Phone Junkie

Gadget patents are a strange lot. Is that dual-handed interface for an iTablet, or something else? Will my remote really Tweet someday? Probably not, but this patent from Nokia had me thinking of a touch- and, more importantly, pressure-sensitive future:

Now, touch screens are nothing new, obviously. The iPhone’s an obvious example, as are the multitude of touchscreen handsets that have done their fair share of pinch zooming, screen swiping and touch typing in its wake.

Add in pressure sensitive gestures, however, and a new level of control descends on the venerable touchscreen. Again, Apple’s been here before—at least with a 2007 patent—but nevertheless it’s interesting to see a giant like Nokia weighing in with some ideas too (let’s just hope they get their homework handed in before doomsday though, right?).

Like I said, the Apple one is going on two years old, and we haven’t seen anything yet. Our expectations with these things must remain in the realm of the real and the grounded. Still, as we explained earlier, touchscreens are our future, and the added functionality provided by a pressure-sensitive screen seems an inevitability. Question is, who’s going to be first to successfully drive this tech to where it really counts: Into the mainstream consumer market? [Unwired View via Engadget]

Smartphones have all advanced over the past few years, and mostly do the same things. But if you look at the details, you’ll find that—depending on your needs—one may be way better than another.

Most smartphone platforms support touchscreens and/or keyboards, and let you browse the internet, run apps, view photos and play games/music/movies. And while they may act the same on a fundamental level, not all smartphones are created equal. Here’s where they match up, and where they don’t:

Note: We have updated certain notes in the chart to reflect the lively discussion going on in comments, and we want that to continue. That said, we plan to leave Symbian both out of this discussion and any future discussions of the hottest smartphones of the day because it has little or no presence in the US, where we are based, despite its popularity in other countries. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you.

iPhone
Apple is so fixated on maintaining a high level of user satisfaction and reduced frustration on the iPhone, they will bluntly admit to leaving out key smartphone features—particularly features that are either hard to implement in the UI, or require too much battery juice. The result is a pretty slick interface (with occasional glitches, yes, but fewer than others) that nevertheless leaves you wanting more. iPhone OS 3.0 (covered in full detail here) addressed most of the user gripes—such as lack of push notifications, copy and paste and search, but we’re still left without video recording, Flash browser support and true background-app multitasking.

Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is brilliant for the business crowd because of its ability to support secure emails, work with corporate computer infrastructures and run proprietary business apps created entirely within Microsoft’s device ecosystem. You can pretty much run and do anything you want on a Windows Mobile phone, which is great. But because the phones are made by many different competing companies—with no consistent quality assurance—UI and user experience don’t compare to the other platforms, so the OS is not as good for people who want a fun smartphone for their own personal use.

One major gripe especially revolves around the screen and its systemic lack of both finger-friendly capacitive-touchscreen support and multitouch interaction. WinMo feels really clunky when you use a finger, and you otherwise have to use an annoying (and easily lost) stylus.

The official reasoning for no capacitive touchscreen support is puzzling. Here’s what Prithvi Raj, Windows Mobile product manager of consumer experiences told us:

At this time, we are focusing on resistive touch because we wanted to ensure the highest quality across the entire experience on the phone, including in different applications such as Excel or Word. However, we have enhanced our software to help resistive screens act like capacitive in certain areas like the “gesture support” and “physics engine” that you see across the new UI of Windows Mobile 6.5 powered Windows phones.

Hrm. Well at least they’re acknowledging the need for better gesture support, and the need to mimic the capability of capacitive touch. We’d rather they just skipped all that work and upgraded, though.

Android
Android is the code monkey’s dream. Because the OS is fully open source, you can do anything you’d like to the phone. This means pretty much any feature you’d like on a cellphone is possible on Android—even the officially unsupported multitouch interaction—provided someone can write an app or extension for it. The downside? Even the official Google/HTC/T-Mobile release of the G1 had a UI design that felt incoherent, like you’re using four different OSes instead of one. Also, despite all this free love, there’s only one currently available phone, and it’s ugly as all sin. Note: For more information, you should read this detailed Android vs. iPhone piece by Gina at Lifehacker.

BlackBerry
Like Windows Mobile, RIM’s BlackBerry is also a business-oriented phone, but with a much more coherent consumer initiative under way. Relatively intuitive and well-structured to use, it feeds off of an email server that is second to none in getting messages to you as they’re sent. And since the phone only runs on BlackBerry hardware, you can mostly be assured the OS will run smoothly (mostly). But despite their best efforts to liven things up with the admirable 4.6 OS and the not-so-admirable BlackBerry Storm touchscreen edition, this remains a fairly utilitarian phone that serves one main purpose: superior messaging. Note: Blackberry was deemed to not have Universal Search because it doesn’t search files or Applications.

