From the Forums is a great way to see what all of the current hot topics are on the TiPb forums. Today we would like to go over some of the popular sub-forums for those of you who may not be familiar with our forum setup. Becoming a member is fast and free, so if you have not already already done so, head on over and register now.

• iPhone OS 4.0 is coming soon so why not discuss it in our forums? Rumor is we will see a sneak peak on the 27th…
• The Smartphone Experts Round Robin continues and this week it is Matt Miller’s turn from Nokia Experts and he needs your help! Participate in this thread for your chance to win a free device! Yes, I said free!
• Speaking of iPhone OS 4.0 why not discuss what the 4th generation of iPhone will bring us in Rene’s thread: 4th Gen iPhone Concept Designs!
• Lastly, be sure to check out iPhone Plans and Carriers, a forum which is home to all of the latest discussions regarding Verizon, AT&T, etc…

See you on the forums!

From the Forums is a great way to see what all of the current hot topics are on the TiPb forums. Today we would like to go over some of the popular sub-forums for those of you who may not be familiar with our forum setup. Becoming a member is fast and free, so if you have not already already done so, head on over and register now.

• Yes, Facebook 3.1 is still a hot topic. So has their application gotten any better for you? Let us know!
• Crackberry Kevin has been lurking within our forums in search of some iPhone help. If you could, please visit his thread to lend him a helping hand and you may just win a new device.
• We are all aware of the hype that surrounded the Google/HTC Nexus One Android device and so far… it’s turned out to be nothing but trouble with it’s spotty 3G and disappointing initial sales. Do any of you really still feel this device poses a threat to Apple’s iPhone?

See you on the forums!

As it did the year before, the Smartphone Round Robin needed to go into overtime again this time around — but we’re finished now!  If you haven’t been following along, here’s what you missed:  Each of the editors of our five Smartphone Experts sites swapped phones for a week or so, reviewing and leanring what it’s like to wear another smarphone user’s shoes.  The result is the entire series of articles you see linked on this handy page, the Smartphone Round Robin of 2008.

What will you learn there?  You’ll learn that there was no single smartphone that ‘won’ the Round Robin — but that’s by design.  There’s no perfect smartphone out there, but there just might be the perfect smartphone to fit your needs.  If you’re looking to get a new smartphone soon, think about what you need it do to and then hit up these articles — you’ll find that depending on what each of us care about, we’ll give you a useful perspective on whether a given smartphone matches up. 

Actually, we explain it all pretty well on this page. Oh, yeah, one more thing, we are giving away fabulous prizes:

• From Android Central, the T-Mobile G1, the BlueAnt Z9 Bluetooth Headset, and SPE Screen Protectors
• From CrackBerry.com, the BlackBerry Bold, Spare Battery, and Case-Mate Second Skin
• From The iPhone Blog, the iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset
• From TreoCentral, the Treo Pro, Case-Mate Clear Armor, and Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth Headset (original)
• From WMExperts, the HTC Fuze and the Celio Redfly Mobile Companion

Smartphone Round Robin Winners!

Here are all the winners for the 2008 Smartphone Round Robin, chosen randomly in accordance with the contest rules:

From Android Central, winning the T-Mobile G1, the BlueAnt Z9 Bluetooth Headset, and SPE Screen Protectors, we have:

Hunter McNabb, for this post about how the G1 is snappier than the Fuze.

The runner up, who will receive a $50 coupon to any Smartphone Experts accessory store, is Devonair. From CrackBerry.com, winning the BlackBerry Bold, Spare Battery, and Case-Mate Second Skin, we have:

Dimietriev, for this post about one of the ‘little things’ we pay attention to on Smartphones, namely the calculator.

The runner up, who will receive a $50 coupon to any Smartphone Experts accessory store, is jordanmah. From The iPhone Blog, winning the iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset, we have:

Mark, for this post about his primary need in a smarpthone: messaging.

The runner up, who will receive a $50 coupon to any Smartphone Experts accessory store, is Jeff. From TreoCentral, winning the Treo Pro, Case-Mate Clear Armor, and Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth Headset (original), we have:

berdinkerdickle, for this post about just how important one-handed use is — how else can you eat that sandwich?

The runner up, who will receive a $50 coupon to any Smartphone Experts accessory store, is Geo-Treo. From WMExperts, winning the HTC Fuze and the Celio Redfly Mobile Companion, we have

Pamina, for this post about how somewhere in the the Fuze there’s an awesome phone that’s just waiting to come out.

The runner up, who will receive a $50 coupon to any Smartphone Experts accessory store, is blancmik. Congratulations to all of our winners!  You can expect an email from Dieter (aka me) over the weekend.

A special thanks goes out to the sponsors of the Smartphone Round Robin, without whom we couldn’t have possibly pulled it off:

Celio Corp	Palm
Case-Mate	Smartphone Outlet

We’ll bring it back again, of course, later in 2009.  Here’s a promise: this year we’ll actually bring in some Nokia/Symbian action and heck, we might even deign to include a Windows Mobile Standard device.  Oh yeah, and there’s that whole Palm Pre/webOS thing to look forward to as well.

The smartphone world is going to rock in 2009, and Smartphone Experts will be there to cover it all for you.

The 2008 Smartphone Round Robin was originally scheduled to finish… in 2008! December 31st — Today!

HOWEVER, by popular demand (read: delayed shipments, holidays, prep work for Macworld and CES, and Kevin escaping from yet another CrackBerry withdrawal facility), we’re now giving everyone 10 extra days to win. That’s right, from now until January 10th, you can make one more comment/forum post, per thread, per day (including this one!).

Given how many threads we have going not just on TiPb, but on Android Central, CrackBerry.com, WMExperts, and TreoCentral, that’s like a smartzillion extra chances to win an iPhone 3G, Android G1, BlackBerry Bold, HTC FUZE, or Treo Pro — each with accessories! (We’re going with the Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! (Full contest rules here!)

So what are you waiting for? Check out all TiPb’s Round Robin posts, comment every day, head on over to the forums, make fun of Kevin, Dieter, Casey, Jennifer, and me (also every day), and good luck!

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

After 4 weeks sampling Google’s Android G1, Palm’s (HTC’s) Treo (Windows Mobile) Pro, HTC’s Windows Mobile FUZE, and RIM’s BlackBerry Bold, it’s back, and I’m back.

Boom.

A lot has happened since Dieter ripped the still beeping iPhone 3G from my cold, not-even-dead hand. Promo codes hit the App Store. iFart apps did to (and made a killing — sigh). And, of course, Apple released a little something called firmware 2.2.

Admittedly, I cheated a bit. I checkout out the new firmware and the new Google Maps, but I really haven’t had the chance to use iPhone OS 2.2 as my “daily driver”, not until now.

I’ve reviewed the iPhone software several times now, for 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2, so I’ll spare you the regurgitation, because something else has happened to: I’ve spent time with all those other smartphones. I’ve experienced some things still unavailable on the iPhone, some I’ve really liked, others… well, check the videos for the Android G1, Treo Pro, HTC FUZE, and BlackBerry Bold if you haven’t already.

Instead, I’m going to focus on that: returning to the iPhone and looking at it again through eyes now widened by our sibling sites’ signature devices. And I’m going to start after the jump!

iPhone vs. Android

When it comes to the Android, everything seems to boil down to “openness” — unlike the iPhone, which is strictly controlled by Apple and the App Store, pretty much anyone who wants to (and knows Java) can code for Android and give away (and maybe eventually sell) what they want, where the want, and how they want. (Within reason, Google still has a kill switch all their own.)

But big deal. Android’s openness is cliched to the point that that the strawman is wincing. I’m going to propose that neither open nor proprietary, chaos nor order are inherently good or bad, and more importantly, really matter to the end user. Both have advantages and drawbacks — it is what’s ultimately brought forth from each platform that matters (the iPhone, after all, has a Darwin kernel, OpenGL, and other non-proprietary code at its core).

Sure, developers want to express themselves with as little restriction as possible, but they also want to feed their families. Consumers want that next great paradigm-shifting application but they download fart gags in droves. (Unless I missed the memo saying those were one and the same?)

So I’m taking the App Store vs. Android Market off the table. Likewise, I’m ditching the infinite possible Android hardware options vs. the iPhone’s singularity of form and function. Android will give developers more options but more headaches, users more choices but more confusion. Wash.

So what did my week with the G1 teach me about the iPhone? Apple needs to worry about cloud services.

Push Gmail is nice. Push Gmail is fine. Having a separate Gmail app is a dumb idea, and Gmail’s IMAP implementation is so buggy, every time I get an “invalid certificate” or “too many concurrent connection” error I consider abandoning it forever, Contacts are a disgrace, and everything has been in beta beyond the point of embarrassment, but here’s the thing: Google owns the cloud and they’re beginning to show it with Android.

I’ve said before that one big advantage the iPhone has is it gets Google as well as Apple, while Android gets only Google, but that may not always be the case. Sure, Google wants the eyeballs (and advertising dollars — never forget their core business) of the iPhone’s user base, much as they do Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and every other platform mobile and otherwise, but that may only be until such time as they own the platform as well.

MobileMe is a start. We can spare the botched launch jokes — for a few months now MobileMe has been solid, and while it provides some killer functionality for Mac users (Back to My Mac, Mac Sycn, etc.), using the Android really made me think Apple has to up its Cloud game and fast.

First, iPhone needs more robust email functionality. Skip the non-standard labels, but give me filters/rules, the ability to star/flag, and otherwise raise the on-device and web-based feature power to desktop Mail.app levels with Gmail-type power and even better usability.

Get CalDAV really rocking, let me share and subscribe to/publish calendars. Again, iCal power in my hand and on the web.

CardDAV would be nice too, with the same sharing, subscribing, and publishing abilities for contacts, with status rolled in for good measure.

And get those notes syncing, along with the Tasks already built in.

Sure, Android doesn’t do all this, but I’m positive it will. Maybe not Android 2.0, maybe not even 3.0, but as soon as Google stops pulling a Microsoft and actually gets their act integrated, they’ll go from owning the cloud to leveraging it. That, above open markets and variable form factors, is what I’ll really be keeping my Android eye on, and that is what I want to see Apple not only compete with, but raise the bar again in terms of elegance of design and function.

iPhone vs. Palm Treo Pro/HTC FUZE

I’m putting the two HTC-built, Windows Mobile running smartphones together. Blame Palm, not me. Actually, blame both Microsoft and Palm because as much as the Palm OS was abandoned to the point that we couldn’t even include it in the round robin, Windows Mobile showed me its aging platform wasn’t that far from a similar fate. Sure, Palm OS 2.0 Nova, and Windows Mobile 7 are both on the horizon, but as of this writing, both are still vaporware, and both have suffered similar grand promises and heartbreaking delays to the point of asking: it’s 2008, do you know where your 3rd party developers are? (Hint: browsing the AppDroid MarkStore).

In all fairness, however, I’m less worried about Windows Mobile because, well, Microsoft has a winzillion dollars to keep funding it, and like Google they’re investing a ton of that cash in the cloud. So, while Live! Mesh Azure is a near impenetrable clusterfrak, with integration almost as badly broken as its branding, it won’t always be. They’re building data centers like QuickyMarts and Ballmer’s right, they’ll just keep coming and coming, and they could eventually nail it. I could very well get my ZuneBoxPhone Live! one day.

So, just like I’m taking a pass on the openness and flexibility of Android, I’m skipping the old standbys of power and configurability with Windows Mobile. Overhead and complicating clutter render them zero-sum gains anyway.

What will I focus on? Apple’s 360 degree integration, from Final Cut Pro to iTunes to AppleTV to MobileMe is so far unmatched, but it’s by no means unmatchable. Microsoft, with its Kraken-like tentacles, could go a full 520 degrees. We can make all the clumsy giant jokes we like, but getting crushed by a clumsy giant doesn’t make you any less crushed.

Case in point, the HTC Touch HD. We didn’t get it in the round robin (it’s not, and won’t be, officially available in North America), but it shows what type of technology can be put into an iPhone-sized package. I’ve repeated far too often already that I want (and fully expect) to see an iPhone HD come WWDC in June, 2009. Keeping pace in the hardware war is just one step. Others will involve some patents Apple has already filed, especially with streaming video (TiVo meets Slingbox).

Notice I’m talking about entertainment in a Microsoft segment, not Exchange, not remote device management, not office documents, because a) Microsoft is pushing hard in the consumer products space and that’s where Apple dominates, and b) this isn’t the BlackBerry segment, in which — quite frankly — those subjects would be more appropriate given market share.

iPhone vs. BlackBerry Bold

So let’s not talk about Exchange, remote device management, or office documents here either, b’okay. Consider them the last of my stereotypical aversions. As well as BlackBerry handles those tasks — and handle them well it irrefutably does — there’s something BlackBerry does infinitely better that Apple needs to consider and contend with: it’s creates CrackBerry.com members.

That’s not a sibling site plug. As much as the NOC and BIS/BES is an overly-proprietary single-point-of-failure, security and privacy bag half-filled with hurt, it creates an environment that once you get into, you can’t easily get out of.

It’s not that the BlackBerry calls to you. Having something blink at me is not nearly as compelling as having an iPhone just sitting there, not telling you if you have to pick it up or not — ensuring you check it when you may not even have to. It’s that once you get the true push, once you get the direct PIN to PIN messaging, it becomes like a community. Your sales team might all have them, but your friends and family might all have them as well.

We’ve seen the same thing with Twitter. People go where their friends are, and once you have the momentum of community, it creates a significant barrier of exit. Who wants to leave their community behind? It’s why Pownce and Jaiku and other status engines have failed.

While Apple should be applauded for embracing open standards like IMAP IDLE and built amazing technology with OS X 10.5 Server, they’ve done relatively little to promote any sort of community around the iPhone, and what little they have done is handled by third parties via the App Store.

This from the company that told people to Think Different. That created the Cult of Mac. I spoke about the cloud with Android and the integration with Windows Mobile, and here Apple needs a bit of both. And come on, it’s not like snooty Apple fans wouldn’t jump at the chance to be “official” snooty Apple fans.

I’m not the first to suggest this. I’m probably not the hundred and first. But Apple needs to put a little addiction of their own in the iPhone. Mobile iChat would be a great start. Give MobileMe Lite away for free with every iPhone, tied to an always on, multitasking Mobile iChat (supporting not only open Jabber and proprietary AIM and iChat protocols, but Twitter as well — Dieter’s right about cross-platform presence ruling it all), and toss in a super silky smooth CoreLocation-powered social iNetwork along with it. Make PIN seem Paleolithic. Make the NOC the next Friendster.

Conclusion

The Smartphone Experts Round Robin was a stroke of genius. Not only does it let sometimes myopic editors experience the greater gadget world, but it hopefully brings our readers with us (and gives some lucky winners some free smartphones for their trouble). Sometimes we think our chosen device does something really well and don’t realize just how well (and sometimes how differently) other device do the same. Likewise, sometimes we have gripes about our device that turn out to be far worse elsewhere.

It’s a reality check of the first order. Android’s potential, Windows Mobile’s legacy, BlackBerry’s connection, and in the end?

Thanks to everyone on the Android Central, Treo Central, CrackBerry.com, and WMExperts forums for all their help, my fellow editors Casey, Jennifer, and Kevin, and our editor-in-chief Dieter Bohn for their many insights.

