For months before I upgrade my mobile phone, I will sit and research all the current phones and phones due for release. Firstly, there is no doubt that it will be a smart-phone. According to Gartner, smart-phones accounted for 23.6% of all mobile phones sales in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 85.6% year-on-year. Then it comes down to which of the major smart-phone OSes you support: Android, iOS, Blackberry OS, Windows Mobile, Palm or Symbian?

In the last two years or so, a lot has changed in the world of smart-phones as can be seen by the data available from Comscore and Gartner. If you analyse worldwide smart-phone sales from 2009 to present, things are very interesting indeed. In the days before Cupcake (version 1.5) and Donut (version 1.6), when the only Android phone was the HTC Dream (G1), in the first quarter of 2009, Android only had 1.6% of the world smart-phone market. By quarter one, a year later, in 2010, they were close to 10%, and had climbed above Microsoft and all the other OSes. Symbian, iOS and RIM were still the dominant players though. At this stage, Android phones coming out were on the Eclair (version 2.1) release of their OS and Froyo (2.2) was expected by quarter two of 2010. The only significant jump for the iOS was in quarter three of 2009 shortly after version 3.x of it’s OS was released in June 2009. By quarter three of 2010 though, there were two major changes visible in the sales of mobile phones, as both Android and iOS jumping above RIM and Android showing them both the way of things to come by jumping to the second spot, a massive 15.9% climb over 6 months.

For months before I upgrade my mobile phone, I will sit and research all the current phones and phones due for release. Firstly, there is no doubt that it will be a smart-phone. According to Gartner, smart-phones accounted for 23.6% of all mobile phones sales in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 85.6% year-on-year. Then it comes down to which of the major smart-phone OSes you support: Android, iOS, Blackberry OS, Windows Mobile, Palm or Symbian?

In the last two years or so, a lot has changed in the world of smart-phones as can be seen by the data available from Comscore and Gartner. If you analyse worldwide smart-phone sales from 2009 to present, things are very interesting indeed. In the days before Cupcake (version 1.5) and Donut (version 1.6), when the only Android phone was the HTC Dream (G1), in the first quarter of 2009, Android only had 1.6% of the world smart-phone market. By quarter one, a year later, in 2010, they were close to 10%, and had climbed above Microsoft and all the other OSes. Symbian, iOS and RIM were still the dominant players though. At this stage, Android phones coming out were on the Eclair (version 2.1) release of their OS and Froyo (2.2) was expected by quarter two of 2010. The only significant jump for the iOS was in quarter three of 2009 shortly after version 3.x of it’s OS was released in June 2009. By quarter three of 2010 though, there were two major changes visible in the sales of mobile phones, as both Android and iOS jumping above RIM and Android showing them both the way of things to come by jumping to the second spot, a massive 15.9% climb over 6 months.

In todays world with neck to neck competition between different mobile companies it is very difficult for the consumers to decide upon the right phone for them. If you are in the market for a new smartphone, the best option would be to buy an Android phone. Symbian is on its way to obsolescence, the iPhone is still prohibitively expensive (at least in India), and Windows Phone 7 devices are available only in the higher price bracket.

In this article, I will give present the best Android phones you can buy, in various price ranges. This post is focused on Indian buyers, but is relevant for anyone looking for an Android smartphone buying guide, anywhere in the world.

Let me take some of them for our reference (Don’t forget to see for Nokia 500)

Samsung
Nokia
HTC
LG
Spice

Best Android Smartphones

In todays world with neck to neck competition between different mobile companies it is very difficult for the consumers to decide upon the right phone for them. If you are in the market for a new smartphone, the best option would be to buy an Android phone. Symbian is on its way to obsolescence, the iPhone is still prohibitively expensive (at least in India), and Windows Phone 7 devices are available only in the higher price bracket.

In this article, I will give present the best Android phones you can buy, in various price ranges. This post is focused on Indian buyers, but is relevant for anyone looking for an Android smartphone buying guide, anywhere in the world.

