To start with, I had a look at the iPhone, which is unquestionably the top competitor. The iPhone’s screen was very nice – although all three phones had pretty looking displays. It just felt rather good using it over all. The interface was well designed and very intuitive and it doesn’t surprise me that the iPhone is a top seller – it is a nice piece of hardware. Of course, when I went to type on the thing, I could barely form words. It was extremely difficult for me to type anything and I had to be extremely careful of how I was touching the screen. My friend had a different experience, finding it very easy to type with, so your mileage will vary. Still, given that I specifically plan on doing a fair amount of messaging with a smartphone once I get my hands on one, I wasn’t too impressed.

The Blackberry Storm was next. The interface on this one didn’t seem terribly special, but it wasn’t terrible either. The Storm is notable for how its screen reacts when typing – it clicks. When the keyboard is up, you can move your fingers over it and the keys you are over will glow blue. You then press on the screen so it actually does click (luckily it didn’t feel like I was going to break the thing) and you type that letter. I found myself hugely more accurate with the Storm and I was able to type at a decent enough pace, although still fairly slow. The biggest problem I felt that this phone had was that pressing down on keys was just a little too hard. It didn’t take much force, but I could see my fingers wearing out after any real significant use.

Finally, I checked out the G1. The interface on the Android phone felt a little clunky, to be totally honest. It wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t seem as unified or solid as the other two phones. Still, it wasn’t terrible getting around and figuring out what to do with it. I didn’t miss multi-touch much from the iPhone, but I could see a few instances where it would be nice. While it is bigger for it, the physical keyboard on the G1 is the major selling point for me. I was a little worried how it would feel typing on it, but I was surprised. While I wasn’t nearly as fast as I am with a normal keyboard, I could type outmessages at a pretty good pace without any real worry of hitting the wrong key. I took to it quite well.

So, I still foresee myself picking up an Android, but it was nice to get a feel for all of the phones. I really have no comments on the Blackberry, but if the iPhone got a physical keyboard or something a bit more usable for me, I could actually see myself using one easily enough. The Android wins out as is, but also could use a little more work on the interface, unity, and usability – still, I liked it quite a bit.

As for my thoughts? I’m pretty ambivilant for now. I don’t have any real experience with Android outside of fiddling with the SDK (although I hope to pick up a G1 in the near future), which isn’t really enough to show me how it really functions. I wouldn’t be surprised if it could translate to a small, portable computer pretty easily with a few tweaks. Personally, I have a hard time imagining I would favor it over an actual Linux distrobution, but for the public at large, it could prove to be a good plan. Hard to say.

First off: Warhammer Online . I pre-ordered a while ago and thus was allowed to participate in the Preview Weekend last week. There’s a ton of information out there on the game, but I will give my general thoughts on the game briefly. First off, PvE is pretty much your standard flavor of MMO that you’ve been playing for years. However, it was smooth, felt polished, and it was fairly fun. There was also a ton of content, at least at lower levels – hopefully something that will carry throughout the game. Not only that, but it also contained a few interesting features of note. First off was public quests, which I thought were an absolute blast. It was cooperative, in that I was working to complete the quest with a few dozen other people, but at the same time, I was also competing against them to rank highly in the scenario as to ensure I’d get some decent loot from it. Over all, from the PQ’s that I went through, they were very nicely done and an awful lot of fun. Next to that, you had Open Groups. If a group is set to ‘open’ (which is the default), it means that people can invite themselves into your group. That might sound a little weird to many people at first, but it actually is quite nice, even more so in public quests and open field RvR.

Next to that, RvR is just awesome. Flat out. I didn’t touch scenarios as much, as I was far too enthralled with open field RvR, but what I did do was fairly solid as well. Open field RvR is where it shined. The battlefields seemed well designed and it also gave me a lot of flashbacks to Dark Age of Camelot… but without some of the nagging problems, such as abuse of crowd control and stealth. While the game isn’t going to shatter the way MMOs are made, or is even really original, it still looks to be a good, solid, surprisingly polished, release.

Next up: Android . No, it isn’t a game. Yes, it is Google’s phone. The HTC Dream has been getting leaked out a bit and I want one. Also, it appears Google will be working on a browser that sounds particularly interesting, more so for web-based applications, and even more so with ones taking heavy advantage of Javascript (which is many of them).

Finally: It appears that I am back at college once again, where I will be attending a US University once more, instead of an… interesting Japanese one (Japan was awesome though). It actually feels pretty good to find myself getting back to work – not to mention back to all the excessive tabletop gaming that always takes place when I’m here. Before I got back I was already volunteered into two 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons games (so I can finally expand my 4th edition review!) and I’ll be running one of my own. However, with a far, far superior system: Fudge.