Where is my love for Fuze and iPhone

If you are reading this blog, chances are that you’ve already looked into all the specifications and feature comparisons from various cell phone fanatic web sites and blogs on iPhone and HTC Fuze, so I’ll not get into any details on features on either phones, except for the ones I particularly interested.

iPhone, needless to say, is nice in looks. HTC Fuze is also stylish, compact but packed with goodies. Windows mobile 6.1 also looks nice to me. Fuze is $349 from AT&T comparing to iPhone 8GB’s $199 price tag, but you don’t have to sign up data plan with Fuze as opposed to the mandatory data plan signup for iPhones.

When I image my dream cell phone, I see myself using it for calling, internet browsing, navigating, listening to music, and picture/video taking. Don’t have too much to say about the phone part, nowadays, even calling should be the major functionality of a cell phone, but nobody is really paying attention to it as there are some many other functionalities they have to worry about on their cell phone.

With 3G, internet browsing is good on both phones, I use 3 browsers, IE, Opera 9.5 mobile, and SkyFire on the Fuze. Using SkyFire, you can access flash based web sites, such as hulu.com, imeem.com, etc. iPhone has Safari, no flash support. It’s recently cited that adobe is working with Apple on bringing flash to iPhone, but I’ll believe once I see it ’cause I read about the similar claims from 2 years ago. The screen is bigger on iPhone, that’s a huge plus, even with Tru-Flo on the Fuze, screen is too small, doesn’t work on all screens.

Google map’s my location is off, way off actually, for the Fuze in the beginning, the location is constantly within “1000-2000” meters, and I could see the blue “my location” dot in the valley while driving on the road next to the valley. But after setting up aGPS from AT&T Navigator on the Fuze, my location is right on the spot, initial start-up is slow though. With iPhone, it’s pretty good from the beginning, very close, but no other ways to improve the accuracy, without hacking.

I listen to music online so I can access the same collection at work, at home and in the car, don’t really want to sync the songs onto iPhone (8 GB is not enough anyways), having imeem on the Fuze is really nice, but I guess I can settle with last.fm or pandora (a comparison here).

Fuze allows me to do a lot of stuff without worrying about hacking the device. But for stuff you’d like to do on iPhone, you’re out of luck if there isn’t an application for it, and you just don’t know what will strike a nerve on Apple (or their buddy AT&T) so it doesnpt allow it, like “Netshare”, and “Flash”. You even have to jailbreak your iPhone for some basic functionalities, such as zooming in camera and video recording, etc.

iPhone is like a toy computer with simplified and enlarged keys and one-click buttons for kids, built-in goodies and plug-ins. What really won me over is the screen size and ease of use. Fuze has full QWERTY keyboard, but the device can get really sluggish, and requires way more reboots.

This blog probably is more like one whines about “why I can’t get better of both worlds”, rather than a true comparison, but if you’re like me, you’ll understand.

I love both Fuze and iPhone, but for now, my heart goes to iPhone. It not you guys, it’s me.

Tags: comparison, fuze, htc fuze, iphone