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	Home / Cell phones

	The perfect 3G phone	By Jørgen Sundgot, Saturday 11 February 2006

3G phones have finally made their breakthrough - but how do you know which one to choose from the plethora of options available? Follow these instructions to achieve 3G nirvana.

In 2005, 3G phones finally hit shelves in large quantities after years of promises - yet the public's reception has thus far proven rather lukewarm. Rightly so, one might say, as glitzy features don't necessarily make for a great experience - so what does, and is there anything out there that's worth the premium on price to get your wireless broadband on?

First things first

3G as a technology has two main trademarks, the first of which is increased data transfer speeds and the second - as a natural consequence of the former - reduced battery life. Where transfer speeds have remained unchanged since the arrival of the first 3G handsets, however, newer models typically offer significantly improved battery life. Also, check to make sure video and voice telephony are given equal integration for dialing from within the contacts library, and that you're able to switch camera views from your own fantastic self to something you want to view the other party quickly and without hassle.

Of course, not even the fastest wireless broadband will be of much use when squinting at a small screen. Yours should be of the large, bright and preferably high-resolution variety, letting you make the most out of content available to you. Here, your choice of network operator comes into play, and it's vital to pick one which offers all-you-can-eat streaming of content that's important to you - be it music, live TV or video clips of various kinds - so you don't have to worry about incurring costs.

Added value

If you've got these basics taken care of, it's time to take it to the next level. Enterprise users will want support for the Bluetooth DUN profile, which lets them use their phone as a wireless modem for their laptop, while everyone benefits from a good browser for some light reading on the go. Again, which content is offered by your operator of choice is important, as many popular online destinations don't have publicly accessible mobile versions of their web sites but rather work with operators to offer their services.

Quick tip: among others, Google offers a so-called proxy service which opens in most any handset browser to adapt full web sites for mobile viewing. Doing an even better job is the Opera Mini browser, which is a free Java download compatible with the vast majority of handsets.

Making the cut

So, are there any combinations of handset and operator which can live up to these requirements? Although several handsets in fact deliver the goods, only CDMA operators Sprint and Verizon have sufficient coverage in major metropolitan areas to warrant inclusion; unfortunately, neither score full marks on all accounts, but if you simply can't wait, we've included a list of their strenghts and weaknesses below.

US carriers and handsets