by Mike Finlay

Created on: June 02, 2008   Last Updated: March 28, 2011

More than just boys' toys?

There was a time when everyone knew where they stood - iPods were for the young to listen to music, Blackberrys were for overweight businessmen to check e-mails on the train and mobile phones were for both. But now that Blackberry have brought out the new Curve and even LG have entered the arena, has the revolutionary iPhone met some competition?

Let us begin with the current reigning champion, the iPhone.

It was only a matter of time before Apple gathered all of its iPod's capabilities, shook things up a bit and poured the results into a neat new phone. The result was astonishing. Listed at between $399 and $499 (Dependant on memory size) stores sold out in days and reviews couldn't use enough superlatives to best describes the unit's usability.

Whispers on the street are growing as word that a second generation iPhone is well into testing and could look to release as early as July. So, why spend extra on the new model and is it worth looking into the Blackberry and LG?

Well, the new iPhone will be similar in appearance and size to the first but will have resolved the few small quibbles that were present on the first; namely a flush headphone jack and no more metal rear case. The unit will have 3G and a GPS that works! All good so far, so whose heads will be turned by the Blackberry?

Claims by the company that the Curve is 'beautiful' may be unfounded, with the unit looking as much like an 80's handheld game as its predecessor. What it lacks in looks, it makes up for in brains. Including multimedia capabilities and GPS, the Curve still does e-mailing better than the iPhone. Whilst the majority of grown adults will struggle to use the tiny QWERTY keypad, it is much simpler and faster than a normal phone or the Apple, maintaining its appeal to the businessmen of the world. However, it has been argued that LG's Voyager has the most user friendly keypad to date. Combined with its expandable memory, 2 megapixel camera and phone use, does this mean that we have a two horse race?

Surprisingly, the answer is not the resounding 'no' that I expected. The LG puts forward a good case and fights the middle-ground between both the iPhone and Blackberry. With an interactive touch screen AND a QWERTY keypad, it is extremely versatile in terms of e-mailing and texting. What the clever boys and girls at LG have done is to create a unit that both the young music-lovers AND the overweight business men will love equally. So then, they have reinvented

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>