Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Anything out there better than the iphone?

J

joesegal76

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 3, 2008
40
0
Is there a phone out there right now that anyone thinks is better than the iphone in terms of style, performance and features?
I used to update my phone almost every other month, but nothing has made turn the other way yet.
Notable mentions:
HTC Touch HD
Nokia Tube
 
You may be asking the wrong crowd.

You're on a MacRumors website, and an iPhone Forum. Do you really think you're going to get an answer saying that another phone is better than the iPhone?
 
I understand, I am one of those that won't be changing phones for a long time because I love my iphone, but I have been noticing a lot of iphone wannabe's popping up the last couple of months and was just wondering if anyone thought any of these phones might give the mighty iphone a run for the money.
 
markgamber said:
Better at what?
Click to expand...

Exactly.

Better at having easily downloadable apps? Better at integration with iTunes? Better at having an easily recognizable brand name? Better at having a touchscreen that requires a light touch? Better at having a UI with finger friendly buttons and 2D UI effects?

Or better at being usable stock as a portable disk drive? Better at having available turn-by-turn navigation built-in? Better at having video output for all apps? Better at having a VGA screen? Better at having A2DP? Better at having a replaceable battery? Better at having background apps? Better at 3D UI effects? Better at being able to use cheap SIMs in other countries?

Lots of choices. Bear in mind that although millions have chosen the iPhone, many millions have chosen other smartphones, for various reasons.
 
He didn't ask for a better phone. He asked for a phone that "anyone thinks is better".

All he has to do is ask that in a forum for some other recent expensive phone.
Some of the people there will be trying hard to justify their expense.

.
 
I would say iphone has no competition from anybody only the fact that it's locked to providers hinder it and I hope apple unlock it very soon.
 
I don't think there is currently anything better for me than the iphone--but I can understand how a business person might have a very different view. However, the closed nature of the platform leaves an opening for competitors who are able to offer more freedom to consumers. That hasn't materialized yet and hopefully when it does Apple will respond in kind. It's a great sign that the NDA was dropped recently so there's hope.
 
I agree with whoever asked "Better at what?"

For some people in some fields there are better phones for conducting their jobs. One example is physicians. I have a wife and several friends who are physicians and there are better phones for using in their jobs because the iPhone doesn't support a couple of programs that are commonly used by physicians (UpToDate is one of them).

For multimedia, games, web-browsing and non-verbal communication though I think the iPhone is tops.
 
joesegal76 said:
Is there a phone out there right now that anyone thinks is better than the iphone in terms of style, performance and features?
I used to update my phone almost every other month, but nothing has made turn the other way yet.
Notable mentions:
HTC Touch HD
Nokia Tube
Click to expand...

the HTC touch HD looks like it could be a solid competitor..... On paper anyway.

It has a bigger screen than the iPhone, only .3, but still bigger

Also it implements the touch flow. Which I've only heard good things about



But only time will tell. Have to wait and actually try it out

In the end the dealbreaker for me is that it runs WM
 
don't flame me for saying so, but WM does far more than iPhone is capable of. It's also infinitely more customizable via registry edits and many of the best apps and hacks are simply given free despite the time developers spend on them.

Treo Pro and 800 are way more powerful and do 10x the numbers of things an iPhone does. They don't have the pretty user interface, but with a touch screen, they work just as well, and in many cases better. They are also much more stable, and you can use them on Verizon where you get highspeed and service all over the country. HTC makes some great WM phones as well.

The only thing that keeps me on iPhone is MM which allows my wife and I to have synced calendars, contacts, etc. The only thing the iPhone does way better than WM, imho, is media. Everything else is superior on WM.
 
littlewaywelt said:
don't flame me for saying so, but WM does far more than iPhone is capable of. It's also infinitely more customizable via registry edits and many of the best apps and hacks are simply given free despite the time developers spend on them.

Treo Pro and 800 are way more powerful and do 10x the numbers of things an iPhone does. They don't have the pretty user interface, but with a touch screen, they work just as well, and in many cases better. They are also much more stable, and you can use them on Verizon where you get highspeed and service all over the country. HTC makes some great WM phones as well.

The only thing that keeps me on iPhone is MM which allows my wife and I to have synced calendars, contacts, etc. The only thing the iPhone does way better than WM, imho, is media. Everything else is superior on WM.
Click to expand...