A month and a marathon of reviews later, I love my iPhone more than ever, but also think I understand it more than ever as well. And most importantly, I know what I want to see from it, and from Apple, for the next Smartphone Experts Round Robin in 2009.

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Join us for the second of two special Smartphone Round Robin Roundtables! This week, Casey, Kevin, Rene, and Dieter discuss the final two devices in our Smartphone Round Robin: the T-Mobile G1 and the the HTC Fuze. Plus, they answer your questions live!

Music: Our Slanted Voices by DoKashiteru

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

We’ve come full circle. After previewing the Android G1, Treo Pro, HTC FUZE, and BlackBerry Bold, I’m finally — finally — back to the iPhone 3G.

Will I still know how to use it? Will it be enough to mellow my month-long harsh? Will my own childlike sense of wonder be restored?

Check out the video, and then head on over to my triumphant return thread in the TiPb iPhone forums, and help me find out!

Every day you comment here, you get one entry to win not only a supra-shiny iPhone 3G, but the Case-Mate Naked Case which allows full touch through access to the iPhone’s amazing screen. Smartphone Outlet is also kicking in the revolutionary Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset AND a runner-up prize, $50 coupon good at any SPE store, including the new Smartphone Outlet, where you can find refurb Smartphone Accessories at very (very!) low prices.

Check out our full contest rules!

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

Fair enough, the CrackBerry’s didn’t smack me around as badly as the WinManiac — those who bothered to read the context disclaimer and understand the point of the Round Robin at least! Ha! And along with the awesome CrackBerry.com forum members who tried to help a poor iPhone n00b out, the commenters added many useful insights and a tip or two to boot! Still some questions were asked and that means there are answers to be attempted… after the break!

Rey Says: Could you compare video quality on the two screens? Same resolution but does it look better on one than the other?

Better is subjective. Due to it’s much higher pixel density (217dpi vs. 160pi) the Bold looks sharper than the iPhone, but because of the much smaller physical size, you may or may not value that sharpness over the beefier screen on the iPhone. (Think iPod Nano experience). Again, it’s like a 1080p LCD TV at 37″ as opposed to 52″.

Jhauser3 Says: How does the browser compare? I have used the black berry browser in the past and it was not even close to safari. Has RIM made steps towards a better browser?

I haven’t used previous BlackBerries, so it may well be night and day better. It rendered regular pages well enough but had some problems with CSS elements, which may be due to some optimization it’s trying to make. JavaScript didn’t look to be very well supported, especially since RIM turns it off by default. So, steps have been made, yes, but not leaps or bounds yet. For an iPhone user, it’s not quite good enough.

Touch Me Says: How does the battery hold up with heavy internet use compared to the iPhone?

Battery life was excellent! RIM really balances this well. However, I didn’t enjoy the web browsing or media experience (never mind gaming) as much as the iPhone, so I didn’t do those things as much. When I did, it added considerably to battery drain as happens with pretty much every device.

Tk Says: another question i’ve had was, it looks kinda big, is it heavy? or in other words, is it small/light enough to fit in your pocket without feeling uncomfortable?

The Bold was much lighter than I thought it would be, and given it’s width, it’s still incredibly slim on the profile, so it’s very pocketable.

Bear Says: How do the speakers sound. Are they tinny sounding and are they loud enough?

The speakers sounded great! The Bold has one huge advantage over the iPhone 3G when it comes to speakers: they pump much more serious volume out of the ear speaker when playing media. On the iPhone 3G, the ear speaker is much lower than the bottom speaker. The Bold balances this better, for a nicer stereo experience. (You listening, Apple?!)

Steve Says: How many minutes does it take to figure out where things are? And does it come with a giant magnifying glass to read emails?

No UI is yet as intuitive as the iPhone’s, and frankly while the neon wireframes look neat, they’re not always immediately obvious. Add to that multiple email icons when you add accounts (I can hide them, I know, but they’re not hidden by default) and the lack of iPhone-style text labels beneath them, along with the trackball moving too little or too much, and it took some time and practice before I was speedy with it. And no magnifying glass, as the email was easy enough to read, though the app is Spartan to say the least.

mbiphonefan Says: i would like to know about the typing comfort. is it more comfortable to type on that device than on the iphone? is the wifi connection better than on the iphone?

I dislike physical keyboards as I find the repetitive pressure stressful and it burns out the small muscles in my forearms. I far, far, prefer typing on the iPhone, but other people will no doubt feel the opposite way. That said, the Bold had the nicest keyboard I’ve used so far. I did like the sticky feel of the Treo Pro, but the Bold’s width made a big difference.

Didn’t try WiFi as I get really decent 3G. I did see that there was a separate WiFi browser mode, which I found strange and off-putting. UI should be UI and pipe should be pipe, and never should a user be forced to watch the sausage being made.

Deathscaller Says: Hows the internet speed and battery life compared to the iphone.

Speed is probably a function of network, but I found the iPhone on 3G rendered pages faster and better than the Bold, especially with JavaScript enabled on the Bold. I think the Bold, however, manages battery life a tad better than the iPhone, as their push solution can handle a lot of lower-power interactions (I think?)

frog Says: Is there much/any lag in the menu system?

Nope. Menuing and UI systems were hecka snappy. However, once in a while the screen would flash pure white for a second then come back. Not sure what that was about?

The Reptile Says: 1) The BBB browser. How well does it work? Is it frustrating to have a good screen but no compelling interface? 2) Media capabilities. How do they compare to the iPhone? 3) Non-NOC email. Can you do this on the BlackBerry and if you can how well does it work? 4) Navigation. How long does it take to navigate to screens using the trackball? Are there other methods or is the track ball the only way? 5) If you don’t email or text much is there a compelling reason to own a BBB?

1) It works okay. The frustration was minimal, but the screen was sharp and small, and it takes a while to scroll. It’s hard to use other handset browsers after MobileSafari, however. 2) It seems like RIM is trying harder with media, and the built in players all worked well enough, but again anything would have trouble in comparison to the iPhone’s real strengths. 3) I tried the Gmail downloadable app, which worked well enough, but again I prefer having 1 email app to rule them all. 4) Keyboard shortcuts work, but the trackball is king. 5) Nope, other than fashion. Messaging the Bold’s forte.

Glenn Says: How does the app store and browers compare?And how does apps like aim and facebook compare

No App Store yet in the iPhone sense. CrackBerry.com offers so similar services, but Apple really nailed the mobile software delivery system. I didn’t try Facebook. Anyone tried them both and willing to share?

James Says: How was the Bold’s radio reception compared to the iPhones?

Good, but I’ve never had trouble with the iPhone’s radio. Not had a dropped call yet on either device. (Knock wood).

Charlotte Says: in terms of applications, which one has better selection and more powerful/useful apps? access, costs, etc??

App Store is unmatched as of this moment, but RIM is planning to iClone… er deploy their own version(s) soon.

Jonathan Kutz Says: How is the battery case cover in terms sturdiness? I always found myself playing with the cover on my palms, taking it on and off alot.

Good! Fix it in place and forget it!

Steve Says: I was listening to the Crackberry podcast, and something Kevin said made it sound like there is more than one type of Internet browser on the phone. Is there more than one? What’s up with that? Secondly, is it possible that having more buttons on the phone make games more enjoyable than on our beloved iPhone? Finally, just to get Kevin back, can we find some excuse to come up with a good name to call the BB in retort to his “Oh Frack-phone” label….???

Bla1ze was kind enough to answer the browser question, and I bow before his crackspertise! “the “Internet Browser” the “Hot Spot Browser” and whatever lame wap browser your carrier wants to install (ie: medianet for AT&T) but essentially all function in the same way you can read a better explanation that I posted @ http://forums.crackberry.com/f3/why-do-i-have-different-browsers-ie-wap-internet-wifi-85060/“

Maybe a real time strategy game would enjoy more buttons, the way they do on PCs vs. consoles. Dunno. We could come up with many names, how about it, commenters?

Steve Says: Could iPhone users find any practical use for the BlackBerry Bold… like for scraping ice off of their windshields?

It scraped a scratch in my iPhone 3G glass, which nothing else had thus far been able to do, so yeah, I think it would kill at ice scraping.

Dan Hinze Says: So, if this is exclusively for legitimate questions about the BlackBerry Bold from an “iPhone” perspective, why is an iPhone being given away? Shouldn’t a Bold be given away instead since most the questions will come from “iPhone” users inquiring about the Bold???? Anyway, here’s my “Bold” question. Do third party GPS apps such as Google Maps work with the Bold yet?

Er… I’ll just assume you finally read all about the Round Robin contest in the many, many links we’ve posted and skip on ahead… Yup, I believe the bold has Google Maps goodness.

bas.life Says: I know this is pretty much a subjective question, but I watch many movies on my iphone; knowing the screen size differences, do you or anyone find watching video/movies on the bold enjoyable? Another question, will my movies formatted for the iphone play natively on the bold or do I have to reconvert them into a compatiable format?

It was about the same as watching on the iPod Nano in my experience. Super high density in a tiny little package. I’m not sure about the movie format as I didn’t try moving anything over.

Cherryhead25 Says: I think I have a legitimate question. How’s the Bold sound as a phone, ya know like when placing a call? Is the sound quality good compared to the iPhone 3g, eh?

Sound was good. I’m not sure digital actually improved on analog, and everything sounds chopped off to me, but I’d say they’re pretty much good all around.

iAirmanshirk Says: Why is the blackberry track ball so hard to use, why is their user interface not been upgraded since the 90’s and how are they still selling phones?

Trackballs are mechanical and hence subject to mechanical failure. Think old school ball mouse. I don’t think anyone really understood mobile interfaces before Apple launched the iPhone, now RIM is struggling to adapt a last gen micro-OS to a next gen world. They’re still selling phones because they took a lesson from Microsoft and managed to get a huge install base of locked-in proprietary technology: BIS, BES, and NOC.

Patrick Says: Blackberries are famous for their email capabilities. However, I’ve heard the gmail experience on a BB is not that great (e.g. no push, haphazard 2-way imap synching, etc…). How does gmail on the Bold compare to on the iPhone? I’m looking at getting one of these devices, and the gmail experience is a huge factor for me. Thanks!

Google has really poor IMAP support on any and every platform, so there’s really no way to make a fair comparison. When Gmail is working, they both work.

msbaylor Says: What is the cost of the blackberry data plan? What color bit depth does use? What’s the picture resolution (talen from the camera) ?

Cost will vary by carrier, but I think it’s roughly the same as any data plan. I believe the Bold tops out a depressing 65K colors, which is a little out dated, but again at 217dpi, I’m not sure how noticeable it would be (I couldn’t see much if any dithering or distortion). 2 MP camera… but with flash!

lordzod01 Says: there are enough reviews to compare both the iPhone and bb indepth. Why do people keep blogging with stupid questions about browsers and battery life.

Anything unknown remains a question.

Kevin Nuckols Says: I would like compare the the fuze web browser and the bolds experience.

I couldn’t get Opera Mobile working on the FUZE, so no comparison for me. Maybe Dieter would know.

Amani Says: Whether I get an iphone or blackberry, I won’t be using the 3G Network(I don’t want to pay for a data plan) How does the wifi compare on each?

Sorry, didn’t try WiFi on the Bold, but the iPhone’s is awesome.

Garrett Says: Fantastic review. I am currently on a BB and looking forward to a Bold or an iPhone. I have used both and both are great fantastic devices. There are tons of keyboard shortcuts you can look into. I stumbled across a lot of them while using mine. Having and iPhone I am sure you have a mac. Have you found any solutions to the BB syncing to mac catastrophe? If so please let me know!

Kevin swears Mac support for the BlackBerry is improving. Pretty depressing that it took them this long!

December 21st, 2008 at 9:05 pm Are there any applications that you loved on the Bold? Either on the BB OS or third-party? Did you feel like you used the Bold “on-the-go”? Or was it a “stop & use” phone?

Bold was stop and use for me. It had to be. I don’t know how Kevin can handle really parsing, processing, and responding to all that push email and messaging without stopping. Then again, he’s much smarter and more productive than I am. (And those were the apps I liked most).

SomeAudioGuy Says: Really after your Spazz-out review of the Fuze, I’m really curious to see how you handle a non-touch screen phone. What do you think of the total messaging package? Being able to receive IM without being IN the IM app?

Well, since you were so gracious and classy in the asking, I really enjoyed the power of the messaging, but as I said in my review, the demand of it was terrifying.

talljason Says: How do the Bold and iPhone compare for consumers not dependent on getting and sending e-mails…is there a certain feature other than e-mail that makes the Bold better than the iPhone?

The keyboard if you prefer physical keyboards?

Jrock Says: Is the bold better than the iPhone? =O

Depends on your needs and preferences.

Scotty Says: How does it feel in the hand. Too wide?

Nope, felt fine!

cole Says: how is the reception compared to the iphone after all the iphone doesn’t get good reception at all

iPhone reception has been solid for me, get a better network!

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Jennifer from our sibling site, TreoCentral, has already posted her video first impressions of the iPhone 3G, and now she’s back with her full, final review. Did she hate it’s lack of the Qwerty keyboard Treo made famous? Did she break out the glue stick in an attempt to actually paste something? Or, gripes aside, did she enjoy it for what it does well, killer Apps and fantastic web browsing and media playback?

Go check out her review, and let us know what you think!

Meanwhile, I’m finally — finally — back with the iPhone 3G this week, and wow does it look like I missed a lot of great apps and developments over the last month. So, I’ve started a TiPb iPhone forum thread where you can help me catch up — and get another chance to win an iPhone 3G!

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Black and white. Night and day. Left and right. BlackBerry Bold and iPhone 3G. For the penultimate Round Robin, I set aside my multi-touch no Qwerty for Kevin’s touch-less Cadillac of Querty’s.

And…? I loved it and hated it. How utterly appropriate. Not to be too tale of two-cities about it, but it was both the best of the Round Robin devices for me and the worst. Google’s Android G1 tried to do everything but beta’d all of it (give them time though!). The HTC Fuze tried to shellack over Windows Mobile to make it more like the iPhone and — in terms of usability — tripped and fell all over itself in the attempt. The Palm Treo Pro, while unabashedly Windows Mobile, was still a touch screen, allowing for some level of direct comparison, and proving just how far behind Windows Mobile’s interface has fallen.

But the BlackBerry Bold is a different beast entirely. Direct comparison is impossible. A pager vs. a music player, all grown up and bedecked in smartphone tech. Both devices can do similar things, but their strengths are almost polar opposites, as are the approaches they take in delivering them.

Kevin’s already written 7500 words on that, however, requiring few if any from me. So rather than rehash, or duplicate what the previous Round Robin editors have said better before me, I’m going to change it up a bit (yes, again) and look at things from a different perspective. And I’ll do it after the break!

Hardware

The BlackBerry Bold is the nicest hardware I’ve yet experienced in the Round Robin. The other devices were a little too plastic, a little too creaky. I think battery doors contribute to that since structural elements can no longer be braced to the back, not to mention hinges for the sliders. With the Bold, I expected something as good as the iPhone’s singular slab of glass and metal and high-density backing.

I didn’t quite get that, however. The Bold is lighter than I anticipated, and some of that lightness just made it feel a tad below the iPhone in build quality to me. That slight aside aside, the whole device speaks — nay, screams — luxury. The faux leather, the glossy back trimmed in sliver (yeah, RIM totally ripped the look off, but they did it because it works). It really is the executive smartphone.