Let me take some of them for our reference (Don’t forget to see for Nokia 500)

Samsung
Nokia
HTC
LG
Spice

Best Android Smartphones

The Samsung Galaxy S II – successor of the popular Galaxy S and brand new flagship device from Samsung. After a long period of monopoly from Nokia, its time to look out for many other brands who are very well doing in the market. Samsung is one of the main competator of Nokia which is giving tough competetion.Samsung sure raised some eyebrows when they announced the SGS II, sporting some impressive features like a Dual Core ARMv7 1,2GHz processor, a super AMOLED plus display, Android 2.3 aka Gingerbread and lots and lots more. Yes I was impressed too, and with the HTC Sensation being a good device, but not completely what i wanted, I thought it was time to have a closer look at the Samsung Galaxy S II. There is a lot of demand for trial devices at Vodafone Austria (one could say now it is cause Samsung sent out a ridiculously low amount of devices), so my test period has shortened to just a week, so don’t expect an in-depth review, but rather some day-to-day impressions from the week i have spent with it. Will i miss it?

Hardware:

The Samsung Galaxy S II – successor of the popular Galaxy S and brand new flagship device from Samsung. After a long period of monopoly from Nokia, its time to look out for many other brands who are very well doing in the market. Samsung is one of the main competator of Nokia which is giving tough competetion.Samsung sure raised some eyebrows when they announced the SGS II, sporting some impressive features like a Dual Core ARMv7 1,2GHz processor, a super AMOLED plus display, Android 2.3 aka Gingerbread and lots and lots more. Yes I was impressed too, and with the HTC Sensation being a good device, but not completely what i wanted, I thought it was time to have a closer look at the Samsung Galaxy S II. There is a lot of demand for trial devices at Vodafone Austria (one could say now it is cause Samsung sent out a ridiculously low amount of devices), so my test period has shortened to just a week, so don’t expect an in-depth review, but rather some day-to-day impressions from the week i have spent with it. Will i miss it?

Hardware:

In this post, I will compare the Samsung Galaxy Tab, an Android tablet by Samsung which will be launched on September 2, and the Apple iPad, which is the best tablet available currently.

Display
The iPad has a 9.7-inch touchscreen display capable of 1024×768 resolution. As the smaller size mentioned above implies, the Galaxy Tab display is smaller. The Samsung tablet uses a 7-inch display originally thought to be limited to 800×600 resolution, but newer speculation is that it is 1024×600.

Processor
Apple designed a custom A4 processor for the iPad. It is a high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip running at 1GHz. Sources report that the Galaxy Tab will run on a similar 1GHz ARM processor.

Operating System
While the iPad runs a version of Apple’s iOS, the Galaxy Tab will run on its primary mobile OS competitor–Android. The iPad is currently stuck on yesterday’s iOS with version 3.2.2. It is slated to get an update to iOS 4 very soon, which will add functionality like nested folders and multitasking. The Galaxy Tab will reportedly come out of the gate with the cutting edge Android 2.2, a.k.a. “Froyo”.

Apps
Both the Apple and Android app stores have more than enough variety to meet the needs of virtually any user. Granted, the Apple App Store has crossed the 250,000 apps mark, while the Android Market lags somewhere around 100,000, but at some point it becomes like the Cold War nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union: how many times do you need to be able to blow up the whole planet?

Features
Many of the features are similar, but this is one area where the Galaxy Tab doesn’t just compare, but can set the bar for what to expect in the next-generation iPad. Based on the video, it appears that the Galaxy Tab has both front and rear-facing cameras, and is capable of video chat. The Galaxy Tab is also expected to support Adobe Flash, and possibly be able to play HD video.

Intangibles
When it comes to making an actual purchase, it rarely boils down to comparing spec sheets. There are intangible factors that come into play. How much does it cost? Which wireless providers support the device?
The Galaxy Tab will have the benefit of riding the wave of tablet demand created by the Apple iPad, but it is also at a disadvantage compared with the three million plus unit jumpstart the iPad has. Still, there are people who love Apple and iOS, and there are people who love Android. The Galaxy Tab looks to be a very capable device and will at least offer a worthy challenger in the tablet market.

In this post, I will compare the Samsung Galaxy Tab, an Android tablet by Samsung which will be launched on September 2, and the Apple iPad, which is the best tablet available currently.

