When Apple first announced the iPhone, they did a great favour to the mobile phone industry, and to us the consumers. They showed that the mobile phone still had lots of room for improvement, and that it’s not just about features but about usability. It’s good to know that Apple’s competitors, the incumbent mobile phone manufacturers, have not been asleep at the wheel.

Some manufacturers were very quick to respond. For example, HTC quickly released the HTC Touch (and later Touch Diamond, Touch HD) and Samsung had their Instinct. These first attempts primarily sought to match the iPhone’s touch screen and also to mimic Apple’s touch interface. However, even HTC’s admirable efforts to come up with their Touch Flo interface couldn’t mask the clunkiness of the underlying Windows Mobile operating system.

Samsung Instinct Sprint

A year later, after Apple released the iPhone 3G, we are seeing the big boys join in the game. Mobile phone giant Nokia has released the 5800 XpressMusic, which is targeted towards the mainstream consumers. The 5800 comes equipped with a 3.2-inch 640 x 360 resistive touchscreen to go along with its 3.2-megapixel autofocus cam, Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash, GPS, WiFi, 3.5mm jack, and a microSD slot with support for 16GB cards. However, given the time that Nokia had to come up with an “iPhone killer”, the device could have been so much better.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Smartphone leader RIM has released a much better effort in the form of their first ever touch screen Blackberry : the Blackberry Storm. It has a 3.2-Megapixel camera, a better browser with built-in RSS support and 1 GB of on-board memory. The screen has 480×360 resolution. The Storm is a true world phone, with support for EVDO Rev A 3G Network and (2100Mhz) UMTS/HSPA 3G along with older technologies such as GSM, GPRS and EDGE. This means you can use it just about anywhere in the world. This is the Blackberry that just help Verizon retain their high-value customers. Half of new iPhone customers in the US came to AT&T from Verizon.

T-Mobile Android G1 Google HTC

Another US operator which needed a “Jesus phone” to compete against the iPhone was T-Mobile. After much waiting, we finally saw the launch of the T-Mobile G1, the first smartphone to feature Google’s Android operating system. Designed by HTC, the T-Mobile G1 has a flip-out keyboard, 256MB of built-in memory, MicroSD slot, 3 megapixel camera and the requisite touch screen. Of course, there’s the tight integration with Google services like search, Gmail and Maps as well as access to the Amazon DRM-free MP3 store. This phone looks to be a great success, with 1.5 million G1s already pre-ordered. They did stumble in one aspect, though — there’s no standard 3.5mm jack, but rather an ExtUSB port for your headset.

So, we now have 3 new smartphones in the market, each quite different in approach, targeting slightly different customer segments and each standing as credible alternatives to the Apple iPhone. The price points for smartphones are also lower than ever before, with the G1 selling for just US$180. As I mentioned before, this is a great development for consumers.

This is an exciting time indeed for the smartphone world.

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Filed under: Mobile News

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