pcworld.com
How does Apple's iPhone
4 stacks up against the competition? Take a look at these charts
and see for yourself and read on.
The iPhone 4, announced Monday and available on June 24, enters an
increasingly crowded and confusing smartphone market. Several Google
Android competitors launched every month, and Microsoft and BlackBerry
playing catch-up with their own offerings. To help you keep track with
how Apple fits into the smartphone landscape take a look at the charts
below.
The iPhone 4 may look similar to the prototype Gizmodo got its
hands on last month. But the devil is in the details, as they say. The
iPhone 4 now unveiled we can put it head-to-head with the hottest phones
right now, including a couple of unreleased devices from Dell and
Research In Motion. The phones we are looking at are the HTC
Incredible, HTC
Evo 4G, Samsung
Galaxy S and Motorola
Milestone XT720 from the Android side, the HTC
HD2 and Dell
Lightning from the Windows Mobile camp, the Nokia
N8 representing the Symbian platform and the recently leaked BlackBerry
Bold 9800, a crossover touchscreen phone with a famous physical
BlackBerry keyboard.
iPhone 4 vs The Android Army
Steve Jobs stressed in his keynote on Monday that Android is only
fourth in the smartphone race, pointing out Research In Motion is
leading the pack, followed by the iPhone, Windows Mobile and only then
Google Android. Yet Android phones are selling in large numbers and are
quickly catching up, mainly due to sheer volume of models from various
manufacturers running the OS.
The hottest Android phones right now are the HTC Incredible on
Verizon, the record-selling HTC Evo 4G on Sprint, and the newly
announced Samsung Galaxy S and the Motorola Milestone XT720, freshly
introduced on Monday. But does Android have the edge over the new iPhone
4G?
Speed-wise, all the above-mentioned Android phones run on speedy 1GHz
processors, except the Milestone XT720, which runs on a 550MHz chip.
Apple on the other hand, took its speedy A4 chip found on the iPad and
put it in the iPhone 4 (no surprise here). With this, the iPhone 4 comes
in line with the top-notch Android phone, but given the OS and app
differences, a proper speed comparison would be quite subjective.
The iPhone 4 packs the most GB for your buck in terms of storage,
with the base $199 model coming with 16GB of built-in storage, while the
Incredible and Evo 4G coming with only 8GB bundled for the same price.
On the good side though, all the Android phones in this comparison come
with microSD expansion slots, and you can get a 32GB memory card online
for around $100 (the same price difference between the iPhone 4 16GB and
32GB models).
The iPhone 4 also has the smallest display in comparison to the
Android phones in this chart, but the Retina Display technology in the
iPhone 4 rivals even the huge 4.3-inch screen on the Evo 4G, packing in
more pixels per inch. The camera on the iPhone 4 is now on the par with
the Samsung Galaxy S, and still below the Incredible, Evo 4G or
Milestone in terms of megapixels. All five phones can record 720p HD
video though - yet only the iPhone will have the Apple-designed iMovies
app, and nothing out today is remotely comparable to this in terms of
mobile video editing. If you are into video calling, you will have limited options between
the iPhone 4, HTC Evo 4G and Samsung Galaxy S. Note though that Apple's
FaceTime video calling service works only via WiFi, and only
between Apple iPhone 4 compatible devices.
The Samsung Galaxy S is the only one left out of the camera flash
party, but the phone is second only to the iPhone when it comes to
thinness. Weight-wise, the iPhone 4 is heavier than the HTC Incredible
and the Galaxy S, but lighter than the Evo 4G and the Milestone XT720.
As for battery life, the iPhone 4 claims the longest battery life,
with up to seven hours of talk time, closely followed by the Galaxy S,
with 6.5 hours. Of course, these are manufacturer specifications, and
real-life results can be very different. Stay tuned for PCWorld testing.
The Android Market may not be as big as Apple's App Store (with
over 225,000 apps), but it is getting new apps every day -- now clocking
over 38,000 apps. But for Flash games fans, Android is the most viable
solution, as the iOS will clearly not support Adobe's technology any
time soon. To top it off, multitasking and tethering also come with the
iOS 4 in the iPhone 4, catching up with the Android phones.
iPhone 4 vs WinMo, Symbian and BlackBerry
Microsoft will put up a good fight to the new iPhone 4, with the
upcoming Dell Lightning, which also features a bigger display and adds
the bonus of a sliding full QWERTY keyboard, for fans of the genre
(sacrificing thinness).
The HTC HD2 and the Lightning also have an FM tuner, a feature not
found on the iPhone 4. Microsoft still lacks in the app store
department, and the Lightning, running Windows Mobile 7 will go a step
back in terms of multitasking and Flash support.
Nokia however, will also challenge the iPhone 4 with its flagship
N8 device. The N8 has a 12-megapixel camera (the biggest in the whole
lot), an FM tuner and transmitter (think wireless music in your car via
radio), and runs Flash (albeit Lite).
As for the dark horse in this comparison, the not so mysterious
anymore BlackBerry Bold 9800 (leaked
last week) looks like a serious business alternative to the iPhone
4, with its sliding QWERTY keyboard, 5MP camera and the recently
previewed BlackBerry
OS 6.
|
