Top iPhone Alternatives

Published: 3 June 2010

Everyone wants a smartphone and the whole world seems to own an iPhone. The iPhone is great but it's not for everyone.  Some of us want to be different whilst some of us want a better camera or a decent battery life.  Here's our guide to the best smartphone rivals the HTC Desire, Xperia X10, Nokia X6, Blackberry Bold 9700 and Palm Pre.

HTC Desire

HTC has achieved huge growth since its launch in 2006, and now it brings us the HTC Desire. Designed for fast mobile browsing with a perfect screen size and lots of applications to help you get the best from this device.

The Desire is sleek with a huge (3.7 inches) display with an AMOLED capacitive touch screen and a resolution of 480 x 800 WVGA. Although the screen is large, it doesn't make the phone seem too large or unwieldy to use. The Desire offers a sharper image than the HTC Legend due to its higher pixel density.

There's no trackball, which is one feature that made it similar to the Google Nexus One. It does however, like its sister phone the Legend, have an optical trackpad which registers finger motion over the sensor. The Desire has 64MB more RAM than the Nexus One and Battery talk time can last up to 400 minutes and standby up to 360 hours.

There is a 5 megapixel colour camera with autofocus, flash and geotagging. Video can be recorded, but this can perform weakly in dark environments. Bluetooth is available. The HTC Desire has widgets built-in to the phone that include a news feed, clock, twitter, photo frame, weather, plus there are many more widgets available to download.

Facebook and YouTube are supported aswell as multimedia applications: photos, music, radio. There are a range of special features included: the ring tone automatically lowers when the phone is picked up, the ringer is muted when the phone is placed face down, and some data and settings are backed up to the microSD card (supports up to 32gb) automatically. There are only a few buttons (Home, Menu, Back, Search) on the front and a couple to the side too.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 is selling well and seems to be gaining credibiity as a serious iPhone rival thanks to it's Android operating system combined with an excellent camera and huge display.

The Xperia X10's all important camera has 8.1 megapixels with up to 16x digital zoom, auto focus and face recognition. There is also smile recognition, which will automatically take a picture when your subject smiles. There isn't a flash as such, but a photo light, which stays on when using the camera function (if required) to help frame the shot. Sony Ericsson have a good reputation for producing good quality camera phones, and this is no exception.

With up to 10 hours talktime and up to 425 hours standby time, the Xperia X10 lasts slightly longer than the HTC Desire. The screen is also slightly larger at 4 inches and the resolution at 480 x 854 WVGA is every so slightly better.  Unlike the HTC Desire however, the handset can appear to be a bit large for those with smaller hands.

There are more buttons on the casing of the phone, mainly on the sides, but the main control pad is the touchscreen and the qwerty keyboard. The touchscreen keyboard can cause some problems, with missed input and some function issues. Music always features on Sony Ericsson phones and the Xperia X10 also have a pretty good Walkman feature.

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Nokia X6

Entertainment and music is the main selling point for the Nokia X6. Unlimited music downloads, a music store, the Ovi Player – its all a bit iPhone.

What else does the Nokia X6 offer? Well the screen is slightly smaller than other smartphones at 3.2inches, although it is a capacitive touchscreen. The resolution is slightly lower than other phones too at 640 x 360 pixels (nHD). There is an 'accelerometer', a fancy way of saying there is display rotation. The touchscreen offers a qwerty keyboard and also provides a facility for the Chinese language.

The Nokia X6 has a sensor that adjusts the screen brightness automatically. There are a mix of onscreen buttons – media bar for music, gallery, sharing online etc, contacts bar for direct access to feeds, contacts and status updates – and physical buttons – menu key, send and end keys, power, camera, lock and volume.

What can be confusing wiht the Nokia X6 is that some menu buttons require one tap, and others two – not that important maybe? But it doesn't always make it clear whether you've tapped correctly, or in fact you are waiting for nothing as you haven't tapped enough. Another quirk of the touchscreen is that if you hold the phone portrait, the screen presents a predictive text function, and only if its landscape will it present a qwerty keyboard. Annoying.

Standby battery time can be up to 450 hours and talktime up to 11 hours 30 minutes. The camera has 5 megapixels, 4x digital zoom, scene modes, flash, autofocus, white balance modes and colour tone modes. There is also video capture, as with all phones, and an in phone video editor.

Overall the Nokia X6 is an improvement on other Nokia phones, but it doesn't quite have the quality of other smartphones on the market to be a true iPhone beater.

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Blackberry Bold 9700

Originally conceived as business phones, Blackberry is now taking the consumer market by storm. The Blackberry Bold 9700 is their top iPhone contender.

With a 480 x 3260 pixel colour display, user selectable font size and a light sensing screen it pretty much matches the screens of it's rivals.

Unlike the other smartphones listed here, it has a real qwerty keyboard making it ideal for quickly typing out emails, easier than on a touchscreen. However, the Bold 9700 is smaller than other Blackberrys and therefore the keyboard can seem a little more 'squashed in' than on other models.

There are external buttons to the sides and a trackpad for navigation like the HTC Desire. Talktime is up to 6 hours and standby up to 21 days. There is even music playback time of 38 hours. Essential for any phone designed for the business market, there is bluetooth and wifi for fast data transfer on the go. The Blackberry Bold 9700 does have a fairly low resolution 3.2 megapixel camera, but autofocus, image stabilisation, flash and 2x digital zoom mean it's a pretty reasonable snapper. Video recording is also available, but if a good quality camera is what you want, this phone is probably not for you.

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Palm Pre

The Palm Pre was eagely anticipated in 2009 and more than any other phone was seen as a potential iPhone basher.

The Palm Pre was launched with an innovative new operating system and some features that hadn't been seen on other phones. Of the smartphones we've looked at, this is the only one which mixes a touchscreen with a slider that reveals a qwerty keyboard giving you the option of a touchscreen experience with the back up of proper typing for emails and texts just when you need it.

There are the usual Apps – Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter. Along with the usual type of quick launch bars, there are also card views, where all multiple applications can be kept open and viewed easily while choosing what to do next! Pre also links together all of your contacts from Outlook, Facebook, Google and links them together with your calendar so all your information is in one handy application.

The Palm Pre's display is 3.1 inches with a 320 x 480 HVGA display – similar resolution to the iPhone but it packs those pixels into a smaller area, improving screen quality. Sensors include ambient light, accelerometer and proximity.

The Palm Pre supports wifi and bluetooth for on the go use, along with GPS for finding things nearby on a map. The Pre has a 3 megapixel camera, the lowest resolution of the 5 phones here, and has automatic flash.

These five iPhone alternatives may help you to avoid following the iPhone crowd.  Or you could just wait for the iPhone 4G....

Compare the best HTC Desire deals, Xperia X10 deals, Nokia X6 deals, Blackberry Bold 9700 deals and Palm Pre deals with GadgetStylist Deals, our new mobile phone comparison service