Apple iPhone vs. HP ipaq 910c

VS.

Most of the phones we've compared to the iPhone in these pages have been from familiar manufacturers. The biggies, like HTC, Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry, Sony Ericsson. But did you know there's a smartphone from HP? (That's Hewlett Packard for you old timers.) And what's more, did you know that it's pretty good, as in one of the highest rated smartphones so far this year?

You wouldn't normally associate smartphones with HP, being their expertise is more in the line of printers and copiers. But the HP IPAQ 910c is actually quite a nice little device. Looking more like a Blackberry Curve than an iPhone, the IPAQ 910c will certainly attract a different customer base than the iPhone 3GS (or any earlier iPhone, for that matter), as it has a smaller 2.46" screen with a QWERTY keyboard below it, while the iPhone is a 3.5" display with only a digital touchscreen keyboard. Both the HP and the Apple device's displays, however, are touchscreens.

Even the IPAQ 910c's "other name", the HP Business Messenger heralds more to RIMs line of smartphones than Apple's.

But let's say, hypothetically, that you still couldn't decide. How else do these two devices hold up against one another? Well, their bodies are close in size, despite their differing faces, with both standing 4.5" tall and the HP at 2.5" wide and 5.4 oz. to the iPhone's 2.4" and 4.7 oz.

Both have the same basic features - Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, built-in browser, digital player and video recorder, etc. The iPhone's camera is 2 megapixels to the HP's 3 megapixels. But the iPhone's screen resolution is 480 x 320 to the HP's 320 x 240 pixels.

Also, the iPhone's got more memory (16 GB vs. 256 MB) and a longer lasting battery life (300 minutes, talk/300 hours standby vs. 240 minutes, talk/280 hours standby). The iPhone 3GS runs on Apple's OS X mobile platform while the HP IPAQ is a Windows 6.1 Professional based device.

Essentially, if you use your smartphone more like a PDA and for business uses, then give the HP IPAQ 910c a try. And if you use your smartphone more for personal entertainment, then give the iPhone a try. If all you do is use your phone to talk, then it's a toss-up.