Display
The iPad has a 9.7-inch touchscreen display capable of 1024×768 resolution. As the smaller size mentioned above implies, the Galaxy Tab display is smaller. The Samsung tablet uses a 7-inch display originally thought to be limited to 800×600 resolution, but newer speculation is that it is 1024×600.

Processor
Apple designed a custom A4 processor for the iPad. It is a high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip running at 1GHz. Sources report that the Galaxy Tab will run on a similar 1GHz ARM processor.

Operating System
While the iPad runs a version of Apple’s iOS, the Galaxy Tab will run on its primary mobile OS competitor–Android. The iPad is currently stuck on yesterday’s iOS with version 3.2.2. It is slated to get an update to iOS 4 very soon, which will add functionality like nested folders and multitasking. The Galaxy Tab will reportedly come out of the gate with the cutting edge Android 2.2, a.k.a. “Froyo”.

Apps
Both the Apple and Android app stores have more than enough variety to meet the needs of virtually any user. Granted, the Apple App Store has crossed the 250,000 apps mark, while the Android Market lags somewhere around 100,000, but at some point it becomes like the Cold War nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union: how many times do you need to be able to blow up the whole planet?

Features
Many of the features are similar, but this is one area where the Galaxy Tab doesn’t just compare, but can set the bar for what to expect in the next-generation iPad. Based on the video, it appears that the Galaxy Tab has both front and rear-facing cameras, and is capable of video chat. The Galaxy Tab is also expected to support Adobe Flash, and possibly be able to play HD video.

Intangibles
When it comes to making an actual purchase, it rarely boils down to comparing spec sheets. There are intangible factors that come into play. How much does it cost? Which wireless providers support the device?
The Galaxy Tab will have the benefit of riding the wave of tablet demand created by the Apple iPad, but it is also at a disadvantage compared with the three million plus unit jumpstart the iPad has. Still, there are people who love Apple and iOS, and there are people who love Android. The Galaxy Tab looks to be a very capable device and will at least offer a worthy challenger in the tablet market.

Samsung and Giorgio Armani have teamed up for a third time to design a new Windows Mobile 6.5 powered Samsung smartphone. The high-end smartphone comes with a full touchscreen that slides out to reveal a full QWERTY keypad beneath.

 

It comes with a 3.5 inch AMOLED touchscreen display with 800 x 480 pixel resolution, 5 megapixel camera along with LED flash, 3G with7.2Mbps HSDPA, Assisted GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB 2.0, a DivX-certified media player. Powered by an ARM1176 CPU running at 800MHz, which is coupled with 192MB of RAM. It comes in a distinctive bronze color, which aims to perfectly complement a Giorgio Armani suit This touchscreen handset offers internal storage of 8GB which is expandable up to 32GB.

 

The Giorgio Armani-Samsung smartphone is one of the first phones available with the Windows Mobile 6.5, which includes a new start page and dashboard that simply and intuitively displays key productivity features such as e-mails, text messages, missed calls, and calendar appointments.

The Giorgio Armani-Samsung smartphone will be available in Italy, U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Russia, China and UAE and will cost €700 ($1032).
 

Samsung and Giorgio Armani have teamed up for a third time to design a new Windows Mobile 6.5 powered Samsung smartphone. The high-end smartphone comes with a full touchscreen that slides out to reveal a full QWERTY keypad beneath.

 

It comes with a 3.5 inch AMOLED touchscreen display with 800 x 480 pixel resolution, 5 megapixel camera along with LED flash, 3G with7.2Mbps HSDPA, Assisted GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB 2.0, a DivX-certified media player. Powered by an ARM1176 CPU running at 800MHz, which is coupled with 192MB of RAM. It comes in a distinctive bronze color, which aims to perfectly complement a Giorgio Armani suit This touchscreen handset offers internal storage of 8GB which is expandable up to 32GB.

 

The Giorgio Armani-Samsung smartphone is one of the first phones available with the Windows Mobile 6.5, which includes a new start page and dashboard that simply and intuitively displays key productivity features such as e-mails, text messages, missed calls, and calendar appointments.

The Giorgio Armani-Samsung smartphone will be available in Italy, U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Russia, China and UAE and will cost €700 ($1032).