Lend yourself a touch of class

With many modern mobile phones, making a call can feel as complicated as negotiating the control panel of the space shuttle. The profusion of fiddly multi-function buttons means one false press can have you accidentally taking a photo, opening a web browser or turning the phone into a sat nav unit.

So what’s the solution? Ditch the keypad, bin the buttons and replace the whole lot with a touchscreen that has colourful icons to prod and simple lists to flick through.

Touchscreens look clean and modern, afford plenty of room for viewing photos or videos and dispense with the need for tiny, childlike fingers to accurately dial a number. The best touchphones can even respond to certain gestures, such as making a pinching motion across the screen of the iPhone to make a page shrink before your eyes.

Although Apple’s iPhone wasn’t the first touchscreen mobile, its launch last year galvanised other phone makers into releasing their own touch-sensitive handsets. The result is that there are now touchphones to suit all tastes – if not all budgets – so the new 3G iPhone finds itself up against some stiff competition.

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Large, colourful touchscreens are much more expensive to make than traditional displays, so they tend to be found on high-end handsets bristling with advanced features. We tested six touchphones using two different kinds of touchscreen. Resistive touchscreens – found here on the HTC, Palm and Sony Ericsson – can be used with a finger, a stylus or even the end of a pencil, but they don’t provide a particularly crisp image.

Capacitive touchscreens, on the other hand, give greater clarity but work by means of your fingers interrupting a weak electric field. Unfortunately, a stylus or gloved hand is useless, as it doesn’t affect the current. Capacitive screens are found on the iPhone, LG and Samsung.

Some touchphones also have conventional keys. The Sony Ericsson and LG have small number-pads, while the Palm Centro squeezes on an entire miniature qwerty keyboard – time to call back those pin-fingered kids. The Samsung doesn’t have real keys but goes some way towards emulating them by vibrating each time a virtual key is pressed.

Speed is critical on a touchscreen. The HTC and Sony Ericsson proved slow in our tests, while the iPhone and Palm were most responsive. Excluding the Palm phone, all the units tested were 3G-compatible, which provides much faster web surfing and e-mail retrieval – as long as you’re in a 3G area, of course. All but the Sony Ericsson worked with the latest, superfast 3G technology known as HSDPA, although coverage of this service outside big cities remains rather patchy in the UK.

The iPhone, Sony Ericsson and HTC have wi-fi for connecting to the internet using hotspots or wireless home networks. The iPhone and HTC handsets also have GPS for navigation, but be warned that this drains batteries at a ferocious rate.

The LG, Palm and Samsung phones have enough internal memory to store your contacts and messages and take some pictures. To store more music and video, you’ll need to slot in a microSD card (about £15 for 4GB). The other phones have much more internal storage, but no card slot for further expansion. That’s fine with the 8GB and 16GB iPhones and the 8GB Sony Ericsson, but you could well eventually run out of space with the 4GB HTC.

Touchphones aren’t for everyone. They are usually larger and heavier than normal phones, have a shorter battery life (four hours of talk time is typical) and often make texting slow. Even making a call can become problematic if the screen reacts to the pressure of your ear.

If you want a phone to flick through thousands of tunes, watch movies on the move or browse the web, the iPhone 3G, LG Secret or Samsung Tocco are useful, easy and fun to use. If you have less money to spend and don’t mind a slower 2.5G connection, you’ll find the Centro is great value, particularly as it has a real keyboard for easier messaging. But if you spend most of your mobile life writing texts or making calls, you’ll probably find these touchscreen divas rather ungainly and overpriced.

One last thing: all the phones here can be had more cheaply, or even for free, if you sign up to a monthly contract. Mobile networks subsidise expensive handsets in the expectation of earning back more in call and data charges over the life of a contract. As an example, it’s believed that AT&T – the iPhone’s network in the United States – buys phones from Apple for $499 (£254) each and sells them to customers, with a contract, for $199 (£101) in the expectation of making back at least $300 (£153) on each phone.

