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I had the experience of playing with three touch screen phones that’s on the market today. I actually had the devices in my hand, took it to different places, and played with them for an extended period of time. I even had them at the same time and played with them next to each other.

I’m going to compare three phones: the iPhone, Palm Pre, and HTC’s G1. Unfortuantely, I didn’t get my hands on ther other screen phones. I wished I played with HTC’s MyTouch since that would be more relavant than the G1.

I’m not going to compare the technical specs since you can find those at other sites. I’m just going to cover my user experience and other high level thoughts about these phones.

Hardware

The Palm Pre is a lot smaller than both the iPhone and the G1. It’s almost the size of a woman’s compact makeup. Because of it’s size, it fits most women’s hands well (and men who have small hands). But the Palm Pre is a lot thicker than the iPhone. Thinner is better to carry around on your body. Luckily, it’s not too thick that it makes a big bulge in your pocket. It is also very light.

The iPhone is the thinnest phone of the bunch. Like I wrote earlier, thinner is better to carry around since it can slide in and out of tight pockets and other slim spaces. It is, however, larger than the Palm Pre. But I find that to be a positive because of the bigger screen. And the ergonomics isn’t a problem for people with bigger hands.

The G1 is just a brick. It’s bigger and thicker than the other phones. It’ll fit in your pocket. But it’s just a clunky phone to carry around compared to the other two.

The Palm Pre has a nice, slide out keyboard. But Palm made the keys so scrunched together that you’ll need to use your fingernails to type–another reason why the Palm Pre is good for women. The G1’s keyboard is much better. The keys are larger and spaced out. It’s easier to type on the G1. But after some practice, you can type on all three devices easily.

Also for the Palm Pre, it is hard to slide the keyboard out with one hand. Let’s say you’re doing something and need to type. So you start to slide the keyboard out with your thumb, but your thumb will press all sorts of buttons on the touch screen since that’s the only place you can get a grip on  it. I can understand they sacrificed serrations or more grippy areas in the Palm Pre to make it prettier, but it is annoying to slide the keyboard out. Oh well, you can’t have it all.

Another “womanly” feature in the Palm Pre is the mirror in the back when you slide the phone up. For guys, it’s great to check your teeth for food stuffs, plucking out your nosehairs, etc. For women, I guess you can use it to check how pretty you are. But the Palm Pre feels like a girl designed it. It’s just a girly phone. A lot of the women I know seem to love it, but none of the bigger, beefier guys like it at all. But I’m a man with large, endowed hands; and I didn’t mind it at all.

The screen resolution is same on all three phones. The Palm Pre has the smallest screen in terms of area. And that sucks. They should have made the screen a bit bigger by stretching the screen out a bit more or making the phone slightly bigger. Since it is a touch screen phone, it needs all the screen real estate it can get. Because of the small screen of the Palm Pre, I felt it needed a stylus.

Like any Apple product, the industrial design of the iPhone is very nice. It’s not overly rounded like the Palm Pre, and it’s not a big brick like the G1. The Palm’s industrial design is nice too. It is obviously rips off inspired by the iPhone. But iPhone definitely wins in the look, feel, and the coolness factor. Palm Pre comes in at a close second. The G1 is just ugly.

I love the wheel of the G1 though. If I can’t get to an element of the screen with my finger, I can just use the scroll wheel to access it. It’s very convenient. The G1 has too many buttons on the device itself though. A lot of the button’s functionality could’ve been handled in the OS. Both the iPhone and the Palm Pre has a very miniamal design. They only have one button which is enough.

Software

We all know that iPhone has a billion apps. The G1 has like a million. And Palm Pre has like 10. And Palm’s API is just a glorified JavaScript/HTML 5 framework running on some browser engine.  I’m sure the number of apps will increase on the Palm Pre as long as they’re not as restrictive like Apple. However, unless Palm release a a more powerful API for the Palm (or support flash), I doubt they can get the cooler apps like the G1 or iPhone has–such as games. And I’m not talking about boring board games. I’m talking about next generation 3-D games.

On the other hand, even though the iPhone and the G1 has like a million apps, most of them are crap. Also, the Palm Pre has some unofficial home brew apps coming like the tethering app. You don’t even need to jailbreak the Palm to use it, and it won’t void your warranty either. But to install them is a pain for casual users.

There is a copy and paste function in the Palm Pre. But it sucks; you can only use it on the document you’re currently writing. You can’t copy and paste between different applications. I hope Palm improves the copy/paste functionality in the future. iPhone’s copy and paste is a lot better.

The responsiveness and smoothness are very close for the Palm Pre and the Iphone. In fact, the Palm Pre functions pretty much like the iPhone with the muti-touch capabilities, the easing, scrolling, etc. It’s almost like they hired some Apple people and ripped off some stuff from Apple. Hmm… The G1 just felt sluggish for me. Overall I think the iPhone was the slicker device among the three.

The UI of the Palm Pre is weird. If you have no idea about gestures, you won’t be able to figure out how to get around the app. If you are planning to buy a Palm, make sure you understand gestures. Once you do, everything is cool. You just have to be trained in the Palm Pre way.

There is multitasking in the Palm Pre and the G1. That’s an important feature no matter what the Apple fan boys say. I can leave Pandora on and go surf the web. I can leave my chat window to do something else and still get notifications for chats.  It’s just useful. On the other hand, if the apps are made horribly, leaving certain apps on in the background will drain the battery fast. It’s a balancing act. But I would prefer multitasking.

I also think the accelerometer is too sensitive on the Palm Pre. If I tilt it slightly to the right, the screen turns unexpectedly. The G1 obviously has no problem with this. You have to open the keyboard to switch to landscape mode.  I like having direct control of that. iPhone’s acceleormeter is weird. Sometimes it takes a long while for the screen to shift directions. My friend’s iPhone was stuck in the landscape mode for several minutes until it finally freed itself.

The software for the G1 is pretty powerful. It has a lot of features thanks to it’s open nature. It’s even going to support flash in the later release. I just wished that they paid more attention to the little details like what Apple did to make the user experience more pleasing. Even though it’s more powerful, it doesn’t act like it. It just feels sluggish. But I think Android is just going to get better since it’s an open platform. It’ll probably support multitouch later on and rip off a lot of the other smart phone’s features.

Price

We know the iPhone is the most expensive product among the three. That’s a big negative. For unlimited two year plans, the iPhone is around $1000 more expensive compared to the Palm Pre and G1. For average plans, it’s still several hundred dollars more expensive than the other two phones.

Networks

Tmobile sucks compared to Sprint and AT&T. I can’t get a signal anywhere. But T-mobile has the BEST customer service I’ve ever witnessed. But good customer service won’t do me good if I can’t get a signal in certain places. Of course in dead zones, all three won’t get any service.

Conclusion

They’re all nice phones. I’m sure the new Android phones coming out should make the Android platform a sexier choice. The G1 is old, and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you want a big keyboard and not care what the phone looks like.

Overall, I think the iPhone does stand out from the pack. It’s just sleeker than the other two. Palm Pre comes in a close second. Then comes the G1. But any of these devices will do you good. But if you compare them all next to each other, it’s like comparing a Ferrari to a Lexus and an Acura. All three cars are nice, but a Farrai is a sleeker car.

Of course, the iPhone is priced like a Ferrari. I personally am turned off by how expensive the iPhone plan is and how it’s locked into AT&T. If I were to get a touch-screen smart phone, I would probably go for the other choices (Android or Palm Pre).