And yeah, it’s positively covered in buttons. Full Qwerty keyboard (though it misses some of the dedicated keys other devices had, like period, search, etc.), left and right (or plain and studded) convenience keys, green and red phone keys, BlackBerry (menu) and back (yes!) key, volume rocker and mute button. It’s even got left and right fake buttons (okay, yeah, they’re actually contact points, but they look like buttons which is a slight design failure).

For my tastes, there are actually too many buttons, and I found it too easy to hit them and thus, too easy to do things by accident. One of the convenience buttons defaults to voice control, and so I kept getting a very helpful lady asking to help me do what I didn’t want to do, when I didn’t want to do it. Thanks for that!

Also, while I’m no BlackBerry ninja, I couldn’t find a way to quickly lock the device in the manner of the iPhone sleep/wake button. I could hold down the red phone button, but that seemed to actually turn the services off. Otherwise, the screen would turn off, but if I bumped the wrong button, it would wake up and start to do things as I was pocketing it (again, most often that helpful lady, this time from the rather intrusive confines of my pockets!)

Oh — and it has a nice screen. Expecting me to gush? I would but after 4 other editors, what’s left to say? The iPhone is 160dpi, the Bold is 217dpi or so.

A closer comparison, though, would be the Bold and the iPod “fatty” Nano of the previous generation which had a similar horizontal screen above the control area (substitute scroll wheel for Qwerty). Inarguably it’s a gorgeous display with nary a jaggy in sight, however… it’s too small for my tastes. I like the iPhone screen size. It’s the 52″ HD LCD to the Bold’s 37″. Unless you’re in a cramped sliver of a condo, most people would prefer the physically bigger screen, and I find the same holds true on the mobile. Now, give me that 217dpi on a 3.5 in screen and we’d be talking (Touch HD, specifically).

The BlackBerry Life

I’m not reviewing the OS. It’s a Java Micro Edition pseudo-OS and despite some limp signs of life in the last (and curiously first) BlackBerry developers conference, both its limitations and the API shenanigans engaged in by RIM (which makes Apple’s SDK seem positively straightforward) make it exactly where Dieter pegged it to be: at its zenith much as Garnet was for the Palm Treo 650. It does what it can do, and as a platform I’m not sure it’s capable of much more. RIM should be applauded, and should desperately be working on a next generation OS of their own deep beneath Waterloo way.

What I am reviewing is the BlackBerry lifestyle, which is what is required to use this device. It’s not called push because it alerts you the moment data has been sent in your general direction, it’s called push because it will shove you both in how you must work to make use of that data, and the hold that data begins to take on you.

I’ve joked about this before, but it really is preemptive and interruptive. PING! You’ve got mail. PING! You’ve got BlackBerry messenger. PING! You’ve got SMS/MMS (yup, it has MMS!). PING! You’ve got… on and on and on… If you have any heft to your contact list, and size to your mail pipe, that little blinking red light is going to start to pwn you. Kevin says it’s compelling. It’s the crack. It makes you not want to put it down, and if you have, to pick it back up again often and always.

And I’m not sure that’s a Good Thing.

But back to that in a moment. More than just pushing your data, the BlackBerry records and pushes state on that data. If you’re messaging, for example, not only are you alerted to it being sent, but to it being delivered, being read, and even when the other person is typing a response to it.

Some call this accountability. Your boss, your partner, your fellow communicator knows what you’ve seen and when you’ve seen it. And it scares the privacy out of me. Sure, it’s not dissimilar to IM status in many applications, but then I heavily restrict my IM usage as well. It’s like having that boss, partner, or fellow communicator staring over your shoulder 24/7. Frankly, it’s creepy. Don’t just get off my lawn, get out from over my shoulder!

Back to Ping Death. I have no attention span. Give me a distraction and I’ll take it and ask for another. I need to focus in a world that does everything it can to split my focus. See, it’s not that I don’t understand the crack in Crackberry Kevin’s metaphor. I understand it too well. And the last thing an addictive personality needs is another addiction.

Slice it this way: demanding attention is different than on-demand. In my day job, we have a term called “data explosion” where so much information comes at you so fast it becomes paralytic. The BlackBerry is a little like that. Kevin has said the BlackBerry is an on-the-go device and the iPhone is a stop-and-use device. I had the exact opposite experience.

With the iPhone, I listen to podcasts or audio books as I commute. I occasionally read the email previews when at traffic lights or when walking downtown. I glance at the SMS previews likewise. (I wish I could do likewise with iChats, but more on that next week). I can surf the web or play some casual game while I’m waiting in line. It fits into the broad or broken moments of my day.

The Bold breaks my day. If I have 3 people hitting me on BlackBerry Messenger all at once, I can’t handle that exchange “on-the-go”. I have to stop, parse each message, make sure I’m in the right place for each one, and respond appropriately. And the little red blinker makes certain I really want to jump in and engage with those 3 people post-haste — even if I’m supposed to be finishing this review. The more important the person is to me, the more demanding. RIM really nailed the social aspect harder than even MySpace or Facebook, and perhaps rivaled only by always-on Twitter. Once you get a bunch of people all on BBM, it’s like being at a really good party and the push notifications are like shots. You don’t want to leave — but eventually you’ll collapse.

With the iPhone, I’ve turned on push but turned off notification. Everything is there and instantly available — but on my terms, in my time. I am master of the machine, not slave to it.

On the BlackBerry I could do the same, but then I feel like I don’t really have (or need) a BlackBerry any more. Oh, sure I can edit office docs, but I could do that on Windows Mobile (and too be honest, I bought a Windows Mobile device a couple years ago for that very reason and found it crippled and frustrating enough never to bother.)

So, take this as my stand against the culture of interuption, for which the BlackBerry could most easily be the poster child. This is why I mentioned at the beginning that the Blackberry is the non-iPhone I both loved and hated the most in the Round Robin. It’s not just that I think the age of physical keyboards is over (the Storm — which I’ll get to in a follow up — gives a keyboard-less BlackBerry option), it demands an entire shift in lifestyle. It just works, in all the triple-entendre’d terror that implies.

Conclusion

I won’t lie. I’m going to miss the Bold, and the BBM, and the instant connection to all my friends and contacts. But at the same time I’m going to enjoy getting my life back. A good friend of mine who works in a super-critical position in a huge company is a BlackBerry user and as much as he loves it, he hates it with a breathing passion because he knows every call could be his boss asking why he hasn’t done something about what the boss already knows he’s seen, read, or otherwise been pushed. He’s highly placed in this company, with exponentially more people beneath him than above, but we all know it’s the bosses (or girl/boyfriend/spouses) call that comes most often, and with the biggest impact. I can understand why people are so passionate about the BlackBerry, but I can also understand why people sue for overtime when their companies “give” them BlackBerry’s to use. Crackberry is a very apt nickname.

Apendix: Sleeping with the Frenemy

A few people I know duel-wield the iPhone and the BlackBerry. To get a sense of their “best of both worlds” approach, I spent a few days Bold-only as the Round Robin demands, and the weekend slinging one on each hip.

To first address something we get a lot of in the forums, the iPod touch/BlackBerry nirvana is an urban myth. Absent 3G and GPS you’ll be missing out on one of the most exciting aspects of the iPhone: ubiquitous location-based services. The Bold has the same guts, but it’s user experience for this technology just doesn’t compare, while the iPod touch’s WiFi restriction makes it unusable for large stretches. I had an iPod touch originally. It took me all of a week to give it away and get an iPhone.

Back to iPhone+Bold. It’s an interesting approach but one I ultimately found would be too cumbersome and expensive. Since I won’t switch SIMs every 2 minutes, I’d need 2 plans, one with BIS (which I won’t rant on now, but which deserves it for being both powerful and punishing to consumers — you shouldn’t need anything other than a standard data plan to run a smartphone in 2008! Work that out RIM!). I’m also a Mac user, and while RIM is improving Mac support (and aren’t anywhere near as negligent as Windows Mobile) it’s nowhere near there yet. Since many Mac users are also CrackBerry addicts, and proven price-insensitives and brand-loyalists, ignoring them (us) is just bad business.

Bottom line, I don’t have a handy bat-buckled utility belt, nor do I want to be perpetually clad in vests-of-many-pockets, so convergence devices are important to me. I would only ever carry one phone. In this world, it’s the iPhone. In another world (where my lifespan would not doubt be shorter and my stress level way higher), it might just have been the Bold.

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I’ve just barely scratched the surface of the BlackBerry Bold (PIN PING! No, not literally Kevin!), as my initial preview video shows (MAIL PING! Thanks for the tips, Bla1ze!) and already have to figure out my full, final review (SMS PING! Will have it up Monday, Dieter!)

I’m figuring out the “fake buttons” (MMS PING! Ha! Funny Moran sign guys!) and the spellchecker (MESSENGER PING! Yeah, you can still out type me…)

Hang on… Holds down power button. There, now maybe I can finish this post!

So here’s the thing: TiPb’s main purpose is to service you, our readers. What if any questions might you you have about the Bold. What would you like to see better explored? Compared more directly with the iPhone?

Let me know in the comments and you’ll also get another chance to win our iPhone 3G prize pack.

(And remember to head on over to our sibling sites for more chances to win a Blackberry Bold, Palm Treo Pro, WinMo HTC FUZE, and Android G1!)

Note: Off-topic comments may be deleted. Post legit questions only please

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Cursed I tell ya. Not “Steve Jobs’ isn’t keynoting Macworld cursed, (though Dieter clearly blames me for that anyway!) Cursed in that not only did UPS hold CrackBerry Kevin’s beloved BlackBerry Bold hostage for nearly a week (“it didn’t make it on the plane” — what, it decided to go bar hoping first?!), not only to BIS take days to start working (“oh, you wanted BlackBerry BIS — no, I wanted iPhone BIS?!), but then I — a rabid iPhone enthusiast — had to endure my first completely non-touch screen device! Cursed!

Did I survive? Could I even use the tic-tactile little BlackBerry beastie? Check the video above to find out, then drop a comment here for your chance to win an iPhone 3G, or post on my comment thread over in the CrackBerry.com forums and you may just win a BlackBerry Bold! Prize details after the jump…

Every day you comment here, you get one entry to win not only a supra-shiny iPhone 3G, but the Case-Mate Naked Case which allows full touch through access to the iPhone’s amazing screen. Smartphone Outlet is also kicking in the revolutionary Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset AND a runner-up prize, $50 coupon good at any SPE store, including the new Smartphone Outlet, where you can find refurb Smartphone Accessories at very (very!) low prices.

Check out our full contest rules!

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TreoCentral’s Jennifer has our iPhone 3G this week. She gave away her original iPhone 2G to her mom and got herself an iPod Touch, but the lure of the 3G actually encouraged her to get herself a brand new iPhone this year. How does this year’s only full touch Round Robin smartphone stack up for the lady who’s used to touch and a front facing Qwerty?

Check out her video and be sure to leave a comment in her TreoCentral thread for a chance to win a Palm Treo Pro as well! You can also comment on this very post, and in Jennifer’s thread on the iPhone 3G in TiPb’s own forums, or on my thread over on CrackBerry.com for even more chances to win.

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Our Public Frenemy Number One continues his assault on the iPhone blog! Not only did Kevin post his video preview of the iPhone 3G, spend time on our forums learning what abuse really is, and even joined in for our iPhone Live! Podcast, he’s gone and done a near epic 7500 word iPhone 3G full, final review.

Fanboy much?

But what did he think of it? Did the man with two-tic-tactile thumbs-of-fury learn how to type on glass? Did he master the Super Monkey Ball? Did he get lost browsing “just the internet”? And did he finally, fully restore his childlike sense of wonder, something years of BlackBerrius Pusheruptus all but productivity’d out of him?

Check out his review to find out (hint: he calls it the Ah Frak Phone!), post a Crackberry.com comment for a chance to win the BlackBerry Bold, and post your thoughts on Kevin’s thoughts right here for a chance to win an iPhone 3G.

What? You want MORE chances to win? Head on over to the Crackberry.com forums to help me out with the Bold (the touchscreen isn’t working!) and then hit TiPb’s iPhone forums to give TreoCentral’s Jennifer a hand — she’s got the iPhone 3G this week!

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So the WinManiacs kicked my butt a bit over the HTC FUZE review. David Pogue was wrong, neither Apple Nuts nor BlackBerry nuts hold a candle to WinMo users scorn. However, I’d counter by saying they were so busy being indignant, they didn’t really stop to consider the point of the round robin, or the points raised in the preview or final review. In other words, coming from where we’re coming from, iPhone users approaching other devices, we were right, and the enraged WinManiacs… well… read on after the break!

Justin Says: It is abundantly clear that the iPhone is excellent as a multimedia device, but lacks some of the productivity tools that a business user is looking for, a Blackberry is really the oposite. I want something that can fit both of those bills, how does this phone handle that?

It doesn’t do both well, it compromises to do both from poor to fair to okay. It’s power is considerably hampered by its unease of use, and its overall experience is a confusion of inconsistent TouchFlo 3D and archaic Windows Mobile 6.1. I’d almost recommend getting a BlackBerry and an iPod Touch. If, as I mentioned in my review, you’re really into tweaking hardware and controlling every little aspect of your device, then go for Windows Mobile and you can make it the best of both.

Jim Says: Just how easy (or hard) is it to get the FUZE to work with an Exchange environment?

Theoretically it should be a snap. I couldn’t get it to work, however, as Windows Mobile claimed my Exchange certificate was invalid, so while on the iPhone I could just tap ‘ignore’ and keep going, this was a dead end on Windows Mobile, as was the convoluted process required to move my Mac desktop certificate over the device. (Yeah, I know, they don’t support Mac — not acceptable).

Brooks Says: Speaking of HTC phones, how’s the HTC Touch HD? Is it available in the US?

Haven’t tried the HD but it looks good based on Dieter’s hands on. Not available in the US, and not going to be, unfortunately.

WatersWest Says: Would I be able to load up a fuze with music, photos, and videos to the same extent that I do on my 16GB iPhone, and would it be as easy?

Yes and no. You can load it up pretty much with everything you want, but nothing in my experience currently matches the ease of use of the iTunes and iPhone integration and sync.

WatersWest Says: My newest favorite feature on the iPhone is the wireless downloading of podcasts. Would I still be able to do that on a fuze, and would it be as easy as it is on the iPhone (where it is so easy, it’s a pleasure)?

Dieter loves him and recommends him some Kinoma player, which streams podcasts (though I don’t think downloads them). I didn’t try any direct downloads, so I’m not sure if those are possible. Nothing on Windows Mobile was as easy, however.

Touch Me Says: let’s assume that the bulk is acceptable to me and I am more at home with a physical keyboard. Further, once I get the device set up to do what I want the software becomes more-or-less transparent. Where does that leave the Fuze-iPhone comparison?

It leaves it manipulated to the extreme More specifically, it leaves a bulky device that you had to invest significant time tweaking compared to a slender devices that’s really not tweak-able to any significant degree.

Touch Me Says: Will the Fuze work more easily with other carriers besides AT&T? Is its replaceable battery a significant advantage in the field? Does the screen look as good as an iPhone’s especially outside? Is Window’s vast array of applications, not to mention the Palm applications it can run, a plus? Is every program efficient with the iPhone’s touch interface or are some uses better with a keyboard (text input, forms) or stylus (database, some games like backgammon)?

