The Feature battle for 2010 has begun! So far, we have the Nokia N900, HTC HD2, and Motorola Droid either out already, or coming very soon to the states. All three phones are promising to be the next “iPhone Killer”, and (on paper, at least), are all formidable in their own right.

If you’ve been keeping up with the reviews and the hype, you should already be aware of most of the info in this article. Note—I’m not providing a hands-on p/review of any of these phones, just compiling information from other reviewers to give you my take on these competitors. I may end up doing a hands-on video and review of the N900 and HD2 as soon as they are both available. I haven’t been able to decide which I prefer, so will probably end up getting both (N900 for personal, HD2 for business).

Out of the three, the Nokia N900 and Motorola Droid both have physical Qwerty keyboards, along with virtual on-screen keyboards for those moments that you don’t feel like taking the 0.002 seconds to pop it out from under the phone. The HD2 relies on an all-virtual typing experience, but the keyboard in HTC’s new Windows 6.5-based Sense UI has been heralded as the best virtual keyboard on SmartPhones to date.

Physically, the HD2 has been winning out for the large, gorgeous 4.3” screen and thin form factor. The Droid is second in line, described as being “so utilitarian that it’s hawt”. The N900 is a bit thicker than the competition, and doesn’t as high a resolution. It is advantaged, however, by the hardware acceleration built into the hardware.

There is one clear winner if you are looking for processor speeds. The N900 and Droid are running at 600mghz and 550mghz, respectively, while the HD2 is packing a netbook-grade 1ghz Snapdragon processor.

You can have all of the processing power in the world, but if your Operating System doesn’t know how to make use of it, you’re better off just getting a “Free with Contract” dumbphone or featurephone. As mentioned above, the HD2 is riding on the Windows 6.5 wagon. Sure, Windows Mobile has been pretty bland in the last couple of iterations, but HTC has been able to shake things up by completely revamping the OS into their very touch-friendly SenseUI (currently used on the Hero and other Android phones). It does the trick with regard to looks, but ends up lagging a bit more than the N900 and Droid. This has been accredited mostly to the RAM-hungry OS (and the pretty new overlay doesn’t help in this regard).

The Nokia N900 is rocking Maemo 5.0. This is a linux-based mobile OS that allows multitasking and looks great, but doesn’t have the app library the Windows and Android boast of. Since this is a very ‘open-source’ OS, you can be sure that the app market will grow quickly in the months following the N900’s release.  The Droid got its name from its OS, Google’s Android. We’ve seen plenty of Android mania and phones in recent months, but the Droid is one step above the rest of its cousins- Motorola is releasing this phone with Android 2.0 (multi-touch support, less lag, and some of the bugs have been fixed). Like Maemo, Android is still a fairly young mobile operating system, but already boasts a much larger library of applications and developer support. This OS isn’t expected to go anywhere soon, and as hardware speeds keep increasing you can expect to see the apps to only get more robust.

To decide which phone is ‘the’ phone, you must get past all of the marketing hype and decide what it is that you’ll be using your phone for. If you are needing a smartphone primarily to keep up with the endless onslaught of work-related emails, spreadsheets, and reports, then a Windows (or RIM BlackBerry, preferably) would be a better solution. Most business users (and CTOs) prefer these operating systems because of the easy MS Exchange support. If you want a phone to use as a gaming platform while on the go, just suck it up and get the iPhone. None of the currently discussed phones will have the same amount of support from the gaming sector. Android has attracted some developers, but not enough big names to qualify as a gaming OS. As far as hardware goes, the N900 hardware is very similar to that of the iPhone, and includes OpenGL support. This allows OpenGL-based titles like Quake III to be easily ported over to the handset.

Surfing the internet using your phone is something that most SmartPhone users do, but is still not as comfortable and convenient as using a computer. Mobile browser developers have been working on improving the mobile internet experience for years now, and this quarter’s top three (touch) SmartPhones are no exception. The N900 is supposed to be an Internet Tablet right out of the box.. Does it live up to the hype? From all indications, Nokia and the Maemo crew have not taken this phone’s browsing experience lightly. The phone includes out-of-the-box Flash 10 support (Now we play many FB games on a handset!) While the phone does not have multi-touch, using a simple “Spiral in/out” gesture will allow you to see the pages you are viewing in more detail.

I am currently a BlackBerry user, but didn’t include reviews of any new and up-and-coming BB’s for one simple reason- the only touch-based BB phone is the Storm (and now the Storm 2); daily users and tech reviewers alike have had the same opinion- the Storm is nice, but too gimmicky to be an end-all device. The Storm fixed many of the hardware and software issues, but to me still seems like it’s a response to all of the other touchscreen phones out there, rather than an industry-leading platform. If the 9700 (the replacement for my current phone, the Bold) would have incorporated a capacitive touch screen, it would have definitely been my upgrade of choice. But, alas, size constraints and battery life have kept RIM from going into this direction, nice as it would have been.

If I were spewing out the specs of my dream phone, it would probably end up looking something like this:

Maemo or Android w/ HTC’s SenseUI

1ghz Snapdragon (or the 1.2Ghz TBA)

3.8” Capacitive Touchscreen

1gb Ram (All physical)

64gb Internal Storage** (upgradeable to 96gb via 32gb MicroSD)

Quadband, support for 3g, Edge, etc OR LTE, CDMA

WiFi (Wireless-N compatible)

8MP Rear Camera, Dual LED Flash, 1.2MP Front-facing Camera

5 line staggered Backlit (Dual/Multi Color) Physical Keyboard

Optical Trackpad (BlackBerry 9700 style) on front.

**Note – a requirement of the storage is that ALL of the internal memory be available for applications. The only phone that has been able to accomplish this (to my knowledge) has been the iPhone- all of the other platforms only provide between 128mb and 1gb of application memory, severely limiting application size and options.

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