Hello

I am about to join the technology arms race and buy a fancy phone 🙂

Ive been using a crapy PAYG phone, iPod touch, GPS in the car and modest camera for ages

Now seems as good a time as any to junk them all and buy a lovely new sexy gizmo which does all of the above without me needing to carry a back pack for the lot

Firstly I appreciate the camera thing is a compromise
I have a DSLR but would actually like to be able to take a decent candid with my phone when necessary – this is where the iPhone falls down as its camera is limited in quality I think

Next I have all of my music ripped with and stored on iTunes
This is easy to sync with an iPhone but Google is not my friend when it comes to iTunes syncs with HTC and Nokia N97's and the like

Thirdly tell me about GPS
Which smartphones if any will actually navigate usefully?
Do I need to buy extra apps or software to use them in the car?
Will any actually use TMC?
And are they any good?
Please note Im not going to use them on my bike – I have an etrex for that

Err thats it
Further info on useability issues like battery life and reliability welcome
As well as anything I may have missed

Cheers

Pretty much all your questions are answered by the iPhone. The 3Gs has a 3.2Mp camera with user selective focus, plus video with inbuilt editing. The GPS works very well, satellite aquisition is pretty quick and accurate, there are already two turn-by-turn satnav apps available with full UK/Europe native maps, and TomTom will be coming along fairly soon. There are thousands of really neat, useful and cheap apps for just about anything you could want, and, apart from the lack of Flash, the web browser is perfectly useable. My PowerBook barely gets a look-in these days. Going back to the camera, this pic was taken on my 3G, 2Mp phone, and for a phone camera, it's not to shabby.

From what I gather, because of the size of the sensor, anything much bigger than 3Mp is pretty pointless, you just get more digital noise. I've had a couple of smart phones, an XDA Mini, which was ok, except it used Windows Mobile, which just sucked big-time, and an N95, which was ok, but the GPS was really difficult to use, because of the titchy screen, and it's battery life was woeful, I could run the charge down in two hours playing music. I've got 1100 songs on my 16Gb, plus an app called iCarRadio gives me BBC 6 Music over the phone network, then there's LastFM. Also I've got dozens of EBooks on mine, bought through Ereader and Stanza, plus there's stacks of free books out there too.
It's truly a remarkable piece of technology, and I really can't imagine what I'd do without it.

I think the iphone is an oversized brick. I've got an HTC Touch Diamond on O2 and I love it. I actually like the windows platform as I use the word & excel quite alot, and use it to sync my work calendar, etc etc. The sat nav is also good and never had any problems.

It has opera is that any good for Itunes? or why not just download to your pc and trasnfer across

The resolution of a camera isn't all. My old Sony Erickson had 3.2M one and the pics were great. The Nokia E71 with a similar resolution camera and carp. If you want all but pics – Iphone. Pics and web – N96/97 or Sony Erickson. Loads of stuff (but I didn't like the software) – Samsung Omnia. Smart phone with rubbish camera and lovely everything else – E71.

Mrs deadly's no-flash iPhone pics beat the living daylights out of my shonky piece of crap n95 pics.

Honestly, go with CountZero's iPhone suggestion. Compared to anything out there, it's a no-brainer given what you're looking for.

Many thanks for the replies
I appreciate we've done phones to death recently

I guess it boils down to the following:

iPhones are lovely but everybodies got one and I fancied being different
(But everyones prob got one as they are superb)

The iPhone will sync with my iTunes and Mac diaries etc
Would the competition do that easily too?
I dont actually use the Mac calendar, I prefer the Google one but iTunes is a concern – I cant find much online about whether the HTC will work with it

Mates tell me theres no decent nav app (yet) for the iPhones GPS

The camera remains a moot point

Cheers

N95 has a Zeiss lens IIRC. It's a bit slow (software). N96 is far better and faster. I dislike touch-screen phones so no iPhone. FAIW I stuck with a Nokia and see no reason to change. Besides, Google Maps for driving, camera is great, sound is very good too. And the best menu ever.
E71 allows me to run my business on the go (didn't want plasticky Blueberry).
I think it really depends if you want to be cool – iPhone then, or sensible – Nokia.
Don't forget you can convert formats, Nokia does it into it's own format using the Nokia Suite software. Whatever rocks your boat.

Yes. The N95 does have a zeiss lens. Has done well in all the reviews of a camera in a mobile device so not sure where all the negative comments have come from. Also has a built-in flash.

Also being symbian – can run Nokia's sporttracker freeware. Can also run
TomTom 6 GPS navigation software and if you're serious about GPS mapping – it can also run Viewranger to turn it into a GPS mapping device.

However you'll find runtimes to be a problem on longer rides. Spare batteries cheap though.

IPhone's big plus for me is the web browsing. Must be the best mobile web browser this side of a netbook. A big plus being the screen size too. Still no flash on the camera side of things. Can't comment on the pic quality as I've not seen any from the new 3.2Mp 3GS phones. I was a little surprised at the smaller resolution camera – even though MPixels are not the be all and end all of a camera.

The new N97 is a sizeable phone and is geared towards social networking and internet but doesn't seem to deliver a whole lot more than say an N96 with the addition of keyboard and bigger screen. Also I've heard current popular software may not be compatible with this phone.

Hi,

Yes the HTC phones will work with itunes. See link http://msmobiles.com/news.php/7511.html

Windows Media player can also automatically sync MP3 with your phone.

There are quite a few good GPS road navigation products for Windows Mobile to (as well as offroad, sport based, etc etc).

They can also sync with Google Calendar see here http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/01/google-calendar-sync-for-windows.html

The iphone is undoubtably has a better user interface and is probably easier to use. Windows Mobile devices can be a bit frustrating at first but they are much better than they were and are fast catching up with the iphone.

You pays your money and you makes your choice……