Written on 4:02 PM by poison_ivy

Whew, wow, my title is a mouthful. That’s a lot of phones to compare and though I’ve only really reviewed the Google Nexus One, I just want to create a paper side by side comparison of the four latest Android mobile phones so that those still undecided about which mobile phone to get, can make an informed decision.

Design

Let’s face it, though it’s superficial, the design of a mobile phone can play a big factor whether you will fork up your hard earned cash. If design is the main thing that you would consider amongst these phones, would you say you’d rather have a bigger screen, a thinner phone or a phone made of metal?

In terms of screen area, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 has the bigger screen of the four, coming in at a massive 4 inches. The Nexus One and HTC Desire comes a close second having a 3.7 inch screen area while the HTC Legend only has a 3.2 inch screen though it looks larger because of the unibody design.

If you’re going for a thin mobile phone, the Nexus One and the HTC Legend is a hair thinner at 11.5mm compared with the HTC Desire which is 11.9mm thin. The Xperia X10 is the thickest of the four at 13mm.

In terms of build quality, no doubt the HTC Legend comes on top because of its unique aluminum unibody. Yeah, that’s right, aluminum unibody, a feature you would hear on an Apple product, particularly Macbooks. The HTC Desire and Google Nexus One on the other hand have some brushed metal effect which makes them a bit sophisticated while the Xperia X10, I think, is made mostly of plastic.

Quality

HTC made the Google Nexus One, HTC Desire, and HTC Legend while Sony Ericsson, well, who knows who are now making their handsets. The thing is, both companies are not exactly getting medals and praises for their customer service. Last year, Sony Ericsson temporarily stopped selling their Aino’s because of firmware issues and there are a lot of complaints from customers regarding the build quality of recent Sony Ericsson phones. As for HTC, though they don’t have history of pulling out stock and there are lesser complaints about the build quality of their phones but the again this may be because most HTC phones are high end smartphones so there are less users compared with Sony Ericsson’s phones.

Power

The HTC Legend is behind in terms of processing power having only a Qualcomm MSM 7227 600 MHz processor compared with the Desire, Nexus One, and Xperia X10 which all have a 1GHz Snapdragon processor.

RAM is another thing to consider when it comes to a mobile phone’s speed as the higher the RAM, the more applications you can run on your smartphone. The Xperia X10 and the HTC Legend is lagging behind in this department with only 384MB of RAM compared with the Nexus One’s 512MB RAM and the Desire which has 576MB of RAM.

The clear winner when it comes to power is the HTC Desire with the highest processor speed and highest RAM available. But unless you’re a hacker who wants to run a bunch of 3D games simultaneously or run multiple applications at once, do you really need all that power? Of course, the higher the processor and RAM also means that your phone is a bit futureproof to the coming Android upgrades.

Features

Now here’s where we get down and dirty. The HTC Legend, HTC Desire, and Nexus One runs on the latest version of Android (2.1 Eclair) while the Xperia X10 at launch will only have the Android 1.5 version (though there are some speculations that it will now have 2.1 too). While having Android as an OS means you get essentially the same features, the user interface can vary amongst these mobile phones. The HTC Legend and HTC Desire both have HTC’s Sense UI while the Xperia X10 will feature Sony Ericsson’s unique interface too. The Google Nexus One doesn’t have any skinned UI but the original Android interface or vanilla Android as some call it.

The advantage of getting HTC’s Sense UI is that if offers additional features such as FriendStream, a widget which updates you on the status of your friends from different social networks. It’s a cool feature though if you’re not a social networking nut, it’s not really a very useful feature. HTC’s Sense also offers HTC’s keyboard which I think is actually quite better because symbols and numbers are shown on top of the traditional alphabet QWERTY keyboard so instead of pressing the symbol button every time you want to enter a number, you can just press and hold a letter. I’m not familiar with the the Xperia X10’s UI but from the videos it looks like Sony Ericsson also skinned Android so it gives you a more graphically appealing UI. The advantage of Vanilla Android UI is its simplicity. Traditional Android users or those with the G1 or Vodafone Magic will feel right at home with the Google Nexus One.

All Android phones will eventually support Flash content but right now, I think it’s only the HTC Desire which will initially have Flash built-in. This will allow you to surf websites with Flash content, or for Facebook games addict, this means you can play Farmville on your phone. The Nexus One on the other hand, will have Google navigation, the first free turn by turn navigation software. The Xperia X10 has the first 8.1 megapixel camera on an Android handset. Each one of these mobile phones have their unique feature to offer.

Conclusion

Wow, Android really has become fragmented. I mean in 2008 there’s only the G1 and Vodafone Magic, in 2009 there’s the Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Milestone, T-Mobile Pulse, and the HTC Hero, this year, in addition to the previous handsets mentioned we have these four new handsets and we’re not even halfway through 2010 yet. For Google, this may be a good thing. The more android handsets there are in the market, the more their market share but for us end users, this is a bad thing. Should we get the one with the better design but less power (HTC Legend), the one with more features (HTC Desire), the one with the new UI and 8 megapixel camera (Xperia X10), or the one with the Google logo on it (Nexus One). Your phone choice will ultimately come down to what you REALLY need or want in a mobile phone.

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