The Phone of the year 2010

How do I even start this one? This is definitely the hardest article I’ll ever have to write. But I have come up with an ingenious plan. Wait you will see. So here we go. The phone of the year 2010 is the Samsung Galaxy S. We also have another winner ladies and gentlemen…Nokia N900. I know you probably don’t see it yet but that’s how things have to be. I could have picked the Galaxy S but last week something amazing happened to the Nokia N900 and remembered all the amazing things that had happened to that phone. While the Galaxy S is probably the phone of choice for many people the Nokia N900 is definitely the phone for the geeks and I think geeks are cool. Geeks come up with all the cool stuff and we use these stuff to get laid while they get rejected. No am just kidding.
The winner had to be a phone that could do everything so as you’ve guessed the iPhone 4 is already out because of its various limitations, no true multitasking being one of them. Some phones however only missed narrowly and they included the Nokia N8, Nexus one, HTC Desire, Motorola Droid 2 and also the Samsung wave 2. So the winner had to be the Samsung Galaxy S and the Nokia N900.
The Samsung Galaxy S when compared with the iPhone left the iPhone for dead. The phone is just too sexy and the screen is 4 inches of glory and protected by a gorilla glass display. Internal memory is between 8 and 16GB with 512mb Ram and 2GB rom. The Wi-Fi is b, g and also n. The processor is ARM cortex A8 running at 1GHz. There is also the usual GPS. The selling point of this phone is definitely not the features but the usability. It is the most practical phone you will ever get. Opening applications, swiping and scrolling through menus, browsing and also typing via the swipe enabled virtual keyboard is a breeze and simply amazing. The camera is a 5megapixel snapper but is incredible. Samsung simply did what the iPhone does and they did it in style and of course they did it better. Well, the iPhone normally has pathetic features but using it is great. The galaxy S has amazing features and using it is more amazing. Currently it runs android 2.2 but the upgrade to gingerbread (android 2.3 is on the way).
The Nokia N900 cannot be described by a single word. If forced to describe it by a single word I will call it “Rambo”. There is nothing this phone cannot do. It has the same screen resolution as the galaxy S but features a smaller 3.5 inch screen making it better. The internal memory is a massive 32 GB and the RAM is 256mb which seems small but this phone does wonders with it. It also has an ARM cortex 8 processor but at 600MHz. This also seems slow but the N900 does miracles with it. The usual GPS with OVI maps is onboard. The N900 also features a slide out QWERTY keyboard.
So the features seem standard or actually less than standard and we wonder what makes the N900 so special. The first thing is that it runs on maemo 5 and it is the only Smartphone from Nokia that does not run on symbian. The maemo 5 brings multiple home screens and this is the most customizable phone yet. The browser on Nokia N900 is the best browser on a phone. It supports flash and can open any page. There is also Mozilla Firefox but you will find yourself using the phones browser. Yes, that’s how incredible it is. Calling the N900 a phone is usually an understatement. The N900 is more of a tablet than a phone. The phone can run many applications at the same time without slowing down and the iPhone cannot even dream of that.
The geeks have also done something special with the N900. The N900 can run android from 2.1 to the latest 2.3. Currently android 2.2 is very stable and android 2.3 is very promising. Only the nexus S natively runs android 2.3 and the Samsung galaxy S has not received the update yet and can only look at the N900 with envy. The good thing is that you don’t do this at the expense of maemo 5 because you get to dual boot operating systems just the way you can run windows 7 and windows XP or Linux on one computer. I forgot to mention the obvious. The phone will be able to run Meego after it will be released next year.
Gaming on the N900 is a different story. The N900 not only plays android games but also Nintendo games, playstation games and most recently web OS games. There are no words for that.
So in the end the phone of the year deservedly goes to the Nokia N900. Oh and did I mention that the processor in the N900 can be over clocked to 1.3GHz in which case it becomes faster than the Galaxy S? The N900 is a beast of a phone and it has no boundaries in its usability. The geeks and anyone daring enough will definitely go for this one cause the power of this phone is just too much for casual phone users. They might think they have a computer instead of a phone and they would be right because the N900 is more than a phone.

