Johannesburg - The smart phone market is heating up as IT analysts talk about the "mobile migration". This entails the move from desktop - and now even laptop - computers to powerful cellphones which offer office functionality and on-the-go connectivity, apart from the usual cellphone activities.
Three smart phones have established themselves as leaders after a few months on the market, and the choice between them is a tough one for buyers.
The Nokia E71, BlackBerry Bold and Apple iPhone all offer progressive mobile functionality. Fortunately all three have their strengths and weaknesses, making it possible to rate them based on what functionality is most important to you.
In this series we look at each phone's functionality and recommend the user they would typically suit, starting off with the Apple iPhone.
The Apple iPhone has become a strong force in the market, packaging the winning Apple iPod brand in the form of a phone that offers full internet browsing, a strong email client based on Apple's desktop Mail.app and the media playback functionality that earned iPod its dominance in the digital media environment.
There are some things the iPhone just doesn't do. One of them is send and receive MMS (multimedia messaging service - or SMS with audio, images and videos) messages, but this isn't so serious since MMS is not widely used and the iPhone has full email functionality for sending the likes of pictures.
Gathering many disciples
More puzzling is the fact that the iPhone can't forward SMS messages, nor does it allow users to forward contact details from their address books via SMS to other users. It also won't record video using the built-in two megapixel camera, although it does take really good pictures.
But as a business phone the iPhone does really well, partly due to its powerful email client, built-in support for Microsoft Exchange and handy calendaring application.
Of the three phones on test, the iPhone is my personal favourite for email-on-the-go. The on-screen keyboard is a tad clumsy at first, but once one gets used to this, and the built-in autocorrect for typing on the phone, putting together even lengthy emails becomes a snap. The email client is rich in features and just works, but does not offer all of the advanced functionality of, for example, the BlackBerry Bold.
With 3G connectivity and WiFi, the "Jesus phone" - a name coined by an analyst to describe the massive following this device has garnered - will keep you connected anywhere.
But be warned: the iPhone is hungry for bandwidth and since most contracts for the device include only 250 megabytes of bundled data, you could end up spending a lot of money keeping your iPhone connected.
The reason for the high bandwidth consumption is simply that the iPhone is so good when connected. You can watch You Tube videos without a problem, browse the web with a rich browser instead of a scaled-down mobile browser, and make use of literally thousands of applications available in Apple's App Store.
The App Store has been a coup for Apple, allowing the company to control which applications are made available to iPhone users. The iPhone SDK allows for quick and easy development of applications for the platform so that thousands have been developed already and many are added daily.
There are applications for everything under sun, from programs that keep you connected to Facebook to spirit-levels that use the built-in accelerometer and even one application that chases away mosquitoes by emitting a high-frequency sound from the iPhone's speaker (which doesn't work so well, by the way).
GPS data drawback
Unfortunately games aren't available in the South African App Store.
Without a physical keyboard, iPhone users are forced to use the on-screen keyboard for typing.
Some users have reported that a lack of haptic feedback limits their ability to type on the device, but this doesn't bother me. After a couple of days with the iPhone I was quite proficient with the keyboard, partly thanks to Apple's auto-correct that guesses the word you meant to type and corrects automatically.
The iPhone also has a built-in GPS but using this for navigation relies on Google Maps. As South African data from the latter are scarce, you'll have to pay for third-party software in the App Store and hope they have SA maps available. Apparently Google is working on the problem.
Of course, coming from the company that invented the iPod the iPhone is also great at playing music, movies and keeping you up to date with your podcast subscriptions. In this department the iPhone is unrivalled.
Battery life on the iPhone isn't great, but this is normal for powerful smart phones, where one must trade off battery life for functionality.
You'll have to charge the iPhone every night if you use it heavily. The battery life can be extended substantially by disabling things like WiFI when you aren't using them.
The iPhone is available to Vodacom customers on contract only, but can be bought at retail and used on other networks.
It is also possible to get 80% of its functionality from the iPod Touch for half the price - but you're stuck with WiFi only for connecting the Touch.
The iPhone is for you if you:
- can handle the on-screen keyboard and don't mind the missing functionality surrounding text messaging;
- need your phone to be an iPod too;
- make use of social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, and don't want a scaled-down web experience.
- Fin24.com