Understanding 4G Networks

Telstra’s made a big splash recently with the launch of its first ‘4G’ product — although depending on whose definition you adopt, it might not be 4G at all. Fourth generation wireless networks, and 4G specifically as a term have been used in varying ways by different groups overseas, so much so that some of what passes for overseas ‘4G’ — especially in the US — is currently sold in Australia as 3G!

That having been said, I’ve been testing Telstra’s 4G USB modem for a number of weeks now. Telstra’s currently using an 1800Mhz LTE broadcast network for its 4G product, which promises download speeds of between 2-40Mbps. That’s an immense range, but then if you’ve used any kind of mobile broadband product ever, you’d be well aware that variability is the name of the game.

At the moment, Telstra’s 4G footprint isn’t that massive, focused around capital city centres — within 5km of the post office typically speaking — and selected regional centres, where the footprint shrinks down to a smaller 3km radius. Step outside those areas and the USB 4G modem flicks over to Next-G coverage, where the bandwidth is smaller, but the footprint much larger.

Telstra won’t be alone in the 4G game for all that long, however. Vodafone’s been testing 4G services for some time now. Its last pronouncement on this was that we’d see 4G products by year’s end, although they’re running out of time to fulfil that promise. Optus meanwhile is testing 700Mhz 4G in Albury; depending on whose definition you adopt that’s more like “true” 4G, but requires the 700Mhz spectrum to operate, and that’s only available in areas where the analogue tv signal has been switched off. Optus’ timeframe for commercial availability of 4G products starts in limited rollout in April next year.

So what’s it like to use? Telstra’s only currently got one 4G product; a USB modem that comes with its own drivers installed on the modem. They’ll tell you how to connect, and whether you’re currently within the 4G network or Next-G coverage instead. In my own tests in Sydney’s CBD I’ve averaged anywhere from 4-50Mbps, but there have equally been times where it’s stubbornly sat on Next-G rather than 4G, even though I should have been under Telstra’s 4G cloud at the time. Telstra’s not charging for 4G any differently than it does regular data, however; it’ll be interesting to see what happens with data prices — considering 4G is essentially a pure data network, and the telcos will continue to use existing 2/3G infrastructure to service our call and texting needs — once Vodafone and Optus are also offering 4G services.

Notebooks: Thin Is In

There was a time when if you wanted a very thin and light notebook, you’d pay through the nose for it. Ultra-light notebooks were for serious business travellers with serious business bank accounts that could withstand four thousand dollars or more being spent on a thin and light notebook — and more often than not, one that wasn’t as powerful or feature rich as the same heavier systems were at the time.

Those sorts of machines are still around, but they’re generally not feature poor. I’ve spent a couple of weeks recently testing out Sony’s ultra-slick Vaio Z, a thin and stylish laptop with all the trimmings, and then some. This is a system that includes a media dock that comes with a Blu-Ray drive and external graphics card for added performance when you’re using it in a desktop style configuration. The one thing it isn’t is cheap; at $3,999 it hearkens back to the ultralight systems that used to dominate this particular market segment.

Apple’s been something of a disruptive force in this particular market, although even they used to sell the ultra-thin Macbook Air as a premium machine. Last year’s iteration of the Air slimmed things down and made SSD mandatory while dropping prices, and this year the company effectively killed its plain Macbook line in favour of the Air. If you want an entry level Mac notebook, the Air is it.

It’s not just a Mac world for inexpensive ultralight notebooks however, with a number of vendors offering up what’ll be informally dubbed Ultrabooks; that’s an Intel marketing term for thin and light ultraportable notebooks. Acer’s set to unveil its Aspire S3 ultrabook in the Australian marketplace, and it’s expected to sell for between $1000-$1600 depending on configuration; that’s the same price as most equivalent Macbook Air models. Toshiba likewise has the Portégé Z830 ultrabook waiting in the wings for an Australian release later this year, and it’s likely to sell for the same $1,000-$1,500 price point. Acer’s ultrabook has the edge in being genuinely thin, but Toshiba’s is somewhat lighter; at around 1.13kg it’s the lightest ultrabook announced so far.

