SMART
PHONE
STATE OF
THE UNION
Calling mom and playing Q*Bert just doesn’t cut it
anymore. Here’s everything you need to know to
get the brightest phone on the block
T
he state of the smartphone union is strong—so strong, in fact, that the dizzying
array of service plans, operating systems, and phone features available can make
choosing a device more challenging than building out a full-blown rig. Sure, you
could get by with the freebie phone your service provider gives you when you sign a
two-year contract—and be ridiculed and eventually shunned by your power-user friends
so your minutes sit, piling up, unneeded. Lucky for you, it’s easy to avoid this cruel fate!
Today, even low-end phones sport cameras and email functionality—features that
were unheard of just a few years ago. What, then, makes something a smartphone?
For our purposes, a smartphone is a device that can sync to your PC and download
and install a rich variety of third-party apps. Some of the phones in our roundup stretch
this defi nition, but we wanted to show you an array of options.
We contacted service providers and handset makers to collect 12 phones that
represent the major carriers—plus one upstart—and the major OSes. We tested
sound quality from different locations (calling people from areas of both good and poor
signal strength), tried out email and messaging capabilities, and considered ease of
use and ergonomics. In the end, we found some phones that we really liked, but the
features we went ga-ga for might not be the same ones that will fl oat your boat. The
best phone really depends on your individual usage habits.MAXIMUMPC JULY 2007
BY TOM EDWARDS