An unlocked GSM device is an unlocked GSM device, so until the iPhone 3G is software unlocked, the FUZE is more transportable. I had a replaceable battery on the Treo 680 and never used it, so for me it made no difference. The screen is higher resolution, I believe, than the iPhone and looked gorgeous, but the plastic matt finish vs. glass gloss of the iPhone will depend on individual preference. Are more applications better? No. Look at the 10,000 App Store apps, when many more are more realistically CrApps. So, this will also depend if there are applications you really need that are Windows Mobile or Palm emulator-only (like Office suites, currently). Keyboards and styluses will likewise be individual preferences. I never used keyboards well on the Palm, and didn’t like styluses, so the iPhone’s paradigm suits me far more. As to types of programs, that’s really down to the designers — they should be able to make any app work with any input method, the same way Photoshop works with a mouse or with a tablet.

Dimietriev Says: I don’t remember if this has come up, or if some other round robing review has talked about it. But are the many buttons re-mapable in any way?

I didn’t test for this. The fine folks at WMExperts likely know, but my guess is everything is configurable on Windows Mobile if a) you dig deep enough, b) spend time enough.

The_Reptile Says: How about a history lesson? This platform has been around in one way shape or form since the PDA days. What innovations has Mr Softie come up with and why is this not a me-too platform/device?

History available from Wikipedia, where you can discover that, unlike the iPhone which leverages the same core as Mac OS X, Windows Mobile is really Windows in name only. Now, if we go by CES shows, then Mr. Gates et. al. have created magical devices that take our entire computing environment with us where ever we go. However, that’s all been vaporware. Instead, we’ve got an aging OS chasing Palm’s garnet on the way to obsolescence, with a next generation version delayed to the point being vaporware itself. So, it’s not a me-too platform/device, more like a never was. Sorry folks, but Microsoft, like Palm, should have given us an iPhone-class experience 5 years ago. Their complacency has cost them.

ekabe Says: How does the turn by turn GPS compare.

The iPhone doesn’t have turn by turn GPS, so it’s not comparable. Google Maps is a much, much, much better experience on the iPhone. Turn by turn is nice to have on everything else, but I don’t use it much so I’m not missing it like others might be.

James Says: How well does the touchscreen on the phone work?

Uh… watch my video review. It’s resistive rather than capacitive, which is good news for stylus lovers, bad news for those who have gotten used to the iPhone, Android G1, or BlackBerry Storm.

Todd Says: I had a question, is the Fuze screen quality way better than the iphone bc it is a VGA device?

It has greater pixel count and density than the iPhone, so you get more dots in less space for a theoretically sharper picture overall.

Glenn Says: What is the biggest difference between windows mobile and OS X on the iPhone, does the htc blur this difference??

iPhone OS X is a modern, desktop derived operating system, built from the ground up to support multi-touch and other next generation mobile features. Windows Mobile is currently an out dated system built for last generation embedded devices. HTC’s TouchFlo 3D attempts to mask this, but ultimately fails due to inconsistencies of its own, and — worse — the necessity of dropping back into Windows Mobile proper all the time, which creates a completely Jekyll and Hyde user experience. (Again, I’d be really interested to see TouchFlo 3D given a little more consistency and backed right into a Samsung Instinct class consumer device).

The last WM device I owned was an T-Mobile MDA Vario II (HTC TyTN*), which was a WM 5 device. Lots infuriated me about it, but nothing so much that it didn’t automatically connect to Wifi networks (even if you’d joined them many times before). Is that fixed now in WM (like in iPhone)?

It might be; I was running off 3G fast enough I didn’t couldn’t bring myself to try to enter my long, pseudo-random WPA key into Windows Mobile with a visibly state-changing keyboard. However, going to the settings screen and seeing just how many wireless configuration apps were just sitting there scared the bajeebers out of me. I’m sure they all provided cool functionality — maybe tethering? — but that many similar looking and similar named icons is just depressing from a UI point of view. Collect ‘em up!

Andrew Says: The physical keyboard for me looks like a win. I don’t have an iPhone, but the iPod Touch Keyboard is annoying for my big fingers, unless in landscape mode, which isn’t always possible…

You know, I have fingers big and smushy enough that typing on a hard keyboard if very frustrating for me, and with the iPhone, I find I barely ever use the landscape keyboard. Maybe it’s my alternating typing style, but the portrait keyboard works just find for me. For those who want a hard keyboard with some room to it, the FUZE was definitely a nice, wide slider.

Bla1ze Says: What I wanna know is…Why does the device lag so bad with all that processing power behind it, I mean TF3D really suck up that many resources?

Windows Mobile 6.1 + TouchFlo 3D = Vista Aero on a “capable” 2006 machine.

Joshua Says: If you do a hard reset and not allow the ATT software to load, this device is so much faster.

If you, like Apple, stand up to the carriers and say “No crapware, frakyou very much!” it runs faster still!

Steve Says: When I look at those screen shots I can’t even make out what it is I’m looking at. It’s a typical cluster-f**k of Windows icons, menus, and tabs. What do I click on? What will happen?

That’s a very real concern. The device is not intuitive.

PhilR8 Says: I also with you would have addressed some of the comments from the preview thread that gave you suggestions on how to better use TF3D (like mine). Were these tips helpful? Did you even try them? Or is it still not for you?

The tips did help somewhat, but I think my usage method was just too iPhone-trained to really do a good job with it in only a week. Switching to my nail made it better, but it never did what I intended it to do. I would even try just hitting the icon I want, when it was off to the side, and different things would happen at different times, and no matter what anyone says, if I drag sideways on the music app instead of up and down, no way should that activate the tab bar (which is nowhere near where I pressed) and shoot me into different apps.

Nailing touch is hard. I think we all know that. HTC names their like Touch. That’s a really brazen thing to do if you don’t nail the experience utterly and completely. I’d argue Apple did with the iPod Touch, and HTC absolutely did not with their line.

Maybe I could have gotten used to it if I spent more time with it, or if I’d spent money on it and knew I couldn’t return it, but — again — I don’t think, in 2008, I should have to.

ekabe Says: But after a month of using this phone ive never had a random application generator moment using touchflo. You sure you where holding and dragging? Its not meant to be flicked.

I switched to even just trying to press the icons. Maybe I should have held and dragged, but can’t I even just press the icon I want to launch an app? From testing: nope.

pinguino1 Says: I’m not a fuze guy, but many of your negative comments are because you just didn’t do what 99% of people in this planet do: . Read the manual! . The other 1% are iPhone guys.

I never read an iPhone or iPod Touch manual, nor the Android G1, nor the Treo Pro, and I shan’t be reading the BlackBerry Bold why should the FUZE get, never mind need, special consideration?

And if it does, that sorta makes many of my points. I really don’t want a phone I need an instruction manual for, especially after having used PDAs and Smartphones for a decade already…

Darrell Pittman Says: You know, irony can be so ironic. I think back to that 1984 Super Bowl ad, where the Mac’s avatar strides up to the big screen and supposedly, strikes a blow for the everyman against Big Brother. Now look at you lot, grateful for being able to spend big money on a phone, then set it up AT HOME. Then when you do, you can install only Apple-approved apps. You can’t even change your own battery. It’s sad, for people who profess to love freedom.

If I go to a gourmet French restaurant, look at the menu, and then proceed to throw a fit because I can’t order pizza, is that a blow against my personal freedom? Of course not, that would be silly. If, on the other hand, I want to go to the trouble of cooking for myself at home, I can make anything I want. I enjoy cooking, and I enjoy restaurants. Cooking can be a lot of work, so sometimes I eat out. Setting up a Windows Mobile device (or Linux distro) can also be a lot of work, so currently I choose to use an iPhone. What’s really ironic is all the so-called freedom exponents with little no respect for the choices of others. Part of being free means the freedom to chose proprietary solutions.

PmMann Says: As much as they say “Think Different”, every ipod I have seen is exactly alike. Heaven forbid you want to change the skin of the UI, or even choose a different UI..

“Think Different” was a Mac, not an iPod campaign. There are plenty of devices you can tweak to your hearts content, but does market share show them to be as popular? Nope. Why is that? Could it be that while some groups are especially loud, they don’t consider that there’s a far larger, albeit more silent group, that doesn’t really want to tinker, doesn’t even really care for technological details, and just wants their music to work? Apple considers that, and the market has certainly born them out.

Thanks for all the great questions!

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I thought my review last week for the Palm Treo Pro would be my toughest, little did I suspect Dieter would double up on my HTC and Windows Mobile experience (actually, triple up on HTC as I had the Android G1 for the first review). That’s a LOT of Windows Mobile, especially for someone who abandoned the platform a long time ago, first for Palm OS, and now for the iPhone.

Reviewing the same OS two weeks in a row is a challenge. I originally focused on the PIM apps last week, including calendar, tasks, and notes, and through in email and web for good measure. This week I planned on focusing more on Windows Mobile from a media and “under the hood” perspective. However, something changed that: TouchFlo 3D. Turns out, not only was the FUZE’s slider keyboard a big old hardware differentiator, their “skin” running on top of Windows Mobile was a fairly compelling software differentiator as well. So, instead of doing a poor job rehashing tech-specs that any writer over at WMExperts could run circles around, I’m going to go with the TouchFlo.

Just remember: I’m not coming at this device from a neutral point of view. That’s not my job here. My job is to give you an iPhone user’s opinion. So, consider me bias, a n00b, an iFanboy, a complete idiot, but consider this as well: my final, full review… after the break!

Introduction

Never had an intro on one of these before. Never needed it. Do now. I don’t run Gentoo Linux as my primary, secondary, tertiary — my any-ary — OS. I’m sure it’s powerful, configurable, and Stalman et al could give me a thousand reasons why I should. I only have one reason why I don’t: user experience. I just don’t want to work that hard. I’ve talked about this before, and I will again (fair warning, that!) but my smartphone should work for me, not the other way around. The WMExperts forum gave me tons of useful tweaks (thanks for those!) but I really don’t want to tweak. I’m too tired of tweaking. I don’t want to have to edit registries, tinker with ROMS, remember shortcut keys, or do any of the winzillion things I need to do to make a Windows Mobile device “just work” for 90% of what I want it to do. The barrier for entry is too high.

I’m in the process of deciding there are several segments of the smartphone market. BlackBerry hits productivity/business. Android hits early adapters/enthusiasts. Windows Mobile hits tinkerers. It hits people who want exactly what they want, and enjoy working at it almost as much as using it. Rather than tricking out the ultimate drag racer in their garage or building a robot in their basement, they’re going to make their Windows Mobile smartphone do exactly what they want down to the 3rd alt-shortcut key in the 4th tabbed option screen (skinned, of course).

It’s for those who enjoy the journey as much as the destination. (I suspect that’s why Dieter has enough Windows Mobile devices to make a manwhich out of!) There are several cases where I’m exactly that guy. This isn’t one of them. I want my smartphone to work pretty much effortlessly right out of the box, and I want it to perform as well or better than the best smartphones available in 2008. That’s what I want.

Hardware

Yes it’s creaky. I’ll get that out of the way right at the beginning. The iPhone is a solid slab. Anything made out of plastic that includes a slider hinge that moves half of the device half the way off the device will be, decidedly, not so solid. Still, HTC makes really good plastic hardware, and much like the Android G1, the individual pieces of the slider by themselves are solid.

Buttons

When the device is closed, the front is very clean. There is a large central button. At first I thought this was just a big “okay” button, but commenters told me it had some gesture ability and was also a d-pad. The gestures were too inconsistent for me to really get into, an it’s quite emphatically not a d-pad… however, the area around the large central button IS a d-pad. The integration is awesome — so awesome I initially missed it, but if you press the entire facade on any side, it will tilt down and register a button click. Very nice!

But they’re not done! The facade also holds 4 buttons. The first, “home” sorta brings you home. I’m not sure what “home” means to this device, as it doesn’t bring you back to the Today Screen the way an iPhone does the Home screen, at least not consistently. Sometimes it brought me “back” instead, which is strange given that the next button is “back”.

Since the Android G1, I’ve really liked the idea of a “back” button. It works well here, especially when you’re new and you sometimes take a wrong turn, or when you’re moving in a rush and hit a wrong app or function.

The last two buttons are an upside down, and downside up phone. These are what, on other devices, are usually the green and red “phone” buttons. I like the minimalism of the HTC design, if not the penetrability of the iconography. Like other Windows Mobile handsets, the left “phone” button sends you to the call app, and the right “phone” button ends a call… and takes you to the Today screen (memo to Redmond: the home button is a great idea, and a better usability experience).

Strangely, none of these buttons turned (woke) the device for me. None of them. Only the top “power” button did that. I’m not sure if I prefer this to the Treo Pro’s seemingly random “every button but center and okay” with “center to unlock” arrangement. Like many things, there are some advantages, some drawbacks.

Oh, and it has volume and PTT (push to talk). I miss the Treo Pro (and iPhone) mute button.

Keyboard

Star Destroyer class. I’ll say it again, this keyboard has everything imaginable on it. I’m not a fan of sliders. The way I type, the less “travel” the better, so the traditional Treo (i.e. 650) keyboard is more to my liking, but it’s hard to hate the FUZE when it’s almost as full as a Netbook!

Compared to the G1, the feel of the FUZE keyboard felt better to me, and the lack of a “chin” was a huge plus. Again, since hard keyboard can’t change to reflect state (i.e. when you hit shift or alt, the key doesn’t change to show you exactly what you’ll be typing) it did cause some self-doubt in password fields, but that’s an uncommon enough situation. Also, since the keyboard slides in and out, it can be hidden when you don’t need it. That’s an advantage over the front-facing Qwerty’s, but it comes at the price of making a really thick phone. I found it a bit chunky, but it won’t be a deal breaker for most.

Screen

Bright and beautiful, it reminds of the G1′s absent the capacitive touch. Since it’s a touch screen device, that means it makes you really want to touch it, but resistive technology is outdated enough to make it a less than premium experience. Instead of tapping and flicking like on an iPhone or G1, you have to press hard enough to smush the layers together, or press and drag hard enough for them to register movement. After the iPhone and G1 experience, it’s like touch in quicksand. This is something we’ll revisit when you meet TouchFlo 3D.

Fit and Finish

The fit an finish isn’t quite up there with the Treo Pro in that I think Palm looking over their shoulder made HTC sweat the details more. Yet it remains a solid device with an interesting faceted back plate (identical, far as I could tell, to the its eponymous “diamond” cousin). One interesting addition, however, is that the stylus on this device is magnetic, so when you pull it out, the FUZE automagically turns on, as it does when you slide out the keyboard. Given the paucity of buttons with which to wake it, these are both excellent touches.

Windows Mobile TouchFlo 3D

I joked in my video that TouchFlo 3D should more properly be named “Press Really Hard and Stammer 2D” and I stand by that. As a user experience goes, it mixes brilliant animation with resistively-challenging control and inconsistent gestures to truly confusing ends.

I love the visuals. The visuals are killer. Introduced after the iPhone, it’s obvious HTC decided to take the fight to Apple on the iCandy front, and when you consider the bright, vivid animations, the results are just gorgeous. Mad props to HTC’s design firm (which I think they recently bought out — smart move!)

Taken as set pieces alone, I’ll go so far as to say that in some cases they look even better than the iPhone’s older alternatives. For example, I love the weather app. The animating clouds and rain — or snow in Montreal’s case now — are stupendous and I’d love nothing more than for Apple (or a 3rd party weather app) to steal them immediately.

The picture and contact apps are likewise beautiful.

