1. Blackberry
1.1. Blackberry Style
1.1.1. RIM's first flip phone with a full QWERTY keyboard is aptly named. This is one stylish looking clamshell phone with rich textures and great looks. Inside we've got BlackBerry OS 6 which works well on non-touch screen phones like the Style. It's modern, more intuitive and reasonably fast. The new web browser brings BlackBerry into modern times and the sharp inner display is great for browsing and video playback. The Style has a 528MHz CPU, 512 megs of RAM and the usual trio of WiFi, Bluetooth and a GPS.
1.1.2. Measuring 3.78 x 2.36 x 0.73 inches with the flip closed, the BlackBerry Style is perfect for those who want to put their Berry in a back pocket or a shirt pocket. When the flip is open, the phone feels quite long measuring 6.91 inches in length, which might be too long for some users with small to average size faces. That’s the price you pay for a 2.8” 360 x 400 resolution display, a 240 x 320 resolution external display, a trackpad with four menu keys and a full QWERTY keyboard. Both displays look good. The external screen shows the time, incoming calls and alerts for messages, missed calls and updates from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The main internal screen is sharp and bright with saturated colors. The new BlackBerry 6 UI looks great on the screen, so do videos, pictures and web pages. Neither of the displays is a touch screen.
1.2. Blackberry Curve
1.2.1. The Curve 3G is upgradable to BlackBerry OS 6, and that's its most exciting feature. Unfortunately, it still ships with OS 5, but we're hoping the upgrade will be out soon. In fact, we upgraded our phone with a pre-release versionof OS 6 for the Curve 3G and we liked what we saw. our review includes a video review of the Curve 3G running OS 6 and a video with OS 5. The Curve has 3G EV-DO Rev. A, a 2 megapixel camera, QVGA display, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi and RIM's usual excellent QWERTY
1.2.2. The web browser is the usual pitiful BlackBerry OS 5 affair. It's less boggled by Javascript than older BlackBerry models and most desktop sites render decently but slowly. You'll use the optical nav pad to move around the page and press the nav pad to zoom in and select links. We were more impressed with the OS 6 Webkit web browser once we upgraded the phone, though it's not as fast as on the BlackBerry Torch. Our OS 6 isn't final release, and we're sure RIM will continue to fine tune it before and after it's available to the public.
2. Android
2.1. ATRIX 4G
2.1.1. Working in tandem, the two 1GHz processor cores can achieve processing speeds of up to 2GHz. That extra power was apparent as i used the phone. The Web browser was very responsive to my movements and moved through graphics-rich Web pages smoothly and speedily. And when I used the phone to stream video via a fast Wi-Fi connection, the video ran smoothly at all times. I also noticed that I could launch new apps quickly, even when several others were already running.
2.1.2. The Atrix ships with Android 2.2 (Froyo), not with the more recent Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). So the phone does not support SIM calling, near-field communications (NFC) for mobile payments, or the enhanced front-facing camera technology that Gingerbread offers. Still, Android running on the dual-core processor is a very nice (and responsive) environment to work in.
2.2. HTC Thunderbolt
2.2.1. The HTC ThunderBolt looks, feels, and handles like a solid piece of hardware. Although its specs aren’t anything we haven’t already seen in the Droid X or the Droid 2, the ThunderBolt’s ability to utilize the unprecedented speed of Verizon’s LTE network makes it a special phone indeed. Users who like to run high-bandwidth apps on the road--as in streaming high-def video or playing online games--will find no faster phone on the market right now.
2.2.2. A DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance)-certified device, the ThunderBolt can stream photos, music, and video to and from DLNA-supporting devices on your home wireless network. For instance, you can stream video to your DLNA-certified TV for playback. The music player can also stream from any media servers you have on your network.