At that kind of price point, it’s still entirely possible to pick up a decent but heavy notebook, with many models coming in under the $1,000 barrier. If you’re cash-strapped and still need portability, a netbook is still a viable option, but not a powerful one. The under $1,000 crowd are largely older technology — in the next few years we can expect to see this year’s Ultrabooks become the entry level fodder. Thin, in other words, is in.

Apple Lion OS X Roars, But It Can Also Bite

It’s been a couple of weeks since Apple released the latest version of its particular computer operating system, OS X 10.7, more informally known as “Lion”. Apple uses the names of the big cats for its operating systems, which is why previous releases have been named things like Tiger, Panther or Snow Leopard. Which means that presumably, a few years down the track, Apple may release OS X Ocelot.

At $31.99, Lion’s very cheap for an operating system, but that’s more a function of it being part of Apple’s overall computer strategy. It makes money from hardware rather than software, and while that may be changing with the wild success of the iTunes App store for devices like iPads and iPhones, it’s a slow change, and for now the software’s just an inducement to buy the hardware, the same way that car retailers will offer “free” air conditioning… as long as you buy a thirty thousand dollar car. That kind of price might make it seem like an automatic upgrade option compared to the hundreds of dollars a full version of Windows goes for, but there are still some catches. I’ve had some serious time with Lion now, and while there’s definitely some good stuff in this big cat, there’s also some areas where it’s all too easy to get bitten.

Apple’s main focus in Lion has been to slowly merge the kinds of experiences its customers on iOS devices have with its Mac userbase, and as such, touch gestures are now system-wide. This includes the curious decision to reverse the direction of the scroll wheel to match how your fingers move on an iPhone or iPad; Apple rather optimistically calls this “natural” scrolling, and it was amongst the first things I switched off, which thankfully isn’t too hard.

Not surprisingly, my test Lion system has been quicker than it was before, but I’m still unsure if that’s a function of it being a freshly optimised system; I could well have the same speed boost in a freshly installed copy of Windows. Some applications are definitely perkier; Mail in particular may look drab but runs well and now has search capabilities that make it a pleasure to use. I’m also getting a lot of utility out of the app resume feature, which allows you to shut down the Mac and have every window, application and file spring up as it was the next time you power the system on. Likewise, system-wide autosave is a feature that’s been a long time coming to Macs, and so far, seems to work well.

Then there are the things that don’t work so well. Any Mac users of long standing with older applications may find they work unpredictably, or in the case of any code written for PowerPC Macs, that they don’t work at all. This includes some quite high profile applications, including Microsoft Office 2004; if you’re running that particular version of Office (or any older version), you’ll need to weigh up the cost of upgrading the suite as well as Lion.

I’ve also hit a smattering of application and hardware incompatibilities, some of which will hopefully be ironed out sooner rather than later. One of my multifunction printers works for printing, but hangs trying to scan documents, for example. The solution to this, by the way, for any prospective Lion upgraders would be to check with the vendor prior to upgrading for OS X 10.7 compatible drivers. Thankfully for my purposes I can access the scanner from another system.

So does that mark Lion up as a beast that roars, or a whimpering kitty? I’d say that as a new operating system on balance it does fairly well; I’ve certainly seen the same kinds of issues on new versions of Windows when they’ve emerged, with a mix of fixes and applications left by the wayside. It’s certainly worth doing your homework with regards to applications and hardware to ensure it’s compatible before switching over, but at the asking price if those apps aren’t an issue for you, Lion’s something of a bargain.

Can Blackberry Take Down The iPad Juggernaut?

Apple’s selling a lot of iPads right now. For the quarter ended in June 2011, more than seven million of them. To put that in perspective, Apple’s iOS business (which includes iPad and iPhones) was reported online to be, by unit sales, larger than the PC businesses of HP and Dell, combined. That’s a staggering figure for a combined tablet and phone offering that, four years ago, simply didn’t exist — and in the case of the iPad, that figure is only 18 months.

In other words, that’s a whole lot of tablets, and where there’s that kind of market momentum, there are going to be plenty of firms lining up to grab some of that market for themselves. To date there have been a number of Android tablets, but few that could entirely match the iPad experience, whether that was down to the plain nature of the Android OS supplied or a variety of hardware quirks.

Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIM) has its “PlayBook” tablet in the marketplace now, and for the past couple of weeks I’ve had the chance to give it a longer than usual test. As a disclaimer, this is because RIM supplied me with a long term review unit.

The PlayBook is a 7” tablet, putting it in company with Samsung’s original Galaxy Tab, the very cheap tablets that Telstra and Optus offered late last year, Viewsonic’s ViewPad 7 and Huawei’s upcoming MediaPad. 7” tablets may have been dismissed by Apple’s Steve Jobs as not worthwhile, but that’s just his opinion; there’s undoubtedly some appeal in a smaller, more portable tablet option.

The best thing about the PlayBook? The hardware. This is easily the best 7” tablet on the market right now, from the build quality to the use of the entire screen, even the bezel sides, to perform tablet functions. The core operating system that runs it all is slick and fast and very easy to learn, even if you’ve not used a tablet before.

The currently available $579 PlayBook is WiFi only, and works best in concert with an existing Blackberry smartphone. That’s quite a deliberate decision on RIM’s part, as the mail and calendar clients on the PlayBook rely on having a nearby Blackberry to draw data from via Bluetooth connectivity. The idea is that if you lose your PlayBook, your most sensitive data doesn’t go with it, while at the same time tying you closely into the Blackberry ecosystem. With a Blackberry this does work well enough, although Bluetooth isn’t the fastest transmission protocol, and without it you’re limited to web-based email clients only.

Applications are the lifeblood of any tablet, and here the Playbook has some catching up to do. The number of available applications and their variety is somewhat dwarfed by the iOS and Android marketplaces, although there’s a curious feature of the PlayBook that could equalise that difference rather quickly. Aside from natively developed applications, RIM’s promising in a future update that the PlayBook will be able to run Android applications from the Android marketplace. They’ll have to be slightly re-optimised for the PlayBook, but making it easier to develop for in any way makes for a better future.

As it stands, the PlayBook is a great bit of physical hardware, and one of the best challengers to Apple’s near dominance of the tablet market on hardware terms alone. It’s not without its flaws, though, and unless you’re already a Blackberry user it’s limited in its overall utility thanks to the reliance on a Blackberry for vital email and calendar functions.

Windows 8 Might Just Dull Computing’s “Cutting Edge”

It’s been something of a maxim in computing circles that processing power (however you choose to measure it) increases over time. This is a good thing, given that it enables faster performance and the development of new applications that would simply be impossible under older hardware. There’s Moore’s famous Law (really more of an observation, but I’m nitpicking) that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. More transistors equals greater performance, in other words.

That pace of progress is a good thing in certain ways, but it does mean that systems can become obsolete from a technical standpoint long before they actually stop working as functional machines. The salespeople of the world would be delighted for us all to update our desktops and laptops every one to the three years, but there are plenty of PCs that manage service lives of a decade or more, even though what’s under the hood is well behind the cutting edge. They certainly won’t run the latest games, many of the latest applications or operating systems.

Except, that is, when they do.

Speaking recently at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in California, Tami Reller, corporate vice-president of the Windows division announced that the next version of Windows, currently known only as Windows 8, should have the same minimum system requirements as Windows 7 currently does. It won’t be quite the same experience across systems, as Windows 8 will dynamically adapt performance based on the system it’s running on.

Without a doubt, Windows 7 currently runs better on a high end system than a low end one, but the important detail is that Microsoft’s planning to keep the minimum supported specification effectively frozen for quite some time, especially when you consider that the system requirements for Windows 7 are essentially the same as they were for Windows Vista. A 1GHz processor is hardly cutting edge, but if Microsoft can keep to Reller’s claimed (and widely reported online aim) of “keeping system requirements either flat or reducing them over time” then Windows 8 might just run on some very old hardware indeed.

It’s early days yet — we won’t even see Windows 8 on store shelves this year, and there’s speculation but no strict timeline for when Windows 8 will launch.