WebOS and the Palm Pre
Palm’s Pre with its all-new WebOS has the potential to be the closest competitor to the iPhone, merging the zen simplicity and beauty of the iPhone OS with some of the background processing power of an Android or WinMo phone. You can run as many apps as you like concurrently, and manage them using a system that lets you quickly flick through apps like it was a photo system, great for staying on top of many things at once. But it also integrates the internet into so many facets of its UI (search, contacts, UI, etc.), that you might not even realize you’re using the internet sometimes. If the iPhone is for the common man, WinMo for the executive, Android for the programmer and BlackBerry for the information junkie, WebOS could very much be for the savvy kids trying to stay on top of social media and Web 2.0. Let’s see what happens when the thing actually ships.

Anything you’d like to add about the differences between the smartphone OSes? This is obviously an overview meant to highlight the most crucial differentiators, but if you’ve got something you want to share that’s a little more nitty gritty, please pop it into comments pronto.

Still something you still wanna know? Send any questions about smartphones, dumbphones or megaphones to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.

Surprisingly absent until now, touchability has finally made it into the KDDI au line-up. Casio’s offering utilizes a 3.1-inch touchscreen for some funky music apps — making it a music studio in your pocket.

The screen swivels around a central hinge to hide the phone’s regular numerical keyboard. Through a Yamaha piano app program, you can also play and record various other instruments on-the-go. Sounds like a fun concept, but it’s hard to tell if the phone’s specced out enough to handle that kind of program smoothly.

Also included in package: motion sensing, an “urban fitness program,” a 5MP camera and 500MB of internal memory. Per usual, only available in Japan for now. [KDDI au]

After the BlackBerry Bold’s epically delayed launch on AT&T and the Storm’s epically borked launch everywhere, RIM needs 2009 to be better than 2008. The T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8900 is a good way to start.

galleryPost(’tmocurve8900′, 6, ‘T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8900′); We looked at a close-to-production model Curve 8900 a few months ago (albeit one marked for the Death Star). So far, our experience on this retail unit for T-Mobile has been pretty much the same as it was on the prototype, both good and bad (but mostly good).

galleryPost(’blackberrycurve8900impress’, 3, ‘Previously on Gizmodo: AT&T BlackBerry Curve 8900′); We won’t call anything bulletproof without less than a week with the device (especially given horribly depressing comments muttered recently by RIM’s CEO), but BlackBerry OS 4.6 has been around for several months and been on a few devices at this point, and the Curve 8900, so far, seems like the most stable and least buggy product RIM has shipped in a while. It’s also notably hardware that’s a return to what they’re most comfortable making—a 2G device with Wi-Fi—the kind of phone they’d poop out in the old days (you know, two years ago) and it’d still work fine and deflect missiles and small children while maintaining two-day battery life. So, it does bode well.

Conceptually, the Curve 8900 is almost exactly what you want in a sequel—it ups the ante in a lot of the right ways, like sex quotient, but keeps the fundamentals in place. It’s not a beautiful piece of hardware that will magnetically pull drool out of people’s lips in a trickle, but it’s black-and-chrome modern enough with just the right lines (borrowed from the Storm) that it will draw eyes, if only for a split second.

Hardware
Three things make the hardware exceptional: The screen is delicious and not just because a video of John Mayer is preloaded on it, one thing RIM’s been getting very right (the screen, not John Mayer, though that is also very right). Colors pop like John Mayer’s lyrics, contrast is contrasty and the 480×360 resolution is fantastic, with a nice, wide viewing angle. The screen’s still too small to watch anything longer than a music video—starring say, John Mayer—but it’ll look pretty good while it’s rolling.

The new “Atomic” trackball seems noticeably sturdier than the one that’s been on BlackBerrys for years. It’s more solidly implanted in the device, with less room for nasty junk to squeeze inside, but still plenty of spin in the wheel.

The keyboard, I feel, is better than the original Curve’s, with a more pronounced sloped to the keys, a la BlackBerry Bold. I prefer the Bold’s keyboard, since it’s way roomier and has perfectly squishy keys, as opposed to the super-punchy ones found on the Curve 8900. That said, the Curve 8900 keyboard is still one of the best smartphone keyboards you’ll ever tap on. RIM knows how to make QWERTY keyboards with their Canadian eyes closed, even if they’re still working out the whole touchscreen clicky thing.

The build quality is another strong point. It’s a solid device that you know won’t go down without a fight, like all RIM hardware. I’d say it feels more sturdy than the original Curve, which I always thought was excessively plastic-y. It definitely feels nicer than the Curve—more high end, and its smoother lines make for a better handfeel too. The weight’s similar to the iPhone 3G—not a feather, but not a monster like the G1 or BlackBerry Bold. The flimsiest part of the phone is the cheapo battery cover, which pops off and on mercifully easy.

A few things muddle the hardware’s excellence: The lack of 3G (sorry, once you’re used to it, you can’t go back) and the Wi-Fi’s persnicketiness—it just didn’t want to play nice with a few of the secured Wi-Fi networks I had it on, constantly dropping out. Open Wi-Fi points seemed just fine though. Also, when I talked to my mommy, the call quality wasn’t bad—it was very clear—but it also had a weird kind of hollowness to it.

