I didn’t want to make this a full on comparison since both these phones are currently on the market and comparison articles and personal opinions on these two phones are now a dime a dozen.

Instead I am just going to chart the major points for each of the phones and let you decide which one you like better. Both phones have/do something a little bit better than the other, which make them very good candidates for a best of the best comparison. For example, the HTC offers 4G capabilities while the iPhone is stuck on AT&T’s 3G service, or the iPhones 30fps (frames per second) recording time over the EVO’s 25fps. Enough of my rambling, take a look at the chart and see for yourself.

I would like to hear your thoughts on which one you think is better or which one you would get.

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We’re still filing this away in the rumor folder for now, but we’ll be honest — this is totally believable. GigaOM has it on authority that a bona fide Skype for iPhone client will be launched as early as next week, and with CTIA kicking off on April 1st, we’d say the timing is just about ideal. Of course, we’ve already seen a variety of alternatives for bringing Skype and other VoIP apps to Apple’s darling, but by and large, they’ve been supremely unimpressive. There’s no word on pricing (we’re crossing our fingers for free) or any other tasty tidbits, but you can bet we’ll be keeping an ear to the ground for more.

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iPhone OS 3.0 is coming. Set your clocks, mark your calendars. It’s going down March 17th. Apple’s calling this an “advance preview of what we’re building,” so we’re not expecting anything ready to go as of the 17th, but hopefully this will allow developers to start building toward future functionality (hey, how about some push notifications?), and presumably users won’t have too many months to wait after that for the real deal.

via: Engadget

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The price of an iPhone in Japan can’t get much lower than this.

Starting Friday, Softbank Mobile, the exclusive carrier of Apple’s (AAPL) smartphone in Japan, will give anyone who signs a two-year contract a free 8GB iPhone 3G. If customers prefer the 16GB model, that will cost them $118 (reduced from $350).

Writing for CrunchGear, Serkan Toto reports that SoftBank Mobile’s data plan is also being discounted from $62 to $45.60 per month for both new and existing subscribers, a move he attributes to weak iPhone sales in Japan.

Reader Kidong Yun points out that even at the reduced data rates, Japanese customers still pay nearly $150 a month for iPhone service, roughly double what users pay in the United States.]

The promotion is scheduled to end in May. It follows a data plan price cut in August — less than a month after the iPhone’s Japanese debut.

To get a feel for how the iPhone is perceived in Japan, we re-post them below the fold:

1. No One-Seg digital TV tuner
2. No Felica (e-wallet) function
3. Weak camera
4. Only one panel color available
5. Display of cute emoticons, emoji, is difficult
6. Japanese cell phone contracts are long-term (2 years standard, almost no pre-paid) and expensive to terminate
6. A lot of Japanese already own an iPod Touch (launched in October 2007)
7. Japanese women with long fingernails will not buy it (and there are a lot of them)
8. High-school kids use cell phones mainly for emails using one thumb, a dialpad and a jog dial (ideal for Japanese character input)
9. Softbank will probably charge a lot of Yen for the handset itself, accessories, data plans etc.
10. Japan is the toughest cell phone market in the world
(high level of technical sophistication, critical customers, high innovation rate etc. )

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Apple is expected to debut a $99 iPhone, as well as an iPhone 3G with updated performance, sometime in June or July, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky’s research note on Tuesday.

Abramsky, in his report, states:

Checks reveal further entry-level iPhone details, including launches on existing carriers June/July with a data plan, entry-level pricing and a lower subsidy. Also expected is a 3G iPhone performance upgrade (performance, features, form factor).

An entry level iPhone could increase Apple’s overall iPhone unit sales by 25 percent to 69 percent and bump up its slice of the smartphone market from an estimated 12 percent to 14 percent to 19 percent, the report notes.

But it could come at a price.

Apple could find itself cannibalizing its iPhones/iPod business. For example, Apple would need to sell three $99 iPhones to replace the gross profits of one 3G iPhone, Abramsky notes in his report. And it could also create a situation where Apple would need to lower its iPod pricing to sustain the momentum with its media player since the iPhone also offers such capability.

via: cnet

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