Top 10 Touch Screen Smartphones

It’s taken a little while, but finally, touch screen interface has become a pretty mainstream thing. In the past it would have been difficult to comprise a list of the top 10 touch screen phones, but with all of the options available to-date, it now isn't an issue at all.

The whole touch screen phenomena began back in 2007 with the release of the original Apple iPhone. I can still remember all of the hype. People pre-ordered their iPhones months in advance. At the time, I couldn’t justify the price tag, but with the beautiful 3.5-inch Multi Touch screen with pinch and zoom features, a sleek, gorgeous design, finger-friendly interface and an incredible Web experience, I understood why so many people were counting down the days until the iPhone’s release.

The iPhone displayed all of the potential that the mobile carrier market could tap into concerning keyboard-free phones. After the iPhone was released, every major mobile phone manufacturer decided to take a chance on designing their own versions of touch screen smartphones. Some were obviously very successful, but others…not so much. There are some smartphones that have users begging to have a physical keyboard back, but there are others who have users saying they’ll never go back to a keyboard again. There are some smartphones that offer the best of both worlds, by having a touch screen and a slide out keyboard, but the top 10 touch screen phones listed below are strictly touch screen with no keyboard. If you’re willing to sacrifice physical keys and go completely touch, then here are some phones to consider.

AT&T

Apple iPhone 4
The original touch screen smartphone is still going strong four years later. The iPhone 4 is sleek, gorgeous and offers so many different features. It has an incredibly fast processor, tons of apps, one of the best media experiences and a great camera. On AT&T it does have some reception issues and limited FaceTime video calling, but overall it is an awesome phone.

HTC Inspire 4G
Touch screen smartphones can be pretty expensive most of the time, but the Inspire is a very inexpensive exception. It is extremely powerful and features a vast amount of built-in apps and features. There are some issues with the Inspire’s “4G” speeds though. It just seems a little underwhelming.

Motorola Atrix 4G
The Atrix is an incredibly fast and powerful phone. It has a beautiful screen and incredible design. Different optional docks can even easily turn the Atrix into a desktop or laptop PC; however, despite these cool features, the smartphone can be a little buggy and the laptop dock for the Atrix is way overpriced.

Sprint

HTC EVO 4G
The EVO was the first WiMAX phone and is perfect for someone who is always on the Internet. It features excellent Web browsers with some Flash. It also has as great touch screen, two different cameras and Wi-Fi hotspot mode. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the best voice quality and the 4G coverage is pretty limited, but other than that it is a fantastic phone.

LG Optimus S
The Optimus S has tons of great features including Android 2.2, very valuable Sprint ID interface enhancements, mobile hotspot and really good battery life. The issues with this phone are that it doesn’t have the best screen resolution, CPU or camera, and the screen is just a bit small. Overall, the Optimus is a pretty good budget Android phone.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile myTouch 4G
The myTouch is incredibly well constructed and has incredible features including: the latest processor, Wi-Fi calling, hotspot mode and voice commands. The only issues with this smartphone are that it has some problems with bloatware and the fact that not everyone may like the UI skin.

Samsung Galaxy S 4G
The Galaxy S is absolutely gorgeous. It also is really fast with 4G HSPA+ data speeds, excellent music and video and a great battery life. The only real issue with this smartphone is that its TV app is a little buggy, but otherwise it’s a fantastic phone.

Verizon Wireless

HTC Thunderbolt
Verizon has been heavily promoting the Thunderbolt, and why not? This smartphone has lightning fast Internet speeds, a gorgeous design, simply elegant interface and lots of storage. The phone is incredible besides the fact that it is a little on the heavy side, occasional bugs and a pretty poor battery life when users are surfing or streaming on 4G.

Motorola Droid X
Droids hit the market as the iPhone’s competition, and they have done a pretty good job of stepping up to the plate. The Droid X features an incredibly fast processor, Wi-Fi hotspot mode, Bluetooth voice dialing, fantastic reception and noise cancellation. For some the Droid is just a little too big and bulky. There also is no way to turn off Blur and it won’t play HD content over an HDMI cable. These really aren’t huge issues though. The Droid X is the most powerful Android smartphone aside from the HTC Droid Incredible.

Apple iPhone 4
So, a short time ago, Verizon broke the barriers and began offering the Apple iPhone 4 right alongside AT&T. Verizon’s version has all of the same incredible features that AT&T’s iPhone offers, except for the lack of 4G on Verizon’s phone. Overall, it functions just as well as AT&T’s iPhone, so I guess it just depends on which service carrier you prefer and whether or not you really want 4G.

