REVIEW: HTC Touch HD vs iPhone 3G vs SonyEricsson XPERIA X1

As you might see, touchscreen phone interface is strongly making its way as the main control scheme in the majority of smartphones and even regular cell phones. While it was used in mobiles prior to iPhone, Apple showed the world that touchscreen interface can be used as an easy and original alternative to regular buttons. Even if you are an anti-Apple fanatic, it is hard to disagree that iPhone, with all its flaws, was a big step forward in user interface - with many other companies now adopting the same control scheme as iPhone's thumb control. The idea of using stylus as a needed part of interaction between user and his gadget becomes more and more outdated nowadays, with devices like iPhone approving that touchscreen can be controlled by only your thumbs, with no stylus at all.

Looking as Apple making step after step to dominate the market with its upgraded iPhone 3G, companies like HTC and SonyEricsson decided to renew their device lineup and to produce some interesting iPhone rivals. And while HTC already made many attempts to compete with iPhone with its Touch lineup, many of them don’t came even close to the iPhone. They lacked iPhone's sleek user interface, its big and bright screen and many more. Now, both HTC and SonyEricsson understood that to make a powerful iPhone rival they must focus on multimedia side of their devices. So, recent products from these companies, HTC Touch HD and SonyEricsson XPERIA X1, were made with all those things in mind. And in this comparison we would like to describe and compare all of those three touchscreen smartphones: iPhone 3G vs. HTC Touch HD vs. SonyEricsson XPERIA X1.

Appearence

Design is a very questionable point of comparison, but at least we can describe the exterior looks of these devices. All three phones were made in black colors, with iPhone you can choose between black and white back panels though. Sizes are almost completely the same, with X1 being the thickest (16.7 mm), iPhone 3G - tallest (115.5 mm) and Touch HD - widest (62.8 mm). HTC Touch HD is heaviest than others (146.4 g). Complete specifications are:

Touch HD - 115 x 62.8 x 12 mm; 146.4 g
XPERIA X1 - 110 x 53 x 16.7 mm; 145 g
iPhone 3G - 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3 mm; 133 g

Unlike iPhone and HTC Touch, XPERIA X1 is a slider, with full QWERTY keyboard hidden under the screen. It is slightly curved when opened, no idea if this is only a design move or somehow improves usability. iPhone traditionally lacks any navigational buttons, so does the Touch HD. However, SonyEricsson devise has a full set of front buttons, which are shaped in triangles (somehow resembling Nokia Prism) - two soft keys, dial / reject, button for opening Start menu, Ok / close and navigational button in center.
Overall, all three smartphones look stylish and interesting, so it is only a matter of taste which one has better design.


Hardware

Competition gets harder when it comes to the hardware side. Let's begin from the part that is the biggest in all of these gadgets - screen. XPERIA has the smallest screen size - it is only 3-inched versus 3.5-inched iPhone screen and 3.8-inched screen of Touch HD. This is probably because XPERIA has many buttons on the front panel which took the useable space from the screen. Both XPERIA and Touch HD share the same WVGA resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, with iPhone in the back - its resolution is only 480 x 320 pixels. However, there is only a small difference in image quality, because of the same display physical size. On the Touch HD and XPERIA small fonts are more readable and picture looks sharper than on the iPhone - but in terms of colors and brightness they are almost completely equal. Needless to say, each phone supports wireless internet over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, 3G networks and they all has built-in GPS. Audiophiles will be happy to see that all of competitors have 3.5 minijack connector, so you can connect any type of headphones and listen to your favorite music in full quality. iPhone, just like all Apple products, lacks in FM radio support, which is present in both XPERIA X1 and Touch HD (RDS support included). Unlike XPERIA and Touch HD, iPhone has no ability to expand its memory with memory cards, so it is limited to its factory 8 or 16 GB. Touch HD and XPERIA has no such huge built-in storage capacity, but with microSD and SDHC support it is not a big issue - memory can always be expanded up to 32 GB. Among competitors, Touch HD has the most advanced camera - 5 megapixels with autofocus, XPERIA X1 has 3 megapixel camera, when iPhone's camera has only 2 megapixel resolution. When it comes to camera, iPhone's abilities are very limited - no video recording, no autofocus, only geotagging - feature, presence of which in XPERIA and Touch HD is still unknown. iPhone also has accelerometer and ambient light sensor - it is uncertain, do Touch HD and XPERIA X1 have those features (taking in consideration HTC Diamond had accelerometer, we consider that Touch HD will have it too, no word about XPERIA). Both XPERIA and Touch HD have 256 MB of RAM, which will be enough for multi-tasking and heavy applications, both have powerful processors - 528 MHz Qualcomm (Dual ARM cores) CPU. iPhone's hardware specs aren't so full, it is known that it is powered by 667 MHz ARM processor which is underclocked to increase battery life. So, iPhone may have more advanced hardware, but if it isn't used, who cares?


