I currently have my hands on three phones – an HTC Desire, an iPhone 4, and a Palm Pre Plus. For those of you not moving beyond the front page, I’ll put the summary up first, with a comment that for me that the iPhone gets my pick – just, followed by the Palm Pre Plus, then the Desire.  Yes – I’m surprised too, but there’s something about the Pre that really works, and I was disappointed by the screen and operating system of the Desire.  BUT – you know what – which ever you choose, I can’t believe you’ll be disappointed – these are three excellent devices.  I’m really not comparing Ferraris and Rovers, but Ferraris and Lamborghinis – so it really will come down to taste.

Please note – I really couldn’t compare everything – I didn’t have a spare month, and you’d not have read it all anyway.  So I’m trying to focus on two things – Hardware (screen, sound, etc) and the Hardware / software “integration”.

Desire – Surprisingly disappointed – mainly due to screen and OS

• Physicals: Feels nice and solid though plastic back “opening hole” already scratched, just using coins and nails.  Like the ability to change the battery.  Don’t like that the SD card can’t be removed/changed without taking the battery out.

• Hardware: Excellent, fast and solid.  Screen the let down for me surprisingly, virtually unreadable in sunshine, and a strange orange “tint” at times (see detail below for more information).  Transfer speeds as expected for a class 6 card.

• Good stock headphones, with three button remote (Volume buttons and a “play/pause/answer phone”)

• Battery life drains quickly with data use (there’s lots of widgets to choose…).  Very acceptable with video – 75% after a 1hr 41 min video.

• Operating System – wonderfully open, and horribly “unfinished” (hard to explain what I mean).  Also, I just can’t use the virtual keyboard at all.

• My killer app – Evernote (I hear Pimlical may be on the way:))

• My killer game – None yet (Farm Frenzy is nice, but it’s not an Angry Birds or Dungeon Hunter)

iPhone 4 32GB – Pretty much as expected – lovely screen, though limited chance to really try it.   Hoping the “proximity sensor” issue is resolved soon, and how the antenna bug got through QA…?!

• Physicals: I like the design unlike many, though it feels “fragile” (comes from being glass I guess).  Invisible shield has been duly acquired.  Don’t like inability to change battery.

• Hardware: We know about the signal issue – I’ve always used a case so (touch wood) I’ve not been affected.  Generally excellent performance (some slight stutter from Angry Birds in a couple of places – but possibly this was an application issue as I get exactly the same effect on a 3GS).   Excellent transfer speed (my slightly crude test estimates around 16.5mb/s)

• Good stock earphones, three button remote (volume buttons and a “play/pause/answer phone”)

• Excellent battery life when playing video (88% after a 1hr41min video), drains happily with things like push mail.

• My Killer apps – Pocket Informant & Evernote

• My Killer game – Angry Birds:)

Palm Pre – The dark horse, and much better than I expected.  Shame about the build.

• Physicals: I can’t remember who (Shaun?) described the build quality as “Fisher Price”, but it really does describe it.  I get minimal movement in the Pre Plus (presumably resolved from the original issues with the pre), but it does creak a bit when I use the gesture area with the keyboard down, which is annoying.  I do like ability to change battery.  It also feels very nice and natural in the hand.

• Hardware: Actually very good – it’s the slowest on offer (having the same speed as the 3GS), but generally feels solid and fast.  I’m using 1.4.5 which has made a massive difference to the calendar application’s performance.  Very disappointed in the memory write speed – not clear if it’s an OS issue, or that cheaper memory was used.  Transfer speed was around 1.5mb/s – a tenth of the iPhone’s, and meaning it could take 3 hours to fill the 16gb’s of memory!

• Good stock earphones, one button remote (which I actually like, I’m perfectly capable of using the volume on the device).

• My killer apps – calendar (taking the whole integration aspect into account) & Evernote again:)

• My killer games – Dungeon Hunter and settlers.  Also available for iPhone, but the best the App Store has to offer, and very good reproductions of both.

Now, on to the detail – and this review is designed to take a look at a comparison between the three – I’m interested in writing a technical comparison, and to try and keep away from impressions – though I’ll have to describe some items such as sound quality (Note I have dodgy old ears and like classical music)

A note on my test “components” – For those interested, I used an 8gb class 6 MicroSD card in the desire (seemed fair to use the best I could), I used a pair of Sure 540 in-ear noise isolating headphones for my “good headphone test” (They’re something like £200-£300 as I recall), and I used some classical music, a track of Pimsleur’s French, and part one of the Fellowship of the Ring, for my music/spoken/video tests.  Sorry – I’m not into modern music.