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Free Smartphones at Best Buy All December

Best Buy is offering an absolutely amazing deal right now. On Friday, December 3rd, they kicked off their latest smartphone promotion. They said that they will be offering at least four free smartphones every single day through the month of December.

Best Buy will be offering a phone from each of the four major U.S. wireless providers. On Friday Best Buy's deals consisted of Verizon’s HTC Droid Incredible, AT&T’s Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, Sprint’s LG Optimus S, and T-Mobile’s LG Optimus T.

To get the deal from Best Buy, customers have to sign up for a new two-year contract, or they must upgrade their existing account for another two years. Best Buy says that they will only have a limited number of devices in their stores for the promotion. The offer is also not retroactive.

These free smartphones will be available from all of the Best Buy stores, all 157 Best Buy Mobile specialty stores, and on Best Buy’s website.

"We were excited by the amount of consumer interest we received around our 'Free Phone Fridays' promotion in October, so we wanted to do it again only bigger," President of Best Buy Shawn Score said in a statement. "People want smartphones and we couldn't think of a better way to end the year for our customers than to offer free devices every day in December."

Best Buy did something similar to this in October where they offered free smartphones on every Friday of the month, and luckily for those who are looking to upgrade their phones, the retailer expanded it to every day of the month in December.

This is a great deal that anyone who is a customer of the top four U.S. wireless service providers can take advantage of. I know that I definitely need a phone upgrade and will definitely be looking into the deals that Best Buy is offering. If you need a new phone, be sure to check out Best Buy.

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AT&T Brings New BlackBerrys to Their Smartphone Line Up

On Wednesday AT&T announced that they have added the 3G versions of the BlackBerry Curve and Pearl to their lineup of smartphones. As of October 17th, the BlackBerry Pearl 3G 9100 will be available online and in AT&T stores for $149.99 with a two year contract.

The Pearl is two inches wide and weighs 3.3 ounces. This smartphone supports Wi-Fi and GPS and features an optical trackpad and a 3.2 megapixel camera with flash. It also has a redesigned SureType QWERTY keyboard, 360 x 400 pixel high resolution display, dedicated music keys, and support of a microSD card that supports up to 32GB of content.

It has not been announced yet when exactly the BlackBerry Curve 3G 9300 will be available from AT&T. It should be available before the holiday season for $99.99 with a two year contract. It includes a full QWERTY keyboard, optical trackpad, built-in GPS, 2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, and a microSD card that supports 32GB of memory.

AT&T U-verse customers will have the ability to download the U-verse app onto their BlackBerry Curve. This app lets customers manage their DVRs at home and even download certain shows via the Wi-Fi connection and watch them on their smartphone.
AT&T has said that the BlackBerry Curve 3G will support the new BlackBerry 6 OS, but that unfortunately it will not be available for the Curve for several months.

It’s exciting to see AT&T add these amazing BlackBerrys to their smartphone lineup. They have so many great features to offer. They are the perfect smartphone for someone that doesn’t want to deal with a touch screen.

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24 Hour Android Sale

Wirefly, the online site that sells discount mobile devices, is having a 24 hour Android sale that only lasts until this Thursday at midnight. They are offering amazing deals on some incredible phones. You can pick up the Motorola Backflip or the HTC Aria for free when you set up a new account with AT&T. You can also get the Sony Xperia or the Samsung Captivate for only $49.99. All you have to decide is which phone fits your needs the best.

Motorola Backflip
The Backflip features a great keyboard and has a battery life of about seven and a half hours of continuous talk time. MotorBlur also integrates e-mail and social networking quite nicely.

HTC Aria
This Android phone from HTC is absolutely adorable, and it is incredibly fast. It also has an excellent 5-megapixel camera. It is being called the first “usable” Android phone from AT&T.

Sony Xperia
The Xperia is great on battery life. It runs a little bit over 7 hours of continuous talk time. It also has a fantastic camera and great video playback. Sony gave the Xperia a slim, chic feel and plenty of features to make it a great choice.

Samsung Captivate
People are calling Samsung’s Captivate the top Android phone from AT&T and quite possibly the best alternative to the iPhone. It’s sleek, fast, and powerful. It has a big bright screen and tons of great apps.

You better hurry because this sale won’t last much longer. These are some excellent deals on some fantastic phones. Wirefly is the place to go if your looking for a new Android phone.

