Touchscreen phone comparison Q3 - GSM phones

Interface:

The first iPhone became a standard for a user-friendly touch interface and even though the 3G version doesn’t offer any innovations in this aspect, it has kept the winner’s place.

The idea to have maximum number of shortcuts “at your fingers” has been copied to the other two phones to a certain extend.


OMNIA relies on the diversity and lets the users choose between three types of homescreen: the showy but not very convenient widgets , one divided in three tabs and another with 12 large icons, six of which can be personalized. We like the last one best, because it is intuitive and gives access to the most frequently used functions. The main menu, which is similar to one of a non-smartphone and the list with all the available applications are the big difference in contrast to all other WM Professional devices. Unfortunately, behind all menu customizations we can still see the standard Windows Mobile with the small icons, hard to press without a stylus. At times, this makes working with the phone annoying.



HTC Touch Diamond is equipped with an interface called  TouchFLO 3D, which purpose is not to look like as a non-smartphone but simply to be convenient. We dare say that it does its job perfectly. Thanks to the multiple tabs there is access to all frequently used functions and settings of the phone. Moreover, in one of them, you can add up to 18 shortcuts of your choice. Right after we saw the weather forecast and windshield wiper, which cleared the display from the raindrops, we felt like crying, because we had planned to go to the beach.

All three phones are equipped with built-in accelerometers with OMNIA’s being the most used (it rotates the screen no matter in which menu or application you are currently in, as opposed to the browser and the multimedia applications only). However, there are no built-in games, to employ its use. Touch Diamond comes with the very entertaining Teeter, and Apple’s baby doesn’t come with any such applications by default. However, a wide variety  of those is offered for download via the AppStore.

As a whole, TouchFLO 3D falls slightly behind iPhone’s interface. Despite the fact that you won’t have to get out of the personalizations frequently, when you try setting up the alarm you’ll get face to face with Windows Mobile, which creates the unpleasant feeling for incompleteness and disharmony. It’s a similar situation with OMNIA, but even though the homescreen is diverse it offers less functionality.

Rating: iPhone 3G: 5; Touch Diamond: 4.5; OMNIA: 4;