Software
Software-wise, the Curve 8900 has every strength and weakness that every BlackBerry phone has when compared to other smartphones: If you’re not familiar with BlackBerry email, BlackBerrys are all about it, with features like real push, server-side search, Exchange support, serious security, a million keyboard shortcuts and other power perks. It’s not the sexiest looking email client around, but it does everything you’d ever want a smartphone to do in terms of email. There’s a reason it’s a corporate warrior’s mandatory piece of kit.

The OS is fairly easy to use (some particulars aside)—it’s an icon-based layout where what you see is what you get. Settings can be a bit of a listicle labyrinth, but for the most part, everything’s presented right up front and easy to get to.

Even though the iPhone and though Android get all the press for apps, BlackBerry also has the backing of a pretty solid developer community for applications, so there are tons of applications to download and install, even if they aren’t quite as shiny as what’s on the iPhone or Android or available from a convenient storefront (yet). The Curve 8900 comes loaded with a solid starter suite though, with instant messenger apps from everybody that matters, like AIM and GTalk; BlackBerry Maps (which is alright, though I prefer Google Maps); and Office to Go, which lets you edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files…on the go. The media apps work fine, with a fairly generic UI.

The software is hampered mostly by its message-oriented roots, so while it does email better than anyone and does have a ton of apps from the developer community, the whole web thing the iPhone, Android and Palm Pre get, and its attempt to scale to that kind of complexity, is clearly a struggle within the BlackBerry OS paradigm. The Curve 8900’s browser, though ridiculously more usable and accurate at rendering than the original Curve’s, is slow even over Wi-Fi. Its application approach is still browser-oriented while we wait for the BlackBerry app store and it’s pokey and annoying, even from RIM’s own central app hub. The apps are there and many are good—Kevin from CrackBerry highly recommends the Bolt browser for a much faster browsing experience—you just have to find ‘em.

Oh, one other sore point for BlackBerry is trying to sync one to a Mac. It’s not a fun experience, with PocketMac providing nowhere near the kind of complete functionality of the PC BlackBerry Desktop Software, which handles all of your syncing, app and media management, and the total inability to have more one sync program installed on a Mac at once. If you install BlackBerry Media Sync to sync iTunes to your BlackBerry on a Mac, it borks your other syncing programs. =(

Conclusion
Based on our time so far, if you have a BlackBerry Curve, the Curve 8900 is the same thing, but better in a lot of little ways that add up to a markedly better experience overall, thanks to a gorgeous display, slicker OS and well-designed hardware.

It’s not a phone to switch to T-Mobile for—especially since it’s obviously coming to AT&T, and most probably Verizon and Sprint too—but this is the BlackBerry that most people will be rocking in the next year as it inevitably spreads from carrier to carrier, and for good reason. If you’re on T-Mobile, you really have two (good) choices for a smartphone now: This or the G1. If you do serious business, well, the choice is made for you.

If our eyes don’t deceive us, these are the first shots of the upcoming LG VX9600, a touchscreen phone with modular components.

The LC VX9600 (sporting a Verizon logo here) tempts us with the prospect of a detachable QWERTY keyboard, which would allow you to slim down your phone’s packaging when heavy emailing wasn’t in your near future. Beyond QWERTY, we may see other modular components as well, including gamepads and speakers. It’s like something we might see from Bug Labs, but fully functional without knowledge of JAVA coding. [Howard Forums via MobileCrunch]

We took a look at the early Windows Mobile 6.5 build for the old HTC Blue Angel handset that was leaked yesterday. There’s not a whole lot to see yet, but here’s what matters:

• There is a new interface! Sort of! The typical 6.1 home screen is still present at times, but there appears to be an alternate, Zune-like menu too. It’s glitchy for the time being, but it looks like a step in the right direction, and like it runs significantly more smoothly than many of the third-party interface layers out there (Yeah, I’m talking about you, TouchFlo 3d). There are also a few new element skins—namely a new dialer, finally. The keyboard doesn’t get shown off, but I’d assume that’ll be changed too.
• Zune integration is here, in a way. The aforementioned new menu doesn’t just look and feel like the clean Zune UI we’re all so used to, it contains icons for media playback at the bottom, including music and photos. Both had image previews in their entries, and there were specific music functions built into the first layer of menus. In other words, the default user interface for Windows Mobile will be usable as a media player.
• Intertial scrolling is everywhere now. This might seem minor, but the psychological impact of smooth interface movements is huge. Grids of icons can now be thrown around, as can the contact list and web browser (though we saw this in the Mobile IE6 emulator).

• There are a few other new, minor features seen in the video, but it’s unclear which of them belong to Microsoft, which to HTC and which to random third parties (this is XDA, after all). And as I said before, this is probably a very early build and not totally representative of the final product. However, if these few improvements are anything to go by, the user experience will be markedly improved for users of WinMo 6.5, especially on touchscreen handsets.