Alternatives to the iPhone
The iPhone is all the buzz but there are several other hip phones on the market.
June 21, 2007 — -- Looking for a new cell phone? One that can e-mail, play music, surf the Web and, well, is just really cool?
I bet you're thinking: Sure, I want the iPhone. Starting next week you can get it.
But there are also plenty of other hip phones on the market that do most of what the iPhone does and even a few that have some added features.
I got a few of these phones and decided to play around with them for a few days. Apple did not provide ABC News with an iPhone, so there is no way to really compare apples to the Apple, so to speak.
A warning: I love technology, but am in no way an expert. This list is in no way a comprehensive one, or even a full review of any of these phones. It's just a look at some of the alternatives out there and the initial thoughts of a pretty tech savvy journalist playing around with them.
These phones aren't for everybody.
Chris Hazelton, an analyst with IDC Research, said the typical buyer is going to be somebody willing to pay for expensive data plans, willing to sacrifice battery life and people who are "bleeding edge" adopters -- those who are willing to pay for the latest, but untested, technology.
The iPhone, which plays off the enormous success of Apple's iPod, has dominated cell phone talk and media coverage for months. It promises to merge music, video, the Web, e-mail, a camera and more into a spiffy looking phone with a touchpad.
But the phone won't come cheap. It will cost $499 for four gigabytes of memory or $599 for a model with twice the memory. The phone will only work on the network of AT&T, until recently Cingular Wireless, and requires a two-year service contract.
Hazelton said that the "user experience will need to be very good to meet people's expectations which have been highly inflated due to the nature of this launch."
For most users, they "will be too much to deal with."
These phones are essentially mini-computers susceptible to the same issues that face computers today, including viruses and crashing.
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