Touchscreen phone comparison Q3 - GSM phones

It’s a proven fact that, touch technologies are making their way in people’s lives more and more. We are not talking only about mobile devices. Even the most popular OS in the world, Windows, will heavily rely on touch displays in its seventh version.

The touch screen mania in the mobile phone industry exploded in 2007 with the arrival of the iPhone and LG PRADA, the first phones, featuring such a display and targeting the mass consumer, also coming in an attractive package. Previously, this type of technology was reserved for the business oriented PDAs and smartphones. However, those devices were a subject to many modifications, and in the last few months some models appeared, offering much more than organizing and Internet functionality. The spotlight found them and they became a part of the ”touch mania”.

This article will observe the race between two of the best Windows Mobile phones currently on the market (Samsung OMNIA and HTC Touch Diamond) with the standard for quality among the touch devices, the iPhone (3G version). There will be a few rounds in various disciplines and all of the participants will get a grade between 1 and 5.

If you are interested in phones offered by the U.S. carriers, check out the Touchscreen phone comparison Q3 - U.S. Carriers phones

Touchscreen:

There are two main technologies employed in the manufacturing of a touch display: capacitive and resistive. The first one only reacts to contact with bodies with a constant electric current (e.g. human finger). The resistive displays are widespread due to their lower price. They can be used with any solid object by applying pressure. You may not consider this for a serious problem, but if you lived in an igloo we doubt you’d risk your fingers to answer a call. More information on the different types of touchscreen technology can be found here.

iPhone has the best display (3.5”), 16 million colors and a resolution of 320x480, which provide excellent picture quality. The capacitive technology recognizes up to two simultaneous touches. This allows the realization of some interesting and entertaining features like zooming in/out by “pinching” the screen or a more diverse game controlling.

The other two devices employ resistive displays. The one of Samsung OMNIA is 3.2” with a resolution of 240х400 pixels, and in Touch Diamond, it is relatively smaller (2.8”), but with VGA resolution. Despite Samsung’s claims that their device supports 262k colors, it is limited to only 65k like every other WM phone.

OMNIA is the winner in the fight for the second place, mostly because of its size (the bigger the better) and sensitivity. iPhone pops up the champagne and Touch Diamond’s high resolution, suitable for text reading, comes at third place.

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



Design:

In general, all three phones offer similar design with an accent on the large touch display.



iPhone 3G and OMNIA are close in size and weight with Samsung’s baby being slightly narrower and lighter. It is also equipped with more hardware buttons, which are very convenient and most of which have multiple functions (e.g. pressed once the camera button activates the gallery). The OMNIA’s appearance is the most boring of all three, but that doesn’t mean that it’s ugly. It has it’s own charisma and the only annoying element is the stylus, which stays strapped on the side instead inside the body.

Apple relies on the extremely clean design (only one button on the front panel), which has become their trademark in the last years. Its size is somewhat not convenient to carry in a pocket and iPhone owners will have to get used to the question “Is that an iPhone or you’re just happy to see me?”.

The compactness is the key feature of Touch Diamond. It fits very well in a hand and is not bulky in your pocket. Its hardware buttons are very convenient, and the stylus is housed in the body. Pulling it out will automatically activate the screen. The phone’s back has a pleasant diamond pattern and the name of the model comes from it.

The winner in this category is HTC Touch Diamond, because of its compact size and elegant looks. Unfortunately, they come at the expense of the display, which is small. All three devices have a very pleasant design and it’s a matter of personal preference which one you will choose.

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

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;     

Multimedia:

Music:

Today, there’s almost no phonewithout a music player, and more and more devices offer multiplesorting options and audio presets. Nevertheless, the quality sucks inmost cases. Therefore the combination phone + iPod = iPhone was widelyaccepted as the ultimate solution for the music lovers.

Apple’sproduct offers the best interface. It’s easy to use and employs thecool cover flow (in landscape view). In addition, a large album artvisualizes when you’re listening to a song. Next comes Touch Diamond.It has the pleasant option to play music directly from the homescreen.Same as in the iPhone in order to fast forward, you need to run yourfinger along the progress bar, which is a very convenient option.Unfortunately the album covers are quite small and ruin the goodimpression from the easy track change. OMNIA on the other hand, doesn’toffer smooth fast forward, and looking at the album art is nothingclose to what the competition brings us. Besides, if you want to seethe album image on the whole screen it will not automatically resize tofit it, and will appear zoomed in to an extreme and pixelized.

Nevertheless,the all-in-one Samsung is equipped with the best speaker producingrelatively clear and loud sound. Touch Diamond and iPhone fall behindbig time in this aspect, because they are too quiet and have anirritating background noise. We don’t consider this to be a major issuesince the loudspeaker is rarely used for listening to music from aphone.