Nokia C6-01: The New Nokia 5800

The resurrection of Nokia has started. While most of the attention is on the Nokia N8 probably the Nokia C6-01 will move most people. The phone is also based on the new symbian^3 platform. The C6-01 will be aimed at the masses and it doesn’t disappoint.
So anyway the phone has a 3.2 inch screen which will now be considered smallish by many. The screen however is AMOLED, yes AMOLED on a Nokia phone and it also has something which Nokia calls the Nokia clear black display. Indeed the screen is really good and it’s capacitive (yaay). Internal memory is 340mb and there is 256mb of RAM. Processing is still done by the ARM 11 chip but now at 680 MHz and there is also a 3D accelerator, wow! There is also an 8 megapixel fixed focus camera and amazingly video recording is at 720p. So far all I can say is good job Nokia.
In terms of connectivity there is Wi-Fi b, g and n. There is also 3G with HSDPA of up to 10.2Mbps. Bluetooth is Bluetooth 3.0 and there is also USB on the go so you can connect your favorite flash drives. There is also GPS and TV-out support though there is no HDMI.
The new symbian^3 also brings major improvements. Now there are multiple home screens. The music player has received a major upgrade and there is support for xvid/divx. These are all very welcome and the web browser will be upgraded soon. In the meantime you can use the ever friendly opera mobile. Gaming has also been improved just that the OVI store still doesn’t measure up to the demands but it is growing fast.
The phone has definitely been released to replace the Nokia 5800. The journey of Nokia 5800 has been a long one and the most popular phone will be happy to leave behind a capable successor. It has been argued that Nokia 5800 is the best touch screen phone by Nokia especially following the V50 update and the Nokia C6-00 firmware port but that’ s a story for another day.
Compared with the N8 the phone has a smaller screen size and there is lack of a HDMI port. The camera has also been scared down from 12mp to 8mp. The N8 will be about 400 Euros while the C6-01 should be about 260 Euros.

Orange San-Francisco ZTE Blade

The phone is called ZTE Blade but adding the Orange San Francisco surely sweetens the name. But that’s not all. The ZTE Blade has been voted by many websites, bloggers and basically most phone reviewers as the phone of the year 2010. The phone only came out in the last quarter of 2010 but has already won the hearts of many. I also think it’s a great phone despite ZTE being a small company compared to Nokia or Samsung.
Okay the big deal is that the ZTE blade is the cheapest android phone at 99 pounds (about 12,000 Kenya shillings) and there are only a few compromises as we shall see.
The phone has a 3.5 inch capacitive AMOLED touch screen which I believe is large enough, 150mb of internal storage with 512mb RAM. Storage is expandable to 32 GB with an SD card. The processing is done by a Qualcomm chip at 600MHz. These specs seem too limited for android but surprisingly the phone doesn’t lag. In fact it is very zippy and switching between applications is fast enough.
In terms of connectivity the phone has 3G with HSDPA of 7.2Mbps and HSUPA of 5.76Mbps. Amazing stuff! There is also Wi-Fi b and g. The phone comes with android 2.1 but the good news is that it is upgradable to android 2.2 Froyo. There is also GPS on board for the navigation lovers. The battery is 1250mAh and some people have said that it can last for up to 3 days on a single charge.
The downside is that the camera is only 3.15 megapixels and the images produced are not of the best quality. Video recording is pathetic. Another downside is that there is no graphics chip so gaming won’t be as enjoyable and the games such as Asphalt and Raging Thunder 2 tend to freeze a lot.
All in all at that price this phone is incredible. We all know android phones are around 450 dollars SIM free but at 150 dollars and awesome specs sheet the ZTE Blade may as well be a best seller and continue to dent the resurrection of Nokia. Just ignore the camera and the gaming capabilities and you may as well place this phone besides the Google Nexus One.