So what I’m going to do is write this comparison as I go through a day, including the setup.  I should add I’m not actually going through a day, but just mimicking it.  I’m thinking I want to listen to some music on the way in to work, maybe watch a video on the way home, play a game during a break, and of course, deal with emails, texts, and calls.  Call me boring, but that’s what I want out of the day.  Weekends are another matter; I have several more appropriate devices then (the home computer, etc.)

Getting Going…

So, what I want to do first is to set my phone(s) up to provide me with the day’s needs.  So I’m going to start by getting some music and a video onto the devices to test the File Transfer.

File Transfer

It was the file transfer that showed the first “difference” between devices.  You’ll note in the intro I used a class 6 card for the desire, and this showed an interesting comparison.  Quite simply, the write speed of the Palm is very slow.  In fact add a few more “verys” for good measure.

I focused on the transfer of one file – a video file, of 494mb.  The cold hard numbers were that the iPhone 4 took about 30 seconds to transfer the file (Possibly it compresses a bit, or does something clever through iTunes, I don’t know.  Or that would make it around 16.5 mb/s?)

The Desire (via the class 6 card), took around 44 seconds – i.e. About 12mb/s write speed.

The Pre (wait for it… I had to) – took 5 minutes and 30 seconds.  i.e. 1.5mb/s or a class 1 card?  (Note: I tested it with and without write caching, for those of you who wondered).  I also tested read speed just on the palm, for curiosity – it reads the file in about 35 seconds, so it’s definitely just the write time for some reason.

Morning Music

Palm Pre Plus – Nice quality through the stock headphones – clear speech and rich sound.  Definitely benefits from a nice set of good headphones – not so noticeable on speech, but with music, things were much clearer.  I should also add that with the stock headphones I had to turn the sound right up to close to maximum to properly enjoy over background noise (there was some reasonable noise I should add).  With the Sure 540’s, the volume could be put nice and low – though conversely had another problem, that in a very quiet place, I found lowest volume was a little high with the Sure’s.

HTC Desire – Was good on the stock headphones, with a better range of minimum and maximum volume than the Pre.  The lowest volume is still too high with the Sure’s though – though this is perhaps an unfortunate part of the headphones, which as noise isolating, are deep in the ears.

iPhone – For some strange reason, the iPhone seems less stressful on my ears.  Either there’s less bass etc. (The Sure headphones have two independent “drivers”), or perhaps it’s that the lowest volume on the iPhone is a little lower than the other two.  The stock headphones were probably the best of the three as well, though just marginally in my opinion (Probably too much time spent using the Sure’s which make such a difference with Classical music – you can hear the individual instruments!).

Emails and texts (keyboards!)

Palm Pre Plus – Having a keyboard is definitely nice (it works well for me I should note – contrary to other reviewers).  Emails and texts were easy to send.  The Palm Email program works well, and formats HTML nicely I found (even putting in embedded items such as video, better than the desire and iPhone in a lot of cases).

HTC Desire – This is part two of what really disappointed me – I just can’t get on with the way the android O/S (or is it the desire itself?) registers my taps – it seems almost “inaccurate” – I can tap on what seems like the same place, and yet get differing results.  I suspect its OS, as the iPhone and Pre are able to “guess” what you’re tapping better it seems.   Hopefully this will mean a fix is forthcoming.

iPhone – I mentioned the Pre had formatted a lot of email better than the iPhone and desire – in most cases – this is because for some reason the Pre can’t read emails from apple at all – no idea why (either the pre doesn’t like some standards, or the apple emails are causing issues?).  I seem to be finding the keyboard better these days – though I sometimes tap slightly outside the touch area on the left of the keyboard, meaning my tap isn’t registered.  I also need to add, I’ve had to turn off “sort my mail into conversations”, as it’s randomly creating blank emails in places (?!).  No doubt an update or two is needed.

Phoning

Palm Pre Plus – It makes calls.  They’re good quality. Simple complaint – why can’t I use the “numeric” keyboard to search contacts? (You know, the “abc business” where the numeric keyboard doubles as a sort of keyboard – and if I can’t, why are they printed there on the screen!?).  It just means I have to open the keyboard every time.  I found this a little irritating.

