Top iPhone Killers: The List So Far - I

The Touch comes with a 2.8 inch TFT touchscreen and a 2 megapixel camera, and supports microSD cards. The best part about the phone, at least in my book, is the hot-swap slot for the SIM card. HTC relaunched the Touch and added a QWERTY slide-down keypad; this new handset is called the Touch Dual, for Dual Input.

Samsung F490
The F490 actually has a larger screen than the iPhone – or for that matter most other touchscreen phones available. The screen size is 3.3 inches, with a resolution of 240x432 pixels and 256K colors. It comes equipped with a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with flash, and a secondary camera for video calling. It also supports external memory with microSD cards and comes with 130MB of shared memory.

The Samsung F490 supports 3G with HSDPA, among other things. It doesn’t come with Wi-Fi, but it does support EDGE and also has a Stereo Bluetooth profile. There's no doubt the F490 is quite a sleek-looking handset, with an all-black finish.

These phones may not necessarily be better than the iPhone, even if they often boast a lot more features than Apple's handset. Apple has tried to make the iPhone a state-of-the-art mobile device, but there’s so much more one can expect from it.

It’s only a matter of time before the 3G version is out, for example. The big question is – will Apple do something about other features, such as upping the camera and allowing copy/paste of music rather than relying on iTunes? At least the handsets reviewed above don’t require proprietary software for simple jobs like transferring MP3 files!

I shall be compiling a second instalment next week, and adding more iKiller handsets. If you’d like to see your favorite devices in the list – or simply want to sound off on our take on 'iPhone Killers' – feel free to leave your comments and suggestions.