Software

Apple recently made a wise choice to allow its smartphone to launch third-party applications and games. However, users are limited with App Store support, so if the application is not in the App Store, there is no way to launch it on your iPhone except for hacking it out. Hacks are already available, being called "jailbreak", and they allow users to run any application they want without Apple's digital signature. This limits the number of apps, but there already is a big amount of them available, from service applications to fun games. XPERIA X1 and Touch HD both run on the Windows Mobile 6.1, which is an open platform and does not have any limitations - so you can easily code an app by yourself and launch it on your device with no worries. There already is a huge amount of WM applications and games, far larger than on the iPhone today. Although both devices are made on one version of Windows Mobile, their interface is completely different. HTC Touch HD uses TouchFLO 3D interface - made by HTC, it brings all needed functions in one place, and making controlling your device with fingers an easy task. TouchFLO debuted in first Touch model, and now it evolved in a big shell-like application that significantly increases usability of WM. SonyEricsson programmers also wanted to have some unique interface features, so they invented XPERIA - such name belongs to interface smartphone is using. Main feature of it is its ability to use panels, which are like several virtual desktops, and you are able to switch between them in any time you like, in a very interesting and eye-appealing method. It increases productivity, and removing the need in task manager - all those panels are like a different tasks launched and working simultaneously. Big amount of RAM and powerful CPU makes using this interfaces a snap, so in the battle of Touch HD vs. iPhone interface and XPERIA X1 vs. iPhone interface there will be no clear winner. Although changes made by programmers of both companies are significant, Windows Mobile remained an OS that is not very easily thumb-controlled. Many programs still require stylus, so you can't eliminate the need in this thing, no matter how good your shell is. In contrary, iPhone's version of Mac OS X is made especially for thumbs, so you will never need a stylus to work with this phone. Touch HD and XPERIA X1 come with a standard package of WM apps included, such as Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer and Office Mobile. Office Mobile, although quite limited, offer a possibility to view and edit your documents on the go. iPhone lacks in such activities, however, there is a chance of Office App available in the App Store - for a reasonable price of course. Multimedia capabilities of these devices is almost completely the same, they can play almost any type of media files. iPhone is more limited on this side due to close platform, there are plenty of players for Windows Mobile, with help of which almost every file format can be easily played. Also, Touch HD and XPERIA X1, thanks to their powerful CPUs, can play movies in the full resolution even without need to convert them into their native one - just copy it on the card and watch, so in a battle of these phones vs. iPhone this is a major advantage. However, iPhone has perfect iTunes integration, easily syncs with it and taking advantage of all features it has. Microsoft has made a Windows Media Player sync support for all Windows Mobile devices, but it is made too simple and has a limited abilities opposed to iTunes. In any case, Windows Mobile is more preferred mobile OS if you want a huge application base, open platform and good MS Outlook synchronization. In any other cases, if you are looking for a sharp user interface, complete thumb control and iTunes integration, the choice is simple - its iPhone.

Conclusions

Hard to say at this moment, how successful will these models be, from these three competitors only iPhone 3G already exists on the market. New devices from HTC and SonyEricsson are very interesting and curious, but there are strong suspicions that prices on them will be sky-high. iPhone isn't a cheap phone either, but it can be purchased with a cell phone carrier contract which make this phone times more reasonable in terms of price. In any case, the battle of iPhone vs. XPERIA X1 and iPhone vs. Touch HD will be tough, because they all have some advantages one over another. While iPhone bets on user interface and multi-touch, XPERIA X1 and Touch HD take advantage from Windows Mobile huge application base and open platform. Hard to say, which device is preferable, although Touch HD and XPERIA X1 have in our opinion far better multimedia potential - their huge screen and availability of multimedia applications make them a good choice for a portable multimedia center. Time will tell, how good they will be, so let's just wait until HTC and SonyEricsson finally release their devices to the public, to test them more closely.