HTC Desire – It also makes calls.  And they’re similarly good quality.  Extra tick to the desire for being able to enter numbers and have them considered as the “abc business” letters as well.

iPhone – Definite improvement over the 3GS in call quality.  Had some issues with my Bluetooth headset (lovely earpiece quality, but my callers said I sounded awful.  Seems to have sorted itself now – maybe just a reboot of the iphone was needed).  I like the way my jawbone shows an icon on the iphone representing the amount of battery left.

Breaktime game

Due to differing games available between the three products, I’ve picked two games to analyse – the settlers (iPhone and Pre), and Farm Frenzy (iPhone and desire).   Hopefully that way a good picture of graphics and performance will arise.

Palm Pre Plus – Plays games beautifully.  Or at least those games currently available…  But still, both Settlers and Dungeon Hunter are high performing, don’t lag, and look lovely on the screen (though a little small when compared next to an iPhone as the physical screen sizes are different.  No complaints on performance and visuals.  Just needs more games.  Palm have released a “PDK” (also known as a “get your iphone game over to the palm Pretty Damn Kwik), so watch this space.

Here’s a screenshot of settlers in action: (Credit and copyright to the owners accordingly)

Take a glance against the iPhone one below however – you’ll note the colours are ever so slightly richer (pay attention to the brown wood…)

iPhone – needs no introduction (so here’s one – not everyone has an iphone) – it also plays games beautifully.  Had a slight lag with angry birds, but was able to reproduce on a 3gs, suggesting software not hardware.  Both Settlers and Farm Frenzy look good, and play well:

HTC Desire – Interestingly, I found the applications available for the desire to be excellent (unlike the Palm options), but the other way around for games.  I just wasn’t impressed by the android market selection (No I wasn’t just looking for mainstream names).  However, Farm Frenzy provides a good effort (though the graphics are clearly not as enhanced for the hi-res screen as I’d have hoped – look at the grass I’ve put down in the middle, and compare it to the iphone one above):

Evening video

Palm Pre Plus – Video sounded good on the stock headphones – clear speech and rich sound.  The sure’s are nice for the noise cancelling, but less impressive with spoken word / video, than with a nice piece of classical music.  Same problem with the headphone volume levels as for the music tests earlier.

HTC Desire – Video sounded good on the stock headphones, with a better range of minimum and maximum volume over the Pre.  Once again, the Sure’s were indifferent to stock headphones with spoken word.  But I suspect the Sure’s weren’t designed to provide a nice speech – it’s when it’s twin drivers get into action with music that the difference is clear.

iPhone – Similarly good – both through the famous white headphones and the bose’s.  I think the iPhone benefits from the Sure’s particularly though, as the white stock ones tend to be worst at keeping out the noise I found, and I like the peace.

Now onto the screen, where rather than writing them individually, I feel a photo of each gives the impression best.  Watching video was marginally hardest on the Pre simply because the device is smaller physically, though it didn’t bother me that much.  And the high resolution screens are worthless here in my opinion.  Why?  Because if I rip a gorgeous BluRay video into 960 by whatever the iPhone is, and watch it, it looks lovely sure – but only “nicer” than 480×320, not “Oh wow”.  And the killer – a movie jumps from 500mb to 2gb (it is 4 times the resolution after all).  I’m not either going to re-rip all my movies, or store them at 2gb a pop.  Of course, this is a personal view (which I’m trying to steer clear of).

A comment on the screens – make up your own mind from the photos below – and note the strange orange effect from the Desire.  I didn’t notice it until I put them all together.  It’s definitely noticeable in many scenes when you do compare…

Left to right, Palm Pre Plus, HTC Desire, iPhone 4.  These were taken at the same point in a movie, on the same camera, in the exact same location on my desk – so note that the issue I think is simply that the Desire over riches red perhaps?  I really didn’t notice it until this comparison…
Summing up (with a quick mention of other areas)

Speed

But first, a quick comment on the transfer speeds from earlier – I’d be curious to hear the views of other pre owners – I tested this on two windows machines (one windows xp and one Windows 7) plus a macbook pro – they’re all slow with the palm.

Sound

Now I’m not a “soundy” in any sense of the word.  In fact, at university as a member of stage crew, I always did lights.  So take it with a pinch of salt when I say there really isn’t – for me – anything in it between these three in sound quality terms.  Not in my opinion.  The iPhone possibly wins for me simply because it plays a little lower with my set of headphones, and maybe a slight down to the Pre Plus stock headphones for requiring the volume to be turned up to near maximum (the Sure’s behave well – so I’m sure it’s the headphones themselves requiring a little more juice).  However a nice set of headphones for whichever device you choose will do you proud.

