Updated 23 May, 2012, 6:39 pm IST

Top iPhone Killers: The List So Far - I

16 May, 2008, 2:48 pm IST | by Shayne Rana

The iPhone may go down in history, but what about its rivals? Here's a list of pretenders to the throne.

I’ll wager that the iPhone is as universal a term as Superman. It’s become a household name. Nothing that popular would be without a ton of rivals, lookalikes, copycats, and plain old rip-offs. Ever since the iPhone made its debut, there have been so many companies trying to beat Apple at their own game.

Touchscreen technology is not new, but the kind of technology that the iPhone uses is unlike anything we’ve seen in the past. The iPhone may lack features that even some of the lower-end handsets have, but from what I understand, owning one is an experience. There’s always something abuzz with the iPhone, so much so that there isn’t a day that goes by that it isn’t mentioned in the news.

What I have here is a list of handsets that consider themselves to be iPhone Killers (or iKillers, as I call them). In this instalment, I’ve listed the handsets that have been making the mobile scene for awhile now. Some of them have already been launched, while others are still waiting for their day in the sun.

LG KU990 Viewty
The KU990 is equipped with a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with a strobe flash and Schneider Kreuznach lens that shoots video VGA at 30fps and QVGA up to 120fps. That feature itself is leagues ahead of the iPhone’s measly 2 megapixel-no-frills camera.

The KU990 has a 3-inch touch screen display but it’s nothing like the iPhone's multi-touch input method with an Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and a Proximity sensor for auto turn-off. This is pretty much what makes the iPhone, well, the iPhone. But the Viewty has plenty more on offer, such as a secondary videocall camera, DivX player, document viewer and an integrated FM radio.

This handset supports external memory up to 2GB, unlike the iPhone’s inbuilt memory of up to 16GB (depending on the model you choose). The Viewty also has Bluetooth with an A2DP profile – something lacking in the iPhone. There's no Wi-Fi but 3G HSDPA support makes up for that oversight.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1
The Xperia X1 is a Windows Mobile device running on version 6.1. It also has a 3-inch touchscreen display and a superb slide-out QWERTY keypad. Even so, the handset is quite slim. The X1 has a small touch-sensitive nav-pad just below the screen, which acts somewhat like an optical mouse. Other features include Wi-Fi, 3G support with HSDPA, and Bluetooth with an A2DP profile.

The X1 is equipped with a 3 megapixel auto-focus camera with a flash and it has a secondary camera for video calling. A GPS receiver is integrated into the handset and it supports aGPS. Similar to the iPhone's auto screen rotation feature (but not the same), the X1 also has a motion sensor that rotates the display. It supports external memory with microSD cards and comes with 400MB of internal storage.