The music app would garner similar praise if not for the downright awkward integration of the control buttons along the right side. Surely something more fitting the rest of the design could be worked up?

Bringing it all home, literally, we have the Today screen which I must admit is a bit of a let down. It’s still very pretty, but the huge clock means there’s not as much room for the actual “today” content I’ve always loved from Windows Mobile. I’m sure it, like everything else, can be tweaked, but it’s a strange choice for the default.

Since the iPhone has no built-in Today app, the programs tab for the FUZE is the closest match for the iPhone’s Home screen. (I am ignoring the entire secondary program tab AT&T injected into the experience — and WMExperts will give you helpful instructions for defenestrating it entirely if you so choose). Opera is where my focus was — though it turns out it wouldn’t run off AT&T. Bummer.

Now for the negatives. As previously stated, touch on a resistive devices is like moving in quicksand after you’ve had a chance at a capacitive device. WMExperts will also tell you how to tweak preferences to speed this up, but check out my introduction for why I won’t bother with that. Given the technology, that’s understandable. What’s unforgivable, however, is the poor usability chosen for TouchFlo 3D. My video shows this off better, but basically there’s no consistency from one interface to the next. For mail, you have to start by swiping down. For photos, you have to start by swiping up. For music, even though the album art is presented horizontally, you need to swipe vertically. Going back to photos, once you swipe up and press really hard to choose your photo (yes, I know, use my nail, not my finger — fine!), you then have to swipe sideways to move between photos.

And the tab bar itself? Don’t get me started. It’s stroke-inducing to use from a pure touch point of view. Not only is it more random application generator than launcher, compounded by the above inconsistency, if you ever gesture in a way incorrect for the exact application you’re on at the time, the tab bar will gleefully decide you meant to engage said random app generator, and send you on a quick journey to precisely somewhere else.

Very frustrating.

Also frustrating, just when you’re getting used to the fresh, modern, 2008 UI of TouchFlo 3D, it will dump you back out into the cold, archaic, 1999 UI of Windows Mobile 6.1. It’s an entirely different user experience and frankly, it’s jarring. It’s bait-and-switch. It’s “she ain’t pretty she just looks that way” gone wired.

I previously said HTC should take TouchFlo and rather than slap it over Windows Mobile, turn it into a complete Samsung Instinct-type OS. I was only half joking. If they could get more consistent with the gestures, add a capacitive screen, and get rid of the Windows Mobile sword of Damocles, they could have a really compelling offering on their hands.

Windows Mobile Redux

Here are some screen shots. Tweak your hearts out.

Conclusion

See introduction. I wasn’t sure how many would actually make it this far, so I pulled a little bait and switch of my own.

But there’s more: After two devices in so many weeks, Windows Mobile has failed to win me over. It’s powerful, yes, and configurable, bless it’s kernel, but it’s just not for me, not any more. Maybe Windows 7 will change my mind, but I think Microsoft’s mind needs changing first. Ballmer says (in between monkey boy dances, no doubt), that Microsoft “just keeps coming and coming and coming” and that’s certainly true, but they need to get there soon or the smartphone train will have left the station.

I think I’m going to officially toss my hat into the ring of those who think a ZunePhone (Xphone?) wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I’m going to throw an even bigger hat into an even bigger ring and say Microsoft needs to leverage Microsoft.

Apple provides a 360 degree ecosystem for the iPhone. If Microsoft could just get their multi-marketplace’d ducks in a row and offer seamless integration from Azure Cloud to Server backend to Windows Desktop to Xbox console to Zune mobile (with consistent branding to go with it, b’okay?)… well, I’d be very worried for their competitors.

As it currently stands, however, it’s old gen tech that doesn’t play nice even with it’s own. Great if you’re anticipating Cylon invasion, not so great if you’re a smartphone platform in 2008.

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

The iPhone 3G drives Crackberry Kevin nuts, no doubt about it. Sure, he likes a few aspects of it, including the inimitable App Store, but the push buzz when he’s talking, the lack of a back (button, that is), and a million other things add up to make him officially re-dub the device the Ah-[Redacted] phone.

While WMExpert Dieter kept hammering away about the openess of the platform, Crackberry Kevin focuses more on BlackBerry-type productivity. But that’s the beauty of the Round Robin — we get so many looks at so many different devices/platforms from so many different points of view.

Coming from a turbo tactile typing, push email addiction like the BlackBerry Bold, does Kevin have some legitimate gripes? Or is this just a case of post-Storm-FAIL sour grapes?

Confession: many of the things he picks on, we’ve complained about numerous times on TiPb already. But we’re allowed to offer constructive criticism about our beloved device. Can CrackBerry get away with it?

NOT. Head on over to CrackBerry.com and let him know what you think before El Jobso himself decides to call Public Frenemy #1 up and give him a little Apple-powered “Skidoosh!” You could even win a BlackBerry Bold for your trouble!

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My time with the FUZE is just about over, my review almost finished, and with it both HTC and Windows Mobile will leave me, a little poorer, a lot less frustrated.

I’ve read the comments on my video preview. WinMo users think I’m a “moran”. Fair enough. But I’m supposed to be looking at these devices from an iPhone users point of view, and that means the usability bar is set almost as high as the configurability bar is low. WMExperts will give you every little tweak, CrackBerry, TreoCentral, and AndroidCentral will give you the keyboard comparisons, TiPb is focusing on the touch experience and the overall user experience out of the box (since that’s all you get with a non-Jailbroken iPhone!)

But here’s the thing: TiPb’s main purpose is to service you, our readers. So what if any questions you might you have about the FUZE. What would you like to see better explored? Compared more directly with the iPhone?

Let me know in the comments and you’ll also get another chance to win our iPhone 3G prize pack.

(And remember to head on over to our sibling sites for more chances to win a Blackberry Bold, Palm Treo Pro, WinMo HTC FUZE, and Android G1!)

Note: Some people are having trouble seeing the video (comes back as unavailable). It’s working fine for me, but if it’s not for you, please let me know in the comments, and please try this direct YouTube Video link.

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Did I need to review two HTC Windows Mobile devices in a row? Would it have been better to have the G1 or Bold in between, or would I then have back-to-back front-facing Qwerty or Slider bloat? I don’t know. Last week’s Palm Treo Pro and this week’s HTC FUZE are differentiated not only by form factor, but with the FUZE’s addition of Touch Flo 3D (which, during the video shoot, I came to lovingly re-brand “Press Really Hard Stammer 2D”).

Fair enough, coming from an iPhone I challenge any non-Apple device’s ability to deliver the same experience. They can’t. But that’s the point of the Round Robin: for each editor to look at every other device from their own smartphone’s point of view.

Will the humungous slide-out keyboard be enough joy to cancel out the Touch Flo blues? I don’t know yet; we’ll find out together in my final, full review later this week.

Meanwhile, check out the video above, and if I’m wrong, mean, or just stupid, let me have it in the comments, or — better yet — head on over to the WMExperts Forums and help me see the error of my ways.

Likewise, Crackberry Kevin is suffering without his keyboard and trackball, so be sure to give him all the assistance you can before he he comes gunning for our iPhone in his own video!

Doing so, of course, gives you a chance to win the iPhone 3G and HTC FUZE… and a ton of other cool smartphones and accessories. Prize details after the jump…

Every day you comment here, you get one entry to win not only a supra-shiny iPhone 3G, but the Case-Mate Naked Case which allows full touch through access to the iPhone’s amazing screen. Smartphone Outlet is also kicking in the revolutionary Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset AND a runner-up prize, $50 coupon good at any SPE store, including the new Smartphone Outlet, where you can find refurb Smartphone Accessories at very (very!) low prices.

Check out our full contest rules!

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CrackBerry Kevin is a productivity machine, no doubt about it. When he’s not literally typing the plastic off his BlackBerry Bold keyboard, he’s simultaneously answering 87 emails, browsing 64 websites, exchanging half-a-nation worth of PIN messages, and running his trackball in 9 directions with both feet!

Well, this week our best frenemy has to put his addictive little messaging monster aside and immersed himself in a smartphone about as different as a smartphone can be: The iPhone 3G.

We here at TiPb know it might take Kevin a while to break out of his BlackBerry bonds and slip into some next generation iPhone duds, and he knows it too — he’s asking for your help in our forums!

Remember, each day you reply to his questions, you get another chance to win an iPhone 3G and accessories!

(And if by chance you want to win an HTC FUZE, or an Android G1, Palm Treo Pro, or BlackBerry Bold, be sure to hit up every Smartphone Expert site!)

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Our video preview is done, our final review is posted, but you had Palm Treo Pro questions and so we’ll try to provide some answers… After the break…

deathscaller Says: Does the Pro’s Internet speed compare to the iPhones at all?

3G is 3G, but the cpu speed and software engine can make a difference. Web browsing on the iPhone seemed much faster, which I chalk up to MobileSafari’s WebKit foundation (well known from back in it’s Linux Konquerer days for its sheer speed). Email is much lighter than web rendering, and iPhone does HTML email, where I only saw mobile email from the Treo Pro, so that’s not a fair comparison, but both were snappy (though Gmail IMAP still gives me fits on every platform)

Justin Says: I’m curious to know your thoughts on the email set up. I had a hell of a time when I used the Treo 750, and that was ultimately what drove me away.

I won’t lie: it’s fairly hideous. Then again, Windows makes you set up Exchange in Control Panel rather than Outlook, so my expectations have been trampled. I couldn’t get Exchange to work due to the failure to allow custom certificates to be accepted (on the iPhone, you can just ignore the warning). Gmail set up, but defaulted to POP, not IMAP. It did do a decent job of auto-detecting Gmail’s settings, however.

Mike M Says: How well does it do things the iPhone is lacking? Cut and paste, to dos, mms, etc. And would you even consider switching just to get these features? I know I wouldn’t, but I’m sure there are people out there who are on the fence who would like to know.

I really wanted cut and paste, but on both the Treo and Android I ended up not using it much. It was too annoying. On the iPhone, if I want to send you a webpage I’m looking at (or location, or photo, etc.) I just hit the + button, pick your address, and boom, email is sent and I’m back in on the web. Having to manually fiddle with highlighting tiny, irregular text blobs, going through menu gymnastics, manually switching apps, etc. just slowed me down and made me think it wasn’t worth it.

MMS is useless to me as I don’t have any friends or family using it either, and everyone else I just email the stuff to right off the iPhone. It’s device independent, which I prefer.

If Apple really nailed implementations of these features, I’d certainly be really happy and probably use them when I had to, but if they did it badly (no Storm jokes!) I’d be even more annoyed. So no, I wouldn’t switch.

Anthony Martinez Says: How’s that keyboard. I picked up a Palm in a store once and thought it was way too small. But then the iphone keyboard is small in portrait mode too. What are your thoughts?

Material is better than the 6xx/7xx series, but the narrow width takes that step forward back a notch.

Jeff Says: What have you missed most from the iPhone that the Pro doesn’t offer?

Without a hint of sarcasm: joy. The iPhone is just a pleasure to use. The Treo Pro was powerful but a lot of work. I didn’t enjoy the experience, even when it impressed me. User experience on the iPhone — every little detail from app flow to stretch and bounce animation effects — is just so well polished.

PRIMECHUCK Says: Does the phone stream live events

Qik style? According to WMExperts, yes it does.

Mike M Says: How close do you think palm and the iPhone are from being incomparable devices? Palm doesn’t seem to be much of a contender anymore, how long before they drop out of the competition?

I hope never. While Apple is amazing at competing with themselves (see the iPod space), everyone does better with strong alternatives pushing innovation.

Jason Says: Is the touchscreen very important to navigation/data entry/etc? Most other phones are either all keys or all touchscreens…

I’m used to using touch screen on Palm devices (insert stylus humor here), so for me it was very easy to default back to. Crackberry Kevin, by contrast, likely never went near it.

Rey Says: What’s the best and worst thing about it?

Best is that it’s a really great WinMo device with excellent hardware. Worst is that it wasn’t a Palm Treo.

Touch Me Says: The tiny 320 x 320 screen on the Treo looks like a big disadvantage compared to the iPhone’s 480 x 320. How does that affect its use? Or does not needing screen real estate for a virtual keyboard and menus make it a wash?

It felt cramped, which is amazing since the previous gen WinMo Palm had 240×240. And when the default soft keyboard popped up, not only was it tiny and stylus-compelling, it usually covered the field you were supposed to type into.

BLUELINE Says: What is of like haveing a phone with both touch and physical buttons for the ui. Do you think it is better or worse then a all touch or no touch phone?

I like having the choice, though I won’t know for sure until I’ve used a completely non-touch device like the BlackBerry Bold. However, I’m increasingly coming to believe that hard keyboards — for some types of users like myself — are a thing of the past.

Jason Says: Has palm changed anything about the Windows Mobile OS to make it their own? Sort of like the panels on the SE Xperia or the Fuze…

Not this time around, far as I could tell, though that keeps WinMo smoking fast (if heinously ugly).

Jeff Says: what was the learning curve like on the keyboard going from the iphone to the pro?

I used to have a 680, so not too bad. I did find it annoying that the hard keyboard wouldn’t change to reflect state. With the iPhone, I’ve gotten used to pressing “shift” and seeing upper case, pressing 123 and seeing numbers, etc. Especially in password fields, I was never sure what I was typing (even with the little icons on screen).

Jason Says: With the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack, would you use the Treo Pro (or AT&T Fuze and T-Mobile G1) as much for music/videos?….I can’t imagine using the connectors

Treo Pro has the 3.5mm headphone jack, it’s the Android G1 and HTC FUZE that don’t have them, and yes it’s even more egregious than the original iPhone 2G’s wonky 3.5mm (because it needs an even more annoying adapter).

Jeff Says: How about battery life?

It was great! It lasted more than a day, however because I couldn’t get everything working, I did far, far, far less with it than I typically do with an iPhone.

KLutes Says: I am curious as to how robust the device feels as a whole in comparison. More solid less solid or about the same build quality. I see lots of cracked glass iphones on my college campus and I am curious as to how bang up prone this little gem is.

Both the iPhone 3G and the Treo Pro have had reported problems with micro-cracks in the plastic casing, but Dieter’s Treo Pro is still pristine! Build quality is superb, with a ton of fit and finish. However, it’s plastic, not glass, and was a little creaky around the battery cover. The iPhone has no removable battery, so it’s as close to a solid slab as you can get.

Bela says: Do you feel that this phone compares to the Android ?

Android is still very much a beta/technology preview, while WinMo in its current incarnation is a relic, so as the former rises and the latter falls, they could be comparable during this brief slice of time. What Android 2.0 and WinMo 7 look like is a far more important, and difficult question.

Thanks everyone for sending in your questions!

Well I’m sure by now you have heard the latest Smarthphone Experts Roundtable Podcast! (If you haven’t had a chance to listen you better get on it, great podcast!)

You may have heard our very own fearless leader, Dieter, chime in on one thing that he hates about iPhone 3G, the fact that you can not turn on Wi-Fi while the radio is off (in Airplane Mode). Or so Dieter thought. You can indeed turn Wi-Fi on while the radio is off! And doing so is a snap!

First go into your Settings – Turn on Airplane Mode – and then turn your Wi-Fi connection on.

Now you can enjoy browsing the internet, checking emails, or anything else data related all without the radio on!

[Ed: Thanks also to Stephen Sizemore for bringing this up in the podcast comments! Let us know how that works for you, b'okay boss?]

