Feature-wise, the Vodafone XP3 is notable for items that are absent. It doesn’t do 3G, it doesn’t have a camera, and for the life of me I couldn’t find a vibrating ring option anywhere. On the plus side, the ring volume was ear-splitting, so you won’t be needing a vibrate option to avoid missed calls.

So what you end up with is a sub-NZ$200 phone costing NZ$800 (less with a plan). You’re paying something like $600 for durability. Is it worth it? Probably. I can see this phone quite easily out-lasting four $200 phones, even if you’re an accident-prone plumber working around raw sewerage. Seriously.

Here’s a quick few seconds of XP3 abuse. The phone still works. Note: the quick cuts are not hiding anything, it’s just that my gimpy camera cut off the last couple of seconds of each video when I stopped recording.

So I leave it to you. I wouldn’t buy the phone, because I work in an office and stick a screen protector on any phone I buy. BUT, if you work outdoors and constantly break phones, the XP3 might be a valid investment.

Popularity: 13% [?]

(If you just want the quick version, skip to the decision code)

When the iPhone slid on to the scene, it didn’t so much displace any current phones; it created an entirely new market segment. It decimated the status quo, and it has taken a couple of years for competitors to catch up.

In the intervening time, I’ve fondled and fumed over more phones than you could shake an accelerometer at. None has come close to the usability of the original iPhone. When you combine that usability with the the feature set of the latest 3G S revision, Apple might as well just provide me with an industrial shredder in which to toss each phone I’m sent to review.

So you could say my expectations of Vodafone’s HTC Magic were modest. The Magic is the second hardware revision from HTC to run Google’s Android operating system. The first one – the G1 – was not widely released outside of the USA, and was subject to some faint praise. By all accounts, the 1.5 version of Android – cutely codenamed Cupcake – is greatly improved over the 1.0 version. Combined with this new OS, the HTC Magic is the first phone I’ve reviewed that comes close to competing with the iPhone for usability and sheer fun.

Read more…

Popularity: 32% [?]

There are two things you need to know about the Nokia E71. They are:

• It’s very fast; and
• It’s very metal.

It’s sad that I describe a phone as fast simply because it responds the way you would expect: you press a key, and stuff happens. It’s not like most other smart phones in that respect. I’ve come to expect slow interfaces from these phones as a trade-off for advanced features in small packages. My iPhone for example: press the contacts icon then count to 5 while you wait for the contacts app to load and be ready. The E71 on the other hand responds like a well drilled soldier, snapping to attention at the slightest prodding.

And this phone is metal. Not metal in the Vim Fuego, “Hello Castle Donnington!!” sense, but real, physical metal. Even the battery cover is a not insubstantial sheet of aluminium. The build quality is flawless, without the usual rattles and creaks that you get from plastic phones, and the design looks a lot better in person than in photos. The metal does give the phone a fair weight. Not in a bad way, but rather a good “I could chuck this phone through a window in an emergency” kind of way.

Update: someone commented that I make the E71 sound heavy. It’s not. The E71 is 127 grams compared to the iPhone’s 133. I just feel that if you threw an iPhone at a window it would bounce, whereas the E71 would plow on through. Look, honestly, I don’t know why I went down the whole window-breaking metaphor route in the first place, but now I’m stuck here. Help. I’m stuck in a metaphor and I can’t get out!

I won’t go into detail on the features and capabilities of the phone. If you want that information, you can read any number of super in-depth reviews of the phone, or for that matter just about any other S60 phone, because the features are largely the same across all Nokia S60s. It does have the usual bevy of features you’d expect from a high-end smartphone:

• Speedy 3G: Quad-band GSM, UMTS, HSDPA
• GPS (including A-GPS)
• Bluetooth (including stereo A2DP)
• WiFi (802.1b/g)
• IMAP, POP, and MS Exchange email connectivity
• 3.2mp camera plus front-facing VGA camera
• FM Radio with RDS

I understand it is de rigueur these days to compare any new smartphone with the one true smartphone. In this case the E71 holds up pretty well. By my reckoning the iPhone outsmarts the E71 in only two areas: web browsing and application availability; while the E71 simply stomps all over the iPhone in terms of user interface speed. The web browser is adequate, but nowhere near as easy to use as Safari on the iPhone. On the application front, there are thousands of applications available for the S60 platform, but the lack of App Store, and the generally average design of S60 applications let the side down. Once again His Jobsness has outsmarted the incumbents by routing around existing business models: the closed, proprietary App Store has (by virtue of the developer business model) attracted a higher class of developer than Nokia could ever hope to attract to the S60 platform.

Still, for your enterprise user, or perhaps a dedicated Nokia user, I’ll say quite happily that the E71 sits squarely at the top of the qwerty phone pecking order. Get one.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Straight up: this is a very sexy looking phone. SE call it ?Piano Black?, and it sure does have that deep glossy black look. The screen and buttons on the front are hidden behind a reflective cover and are invisible until they are needed. The clear Perspex block at the bottom of the cover glows with a cool white light when text messages are received.

Flipped open, the W980 looks just as good. Individual round buttons and a large, sharp screen draw the eye.

The walkman experience is good, with the navigation using Sony?s now-standard XrossMediaBar. Finding artists, albums and genres is a cinch.

Menu navigation, SMS, internet, etc. is all standard SE flavor. The addition of a physical keylock switch is nice, especially given the sensitive touch buttons on the front.

Audio output via the included headphones is sublime. Unfortunately the lack of 3.5mm headphone plug means you need to use the giant proprietary headphone adapter (which you?ll note is conveniently left out of any product images). I haven?t yet tried the FM transmitter, but expect it to suck about as badly as any 3rd party FM transmitter.

The ?shake? control is nothing more than a gimmick, but at least they?ve also used the accelerometer for screen orientation.

So, first impressions:

• Pros: awesome audio, gorgeous looks, and a very useable phone.
• Cons: headphone adapter, no expandable memory

Popularity: 3% [?]