The headphone sound quality is the really importantthing. In this category, the leader is iPhone, because it comes withthe best pair of earphones compared to the other contestants. They areextremely loud and you’ll even have to lower the volume to 70-80% soyou don’t get your head “blown off”. The quality is very good as welland resembles the experience with best portable music players also madeby Apple. Despite the strange shape, which cannot guarantee comfort forevery ear, OMNIA’s headset puts it at number two, bringing decent soundand light noise. We were left disappointed from Touch Diamond, becauseof the low quality and strength and lack of a 3.5 mm jack, present iniPhone (OMNIA comes with a converter).

Rating: iPhone 3G: 5; OMNIA: 3.5; Touch Diamond: 2.5

Video:

Here, we were nicely surprised by HTC Touch Diamond,which uses a personalized version of Windows Media Player.High-resolution (480х320) MPEG4/h.264  videos play quite smooth, thecolors are saturated and the picture has high-detail. Overall, thequality is better than iPhone’s, but the display is much smaller, whichcould be tiring for the eyes if you’re watching a movie for example. Inaddition, we noted some dropped frames during the time of heavy actionon the screen.


iPhonerelies on the 16 million color large screen and the handy video player.The colors are much paler than the competition but the gradation issmooth. Like in Touch Diamond, the biggest problem of the phone is theneed to convert every video (sometimes taking more than a few minutes).


OMNIAis the best phone to watch videos, because it supports all formats,including DivX/XviD. Thanks to that, you can simply take a movie fromyour computer and transfer it to the device. The display is largeenough to watch and read subtitles without having t stare. On top ofthat MPEG4/h.264 and h.263 videos load easily. Quality-wise, therestill are things to be improved with the most annoying one being thelack of smooth color gradation.



HTCand Apple have integrated YouTube video support, which unfortunately,is not present in OMNIA. This is a serious plus, especially if you havea constant Internet access.

Rating: OMNIA: 5; iPhone 3G: 4,5; Touch Diamond: 3.5;





Camera:

Inthis category, we already knew that OMNIA would win. Equipped with a5-megapixel camera with autofocus, flash and a very user-friendlyinterface, offering a wide variety of options. The most frequently usedapplications are accessible straight from the homescreen, which israther convenient. The image quality is head to head with the photosmade with the best cameraphones and the only more serious drawback isthe unreal colors. On top of that, you can record VGA videos. Some ofthe effects that can be added like color swap for example, areimpressive and we see them in a phone for the first time.



Secondin both resolution and quality is Touch Diamond with the 3.2-megapixeland autofocus. It’s very nice that the camera focuses and shoots ratherquickly. The interface is quite simplified and finger-friendly, buteven for the smallest adjustments, you have to enter the menu. Thepictures lack fine detail, but the colors are good except in the casesof overexposure when everything is faded. Videos can be recorded withresolution of 320х240 and 19 fps, and the quality being nothingspecial.


It’s hard to say anything good for the iPhone’s camera. It is only2-megapixel without autofocus and lacks any settings. The pictures madewith it have the lowest quality of all three, and you simply cannotrecord videos.

Rating: OMNIA: 5; Touch Diamond: 3.5; iPhone 3G: 2;

Internet:

One of the main advantages of the phones with a large touchscreen is the convenience of viewing websites that they offer. Easy navigation makes these devices preferred by the Internet depended individuals. Unfortunately, HTC Touch Diamond and Samsung OMNIA do not have a global 3G support, and only European and Asian.

The leader here is Apple’s Safari. Thanks to the multi-touch you can zoom in/out and like in the other two phones, a double tap resizes the image so you can view it and read it comfortably. In contrast to the competition, although small, you can select a link even when you are viewing the entire page. The other two models require zoom in first.


Touch Diamond and OMNIA run Opera Mobile 9.5 with the browser of the Samsung having a few pleasant modifications. When viewing a zoomed in large page, a mini map appears to help the navigation. If you want to see something up close or to zoom out smoothly, run a finger on the right side of the screen. On top of that, the browser renders pages better than Touch Diamond although the last one visualizes text better, because of the higher detail of the picture.


Overall, Opera Mobile 9.5 falls slightly behind Safari because of its controls and level of convenience. Besides, both Windows Mobile devices cannot be used globally for high-speed Internet access.


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



Messages:

Since none of the contestants are equipped with a hardware keyboard, the touch display is used for text input. The iPhone has only one type of QWERTY, which is portrait oriented (the landscape mode is only accessible in the web browser). It’s quite user-friendly, because the buttons are large enough, but in order to type symbols such as comma or a full stop, you’ll have to switch to a different mode, which is not very pleasant. An interesting feature here is the magnifying glass, which appears when you run a finger over text and assists you to control the pointer more precisely. However, there’s no variant where you are able to highlight, copy or delete text. Unfortunately, the only indication that you have pressed the display is a sound, which is unusable in noisy environments.