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

The iPhone 3G doesn’t have a task manager. It doesn’t have a registry. It doesn’t have a sliding keyboard. It doesn’t have a start menu. It doesn’t have Pocket IE. And most egregiously of all — it doesn’t have a stylus!

Will that be the feature that breaks our Editor-in-Chief’s Windows Mobile back? Or will the ultra-modern OS and buttery smooth UI restore his childlike sense of wonder? Head on over to WMExperts to read his ultimate opinion, and — if he deserves it — give him a bag of hurt, TiPb style!

Be sure to comment both here and on Dieter’s review — on all of our sites — so you can try to win as many smartphones and accessory bundles as possible!

What’s next? Crackberry Kevin gets my beloved iPhone this week! Will he even know how to type on a touchscreen? (No Storm jokes!). He’s asking for your assistance in TiPb’s iPhone Forum, so you get another chance to win over in his thread. And I’m off to WMExperts for the (gulp!) HTC FUZE. Help me!

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Join us for the first of two special Smartphone Round Robin Roundtables! This week, Casey, Kevin, Rene, Jennifer, and Dieter all come together to discuss three of the Smartphone Round Robin devices: The iPhone 3G, the Treo Pro, and the BlackBerry Bold!

Music: Our Slanted Voices by DoKashiteru

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Of all the reviews I have to write as part of the Smartphone Experts Round Robin, I have a feeling this one is going to be the hardest. See, I was a Palm OS user since the Palm V and stuck with the platform through the Treo 680, before switching to the original iPhone.

That, year after year after year, Palm still hasn’t been able to ship a successor to Palm OS Garnet is inconceivable to me to the degree that what I’m now holding in my hand, gorgeous and powerful though it may be — isn’t a Palm, isn’t a Treo. Not really. I was funny about that in my video. I’m actually more than a little sad about it real life.

The Treo 800 series should really be running Palm OS 2.0 “Nova”. Since it’s not, however, I’m reviewing an HTC handset running Windows Mobile 6.1 — something I’ll be doing almost immediately again with the HTC FUZE/PRO.

How to handle that? To avoid redundancy, I’m going to stick reviewing hardware — a front facing Qwerty this time, slider the next — and breaking up the software into two parts. This review (and thanks to Dieter for the idea!) will focus on the traditional Palm core — the four pillars of PIM (Personal Information Management). The FUZE review will cover everything else Windows Mobile (media, apps, maps, etc.)

And I’m going to begin, after the break!

Hardware

The Palm Treo Pro hardware is a real departure. Gone is the little gray box that debuted with the Treo 600. The big honking antenna disappeared with the 680/750, but now even the legacy Treo 800 inset screen and gunship good looks have been given the heave ho.

Some have said this is because HTC basically designed and built the unit. Whatever the reason, it looks fresh and modern. It moves Treo — physically at least — into the next generation.

It looks good. It feels good. The form factor is very nice in the hand. Like the Google Android G1 (also by HTC) it does feel a tad creaky, but I’m beginning to think that a) the iPhone just spoiled me for build quality and b) plastic with removable battery equals a little bit of creak.

Buttons and Keys

A few niggles. The camera button is oddly placed. Having a physical button is okay, and I’m sure some appreciate it, but putting it below the volume rocker is non-sensical to me. The iPhone, by contrast, puts the mute button there, so all volume controls are grouped, and you can feel if the mute is in-line or off-line with the volume rocker, letting you immediately understand state.

On the opposite side is a WiFi on/off button. I’m not sure why it’s there, or why it even exists. An “airplane mode” style toggle, maybe, but why just the WiFi radio? Is that any more necessary than Blue Tooth or cell? I really don’t know.

The keyboard, on the other hand, while a little cramped compared to the 680, is a huge improvement just based on the key material itself. Gone are those hard, rounded nasty little nubs I could never really type on, and in their place is something… like gummy bears. I can’t really describe it, but boy does it improve my typing experience. Keep this material and expand the keyboard back to full Treo size, and Palm has a real winner on their hands (and in ours!)

That said, the iPhone has really spoiled me off hard keyboards and the Treo has re-affirmed that fact. I only need the keyboard for text entry, and after I’m done, I was just sitting there staring at it staring back at me. “Go away! I’m done with you!”, I felt like saying, “I want to watch some video now and you’re in the way!”. But it couldn’t go away. I’m not sure if the FUZE or Bold will pull me back from this precipice, but for some types of users, I’m thinking the era of hard keyboards is over.

As to the hard buttons — they depress me a little. And confuse me. The original Palm PDA’s were pretty much perfect at this, but it’s something Palm has struggled with since transitioning to the Treo line. My 680, for example, had a Green, Red, and Phone button (3 buttons just for the phone!). The Treo Pro has a Green, Red, Windows, and OK button. None of these seem optimal to me. And hitting Red (end call) to get to the Today screen seems counter-intuitive. So does every button but the center of the 5-way and OK serving to wake the device, with the center unlocking it. I realize we need different buttons to wake and unlock, but the center just seems so natural.

Screen

Windows Mobile Treo has finally caught up with the Palm OS 650! Yup, we have 320×320. It’s unfortunate that it happened around the same time the Bold shipped 480×360 and the HTC Touch HD dropped the 800×480 bomb, but welcome to the 21st century! Speaking of which — FLUSH! This is something I’ve wanted on a Palm for a long time, and boy does it deliver. After Kevin’s epic deflation of the stylus in his review — an issue I shan’t revisit here since he nailed it so well — it’s nice not to have to try to poke into corners with any type of input any more.

The next step for Palm will hopefully be a non-square screen. This device with the Bold screen would be impressive (and would likely make Dieter faint).

Fit and Finish

The speaker being placed along the side is genius. If I hold the iPhone wrong, I can’t hear a sound coming out of it. With the Treo Pro, even if I put it flat on the table, the audio is not effected one bit.

The standard USB connector is also very much appreciated. Absent a near iPod monopoly and the ubiquity of the dock connector that goes with that, sticking with standards is a win for every body.

Overall, this device really shines in fit and finish, and it’s obvious Palm and/or HTC spent a lot of time sweating the details. While I benefited from Kevin and Dieter’s tutorials on how to open the battery cover, once open there’s a handy tab to pull out the battery, and SIM entry/exit was a breeze. I use this example because it’s easy to scrimp inside where you think no one’s looking. We looked, and no scrimpage was found.

This device is well made — and beautiful — inside and out.

Final Hardware Thoughts

Downside? I have iPhone out cables that connect to TVs to basically give me a portable AppleTV (the dock even works with the Apple Remote). I take shows and stuff I’ve rented to my friends and family to enjoy together on the big screen. This week in particular, I really missed being able to do that. Apple is still the only one who’s nailed ecosystem.

In a world without the iPhone, however, — and maybe the Bold, can’t say yet — this would be the type of hardware I want. If they could better the buttons, it would be the kind of hardware I carried — if I still wanted a hard keyboard, which is a thought I’ll be finishing in the FUZE and Bold reviews.

Windows Mobile for PIM

Palm nailed the Zen of PIM back in the late 90s. Say what you want about the aging Palm OS (and I’ve said plenty myself!), but it’s arguably still one of the best PIM app suites on the planet. The story about it, about the early Palm team counting key strokes, is near legendary now, and it showed. Everything was easy. Everything was intuitive. Everything worked.

This is not that Palm.

Windows Mobile works — don’t get me wrong! — but it takes work. I have full faith and confidence that if I invested the time to tweak and tune every little setting, to dig into every little registry entry, to basically Dieter or Malatesta the heck out of it, I could achieve something that the Palm OS did pretty much out of the box. But I have neither the time nor the inclination to do that.

By way of example, I bought my iPhone 3G on launch day, and iTunes was down, so no syncing, no activation. No problem. I put in my Exchange details, boom, work was running. Put in my MobileMe, boom, personal was taken care of. Put in my Gmail, boom, TiPb was happy. It all just worked.

With the Treo Pro, I never got OTA anything working. I never got BT sync working despite trying 3 different Macs (all failed at different points). I even bought MissingSync out of desperation, and USB tether would cause MissingSync to beachball of death continuously. I tried launching Windows XP via Parallels and it wouldn’t even see the device.

Now, most users aren’t Mac users, fair enough, but I am and I know many, many Mac users were Palm users prior to the iPhone, so I don’t accept the really poor user experience. I should also point out that I never had a problem syncing my old Treo 680 via MissingSync via BT or USB on the Mac, and I likely could have figured this out too given more time and patience (and forum help). But I oughtn’t have to.

Cases in point:

Mail

Phone aside, Email is the killer app. It’s what made the BlackBerry the Crackberry. I use Exchange for work and Microsoft makes not only the Treo Pro’s OS, but Exchange itself, so I was anticipating a quick and painless set up.

I was wrong.

First, just like I inexplicably can’t setup Exchange in Outlook on a PC (gotta go to Control Panel!) I had to setup ActiveSync first on the Treo. Entering my info was easy enough, though password handling reminded me of iPhone OS 1.x, where we’re expected to enter pseudorandom passwords that are totally obscured, which was made extra hard by having to use shift and alt to change state on a visually unchanging hardware keyboard. I managed to do it eventually however, only to be stopped dead by ActiveSync refusing my company’s certificate.

On the iPhone, I just ignore the security warning and it works fine. With the Treo, I could find no way around it. TreoCentral Forum member Conrad gave me awesome directions for manually finding my certificate on my desktop and transferring it to the Treo Pro, but there’s no excuse for that having to be part of the process.

So, while I could get the certificate easily enough, I couldn’t transfer it over from my Mac by either BT or tether, so I couldn’t get Exchange.

Really depressing.

I did get Gmail setup, though it defaulted to POP. Forum member RichChestmast tipped me to flipping on IMAP, however.

Calendar

I like the Calendar App. I couldn’t sync either Exchange or MobileMe (where I keep my personal data) over, so I just re-entered everything manually (which technically avoided tethering!). Anyone who’s used Outlook — anyone who’s used any Calendar app, will be right at home, and that’s the highest of praise for PIM apps.

As mentioned, there’s a hard key for the calendar, letting you zip right into it and cycle through states, and I’ll use this opportunity again to announce my appreciation for the Today Screen, which would be a welcome option on the iPhone.

Also, the Windows Mobile calendar provides both week view (like the G1), which the iPhone lacks, and year view, though the screen size and ratio constricts it to 9-month view. Both of these would be welcome additions to the iPhone.

Tasks and Notes

As I mentioned in my Android review, the iPhone’s stupefying lack of a Tasks app, and lack of any built-in way to sync notes, even with Exchange which supports just that type of syncing, has conditioned me to pretty much stop using these pillars.

They’re here. They work. But they’re not particularly attractive (making me miss Marker Felt is about as low as any Notes app could ever sync). I’ll get into this more in the FUZE review, but it’s not 1998 any more. UI matters.

Secret Sauce

(Yes, I refuse to surrender that jargon to lesser complaints). When Bill Gates took the stage at CES and stunned the world with a Palm running Windows Mobile, one of the first things that got me psyched was the Photo Dialing. I loved how Palm tweaked out Windows Mobile.

I didn’t notice anything special about the Treo Pro. In a world with Touch Flo 3D and Xperia Panels, I was expecting something.

Far as I could tell, though, when Palm ordered up the Treo Pro, they held the sauce.

Pity.

PIM Postcript

When I was having trouble figuring out how to review this not made by Palm, not running Palm-OS Treo, Dieter gave me some great advice — review it as a Treo, as something you use on the go to get things done.

In that regard, it’s decidedly middling. The latest, greatest hardware and Windows Mobile, while better looking and far more powerful than my old 680, just weren’t as fast and easy to use. They took more work, and that meant they were far less Zen. And, dagnabit, the measure of any true Treo is in the Zen.

Conclusion

I’m really conflicted about this device. It looks and feels great, it’s powerful and configurable, but for every point I feel it improves from the Treo 680, there’s an equal point where I feel it falls short.

I love the new key material but the board is more cramped. I can do far more with it, but it’s just not as easy to get things done. It’s not the aging Palm of yesteryear, but it’s not the Palm I need today — not quite.

I’ve pretty much come to a conclusion that’s been brewing in my head for a while now (and I’m sure I’m not the first to think or post about it). In many ways, the iPhone is far more the successor to the original spirit of the Treo than any current model being sold by Palm today. Windows Mobile, for all the smart business and stop gap reasons that make perfect sense for Palm Inc. from every angle, just doesn’t feel like a Treo to me, and the iPhone does. The iPhone is what I wish Palm had shipped 5 years ago. So I’ll end where I began the Treo Pro is an HTC Windows Mobile device — a terrific one, maybe the best one available here and now — but it’s not a Palm. Not a Treo. Not for me.

Here’s hoping Palm hits a home run with Nova for next year, and we get a 2.0 OS device in Round Robin 2009.

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

Like all good things, bad things, and flummoxing things — all thing in general I suppose — my time with the Palm Treo Pro (see video preview) will be ending shortly, whereby shortly I mean this weekend when my final review goes up an I ship this hot little handset on to Android Casey for his turn at the non-Palm, not-Treo, arguably Pro device.

In the meantime, however, I should like to ask you, our readers, what if any questions you might have about it. What would you like to see better explored? Compared more directly with the iPhone? Put to the torture test?

Let me know in the comments and you’ll also get another chance to win our iPhone 3G prize pack.

(And remember to head on over to our sibling sites for more chances to win a Blackberry Bold, Palm Treo Pro, WinMo HTC FUZE, and Android G1!)

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

The Smartphone Experts Round Robin‘ is slamming into round 2! While I’ve been having fun with the Palm Treo Pro, uber-gadgeteer Dieter has been restoring his child-like sense of wonder with Apple’s iPhone 3G.

Says Dieter, horned WMExperts hat firmly in place:

The real story between Windows Mobile and the iPhone platform is this: the iPhone has elegance while Windows Mobile has power, versatility, and openness. It’s that last one that’s clearly becoming a bigger factor in my mind as time goes on (as it is with the entire the entire WMExperts Team). Podcast downloading is the touchstone example of the moment, but there are plenty of others. I’ll get into it quite a bit more in the final review, but for now, sit back and watch my video first take.

Is he right? And if he is, do we want to live in a world so wrong? Go on over and tell him what you think!

Remember, each SPE site is giving away their signature smartphone and accessories, so it’s not just an iPhone 3G up for grabs! Every day you comment on Dieter’s video, or my thread in the TreoCentral Forum, you get two more chances to win a smartphone (and accessories!)

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! More below!]

[Digg link]

I loved Palm devices and used them as my “main brain” from the Palm V all the way to the Palm 680, before transitioning to the first iPhone. But here’s the thing, I don’t feel like I left Palm — I feel like they left me. Will the Palm Treo Pro be enough to lure me back?

Fair warning: About 1 minute of this preview is done “Zero Punctuation” style (without the salty language, of course!). Apologies to Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw and everyone at the Escapist for the poor (very poor!) parody, and to our readers… er… viewers, but it had to be done!

Check it out, then head on over to Treo Central to help me get this thing working! Every day you post, you get entered to WIN one of FIVE smartphone prize packs! And you can enter each site’s contest, so don’t forget to help Dieter un-harshen his mellow with the iPhone!

Prize details after the jump…

Every day you comment here, you get one entry to win not only a supra-shiny iPhone 3G, but the Case-Mate Naked Case which allows full touch through access to the iPhone’s amazing screen. Smartphone Outlet is also kicking in the revolutionary Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset AND a runner-up prize, $50 coupon good at any SPE store, including the new Smartphone Outlet, where you can find refurb Smartphone Accessories at very (very!) low prices.

Check out our full contest rules!

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

You had Google Android G1 questions, we’ll try to provide answers. Unfortunately, we already shipped the Android G1 off to TreoCentral’s Jennifer and we’re moving on to the Palm Treo Pro, so we won’t be able to answer anything we didn’t already find out last week, but for the most part, we’ll try our best to give you an iPhone look at Google handset.

See our answers, after the jump!

Jason asks: in what user-friendly ways does the G1 shine? I know the open OS is a big deal for developers, but what about the average user?

If you’re in a Google world, with Gmail and gCal, then the G1 is awesome with it’s login/activation setting up Google push at the same time. I still maintained Google Contacts is an embarrassment, however, and needs work pronto. I’m not sure how well Google Docs work, if at all, as I didn’t test those.

For users, the open OS means the potential for a wider range of more innovative software, but it will depending on developers being interested and able enough to produce it, of course.

Fassy asks: What are the major differences between Android’s WebKit browser and Mobile Safari? Do sites render differently, and, if so, how? Can/does the G1 use iphone-optimized versions of sites? Is the G1’s browser any more (or less) stable than Mobile Safari?

The major difference between MobileSafari and “Chrome-lite” (is that what the cool kids are calling it?) is that Chrome lacks multi-touch, which was a huge negative coming from the iPhone mindset. Multi-touch just kills on moving around the space.

Sites rendered similarly, since the engine is the same, but Chrome didn’t resize pages and text flow the way Safari does, so it required extra zoom-out steps all the time. I didn’t see any iPhone-optimized pages pop up on the G1 either, though I did notice when I tried to login to the MobileMe website, it told me to use the built in iPhone apps instead, so Apple was obviously miss-identifying Chrome as Safari.

Chrome was much more stable than MobileSafari 2.1. It didn’t crash once the whole week. So far, MobileSafari 2.2 hasn’t crashed on me either, so maybe things would be more even now.

cherryhead25 asks: Obviously their apps are tied into Google but have you found the phone productive at all? I mean is there a document/spreadsheet editor, or alarms for tasks? What are the calendar views like compared to the iPhones PIM? What about foreign language support like the iPhone has built in, specifically Asian languages. These are deal breakers for me so please elaborate on the productivity side of things.

The learning curve definitely impacted my productivity, especially the dismal contacts. I didn’t try docs, but I didn’t see any way to view or edit them built in. Calendar had a week view, which is lacking on the iPhone. Didn’t see foreign languages, but remember this is a localized to T-Mobile in the US phone. I’d bet when it goes international, like the iPhone 3G did, we’ll see that. I think Android Market will need to enable paid apps before we see the big productivity tools show up as well.

It’s still very much early day with this phone. Just imagine the omni-pesent Google “beta” tag being on the phone.

Dimietriev asks: How easy is it to buy and download apps from the android store. With the iphone, you can do it fairly quickly, especially from the phone.

Very easy! I was very impressed with the download and install on Android Market, and the notification of what services each and every app would use (i.e. GPS, network, etc.) Update notices also popped up right when I launched an app, so no having to rely on an App Store-like badge.

Dimietriev asks: Also, how do you think the swinging hinge will hold over time(long term)? You refer to the word ‘creaky’.

In my experience, each added level of complexity and mechanics is an increase in the chance (read: certainty) of breakdown. Whether it lasts as long as you plan to keep the phone, however, is a question. I’m guessing many people would upgrade handsets before wear-and-tear sets in. But, yeah, definitely “creaky” and not my preference.

Leanna asks: Is the touch screen just as nice and responsive? Or do you need to push harder or hold your finger down for longer?

It’s good, being capacitive like the iPhone, but not quite as buttery smooth (but what is?). Also, not being a glass screen, it didn’t “feel” as nice. Also, having to switch input methods ruined the sheer joy of the experience. I like touch screen. I don’t want to have to change to keyboard and back, track-ball and back. When the virtual keyboard launches, I’m hoping this goes away.

Keil Miller asks: Will android be on other phones and allow for less confusing methods of input?

My guess is yes, there may well be all keyboard, all touch, etc. versions of Android, similar to what we see with WinMo and BlackBerry now. However, on the flip side this will make development as difficult as those platforms since lack of unified hardware means never knowing what input end users will have available. Every iPhone/iPod Touch works the same, which is a huge plus for developers.

Dimietriev asks: Also, what are the options, if any, if you want to back-up the device?

Didn’t see any. iPhone backs up via iTunes when you tether it, and the G1 you really don’t have to tether, which I love. I’m guessing there’s some sort of backup in place, but I didn’t stumble across it. If the iPhone goes completely tether-less eventually as well, I wonder if we’ll see a Time Machine-like option?

Lead asks: Is there a software keyboard?

Not yet, but I understand it’s coming. In my opinion, it would greatly enhance usability in portrait mode especially

James asks: is there any way for you to type up messages an emails while still in portrait mode?

Not yet! See above!

jhunt4231 asks: Does the G1 run flash?

Also not yet, but also coming if we’re to believe the demo at the recent Adobe MAX conference.

Deathscaller asks: Whats the internet speed like compared to the Iphone and(if it has WiFi) how does that compare.

The G1 has WiFi and while I didn’t run any speed tests (d’oh!) I found them both to be snappy.

Luis asks: is there anyway to change the icons on the G1? how customizable is the whole android os?

In theory, it’s ultimately customizable by carriers, manufacturers, and users. According to Ryan Block of GDGT, while there’s no skinning process yet in place, all the UI files are standard image and XML, so anyone could either replace or rewrite them, or create a framework to more easily do so.

Firas asks: but I wonder if my 3 year old nephew would enjoy using it as much as my iPhone.

At the age of 2 1/2, my godson could use the iPhone. By 3 he could use it well. He can unlock it, return the home screen, switch home screens, find the apps he likes, launch them, quit them, play games, look at the photos, etc.

About the only thing he could do with the G1 was launch in at my head and demand the iPhone back. (I joke only slightly).

Alex Radu asks: How’s the camera on the G1? Both in terms of quality and features and options…

I’d say better than the iPhone but when really discussing mobile cameras, we’re discussing the difference between horrible and terrible. It’s not as bad as an iPhone, but not as good as an N95. The iPhone’s camera is greatly restricted by the thinness of the device. It lacks the space for mechanisms. The G1, however, is much thicker, even if part of that is taken up by slider action. Everything is compromise.

royk asks: what’s one thing the g1 does better than the iphone? what’s one thing the g1 could learn from the iphone?

Aside from the more open SDK, Gmail is much better. User experience could learn tons from the iPhone.

Eric asks: Do you like the physical keyboard better than the iPhones virtual one?

Not for me, but then I’ve never liked physical keyboards on small devices. Going back to the Palm 600, I’ve found them hard to use. I vastly prefer the iPhone-style keyboard. I’d recommend asking Crackberry Kevin or Dieter this question, as they live with hard keyboards while I — frankly — have freed myself from the tic tac-tiles

Thanks everyone for sending in your questions!

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! More below!]

So, was Android Casey turned to the Apple iPhone side of the Round Robin, or will the Google G1 from T-Mobile forever control his destiny? Jump on over to his full, final iPhone 3G review to see what he loved, what he hated, and how he treated our beloved iPhone. (And every day you tell him just what you think of his review, you get a chance to win AC’s signature device, the G1 itself).

Since round 2 is now about to start, and Casey’s shipped the iPhone off to WinMo Dieter while Crackberry Kevin has thrown the Palm Treo Pro in my general direction, that’s the end of my incredibly strained Star Wars metaphors (for now!) as well.

Wonder what Dieter will have to say about the iPhone? Can’t imagine what I’ll come up with for the Treo Pro, but remember you can post everyday below to increase your odds of winning an iPhone, and on all the Smartphone Experts sites — we’re giving away 5 different handsets, and accessory packs, this year!

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! More below!]

Google’s Android is the future of smartphones. At least, it’s one of the possible futures. Alongside the iPhone, it’s the OS I’m most intrigued by, and that the two companies have chosen such different strategies in tackling the future only makes it ever so much more exciting.

The iPhone is an ordered, iconic device made entirely by Apple, with all the integration and fit and finish — and frustratingly capricious omissions — that only a single guiding mind can achieve. Android, by contrast, is chaotic and communal, designed by Google to free developers and fit a multitude of tastes and form-factors — with all the possible confusion and derivation open source has to offer.

Which one is “better” is a ridiculously impossible question to answer — each platform has its strengths and weaknesses and each user their own unique needs and preferences. Frankly, we’re fortunate to live in a time where there are so many truly awesome devices from which to choose. (Even a few years ago — and yes, I’ll say it, pre-iPhone shockwave — things were far, far more bleak.)

For my part, all I can really do is tell you how I use a smartphone, and how well the Android G1 fits that usage bill.

I really need to point out, up front, that the G1 is a beta device. There, I said it. Unlike Windows Mobile or Blackberry OS, which have been on the market for years and years, and the iPhone OS which is already on 2.x, Android has just hit the market with all the promise and problems that inevitably go with that. The Android device I experienced this week will absolutely and without question be blown away by whatever Android device(s) hit the market next year. So, it’s not a fair comparison for Android from the get go, and I beg everyone to remember that when I lay… er… get into it below the fold.

Getting Started

After far too few hours of sleep, I count on the alarm to make sure I’m out of bed early enough to delay my getting fired for at least another day. Good news. Easy to set. Easy to turn off.

Roughly the same as the iPhone Clock alarm, it’s more utilitarian (a theme we’ll be seeing often) and while that will appeal to some, I miss the eye-candy and pure fun of the iPhone flick-wheels.

Form Factor

Picking up the hardware, it feels good in the hand. It’s heavy but in a solid sort of way, narrower but thicker than the iPhone. The soft-touch plastic is definitely easier to hold onto. The design, however, is… well… less than attractive, and certainly nowhere near as sexy as the iPhone.

Dieter has made a good point that the G1 hardware had to be like this. If it was wrapped inside an iPhone or Blackberry class package, people wouldn’t be as forgiving of the beta software. This way, the outside matches the in. Clunky is as clunky does. It’s the Google stripped down interface and perpetual “beta” tag made manifest.

And that manifestation? While each part of the two-part keyboard and screen slider is good in and of itself, the mere fact that it’s two parts makes it feel creakier and squeakier when you grip it. It’s not the solid slab of the iPhone, but then the iPhone only achieves its form by completely throwing away the keyboard function. The G1 is all about function over form.

Notifications

(Note: I couldn’t find an elegant way to take screenshots absent downloading a dev kit, so I opted for photography. Apologies for the lousy quality, the screens are really bright and beautiful.)

First thing I do is hit a button to wake the phone, and menu to unlock. Then there’s the awesome puzzle-game unlock. Not sure why I have to hit Menu first and then the puzzle though. One unlock would be enough.

As with the iPhone, I’d like for there to be a today screen. (Marketplace, which I’ll get to later, will likely fill that void at some point if it hasn’t already.)

I heard alerts go off during the night, and the notification bar shows calendar and email waiting. I love this feature. Sure, I’d rather just tap or swipe to reveal it, rather than have to pull it all the way down, but the feature itself it great.

(Actually, I’d really like a pop up to be right there when I turn the G1 on, even before I hit “menu”. When I get an alert on the iPhone, if I look right away it’s already popped up on the screen. If I miss it, it pops up as soon as I wake the phone. I need that! If a future version combined the best of both, it would be notification bliss!)

User Experience

Here comes my major rant, and I’ll get it out of the way early so I can hopefully redeem myself to the Androidikas later: Android as it stands right now has a terrible, borderline-incompetent lack of consistency and user-friendliness to its interface/experience. (Which is something the iPhone absolutely kills at, making this all the more frustrating to me).

Navigation is completely non-intuitive and you are continuously left to guess which of the myriad (too many!) input methods is needed at any given time. Keyboard, touchscreen, scroll wheel, and hard buttons are all good, all fine, really. But all at once?

First example, I turn on the phone and a beautiful home screen greets me. I swipe the touch screen and super-sweet parallax scrolling takes me to a Google search box. I tap the box and it lights up and I get a cursor, suggesting input can be made. But I can’t make it. It is utterly unmakable!

I can tap away and nothing will happen unless it occurs to me to open the slider keyboard, at which point the screen will rotate and I can enter text. (Would it have been so much work to either add a virtual keyboard — don’t tell me it’s coming later, or the text box should come later too! — or just make a popup tell me to open the keyboard to enter?)

Second, there are two (2!) mail apps (more on that later) and while the regular mail app has nice, persistent controls like “reply” at the bottom of the screen, the Gmail app tosses them in-line at the bottom of page — which is often quite a lot of scrolling away (yes, I know there are keyboard shortcuts and menu options — exactly the point of this rant!)

Third, when there are those menu options sometimes needful controls are hidden — tragically — behind the “more” touchscreen button. No effort has been made to elegantly or intuitively direct a user to the right control at the right time, nor to keep controls consistent within input methods or between apps. For shame. That needs to be overhauled completely in the next major rev.

Okay, rant over. I shan’t mention it again. (At least I’ll try very, very hard not to).

Email

Yup, I check it as soon as I get up. My job entails supporting offices in different time zones, and TiPb never sleeps, so there’s usually a ton of stuff piled up in my inbox. One of my biggest gripes about the iPhone is how many clicks it takes to move between email accounts. If you drill down, you must drill back up. Will Android help me out there?

A bit, as we’ll see. Of course, there shouldn’t be two email apps to begin with, just one GUI, and Android should handle everything else transparently. Since both apps have their good and bad points, combine all the good into one would be killer.

Gmail App

I’ll just say it — push Gmail is awesome. I want it on the iPhone right now. Forget Street-view or Location Sharing in iPhone OS 2.2, Google — give me push Gmail!

I use Gmail for both my personal and TiPb mail. Unfortunately, Gmail app only supports one (1) Gmail account (the iPhone only supports one ActiveSync account, but I seem to be able to set up more than one Mobile Me Account.) My personal account won the coin toss.

Setup was easy. Actually, you have to set up Gmail in order to activate the G1, the same way you need iTunes to activate the iPhone, so it needs to be easy.

Once I plugged in my credentials — skidoosh! — all my personal mail “just worked” with instant Google goodness.

Confession: I did find the controls a little confusing (and both trashed and spammed Crackberry Kevin — sorry Kevin!), but luckily Dieter posted the aforementioned excellent keyboard shortcuts. In any case, stars are right there. Labels are right there. Everything anyone who has ever used Gmail via the web interface has ever wanted in a client is right there. If the next rev cleans up the controls, this could be the killer app.

Mail App

Absent built in Exchange support, which the iPhone OS 2.x enjoys via ActiveSync, I set up my work email, and my TiPB Gmail both in IMAP. I’d used IMAP for iPhone OS 1.x, so while it’s nowhere near as robust as ActiveSync, it got the job done. Gmail, due to Google’s “unique” implementation of mapping Labels to IMAP folders, has never been enjoyable to me, not on the iPhone, and not here, but it also gets the job done well enough for now.

I should point out that Gmail IMAP generates regular invalid certificate, simultaneous connection, and other errors to the point of being utterly useless at times for me on both the desktop and iPhone (and Twitter shows I’m not alone), but I had no problem with either of those things on the G1. Either I got lucky, or Google’s got some extra special mojo at work here.

Like the Gmail App, navigation is more challenging than it ought to be. Also, I ended up keeping it on manual as far as when to check mail, since anything automatic thrashed the battery life something fierce. This meant I had to wait each time I opened the app for it to download new messages, and even on WiFi this seemed to take longer than the iPhone does.

The Four Pillars of PIM

Once mail is triaged, it’s time for me to figure out the day. Now, I don’t use tasks/to do or memo/notes (don’t tell Dieter!). This may be because the iPhone just totally FAILS by not providing sync features for them. So, to be honest, I don’t know if Android does this or does it well. It’s simply outside my current usage pattern.

Calendar

iCal synced via MobileMe is my main modus operundi. I don’t use gCal on Google’s server, but I did manage to export my main calendars as ICS files and import them into gCal for instant syncing to Android. Sweet!

I’m still looking for a direct (i.e. non-3rd party) way to simply subscribe to my iCal calendars in gCal using CalDAV, but while Android Central forum members pointed me to great directions for doing the opposite (subscribing to gCal in iCal), I’m still looking for my holy grail. (Anyone seen it?)

It’s a great calendar app. Not as good as Gmail, not as bad as Contacts (wait for it). As Casey will tell you, Week View merely being present is a big plus over the iPhone.

Contacts

I’m going to rant again. I don’t understand how the same company that makes Gmail can put out what they laughingly call Google Contacts. This, above all, made my life with Android miserable.

First, I turned on Google Sync in Address Book and immediately my contacts were beamed to the cloud. Then they were condensed and rained back down on me in tiny, droplet-y fragments. See, Google seems to just randomly add contacts almost always without any sort of container or relationship. Suddenly I had 3 to 10 contacts per person, some just email addresses, some just phone numbers, almost none linked in any useful way.

I did my best to clean it up, but searching for contacts by name seldom if ever turned up their numbers, and when people called me, I almost never got the name of the caller even if it should have been in there.

[Note: Dieter in contacts above, but no numbers, no email, no nothing. FAIL!]

Since I’ve long since lost the ability to actually remember numbers, this made the phone all but unusable for me at times. To be clear, however, this is not Android’s problem, it’s Google Contacts and Android inherited it. And this is not just my opinion, it’s an opinion I’ve seen echoed by many otherwise extremely happy Gmail users.

Please fix this, Google. Pretty please?

On the super epic plus side, however, this did mean I got all my data onto the G1 over the air. No tether. No cable. Totally leash free. MobileMe and ActiveSync users know this freedom. Android users know it as well.

Web

We browsing is huge on the iPhone. It’s inarguably the best mobile browser implementation yet. How does the Google Browser stack up? Pretty well. The lack of multi-touch is a huge hit, no way around that, but the rendering (based on the same open source WebKit foundation as the iPhone’s Safari) is snappy and it’s much, much, (much!) more stable than the iPhone was under 2.1 (let’s hope 2.2 has fixed that).

I had nary a crash all week.

I do wish, however, that it would auto-scale pages and fit text the way MobileSafari does. Having to manually adjust each page with the magnifying buttons got old fast. On the UI massive FAIL front, not being able to tap the touch screen to activate a URL chooser was stupefying. You can start typing on the keyboard to do that, of course, or hit the menu button and then touch “Go to URL” but — again — forcing a user to open a keyboard or switch between input methods is just way, way broken.

Android’s browser doesn’t currently support flash, though it looks like it may soon. When you get to a YouTube video, you’re prompted to launch it in the YouTube app (like on the iPhone) or to view it in the browser. The former works just like you’d expect (hey, Google owns YouTube!), the latter, however, then asks you to download Java and Flash. Er… Howsabout we remove that until after Flash is made into a plugin, b’okay guys?

Phone

I like the phone app quite a bit. I liked it when I used it on the Treo. I say that because it’s almost identical. Same tabbed approach to the same basic usage choices. They worked then, they work now, and as Steve Jobs so rightly said, phone is the killer app.

The only problem I had is that when I had to enter extra digits, opening up the keyboard while keeping the handset to my ear was tricky to say the least. Sure, they’ve invented speakers and headsets for that stuff, but I should have an onscreen keypad as well. Or is it there and I just missed it?

Pairing with my Blue Tooth was a synch. Once and a while it wouldn’t work, and I would find the BT radio turned off, but turning it back on would again enable flawless use. Android really nailed this.

In general, however, I could use a little more visual differentiation in the settings between buttons that simply toggle on/off radios like WiFi and BT, and buttons that take you to those radios settings. Identical slices of a single vertical list with only check marks vs. arrow circles isn’t really enough.

Media

The iPhone, with its iPod pedigree, is a media powerhouse. It’s the media powerhouse! How does Android stack up?

Video

The lack of a built-in video player ranks up there with the lack of MMS on the iPhone. Both are inexplicable. To Android’s credit, however, a video player is just one short trip to the Market away. (Want MMS on your iPhone and jailbreaking is your only current option).

Audio

Music is built in, both the player and the Amazon MP3 store. And they’re fine. Since Amazon hasn’t seen fit to offer the service in Canada yet, I was shut out of fully testing it. Come on, Amazon!

I’m not much of a music listener (the irony is not lost, believe me), so fine was good enough. What I am, though, is a voracious podcast listener. My feed is clogged with every Smartphone Experts cast, most of TWiT and Pixel Corp, GDGT, and many more. (I save video podcasts for the big screen).

Again, this meant a trip back to the Market to get a podcatcher… something (also ironically) Apple refuses to allow into the iPhone App Store.

I’ll be honest here — it worked but nowhere near as well as iTunes, which while still tether-bound until iPhone OS 2.2 (which may well hit today!), is just buttery smooth. Time-outs and failed downloads plagued me (which may also be the case in 2.2, who knows at this point?).

When I don’t have time to tether the iPhone, I’ve tried streaming via web links and the Quicktime plugin, which is hit and miss as sometimes the connection stalls and unlike a downloaded podcast, it never remembers your location if it you come back to it later.

Android was very similar, though perplexingly after I typed in a URL with the keyboard and clicked to begin the stream, closing the keyboard would stop the stream. This is most likely a bug and will hopefully be fixed.

Photos

Photos on the iPhone is one of those apps you do demos with. Multi-touch just kills it. So, while Android can handle photos just fine, it doesn’t have anywhere near the fun factor of the iPhone.

Strangely, cover art for the podcasts I downloaded somehow flooded my photos app, so the top level looked more like an iTunes tab than a set of albums!

Android Market

This is the area where Android has the potential to really decimate the iPhone. Given all of Apple’s restrictions on the App Store and the iPhone SDK, including no multi-tasking, no access to the iPod, no turn-by-turn, etc. etc. ad naseum infinitum, the freedom of the Android Market (even though it too has a kill switch) should release the true power of developer innovation.

One day.

Today, it’s still a little on the far side of slim pickings. This may simply be due to the lack of a commercial option on the built-in app — serious developers who make great software need to be paid enough to support their making great software. Hopefully this will shake out rapidly.

Since the default Android IM client wouldn’t work for me (it was upset I wasn’t using a T-Mobile SIM — apparently it ties into SMS), I went in search of a 3rd party client from the Market.

Android Market works pretty much the same as the App Store, with a few little differences in the UI. Some of them are useful, but the polish wasn’t there, so I’m calling it even at this point.

It was easy enough to find an IM app, and dead simple to install and use it. Strangely, it kept logging me out, defeating the purpose of multi-tasking, but I eventually found a preference setting to keep me logged in and receiving IMs in the background. That was awesome! … until my battery very rapidly ran dry.

Push has its price. Maybe this is what’s (still!) delaying Apple’s Push Notification Service?

I also downloaded a game. I game very little, and very casually — often just to wind down before going to sleep. As anyone who’s seen my video know, it was frustrating. Not the download, that was easy. The game, however, told me to “push up to start”. Touch screen up did nothing. Keyboard had no up key. Finally I hit the trackball and voila. This is the double edge to the Android Market Store: absent a unified hardware platform like the iPhone, you never know what input methods will be available on any given piece of equipment, and which ones will be in use on multiple input devices. This developer clearly should have allowed upward swipes on the touch screen, when a touch screen is present.

The game itself, aside from being the most popular at the time of my download, was fine for freeware, but nothing like what we’ve seen on the iPhone.

But it was enough to put me to sleep.

Another plus: on app update notification. I find having to go to the App Store on the iPhone inefficient at times, and really liked how Android alerted me to updates right from the app.

Conclusion

Again, this is a beta OS on mundane hardware and is ultimately and absolutely fine. It’s fine. Really.

I was expecting more. I was expecting what I have every ounce of confidence Android 2.0 will be.

Problems vs. promise was the theme of my entire week with the G1. It’s not an iPhone killer, not by any stretch of that overused drip of marketing hyperbole… but it could easily become one if Apple isn’t very careful.

Unlike Apple, Google isn’t secretly building devices to slip out of their jean pockets at trade shows and shock and delight the world first time at bat. They’re taking a decidedly Microsoft-ian approach of releasing concept pieces and using the early adopters to test and refine. Microsoft typically does horrible first revs, poor second revs, and then starts to nail things third time at bat. Hopefully Google will hit their home run faster.

I know I’m desperately rooting for them.

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

We come to it at last. My time with the Android draws to a close. I have but my final review to write and then I ship it off to the next lucky SME editor for him or her to take their turn. Before I let it go, however, Android Casey had the brilliant idea of asking our loyal iPhone readers for questions!

Anything you want to know about the Google Android G1? Anything you want to see? Anything you’re even a tad curious about? Anything you want to see compared to the iPhone?

Let me know in the comments and not only will you get another change to win our awesome prize pack, I’ll do my darndest to get you the info you not only need, but so richly deserve.

(Also remember to head on over to our sibling sites for more chances to win a Blackberry Bold, Palm Treo Pro, WinMo HTC FUZE, and Android G1!)

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

Another day, yet another chance to win ONE of FIVE shiny new Smartphones! That’s right, TiPb is giving away an iPhone 3G and for yet another chance to win, each and every day you post in our special forum thread, you get entered for another chance to win! So what are you waiting for? Go help AndroidCentral’s Casey Chan learn to re-love his iPhone!

(Psst- Our sibling sites are also giving away a Blackberry Bold, Android G1, Treo Pro, and HTC FUZE, so head on over to each and every Smartphone Experts Round Robin thread you can find!)

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

Everything is going according to Smartphone Round Robin‘s designs: While I’ve been learning the ways of the Android, Casey shows the iPhone is still strong in him.

Head on over to Android Central, and be sure to tell him what you think: his own council should he keep, or do you find that it is he who is mistaken… about a great many things?

Remember, each SPE site is giving away their signature smartphone and accessories, so it’s not just an iPhone 3G up for grabs! Every day you comment on Casey’s video, or my thread in the Android Central Forum, you get two more chances to win a T-Mobile Android G1, along with a BlueAnt Z9 Bluetooth Headset, and SPE Screen Protectors!

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! More below!]

Okay, fair enough, I’m having a little fun up there, but with the Smartphone Empire Experts Round Robin officially under way and my iPhone frozen in carbonite for the next month, the G1 could be my only hope!

I’m still trying to figure out if this is the ‘droid I’ve been looking for, however. Do I understand the awesome power of the open-platform of the Google? Or is it more concept now than device, twisted and confusing?

Check out the video, then head on over to Android Central to help me out. Every day you post, you get entered to WIN one of FIVE smartphone prize packs! And you can enter each site’s contest, so don’t forget to help turn Casey back to the iPhone side as well!

May the forums be with you!

Prize details after the jump…

Every day you comment here, you get one entry to win not only a supra-shiny iPhone 3G, but the Case-Mate Naked Case which allows full touch through access to the iPhone’s amazing screen. Smartphone Outlet is also kicking in the revolutionary Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset AND a runner-up prize, $50 coupon good at any SPE store, including the new Smartphone Outlet, where you can find refurb Smartphone Accessories at very (very!) low prices.

Check out our full contest rules!

Today on the forums we have a couple of “Official” TiPB threads. So these are some you do not want to miss!

First up , don’t forget to jump in on the action for your chance to win some free stuff! Everyone enjoys receiving free stuff right!? Check out the iPhone Live! #2 Contest Entry Thread. And for even more details regarding this new contest, please head on over to the Ultimate iPhone Accessory Give Away for all of the contest information.

Next up we have Casey’s very own thread, Round Robin: Casey Needs iPhone Help, Tips, Tricks, and Advice! What exactly does Casey need you help with you ask? How about your favorite thing about the iPhone 3G? Or how about your most used 3rd party app? So what are you waiting for? Please help out one of your beloved TiPB bloggers, and since this is an official ROUND ROBIN thread, posting will get you a chance to win a smartphone!

A few days back we mentioned that it’s possible we may see Apple’s latest firmware, 2.2, within the next week or so! So with that said, what do you think of the announced features? Disappointed? Not so disappointed? Whatever the case, make your voice heard!

Now before you can get in on the action, you have to join our growing community! It’s free and simple, so don’t waste another minute and add something to the conversation!

See you on the forums!

Long Live the King

Before we get started with the other folk’s take on the iPhone, it’s good to remember why the iPhone is the best device out there. Mike Overbo, Editor Emeritus, realizes that the iPhone isn’t perfect but has come to believe that the iPhone’s future is the biggest reason he switched. In this article, he takes a look at each device that participated in the Round Robin (Blackberry Curve, AT&T Tilt, and Treo 680) and gives an in-depth look at what’s good, bad, and where the iPhone can learn.

Read on for the rest of the links!

First Look, Final Review from Crackberry’s Kevin

Crackberry has been the butt of a lot of TiPb’s jokes/articles recently because it’s hilarious to poke fun of its shortcomings but honestly, the reality of it is: RIM is the Number 1 Smartphone Maker and they have proven that their devices matter to their users, therefore their users opinion’s matter to the rest of the Smartphone Industry. Kevin’s take on the iPhone is that it should have been called the iGadget and that the iPhone is great at everything the Blackberry is terrible at and vice versa.

First Look, Final Review from Jennifer Chappell of TreoCentral

Hey, Palm still exists? We kid, we kid. One of her biggest gripes about the iPhone was the lack of 3rd party apps, which is fair coming from a Palm user’s incredibly vast software selection. Luckily, that problem will be solved next month! Aside from that, she found the iPhone to be a great device–awesome UI, sweet web browsing, and just loved the overall experience. 

First Look, Final Review from WMexperts (and now TiPb’s) Dieter Bohn

Hey, looks like our good friend/editor has grown a bit and joined the greener/TiPb side since getting his hands on the iPhone. He realized that the iPhone is completely different from the Windows Mobile platform and came up with a hilariously great analogy.

Basically, my week with the iPhone was like a week at a posh resort – I wasn’t as connected as I usually am, I didn’t get very much done, but damn if I didn’t enjoy the view.

Overall, the Round Robin was a great idea to get each user community excited about another device. It gave the readers of each site well-informed looks of the devices that stepped away from the usual fanboy (or fangirl) speak. Hopefully, we can provide you guys with another Round Robin later this year with the iPhone 3G, Blackberry Bold, Sony XPERA X1, and Palm…wait the Treo 850 is a new device? I swear I saw that thing 5 years ago. Again, I kid. I kid.