrome, you hardly see the phone OS, you see exactly what you are looking for. Be it your phone book, or your tweets.

The HTC G1 has a very barebone user interface. And it feels like using Windows 3.1, in terms of the styling and theming, it is definitely not the most beautiful designs I have seen. It gives you most of the things you want though, in terms features.

Verdict: WP7 beats iPhone by a few miles and Android by a few light years.

Usability

As mentioned before, this is about the software, so technically iPhone has a little advantage. But still, it lacks multi-tasking, and looks more or less basic. I still get mails delivered in the background and my tweets pushed through notifications, so it is very much usable. 

Windows Phone 7 fails here miserably. It starts with the lack of multitasking, similar to the iPhone it fetches your mails though.There is no push notification support, no sockets (no chatting), a poor browser (limited HTML5 support) and (hence?) pretty limited apps.

Android scores a home run here. It gives you everything you can think of. You can run a plethora of apps in the background (in the 70MB available memory), be available on chat all the time, receive tweets, and anything you could actually do in an computer.

Verdict: Android pays back Windows Phone,and iPhone stays where it was.

Stability

The iPhone I have is already 2+ years old, with a broken glass and is jailbroken (multiple times), but still is rock solid. No app has ever crashed while I was using it (you can't know if it crashed, even if it actually did :] ). 

Windows Phone has to catch up here. Few of my apps have crashed multiple times ( eg: Foursquare) and my phone itself crashed once and I had to hard reset it.

Android was worser, I used to get "Force close" messages and numerous crashes regularly. Maybe I am biased here, as I used to develop apps and run them on the phone :) Moreover the I could run any spurious app I want, on the phone, with no app restrictions in place.

Apps

Apps have been iPhone's forte and it will be, at least for some (more) time. Only that many of the apps have evolved and ignores the 2G phone now.:)

Windows Phone has some good apps, and generally they have kept the quality of apps high. Also, every app has a "try" option which is good. I haven't seen gaming experience get any better than the XBox live hub in my Windows Phone.

Android again has had a different approach, you can find all sorts of apps; good, bad, harmful, crappy and what not. It was hard to find quality apps in the platform, though there were a few.

Verdict: App-le it is, followed by Windows Phone and Android.

I can't say which is the best first generation phone, each one of them have been exciting in their own ways, if it was the fresh User Interface in the Windows Phone, iPhone brought about the touch phone revolution itself. Android took smartphones closer to computers and gave me infinite possibilities. 

But, if a G1, Mozart and iPhone was kept in front of me and I had to pick one, I would have probably picked the G1, er.. no... the Windows Phone..oh..or is ..it ... the iPhone?

Send in your choices. Which one would be your pick?

PS: I really miss my Nexus One. It is a hell of a phone!

-Codevalley

Why Motorola is still at the bottom of the table!

Motorola recently launched the "smallest & lightest" Enterprise Digital Assistant EDA] class phones, for the business class.
It leverages on Motorola's mobile computing platform architecture, MC55 and the features include, Windows Mobile Pro. 6.1,two-way radio, bar code scanner, digital camera, and mobile computer into a compact and lightweight design. It supports the GSM/GPRS/EDGE standard for wireless wide-area networks, offering voice and data services to provide the information needed for better decision making and business results. With an array of features, like integrated GPS,the new MC55 EDA supports a host of real-time location-based applications.
The phones have a whopping 3.5" [for comparison, iPhone has a 3.5"] and qwerty-keyboard, and has many unheard features like a 1D laser scanner, 2D imager, WLAN, WIFI,WWAN, VoIP, Push-to-talk, even support soft phone clients and integration with installed IP PBXs.
All goody goody?

This is how the phones look like!!

No, this is not some kind of joke of spoof. This is REAL!!

