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iPhone 4 alternatives: How the other half lives

You’ve seen pictures of the iPhone 4, you’ve read about the iPhone 4 and you like the sound of the iPhone 4. You might have even thought about buying an iPhone 4 before you took a look at the asking price and those tariffs. Pretty expensive, right? Don’t fear though, we’ve delved into our data banks to find the best iPhone 4 alternatives.

Out now

HTC Desire – Its 3.7-inch AMOLED display is larger that the iPhone 4’s 3.5-inch screen. Camerawise the HTC Desire boasts 5-megapixels with an LED flash but it’s worth noting that it doesn’t record HD video.

The HTC Desire is due a free upgrade to Android 2.2 (Froyo) in the near future. This promises to increase the already impressive multitasking performance and web browsing experience of the phone.

Despite being festooned with hunderds of low quality apps there is some great stuff in the Android Market. It’s still a way off from matching the iPhone’s App Store, but it’s getting there.

Samsung Galaxy S – Much has been made about the iPhone 4’s slimness (9.3mm – currently the slimmest in the world) and although the Samsung Galaxy S’s 9.9mm waist can’t beat this it comes pretty close. It’s wafer thin and it feels very light.

Those extra 0.6mm may be worth it though. The ultra-sharp and vibrant Super-AMOLED of the Galaxy S competes well with the iPhone 4’s Retina Display and is a whopping 4-inches in size; half an inch bigger than the iPhone 4’s offering.

On the back of the Galaxy S you’ll find a 5-megapixel camera which is capable of shooting HD video.It doesn’t come with a flash unfortunately, which means shots in low light won’t be great.

Unlike the iPhone 4 both the Desire and Galaxy S supprt microSD cards, which means you can expand the internal memory very easily.

The Desire and the Galaxy S are available for free on contracts starting from £30/£35 a month respectively.

Coming soon

The Motorola Milestone XT720 and Nokia N8 come with HD recording and editing facilities and HDMI outputs – which the iPhone 4 doesn’t have – allowing you to watch your HD creations on any HD Ready TV set.

Megapixellage isn’t everything but in case you’re wondering, the XT720 has an 8-megapixel camera and the N8 has a 12-megapixel one. Useful to know if you ever plan on printing out house-sized pictures of your mates.

The Nokia N8 isn’t an Android phone of course – it runs on the new Symbian^3 OS and is the first phone to do so. We had a quick go with Symbian^3 and it’s ok, not revolutionary but it works.

Memory-wise you get 16GB of on-board memory which can be increased via a microSD card. The XT720 packs only 512MB but luckily it’s microSDHC compliant, meaning that it’ll be able to take 32GB cards.

No release dates for the Motorola Milestone XT720 or the Nokia N8 have been given yet but it is thought that the Nokia N8 will arrive in the UK this August.

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