JARGON BUSTER

Accelerometer Motion sensor that rotates display depending on position in which the phone is held
Capacitive touchscreen High quality, operated by fingers, not a stylus
HSDPA Latest 3G technology with near-broadband speeds
Resistive touchscreen Lower quality, for use with a stylus or fingers

BIG AND BEAUTIFUL

Apple iPhone 3G – pay-as-you-go price to be confirmed
Feature-packed but not perfect

The new iPhone 3G, which goes on sale on July 11 in 8GB and 16GB versions, looks as good and handles as smoothly as the original, and has the same bright, colourful 3.5in touchscreen. Of our six phones, the iPhone gave the best web-surfing experience – via 3G or wi-fi – and adds GPS to the already impressive maps feature. You can now “tag” photos with their location, although the 2Mp camera is basic and doesn’t shoot video. Contrary to many predictions, there is no front camera for 3G video calling, though, and the original model’s tricky text messaging remains. The virtual keypad is clumsy but it does have smart automatic error correction. The largest, heaviest (133g) phone here, it’s also the most usable and satisfying one.

SLIDE IN STYLE

LG Secret – typically £400, or £350 from www.mobilefun.co.uk
Stylish hybrid of traditional and touch menus

If you like the comfort and speed of using real number keys, the tough, carbon fibre 3G Secret offers the best of both worlds, for behind its touchscreen lurks a normal, backlit keypad. A menu option makes the 2.4in display touch-sensitive for easy scrolling and zooming, but only for five features: music, photos, document viewer, FM radio and games. There are also touch-sensitive lights on the side that change function depending on what you’re doing. A built-in accelerometer rotates the screen when you tip the phone, and it’s also used for motion-controlled games ranging from mazes to fishing. The Secret is slim and quite light (116g), and includes a 5Mp camera. A smooth operator overall, with a good balance of virtual buttons and real keys.

SMALL BUT FEISTY

Samsung Tocco – typically £400, or £310 from www.allorange.co.uk
Slim, user-friendly cameraphone

This compact 3G touchphone (106g) will suit those for whom the iPhone is too big. The Tocco fits the hand well and lets you customise its 2.8in touchscreen to show or hide the clock, reminders and alarms. The 5Mp camera has face detection and a shutter that is triggered automatically when your subject smiles. There’s no danger of it threatening real cameras, but it’s quite an advanced snapper for a mobile phone. You can configure the vibrating “haptic” feedback from nothing to a fierce buzz, making its virtual buttons feel almost as responsive as real ones. Text messaging is let down by virtual keys that are too close together, and it’s too easy to quit messages accidentally. Battery life is weak, too.

FORM OVER FUNCTION

HTC Touch Diamond– typically £500 or £425 from www.handtec.co.uk
Powerful but slow smartphone

The 3G Touch Diamond’s 2.8in display is bright and the sharpest on test. Some of the touch controls, such as the image zoom, are similar to those on the iPhone, although flicking through tunes and lists is not particularly slick or involving. There’s a Rolodex-style contacts directory and an accelerometer that mutes the ringtone if the phone is left face-down. The lightweight Touch Diamond (110g) has a decent 3.2Mp camera, wi-fi for hotspot surfing and GPS, but its modest 4GB of storage can’t be expanded, and texting with the virtual keyboard can be tricky. Also, some of the Windows-based software is very slow, although the HTC does come with a quantity of programs that befits a proper smartphone.

NO FRILLS FUN

Palm Centro – typically £200, or £165 from www.pixmania.co.uk
Cheap and effective 2.5G touchphone

This affordable touchphone is capable, accessible and fast to use, particularly when finding contacts or appointments with the search function. The screen has short cuts to e-mail, a music player and Google, and its compact, backlit qwerty keypad makes for quicker text-message and e-mail composition. You can dial using either the keypad or the screen, and a handy option lets you reject a call with a polite text message. The handset is not 3G, though, so web browsing can be slow, although it is fast enough for checking simple e-mails. The Palm betrays its budget origins with its smaller (2¼in), less than pin-sharp touchscreen, basic 1.3Mp camera and chunky (124g) design.

SOUNDS COME FIRST

Sony Ericsson W960i – typically £400 or £350 from www.play.com
Good music phone, cumbersome menus

This Walkman-branded 3G phone puts music first with its good-quality earphones, generous 8GB of storage and dedicated music buttons. Away from the tunes, though, the W960i feels a touch confused. Its 2.6in touchscreen is disappointing, lacking both clarity and brightness, and the backlit number pad has awkwardly flat, cramped keys, so it’s no quicker to write texts and e-mails than it is with the best virtual keyboards on test. Even a thumb-friendly, side-mounted jog dial can’t help menus that are bafflingly put together and slow to react to the touch. Finally, battery life on this fat, though not heavy (116g), phone is below average, giving just three hours of talk time between charges.

Reviews by David Phelan.
Prices are for pay-as-you-go phones and include Vat but not delivery