-codevalley

Let’s bury the iPhone, Omnia unfolds an era

Samsung’s growth and rise as a mobile phone market major went unnoticed, until earlier this year when they surpassed Motorola to become the World's 2nd largest Mobile phone manufacturer. Lately Samsung has been putting a very strong and challenging competition even to the market leader Nokia. With constantly launching new handsets with rich features and presenting those with competitive prices have been their strategy.
Now, they have come up with a dream phone, a phone which has everything one could think of, a phone which could be could challenge a 2 year old PC, in short we call it Omnia.
Overview
Omnia is a candybar phone with a 3.2” touch screen and WQVGA display on a 12.5mm thin body with platinum finish. It has a 5MP camera with almost professional features and runs the latest Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. It has a built in memory of 8GB or 16GB and supports additional memory via memory card. It even has a laptop like optical mouse for one hand navigation. It also has WiFi, GPS, Word, Excel, Powerpoint what not?
Multimedia
Going into details, the camera has face detection, smile detection, auto focus, long panoramic shots with auto-panorama shots. There is also extending video recording features like adding subtitles, live dubbing, trimming video etc. The display looks very vivid and clear and the touch interface used is a new patented Samsung technology called TouchWiz, which is genuinely above par to iPhone’s interface. It has support to all major video formats including DivX, Xvid etc.
Connectivity
The phone has GPS for navigation and geotagging. Along with the normal EDGE, Push mail, FM Radio, GPS, Bluetooth A2DP, Wi-Fi, USB 2.0 etc, it also has HSDPA 7.2mbps, Quad-band GSM. It also has Outlook for handling e-mails.
User Interface
No stone has been left unturned in this new Samsung’s all in one package. Omnia has a multitouch with TouchWiz technology, (do watch the video at the end), with intuitive tap, sweep, drag and drop operations as well as an on-screen qwerty keyboard. It also has unique calling and texting methods. Another elegant addition is a widget full desktop, which can be fully customized, (I have never seen a thing like this before). There are also dedicated keys for communications and other shortcuts.
The phone can also download large files and store in them, thanks to the native windows OS in it. It can be used much like a PC without great difference.
Only negatives I could find is the display resolution of 240x400 which I feel is ordinary. Also the 5MP camera doesn’t seem to have a camera cover.

Overall, Omnia SGH-i900 is a PC packed into 12.5mm of metal which is designed for the pocket.
Omnia will be launched by June in South East Asia, and later by July in UK and rest of the world.
And iPhone, what is that???
TouchWiz Demo video


-codevalley

iPhone 2.0, double the performance, half the price.

iPhone 3G or the iPhone 2.0 was revealed yesterday here by Steve Job and it has already been creating hype with so many diggs and search results for the same. I don't believe in rehashing information, but I thought I should let my readers know what is actually different in the new iPhone compared to its older sibling.
The looks
The new iPhone looks little bit thicker but shapier compared to the original, which is understandable, but there is no difference in the display size or resolution (it remains 3.5 inches). The 3 hardbuttons (short cut keys) are now in metal, rather than in plastic (as was in original iPhone). The headphone port now allows the normal headphones to be connected to it. The phone has single color for the back side also, instead of the original metallic back. The phone is also available in ivory white for the 16GB version.
Features
The changes in features includes a faster processor and network chip which boast of 2.6 times faster internet, and also 3G capability.  There is also a front camera for video call. The new iPhone also has AGPS which makes it more useful for map applications like Google Maps, working better. Also theres is a unified push method which allows all background IM and email programs to fetch data at one time from Apple's server which caches the data, thereby increasing battery life because of less network seek. Also, the new iPhone would support software upgrades meaning which is a big plus. You also have a sim card ejector to pull out the sim card.
Pricing
Pricing is the most important difference that iPhone 3G has to offer. If the former version cost you 399$, the new iPhone would cost you only 199$, yes, only half the price. That would be THE cheapest touch screen phone, or maybe smartphone ever heard. I am not sure why Apple took such a drastic step. But Steve Jobs would not do things without some great thought behind it.
-codevalley