It’s a fascinating move from Microsoft, especially in contrast to the software offering that (at the time of writing) Apple’s just about to launch, OS X 10.7, AKA “Lion”. Like its predecessor, “Snow Leopard”, Lion won’t run on older PowerPC based Macs, but it also drops the software that allowed older PowerPC applications to run from the operating system entirely, as well as not supporting some of the very first Intel-based Macs either.

There are catches here; obviously some systems do die a death faster than others whether due to wear and tear, design or even just old-fashioned bad luck. New hardware isn’t just about processing power; you can also add other new and interesting features to a system by updating it regularly, and depending on your use of a computer, that may make sense to you. If you’re on the other end of the spectrum and need every last watt of power you can wring out of your hardware, Microsoft’s plans are certainly more appealing than Apple’s.

Take Two Tablets And…?

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been testing out Apple’s new iPad 2 against its most immediate competition, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1v. I should point out before I start this that I’ve been using an iPad (version 1) since Australian launch last year, whereas the Galaxy Tab 10.1v is much more of a newcomer. Android tablets have been available since last year, but the 10.1v is the first model in Australia to use Google’s tablet-specific version of Android, informally known as “Honeycomb”. Make of that potential bias what you will.

Pricing:
iPad 2 16GB: $579/$729
Galaxy Tab 10.1v: $729

The two pricing variants on the iPad2 are there as Apple offers it in both a with and without 3G option; if you see the cheaper iPad2, it’s the one that doesn’t offer mobile broadband, just WiFi. It’s pretty obvious that this is a clearly tied pricing race for comparable tablets, though.

There are catches to both approaches that may not be immediately evident. It’s possible to spend quite a bit more on an iPad2 — up to $949 — but that comes with increased storage capability, up to 64GB, where the 10.1v is a stock, set, unchangeable 16GB. On the flip side, the 10.1v, which is exclusive to Vodafone, is offered by the carrier under contract from as little as $39 a month with data included. From a budgetary perspective, that’s pretty compelling.

Look & Feel: Apple’s whole marketing schtick behind the iPad2 is that it’s slimmer than the original iPad, and this is indeed true; at 8.8mm thick it’s slender and tapered beautifully. The Galaxy Tab 10.1v is by comparison a chunky beast, but this hides something of a hidden advantage. The back of the tablet is textured and gently contoured inwards, making it easy to grip even without a case. By comparison, the iPad2’s back is relatively slippery unless you pop it in a case — at which point the thickness advantage goes away.

Base specifications: iPad2:  Screen: 9.7” 1024×768 Processor: Apple A5 Dual Core 1Ghz Memory: 16GB-64GB Galaxy Tab 10.1v: Screen: 10.1” 1024×768 Processor: Nvidia Tegra 2 Dual Core 1GHz Memory: 16GB  Again it’s pretty neck and neck; the larger screen of the 10.1v and improved resolution are nice, but the fact that it’s a fixed memory size is an oddity in the Android world and sticks out like a sore thumb.
Performance: This is a considerably more subjective thing, and a lot harder to call. There’s no doubt that Honeycomb is a much better version of Android than the previous tablets offered, as the native applications make better use of the screen space, the onscreen navigation is very snappy, the mail client works well and the browser is just that little bit quicker than the iPad2. Using the online Browsermark benchmark, I recorded a score of 88717 for the Galaxy Tab 10.1v compared to 70310 for the iPad2. If your application needs are modest, the Galaxy Tab 10.1v delivers nicely. The problem for Android is that there’s still a dearth of genuine “Honeycomb” applications for Android, and running older Android applications is a very hit and miss affair. Some scale up to the full screen neatly, while others occupy only a tiny area of the screen, or shrink everything down so small as to be useless. Comparatively, the iPad2 not only has a rich array of native applications on offer, but also scales up the vast majority of iPhone applications with only a little bit of pixel chunkiness as a drawback. Honeycomb should improve over time in this regard, but right now it’s not quite there.