I agree with a lot of what you said but neither the Treo Pro or the 800w can be used on Verizon. The Treo Pro is unlocked for GSM only and the 800w is a Sprint exclusive.
 
psywzrd said:
I agree with a lot of what you said but neither the Treo Pro or the 800w can be used on Verizon. The Treo Pro is unlocked for GSM only and the 800w is a Sprint exclusive.
Click to expand...
Totally right. My error. Was thinking more WM on Verizon than those two models exclusively.

...even my 2.5 year old 700wx does way more than my iPhone can do.
 
the HTC Touch HD looks pretty impressive, although I don't think any of these phones will have the sales figures and therefore support that the iphone has.
I guess we'll see what it can do when it actually comes out.
HTC Touch HD
 
Right now the only touch screen phones worthy of being compared to the iPhone is the touch HD and Nokia tube. Android has potential to be a competitor i think.

I'm leaning towards the Tube because of price right now.
 
I had service issues with ATT for about a month so I switched to VZW and tried out several different phones. None of them seemed to come close to the iPhone. The blackberry did email well, but the browser just wasn't safari. I found that the dare was kind of cool, but it lacked the capabilities of a smartphone. I really don't think there is anything that can beat the iPhone at the moment. As someone else mentioned, the blackberry storm looks like it has a chance of doing some good stuff though. Today I am actually taking back another VZW phone and just ending the contract to stick with the iPhone.
 
Another huge thing that most of these things lack is large internal flash memory. You simply cannot get a smartphone with 16GB internal memory that I know of aside from iPhone.
 
littlewaywelt said:
don't flame me for saying so, but WM does far more than iPhone is capable of. It's also infinitely more customizable via registry edits and many of the best apps and hacks are simply given free despite the time developers spend on them.
Click to expand...

Having owned a Treo 750 and a Samsung Blackjack I totally agree with your statement. Yes, you can make a WM device do more and you can do more hacks with it.

The problem is that of all the things I've seen a WM device do, it does them all very poorly.

Sure, you can edit Microsoft Office documents, and I did so when I had a Treo 750. I can't say I enjoyed the experience, nor did I actually produce anything productive, or that didn't require serious cleanup on an actual desktop before sending out. Contact and calendar sync was also a chore, especially if you have a solution in place other than Microsoft Outlook.

The same I've found true for most of the other features. A lot of times they felt kludgy, had bugs, or I otherwise didn't feel safe relying entirely on my WM device for something.

I also disagree that WM devices are more stable. 2.0-2.0.2 did give the iPhone quite a black eye in terms of crashing and stability, but even then, there is a huge difference in experience between an iPhone app rash and a WM crash. With an iPhone, if the app crashes, oh well, back at the home screen you go, and you can often relaunch and pick up where you left off. With Windows Mobile, my phone crashed a lot, and every crash involved the whole phone, forcing a reboot whether you wanted to do it or not. On WM, there were times when I found myself having to muddle through the day with an inoperable phone, having to go back home, reset the device and re-sync to get my data back.

To me, that goes way beyond "just being pretty." And it was mainly because of my poor experiences with Windows Mobile that I had decided (until the iPhone) not use a smartphone for contact or calendar organization again. Even the Blackberry I used since then was solely an e-mail and phone-only device the way I used it. And a bad experience on a Blackberry where it started deleting all my e-mail slowly over the course of several hours kinda soured me on that platform, too.

After the WM fiasco, it took several months for the iPhone to gain enough trust from me to go back to using it as a calendar/contact organization tool. Though the ability to have my stuff synced across multiple computers and on MobileMe was a big help. This way I know if ever the iPhone does bail on me for the day (which it hasn't at all yet), I can at least get to a computer with web access and regroup.
 
The Nokia Tube all the way for me at the moment until they release the N9X with S60 5.0.

Hardware wise it trounces the iPhone at every turn. I need to see the OS in more detail first before making a definite decision, but on paper it looks great. I really miss S60 too.

The Comes With Music service might be the deal breaker for me as well. All the free music I want for a year, come on!

Don't get me wrong, its not for everyone. We've all got our own individual needs from our phones. I don't think the iPhone really cuts it for me. Jazzy interface asside there's not much substance behind it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back