Software

Operating System

I used to think that WebOS was the best – but – nope sorry, I still feel it is.  Don’t get me wrong, Android and “iOS” (shudders at the name) are good, but WebOS feels the most polished, and that multitasking is just wonderful.

I’ve not covered the OS’s in more detail here – I didn’t intend to.  Search for “iOS”, “WebOS” and “Android 2.1” if you want to – there’s far better reviews of them than I’ll be able to do.  BUT – I want to say one thing – updates.  WebOS updates release over the air, which is a brilliant concept – and they have it working really well. No real comment on iOS updates – you have to use iTunes unfortunately, but then the updates tend to be big (WebOS ones come often under 10Mb…).  The unfortunate dunce hat has to go to the Desire here.  Android is fine – stock.  And therefore Android updates come as stock.  Which means that the Desire, from HTC, has to wait for HTC to release a modified version.  Very simply, Android 2.2 came out – what – a couple of months a go now for the Nexus One (Which runs it raw)?  And still there’s no confirmation on when the Desire will get it…

Calendar

First prize to the iPhone here – “Informant” is just fantastic.  The Pre comes in close second – with it’s integration, and “in place editing” (where you can edit a calendar entry in the calendar rather than in a separate screen).  It’s also A LOT faster after the last Webos update.  Don’t like the stock android (or HTC alternative) calendars, but there’s lots in the works – bring on CESD and Pimlical.

GPS

GPS was a hard one to look at – and that’s due to the Pre having no GPS application other than Google Maps, that I could get hold of (there’s a Sprint one in the US only I think?)  But in short – using Google Maps (available on all three), they all kept signal and location well – even in my house.

It’s worth adding that Alk’s Copilot is available for both the iPhone and HTC Desire, and works brilliantly on both.

Video & Music

The Palm Pre Plus and the HTC Desire both have two separate applications (It’s a personal preference, but I like one app – less clutter, and sometimes I like to flick through and pick between video and music.)

I do like the music player on the Palm Pre most though – possibly part of the “look and feel” of WebOs, but it feels nice and “up to date”, whereas the iPhone player felt more dated.  A knock down to the Desire – it took me ten minutes to find the Video player – inside the Photo application.  Erm, okay…

As a traveller abroad, I felt a battery video test would be a nice way of seeing how hungry each device is.  So, having transferred that video (1hr41min, as mentioned), I charged each device to full, turned on Airplane mode, set the brightnesses to close as possible, and pressed play on each.

At the end, the numbers were quite different – the iPhone 4 had 88% left afterwards.  The HTC Desire had 75% left.  Finally, the Palm Pre Plus had 67% left.

I realise they all compute differently, and some may go to 0%, some cut out at 10%, etc.  I didn’t test that far – but I will add that I was very impressed with the iPhone 4 – in particular because I forgot to turn off the phone it turned out – so 88% included continuing to play with 3G signal.

And Finally…

As I mentioned at the top, the iPhone gets my pick currently – probably simply because of the number of applications available has meant I’ve found the best working relationship for me.

But only just – The Palm Pre Plus was so close, that I found myself swapping between them a bit initially (almost based on how I felt each day).

Last for me came the Desire.  Yes – I’m surprised too, but there’s something about the Pre that really works, and I was disappointed by the screen and operating system of the Desire.

Don’t get me wrong thinking I’m saying the iPhone is fantastic and the Desire not – they’re all very good – and which ever you choose I can’t believe you’ll be disappointed, as these are three excellent devices.

I’m really not comparing Ferraris and Rovers, but Ferraris and Lamborghinis – so it really will come down to taste.

I’ll sign off by saying I hope this has been some use (if you’ve actually read this far!)  please note I’ve linked reviews below…

Note: A link to Shaun’s in depth review of the HTC Desire is here, also there’s a previous comparison between the desire and the iPhone 3GS here.  I mention it because if you’re reading this as a 3GS owner, it’ll hopefully provide some context.
Note: A link to Shaun’s in depth review of the iPhone 4 is here.
Note: We have no Palm Pre Plus review done by one of us.  Shaun is going to see if he can find one, and if you’re reading this with no link, he didn’t.  Watch this space, I’ll see if I get a chance to write one.

Peter.