The Phones Show 71

Wow, 2 shows in less than - what - 2 weeks? Having a haircut did wonders to your productivity, huh? Keep it up!

And the fact that Rafe and Ewan have basically been away for ages, so I had less interruptions 8-)

actually its 2 shows in less than a week! For interest sake,are the newer FP2 Nokia smartphones as near as robust as the N82...😉

I still think you are being hard on Opera. I've been quite impressed with it.

Care to expand on why webkit is better (especially on S60).

Zuber

The old N93 isn't actually all that fragile. Mine took a tumbled (whilst closed mind you) from chest height onto concrete pavement and it only left a small ding in the plastic, barely noticeable. I never dropped my N93i but I suspect that the outer mirrored panel wouldn't have taken much to put a crack down it.

I've managed to keep my E90 absolutely mint so far but I wish I shared your optimism over it's durability, I'm super paranoid about dropping/squishing it.

Thoroughly enjoyed this week's show.

I really think that HTC should just let Winmo go and move over to Android: they're fighting a losing battle trying to skin a dated and stylus-heavy o.s. Think of it as like trying to make windows 3.1 look and act like Vista.

They're also crippled by HAVING to use resistive LCD technology as Windows Mobile just does NOT support capacitive screens. As a user of an iPhone now (and until recently a Google G1) I will NEVER go back to resistive screens: they are dull, reflect badly and are comparatively unresponsive as they rely entirely on physical pressure to interpret drags and screen taps....and their only plus-side - handwriting recognition - is entirely worthless to the average consumer, particularly in a device skinned to be finger-friendly.

Here's another problem: HTC's devices have no video acceleration (despite the fact that they often boast ATI chipsets), so video playback quality is abysmal. Try playing a video from the N95 through Media Player, Coreplayer or TCPMP on the Touch HD - or in my case the Touch Diamond - and you will see how truly terrible these Qualcomm devices are with videos that wouldn't make a Symbian Smartphone or an iPhone break a sweat.

Sure, the Touch HD has a micro SD slot and the iPhone doesn't; but what's the point in all this potential capacity if you can't use it productively?

It seems that Windows Mobile devices now just don't know what they want to be: many businessmen now carry iPhones, Symbian devices or Blackberrys, which all offer push email and great web functionality within friendlier custom-built OS's.

For document editing a Nokia E90 is just as good as a TyTn2, and Email on the iPhone or even the Google G1 outperforms the Windows Mobile Email client every time: there are many emails I cannot view properly on my Touch Diamond which show up perfectly on the iPhone (which has never had a problem with ANYTHING, I kid you not). The Touch Diamond can't even render emails from Play.com.

The only other advantage to Windows Mobile devices I can think of - for the business consumer at least - is that they offer advanced Excel, Word and Powerpoint editing; but with tiny 5-hour netbooks now being offered with built-in sim cards for just 30 notes a month I wonder why anyone would now waste the ridiculous sum of money that devices such as the Touch HD cost when they could have a much nicer day-to-day user experience on a Symbian, Android or iPhone os device, coupled with a nice, xp-driven netbook.

Who wants to edit Excel documents on a 3" screen anyway.....

I will wait and see what Windows Mobile 7 has to offer, but like Steve I really couldn't give a toss about HTC's next Windows Mobile offering as I know it will be more of the same fitting-wheels-to-a-tomato overpriced rubbish.