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AT&T's Much Needed Android Smartphone: The Captivate

AT&T has finally come out with a much-needed Android smartphone. As one of the four major cell phone providers in America, AT&T was the only network truly lacking in the Android smartphone area. They no longer have this problem though thanks to the new Samsung Captivate. The Captivate is part of the Galaxy S series by Samsung and is by far AT&T's most dominant and feature-rich Android device. It has some really exciting features and is a great alternative to the iPhone 4.

The appearance of the Captivate is really nothing special, but the design is clean, simple and it gets the job done. The device is fairly large at 4.18 x 2.5 inches, but it is quite thin. It is only 0.39 inches deep and easily slips into your pocket. The Captivate is a very well constructed phone and feels very solid in your hand, but at the same time, it also feels sleek and modern.

The front of the smartphone is mostly taken up by the extraordinary 4-inch Super AMOLED touch screen. This screen supports 16 million colors and a WVGA resolution of 480 x 800. The Captivate’s touch screen is one of the best-looking touch screens to be seen on a smartphone. It is truly brilliant. The coloring is incredibly vibrant and has a great sharpness that makes texts incredibly easy to read. Samsung’s decision to use the Super AMOLED screen presents several advantages. It has wider viewing angles, improved responsiveness, and also consumes less power. The scrolling experience on the Captivate is very smooth and supports the pinch-to-zoom feature. The display also possesses a six-axis accelerometer, which is quite useful for gaming. It is even quick to change the screen orientation whenever the phone is rotated.

The Captivate has four buttons on the front of the phone located below the screen: menu, home, back, and search. All four buttons are touch-sensitive. On the left side there is a volume adjustment button, and on the right is the power/lock button. Conveniently located on the top of the phone is a 3.5mm headphone jack and a Micro-USB port, and as usual, the camera is found on the back of the device.

As mentioned earlier, the Captivate is part of Samsung’s Galaxy S series and therefore runs Android 2.1 with Samsung's TouchWiz 3.0 interface. Samsung has worked really hard to re-vamp this program. They have enhanced the functionality and given it a more polished look. They also added new widgets including one called Feeds & Updates and another called Buddies Now. The Feeds & Update widget streams updates from Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. It has the capability to display content from one, two, or all three of the social-networking sites at once. The Buddies Now widget allows you to immediately call or text the contacts from your Facebook, Twitter, or MySpaces pages or comment on any of their updates. There are also a number of other Samsung and Android widgets and other shortcuts available.

The Samsung Captivate also comes equipped with a variety of features including: speakerphone, conference calling, voice dialing, text and multimedia messaging, and a full range of wireless options for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G, and GPS. It also gives you access to AT&T's Wi-Fi hot spots and a hot-spot locator app. The Captivate is also compatible with Gmail, POP3 and IMAP, Microsoft Exchange, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

This magical little device also provides quite a nice list of available apps including a Write and Go app. The Write and Go app lets you compose a message on a notepad then send it to yourself whether it be by way of SMS, an e-mail, or a status update. Other apps include: Mini Diary app, Mobile Banking, Where, Yellow Pages Mobile, instant-messaging clients for Google Talk, AIM, Windows Live, Yahoo, a calculator, a voice recorder, and a memo pad. There are also several AT&T-specific services, such as AT&T Music and Video, AT&T Radio, AT&T FamilyMap, and AT&T Navigator. There are even more apps that you can obtain through the Android Market.

The camera on the Captivate is 5-megapixels and has an HD video camera. You have the ability to adjust the white balance and even add effects. The camera also offers lots of editing options like ISO settings, antishake, and blink and smile detection. One odd thing about the Captivate’s camera is that it is strangely missing a flash. This causes outdoor and night photos to be fairly poor, and the night setting doesn’t do much to help the situation. Despite the camera being a disappointment, the HD video camera is still very impressive.

The Captivate comes with a 1,500mAh lithium ion battery with a talk time rate of 5 hours and 50 minutes and up to 12.5 days of standby time. The battery should be able to easily get you though a whole day of checking e-mail, playing music, and browsing the Web. It’s well equipped with Samsung's 1GHz Hummingbird Cortex A8 processor. Every once and awhile there may be a very brief delay when exiting out of an app, but as a whole, the smartphone is extremely quick.

The Samsung Captivate is currently available from AT&T as of July 18 for $199.99 with a two-year contract. This is really a good buy with all the features it has to offer!

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