Before I begin my review, I have to make a note that I have experience with several phones which range from the standard flip phones, to European based phones, to Blackberrys, to iPhones and more. While I understand that everyone looks for different features when considering their phone, I tend to be highly picky with my phones, which almost resulted in my not purchasing the MyTouch to begin with.

Prior to purchasing the MyTouch or HTC Magic, I owned a 2g iPhone which by all accounts was a superior device to any device I had ever owned before. Though I discount the Blackberry as for me the iPhone and Blackberry are two completely different sets of tech and therefore I don’t view them as comparable.

In any event, I had an 2g iPhone jailbroken and unlocked on T-Mobile, which I found was an amazing phone; at least to begin with. I had no complaints whatsoever, the apps were decent, the phone while bulky was easy enough to get used to and it was a fun phone which was an nice change from my Blackberry Curve. The main problem I had with the iPhone was the slowness. This was particularly a problem whenever I was migrating from one screen to another and was evident whenever I went from the home screen to the text messaging screen (or any other screen for that matter), as there tended to be at least 2-3 seconds of a white screen before my messages appeared. Now it is possible I could have just had a crappy version of the phone, however Robby also experienced the same problem, though his seemed to be much worse. In addition it seemed as if the more applications you downloaded the slower the iPhone would become and I didn’t have very many applications, at least not compared to those around me who had iPhones.

I will say that the first time I tried the MyTouch which happened to be a few weeks ago when we were visiting San Diego, I was far from impressed. The screen was a lot smaller then my iPhone which was a turn off, I didn’t really like the controls on the phone (though now I love them) and I think I spent about 5 minutes, though if I’m honest with myself less, looking at the phone before deciding I wasn’t interested and moved on.

The reason I ended up purchasing a MyTouch was because of Robby and I’s decision to switch to a non-contracted plan with T-Mobile as it would have saved us a bit of money. Rather than being forced to shell out $400 for the phone we both decided we’d just do a partial upgrade, stay in our contract for another year and then migrate to the non-contract plan. After discussing this with him I spoke with Danika and told her I was considering getting the MyTouch and she told me everyone she worked with loved their’s, so I figured I should probably give it another and more reasonable shot. I did a bit of research on the web, read up on the phone and the reviews, and then Robby and I took a much better look at the phones.

One of the first things I noticed about the MyTouch is that it seems to be more application friendly both in how many it can handle (as you recall that was one of my biggest gripes about the iPhone) and also what the Android Market has to offer. Given that Apple had announced the removal of 5,000 applications from their app store due to explicit content (such as girls in bikinis) it only proved further that my decision to purchase the MyTouch was a well made one. The open source of the Android OS has great appeal to several individuals, including those like I who are far from being developers mostly because it gives us options. I don’t know call me an anarchist, but I never liked being told what I could and could not purchase or view for that matter. Then again, when I searched porn, sex, or adult on the Android market and get a list of various applications, I’ll be the first to admit, it completely made my day. And yes, if you have not yet deduced from my prior blog posts, I am somewhat of a freak, but that’s another story.

Moving on…

When you get down to comparatively assessing the specs of the iPhone and the MyTouch here is what you’ll find:

Looking at the phones comparatively there are obviously some good and bad aspects about both, however depending on what features you want, one phone is obviously going to suit you better over the other. For myself personally, while I did enjoy having the iPhone and was a little hesitant to switch to the MyTouch as the screen was significantly smaller than what I was used to (though after reviewing the charts, not as small as I had suspected), the MyTouch was the better choice. Why? Not only is the MyTouch faster (at least compared to the iPhone I had), but it also gives you the option to allow applications to run in the background which was one of the biggest issue I had with my iPhone. I understand the reason behind not allowing applications to run in the background but I didn’t understand why I wasn’t given a choice to allow an application to run or not.

For instance, I am a frequent twitter user and felt that a twitter application on the iPhone was pretty pointless because it required me to access the application to view updates. The MyTouch however allowed me to set the application to run in the background so that I am able to receive notifications every 60 minutes (that’s the interval I have it set to) without having to access the application. For me this is BIG (can you tell I’m a Twitter addict?), however for others, this may not be such a great feature. In addition, while I haven’t tested YouTube on the 3G network, though Robby says it’s great, I have tested the feature using Wi-Fi and it works well. This wasn’t always the case for the iPhone. Often times the buffer would stop randomly and the video would not resume playing. I found this to be a bit frustrating and as a result hardly ever utilized this feature.

The next aspect I’d like to touch on are the keyboards. I will admit that the iPhone has the superior keyboard as I found the Android keyboard to be a bit small and had problems using it (this coming from someone with very small fingers) however, it appears Google realized that with this version of the phone and rolled out a new keyboard called Swype. Swype provides a faster and easier way to input text on any screen as you use one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard therefore making your entries more efficient and accurate. Swype is very intuitive and allows you to add words that you use often (names or usernames for instance) in its vast dictionary, which I found to be a convenient and handy feature. I won’t deceive you and say I loved Swype when I first tried it because in all honesty I hated it, but that was an account of not knowing how to operate it. After viewing the tutorial, I understood exactly how to use it and have not had any difficulties operating it since then. For those of you who miss being able to type with one finger on a standard phone (especially while driving) but love qwerty keyboards, then Swype is the alternative that you’ve been looking for and I highly recommend it.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with my decision to move to the MyTouch, even given that a lot of people would view my change in phones as a downgrade; but to be honest and to answer my question on whether the MyTouch is a worthy iPhone opponent; I wouldn’t necessarily consider them opponents, rather that the devices differ from each other considerably and therefore are appropriate for you, depending on what your needs are when it comes to your cellphone.

Current Mood:  thoughtful