Conclusions: The 10.1v is a solid iPad2 competitor, but it’s not quite there yet, and it’s something that Samsung’s all too well aware of. The company has already announced that newer models of the Galaxy Tab 10 will be forthcoming in slimmer frames and possibly with more storage. It’s good to see competition to Apple in this space, but for right now, I’d still say that the richer application infrastructure supporting the iPad2 makes it a better buy. If you’re staunchly anti-Apple for whatever reason, I reckon it’d still be worth saving your money for more Android tablets, and critically more native Honeycomb applications to hit the marketplace.

Are you still gaga for radio?

Radio’s one of those technologies that you probably don’t think about that much at all. It’s just there, for the vast majority of us it’s always been there, and aside from the shift for some music formats from AM to FM in the late nineteen seventies, there hasn’t been much of a technological shift in radio to speak of in the way there has been for television or in information technology in general. Digital Radio’s the latest theoretical shot in the arm for the radio industry, albeit one that’s still in an early growth phase in Australia.

Recently I attended the launch of a range of new Digital Radios from PURE, who are distributed by Pioneer Electronics within Australia. The new models do offer some interesting twists on radio listening. They’re internet radio equipped — hardly the only digital radios on the market to offer that — and have an inbuilt feature that will allow you to identify tracks by analysing them, similar to the Shazam application available for many smartphones.  Aside from the funky new models on display (some of which were just technically funky, while others sported patterns last seen adorning curtains in 1960’s sitcoms), PURE also revealed some rather interesting statistics on radio usage in Australia.

The growth of digital radio — if you happen to be in a digital broadcast area, which currently restricts you to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth right now, or trial services in Canberra and Darwin — has been slow and steady. In eighteen months, according to the figures PURE was touting (which were probably the Commercial Radio Australia figures you can read here, although it wasn’t clear: http://www.digitalradioplus.com.au/index.cfm?page_id=1048&display_news_id=1079) some 400,000 digital radios have been sold, and they count an estimated 700,000 digital radio listeners in the country. On a broader scope, putting all radio up for consideration, some ninety percent of the population listen to radio, and digital radio listeners apparently take in eleven hours of radio per week on average.

So will digital radio explode on the back of a few new models? It seems unlikely.

The lack of regional coverage is obviously an issue for travellers, but the current coverage area does address an awful lot of radio listeners; PURE’s estimate at the launch was something like 50-60% of the population were covered by digital radio already.

Where I suspect digital radio will live and die for take up is in the one area where it’s remarkably weak right now, and that’s in-car listening. Commuters listen to a lot of radio on the way to and from work, and right now there’s a genuine paucity of digital receivers for them to use. Even the prestige car brands are only now starting to add digital radio as an option in their car lines. BMW will apparently be first, with the option adding somewhere around $900 for the 7 Series and 5 Series models, but those are vehicles that aren’t exactly in the price range of the average punter.

Is it time to step up to a DSLR?

At a recent Canon event in Byron Bay (disclaimer: Canon paid for my transport and accommodation costs), I had the chance to get some hands-on time with a number of new consumer camera models; one point and shoot, pocket-friendly model, the Ixus 220HS, and two DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) cameras, the EOS 1100D and EOS 600D respectively.

While digital cameras are still a relatively recent phenomenon seen against the entire history of photography, for that brief history the line between the casual happy snapper and the more interested photographer has been more or less maintained by the type of camera you chose to use. Happy snappers could get adequate pictures from point and shoot models, while those who yearned for more control or specific types of photography would make the costly trip into DSLRs.

All three of the cameras that Canon showed off subvert that kind of thinking. The $1099 600D and especially the $699 1100D are unashamedly “entry level” DSLRs with a lesser price point than more fully featured DSLR bodies, but equally more of a focus on automatic shooting, scene filters and an approach that is best described as “hand holding”. If you’ve never used a DSLR before, you can still take very good photos with these particular cameras.

There’s still clearly a price gap between the point and shoot models. It should also be noted that those prices for the DSLRs are without lenses; you’ll pay more for those, but then lens flexibility is a key function of any DSLR. Still, $699 for a DSLR with limited capabilities is pretty cheap. The best way to convey that? Canon’s top of the line DSLR body, the EOS-1D Mark IV, currently retails for a wallet busting $7299. It’s quite a lot more camera for your money, as you might expect.