HTC Touch Diamond also lets you write messages in portrait mode. The difference here is that the user can choose between seven text input methods, including handwrite recognition. The QWERTY mode visualizes smaller buttons in contrast to the ones seen in the Apple phone, but at least they are marked with the symbols, to which you have direct access. Compact QWERTY mode in combination with the T9 seems to be the fastest and most convenient way to write with this device. However, there is tactile feedback when the screen has been tapped.


OMNIA gives you both portrait and landscape mode options for text input when writing a message and there are nine different methods to do that. Only four of them have been personalized by Samsung and are finger-friendly. The horizontal mode can be very fast for writing, especially if you use both your hands, but we still have some remarks to make. Once again, there is no fast access to the comma (there’s a full stop at least) and the space has been placed strangely in the bottom right as opposed to the middle. Overall, the phone offers the widest variety and you can customize it to fit your needs better. To our regret, the latest firmware removes the tactile feedback.





Every one of the three kings offers automatic settings for the most popular web mail servers so you won’t have any troubles configuring an account with them. There’s also support for all other POP3 and IMAP, as well as Exchange server sync.

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

GPS:

Thetrio comes preloaded with Google Maps by default, which is not the mostappropriate for navigation. What is problematic in the application isthe need for a permanent Internet connection and the trafficgeneration. Moreover, once you lose signal it stops positioning you.HTC Touch Diamond and Samsung OMNIA have the advantage of being WindowsMobile phones and the ability to use other applications such as Garminor TomTom. At present, there are no other such applications for theiPhone 3G.




Rating: OMNIA: 5; Touch Diamond: 4.5; iPhone 3G: 2;


Performance:

Besides being versatile devises, all three phones offer very good sound quality during a talk. However, OMNIA comes first, because the voices in the receiver and at the other end of the line are real and loud enough. iPhone 3G has similar behavior but at your end there will be some unclear sounds. HTC Touch Diamond finishes last due to the excessively monotonous voices at both ends.

Touch Diamond and OMNIА performed very well without noticeable lag, even when overloaded with multiple applications. Anyways, they lack the smoothness of the iPhone.

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



MISC:

Here we have factors which do not fall in separate categories, but are still important when making a purchase.

Since all competitors have serious multimedia abilities, the storage space available for music, video and image files is very important. HTC Touch Diamond scores the lowest because it only has 4 GB of built-in storage and no slot for memory expansion. iPhone 3G and OMNIA are offered in 8 and 16 GB versions, but the Samsung baby is equipped with a microSD slot and even supports the HC (High Capacity) standard up to 32 GB. This allows the phone provide up to the “modest” 48 GB of storage, which we think are more than enough.

The price tag is an important factor of course. At $750 for the 16GB contract free version, OMNIA is a very competitive solution. We have approximately the same price tag and memory for the iPhone 3G (contract free). Touch Diamond is available at the lowest price of $650.

Additional software can be installed on all three, but it’s easiest to do with the iPhone. You can do it right on the device and, in part because of the handy AppStore, containing all applications. This saves you time on searching the cyberspace for the application of your choice. A disappointment to all pirates is the inability to connect the phone to a computer and use it as a flash memory. If you need this option, get a  Windows Mobile device.

Lately, the software and hardware issues of the iPhone 3G have been the subject of discussion. As a  result we have couple of firmware updates and exchanged units. After each one of Touch Diamond and OMNIA got an update, no issues remained notable.

Bear in mind that the Diamonds polished back is very easy to scratch even in your pocket.

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

Conclusion:

We appreciate the fact that every reader values different characteristics in a phone and not all categories are equally important to him. That’s why we suggest you rate the devices yourselves and decide which one suits you better! As always, we try to be as objective as possible in our reviews, but we give you our personal opinion and if it doesn’t coincide with yours, it’s probably due to the difference in the taste and needs.

iPhone 3G is equipped with a wonderful touch display, music player and web browser, which makes it a very good solution for the music maniacs and the individuals dependent on the Web. Compared to its competitors, it is less user-friendly, regarding the text input and it falls way behind when talking about pictures. The still existing software issues are somewhat disturbing, although being constantly fixed.

The small display and the weak multimedia features of HTC Touch Diamond are disappointing. However, if you are looking for a beautiful, user-friendly Windows Mobile phone, this is the best solution on the market.

Samsung OMNIA is very well-balanced in every aspect, and its strengths are the camera and the ability to play DivX/XviD video. The only irritating element is the partially personalized interface, which is not as good as seen in the rival devices.

Here are the final scores: