Clash of the titans

We recently heard that the classic sword and sandal movie Clash of the Titans, famous for Ray Harryhausen’s stop-frame Plasticine monsters, was getting a remake due for release next year. Until then, we’ll have to contend with this equally epic battle of hero handsets, each one vying for a place in our pockets:
HTC Hero

HTC Hero

This Teflon-coated beauty was only officially announced this week and has already caused a considerable stir. The HTC Hero’s 3.2-inch touchscreen features a scratch and smudge resistant coating that is both durable and soft to the touch. HTC’s Sense UI looks great and provides easy and intuitive customisability. The HTC Hero comes with support for Flash installed out of the box, which means you’ll be able to view Flash videos online, download Flash-based apps and play Flash games. The only thing on the HTC Hero which doesn’t come with flash unfortunately, is the 5-megapixel camera.

iPhone 3GS

iPhone 3Gs

The iPhone 3GS is the most impressive iPhone to date, make no mistake. It does everything the previous incarnation does, only slightly better. For starters, there’s twice the memory, with versions starting at 16GB and 32GB respectively; the iPhone and iPhone 3G were only ever available in 8GB and 16GB flavours. The central processor is more powerful, reportedly making things run twice as fast than before. You can now send picture messages to your friends, which you couldn’t do on previous versions and you can now cut and paste from texts and emails. The camera has also been given an overhaul, bumping the megapixel count up to 3.2-megapixels, adding touch focus, and video recording and editing. Still no flash on the camera though…

Nokia N97

Nokia N97

The Nokia N97 is one of the most powerful phones out there and boasts up to 48GB worth of memory which none of the other phones here can come close to matching. Of the current four phones on display here the N97 easily outstrips the competition in terms of imaging. The HTC Hero’s camera may have the same amount of megapixels, but the Carl Zeiss Tessar lens and dual LED flash give the N97 the edge. The Nokia N97 supports a wide range of video and audio file formats, making it a capable multimedia device. Hardcore typers might not gel with the keypad of the N97, and may find solace in the Palm Pre instead…

Palm Pre

Palm Pre

The interface of the Palm Pre is beautiful – everything flows very naturally and quickly. The Cards system is ingenious, intuitive and is easily the main selling point of the Pre. Everything about this phone is streamlined and stylish, right down to the smooth curvature of the design. The Palm Pre features a 3.2-megapixel camera and unlike the iPhone 3GS’s, features an LED flash for taking pics in poorly lit locations. Unfortunately, you only get 8GB of internal memory with the Pre and there’s no card slot, so this can’t be expanded any further – perhaps not one for the hardcore music fan. There’s still no official word of a UK release date, although it is rumoured to be September. At this rate, the HTC Hero will be out over here before the Pre is.

HTC Hero

HTC announces third Android phone

The HTC Hero is HTC’s third handset to be powered by the android operating system. Announced at a press event in London in June, the HTC Hero is one of the best spec’d HTC Android devices to be launched across Europe.

The HTC Hero is a purely touchscreen device that features a 3.2-inch TFT-LCD display with a 320 x 480 resolution, 5 mega-pixel auto-focus camera, 3.5 mm audio jack, and a custom built HTC user interface.

HTC Hero featuring HTC Sense

Here’s the full specification of the HTC Hero handset:

• Qualcomm’s MSM7200A proc running Android at 528MHz
• 512MB/288MB ROM/RAM
• 3.2-inch TFT-LCD display with a 320 x 480 resolution
• 900/2100MHz HSPA and Quad-band GSM
• Trackball
• Internal GPS
• Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP support
• 802.11b/g WiFi
• 3.5mm Audio Jack
• 5 megapixel auto-focus camera
• microSD expansion
• G-sensor

The HTC Hero Android phone will launch across Europe in July, followed by Asia, and the US later in 2009.

The HTC Hero phone will be available in 7 different colour styles including black, white, yellow, pink, gold, red  and turqouise, and will include the much anticipated custom HTC Android user interface ‘Rosie’.

Nokia gets involved with Android?

The Brithis newspaper Guardian announced that Nokia would work on a Smartphone on base of the Google Android platform. Since Nokia has always been working with their own Symbian platform this would be a step into a completely new direction. However, Nokia is denying this statement.

The new touchscreen featured device shall at Nokia World Congress 2009 in September declares Guardian according to an unnamen industrial insider. One reason for this new direction could be the fact that Nokia’s popularity compared to Apple, RIM and HTC is shrinking.

Although the number of Android phones is rather small at the moment, various device manufacturers have announced to launch devices using the Google operating system.

However, Android running on a Nokia device would be a unsuspected surprise since Nokia took over all parts of Symbian for about 264 Mio.  last year. Since Nokia plans to abandon the S60 series that shall be replaces by Qt, according to a speaker, Symbian should become an open source rival for Android.

Additionally, Nokia announced a cooperation with Intel at the end of June 2009. Both companies would like to see devices beyond Smartphones, Notebooks and Netbooks. Regarding this aspect the linux based systems  Moblin (Intel / Linux Foundation) and Maemo (Nokia) should come into effect.