At the same time, the $319 Ixus 220HS features some of the same creative filters you’ll find on the $1099 600D, albeit with less scope for tinkering, and naturally no prospects of adding different lenses down the line. As point and shoot cameras have become distinctly better, pushed both from below by mobile phone cameras and from above by the shrinking prices of DSLR models, the appeal of having something that easily fits in your pocket and still takes quite good photos is still present.

So what’s caused this shift in people wanting better cameras rather quickly? Mostly, that has to be a prime function of them being digital cameras. In the film past, you’d have to wait (and pay) for processing in order to ascertain whether a photo was any good. These days, wait a second or two, and you’ll know if it’s any good and delete it forever if it’s not. That’s opened up photography for a huge number of people who otherwise were only casually interested, and as it’s done so, they’ve become more aware of the upsides (and downsides) of particular camera models.

How much power does your IT equipment use?

Product Review:
Belkin Conserve Insight
RRP: $49.95

Tech devices use power — that much is quite obvious — but over time the amount of work that’s been put into power conservation has been considerable. Today’s laptops and desktops are more power efficient than ever before, but this is mostly so that vendors can talk up the battery life figures of systems.  With (at the time of writing) Earth Hour fast approaching, the subject of sensible power usage is at the forefront. The actual power and CO2 savings of Earth Hour are debatable (especially if you do things like light lots of candles to mitigate the loss of light), but it’s what you do with the knowledge gained going forwards that could make a difference.

If you’re not of a mind to be worried about the effect of power usage on the planet, you should at least see that the use of power when it’s not needed is an unnecessary drain on your own personal resources, namely the money that’s in your wallet. Power prices have risen in recent years, and it’s unlikely they’ll become any cheaper any time soon.

Belkin recently sent me a number of review samples from its Conserve range, including the Conserve Insight, a plug-in power meter. Belkin’s not alone in this field — many hardware stores will sell this type of simple power meter, and if you’re really keen, it’s possible to have whole-of-house (or office) meters installed as well.

The Conserve Insight is  a chunky standard pass-through plug with a meter attached, and the claim that it’ll help you work out your real energy costs by plugging your devices into it. This obviously isn’t limited to IT-style technology power metering, but for the purposes of experimentation, I used it to measure power draw in my office, which connects up surge protected power boards to a single wall socket plug. The idea with the Insight is pretty simple; as you plug in any electricity drawing device, the display shows the choice of cost, watts or CO2 production for that device. The cost and C02 production costs can be varied if you’ve got access to that kind of information; your power bill should certainly at least show you the kW/hr cost you’re paying.

With nothing plugged in, not surprisingly the cost and power draw were negligible. A single power board with a backup drive and a couple of attached chargers saw it spring up to between $26-$60 per annum. Belkin’s claim is that over time the Insight will “average out” your usage based on actual full power draw, which is reasonable enough; many devices draw a lot of power in the startup phase but less in operation, and some more efficient IT devices have very low hibernation power draw. Adding a second power board running some speakers and an office TV on standby saw it stick resolutely just above $60, but no longer down in the $20 range at all. Plugging in a PC, however, saw the figure jump very quickly up to $295, and a second PC saw that hop up to a scary $610 per annum. That fluctuated quite a bit, but again most PCs are pretty power hungry when they’re first starting up, and over a short while things settled down a touch.

Those are annual figures for cost, although I later worked out its inbuilt charging rate was a little lower than the price I actually pay; a 20% premium or so over those figures is more in line with actual usage.

The Insight (or any similar plug in charger) won’t save you a single cent or a single square centimetre of the planet without actually acting on the information you give it. In my case, that involved wandering around the thick layers of dusty cables to spot those things I could easily leave unplugged until absolutely needed, even if it seemed like they weren’t on or might only have a minor amount of standby power usage. Devices you’ll constantly be firing up and down might not need to apply, but it’s quite likely in the average office or home there are mobile phone chargers sitting around doing little but heating the room gently, speakers that aren’t doing much speaking to speak of and even laptops lying dormant waiting for your command. There’s a convenience to having a laptop spring to life at your command, but is it equal to the convenience of having air you can breathe or more money in your wallet at the end of the year?

