Which phone rivals the iphone 4

Latest Insider. Check out the latest Insider stories here. More from the IDG Network. Power ranks iPhone No. Corporations go gaga over Android. Android has even allowed Sony Ericsson to get back into the game.

For several years the company and its lacklustre range of phones have been losing market share; now the company is back with the Android-based Xperia Arc S - a well-built and user-friendly phone that can compete with most rivals.

Google is also constantly updating Android, and provides the software free to manufacturers. This is not charitable behaviour, of course. Google search is deeply integrated into Android phones, providing healthy profits from clicks on sponsored search results although a few network operators have begun to point customers to different search engines. The rise and rise of Android is reflected in the market share. According to research firm Gartner, during the second quarter of Android captured a massive In contrast, Apple's iPhone software iOS gained just four percentage points to The big losers are Nokia's Symbian smartphones, Blackberry maker RIM - and Microsoft who is struggling to gain traction for its new mobile operating system Windows Phone 7.

Despite Android's advances, Apple still dominates the "mindshare" of the smartphone market. This is less a function of the many Apple fans amongst tech journalists. It's more a question of first-mover advantage and, most importantly, branding.

Dozens of manufacturers are now selling numerous Android phones, ranging from the cheap and cheerful to the high end of the market. Apple and its network partners can focus all marketing around a single brand and - now - two devices. No wonder that the iPhone is still seen by many as the benchmark against which other smartphones have to be measured - even though the new iPhone 4S has arguably failed to raise this benchmark in a significant manner.

Some of the new features on the 4S have been standard on Android phones for many months. The lack of a big "and one more thing" unveiling by Apple's new chief executive will have been greeted with loud sighs of relief by rivals. Still, any move by Apple creates headaches for competitors. By trying our damnedest to focus only on the more practical pros and cons of these top handsets, specifically from the POV of someone who listens to a lot of music on their phone.

We're talking about someone who likely prefers high-bitrate recordings and who is ready to spend money on something better than the earbuds or EarPods that come in the box. There'll also be some consideration of the iPhone 4 , Nokia Lumia and PureView , although it'll be more condensed. And yes, we'll end up with an overall winner, but the research here is about more than that. Different phones may suit different people, depending on their priorities. Moreover, new handsets are just around the corner -- the Lumia , the Note II , the LG Optimus G and whatever other goodies the future undoubtedly holds -- and so it makes sense to have a bed of knowledge against which new entrants can be judged.

Then let's get started. You'll find a total of four tests here, each with a different approach and each with its own winners and losers:. First impressions. These are totally subjective and simply involve me listening to a range of tracks on each device, using a pair of in-ear headphones, and then jotting down some notes.

These guys test audio equipment for a living, in everything from concert halls to train stations, and we're grateful for their time and expertise. Guided listening tests, which were still subjective but at least had some discipline to them, and which were again conducted under the auspices of AMS Acoustics. These tests also brought in the opinions of a totally independent witness: Chris Nicolaides, an AMS audio engineer, who is normal enough to regard both the iPhone 5 and the GS III as "just more phones.

A brief round-up comparison of battery life, storage, pricing and software from an audiophile perspective. Note: the iPhone 5 in this review was running on the Vodafone UK network. It's possible that slightly different audio hardware is used in other variants.

As mentioned, the idea here was to make some rapid and purely subjective judgments about the way these smartphones sound. I did that using a pair of top-end Sennheiser IE in-ears, which are characterized by low impedance 16 ohms and high sensitivity -- in other words, it's easy to make them go loud even if you have a low-power audio source like a smartphone.

Given that these Senns are so easy to drive, it shouldn't come as a big surprise that all the smartphones tested came off pretty well. In fact, it's not going too far to say that if you use in-ears with similar properties to these, and if you're only ever likely to use these types of headphones, then you may as well pick your handset based on other factors, because audio quality isn't a big enough deal to accept or reject any of them.

The two older iPhones caught my attention on quiet classical tracks because I noticed that they could both go really loud without adding much extra hiss i. The HTC One X stood out in more rhythmic types of music like hip-hop and dance because it had great stereo imaging -- you could really hear different degrees of left and right -- and somehow it also accentuated little details that weren't always apparent on the other handsets.

The only downside of the One X was that it added quite a lot of hiss. What about the iPhone 5? Well, it was fine on the whole, but I did notice something holding it back: you had to push the volume a good few notches higher just to get the same output level as the 4 or 4S.

Doing this caused the iPhone 5's on-screen volume display to turn a stress-inducing red color, which is arguably not what you need when you're trying to chill out to some chill-out. More importantly, the volume hit its max limit sooner, making the 5 a quieter phone all-round. Apple has consistently maintained that running several programs at once eats up the battery. So iOS4 permits multitasking of certain important functions — for example, Internet radio can keep playing, and GPS apps can keep updating, while you work in other programs.

Other apps go into suspended animation when you switch out of them. Second, when you give the Home button a quick double-press, a new app switcher appears at the bottom of the screen. Here are icons for all your recent apps including the ones you suspended. After three versions of iPhones, you can finally jump directly from one app to another without a layover at the Home screen.

The third big change: you can now file your apps into folders. You drag one icon atop another to create a folder containing them both. Each folder can hold 12 icons, meaning that download-aholics can now install 2, apps on a single iPhone. Those over 40 can now bump up the type size for e-mail, notes, text messages and address book entries. The Mail app can group your messages into threads back-and-forths on a single subject , and you can view all your e-mail accounts in a single Inbox.

A new spelling checker lets you tap an underlined word to see correction suggestions. The new iPhone software, in other words, is sweet and free, and you should not hesitate to get it.