Smartphones Head To Head

If you’re in the market for a new phone, you’ve got two choices. Buy outright, or pick up a phone on a plan. If you buy a smartphone outright, you’re typically looking at between $500-$1000 out of pocket; there are models that are both cheaper and more expensive than that, but it’s a fair average across the most popular models. That’s why contracts make a fair amount of sense. Not only do you shift the handset cost over a longer term (and potentially gain the ability to write it off against tax rather simply under certain business circumstances — but check with your accountant!), you also get the most generously provisioned rates for calls and data compared to most pre-paid plans on a handset you own yourself.

The problem is, most smartphone contracts cost pretty much the same irrespective of the model of phone you choose. Entry level points are now down around twenty dollars, but those are typically last year’s handsets being rushed out the door while they’ve still got stock. Between fifty to seventy dollars a month can get you the handset of your choice, including cutting edge models. It’s easy enough to test the physical layout of a phone by simply gripping it, but what about on the software side? With so many choices, which smartphone operating system do you go for? Here’s a brief rundown of the most prominent smartphone platforms and their pluses and minuses.

Apple iOS

Representative Handset: iPhone 4

Pluses: The largest applications marketplace for any smartphone, hands-down, which gives iOS a lot more flexibility in what can be done with it, especially in the realm of entertainment applications. The fixed hardware platform — basically just the nearly-obsolete iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPhone 4 — also means that all apps run optimally across handsets. iOS upgrades are regular and not subject to the approval of the carriers, meaning they’re usually a little faster than on competing platforms.
Minuses: Apple controls the iOS environment with an iron glove, which some folk plain don’t like; certain applications will never be approved for iOS as a result. There’s also no such thing as a “live” iOS application displaying twitter feeds, weather or the like. Everything is icon-based using push.

Android

Representative Handset: HTC Desire HD

Pluses: Google’s “open” smartphone OS is being rapidly picked up by just about every handset maker out there (excluding Apple and Nokia). That gives you a huge choice of handsets and price points, as well as a wide variety of features. Google’s tailored Android applications for its core search and gmail utilities are incredibly slick, and the applications market is growing rapidly. Applications can act as live widgets displaying up-to-date information constantly.
Minuses: The variety of handsets can make some applications behave in unusual ways, especially as application development isn’t a rigidly controlled as it is with Apple or Microsoft. Operating System software upgrades must be carrier approved before you can get them, which can lead to long delays in getting the latest version of Android for your smartphone — if it ever appears at all.

Blackberry OS

Representative Handset: Blackberry Torch

Pluses: Blackberry has long been the smartphone of choice for the business crowd, and its core competencies have remained the strength and speed of its email client, which simply blows the competition away. If you need email quickly (and want, on most Blackberry models, an excellent physical keyboard), the Blackberry is the one to get.
Minuses: Operating system upgrades are once again at the mercy of operators, and some handsets will get stuck over time. The excellent email service is part of a specific paid service, which (depending on the carrier) might not be the most cost-efficient way to get your email. The application library, like the devices themselves are largely productivity oriented, although this has changed slowly as more consumers have taken up the Blackberry brand.

Windows Phone 7

Representative Handset: Samsung Omnia 7

Pluses: Windows Phone 7’s “tiles” arrangement is amongst the simplest smartphone visual layouts of any smartphone platform, making it very easy to pick up and use. Xbox Live integration is built in for the gaming crowd, and the application market, while still quite small, is growing rapidly.
Minuses: There’s a relative dearth of available handset choices, although that’s likely to change with Nokia recently making the shock declaration that it would start building smartphones utilising Windows Phone 7. As yet for the existing models from HTC, LG and Samsung the full operating system upgrade path is quite unclear; even the patches to date have had a rocky history. At the time of writing, Cut & Paste functionality still wasn’t present, despite being promised as “coming soon” when it launched.

For any of these platforms it’s certainly well worth having a test run in a mobile phone shop to see not only which one may suit your needs, but also your style of smartphone use. Some users will prefer the full touchscreen setup of the iPhone or most Android models, while other users may favour the keyboards found on most Blackberry models.

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