First Look

When I go shopping for a new phone every two years after my contract with Verizon expires I love being able to walk into the store and see all the new devices they have. Although people say all the time not to judge a book by its cover I tend to still do that when selecting my next phone. Structural design and its visual appeal to me take a large role in the decision making process. If I don't find a phone aesthetically pleasing then odds are right off the bat I will not look any further into finding more out about that device.

iPhone:

 

HTC:

 

Samsung:

 

With regards to the three devices I will be examining, I find all of them to be aesthetically pleasing to me. The iPhone is by far the largest of the three devices, offering a 4.7" screen with a slim design. The Samsung devices follows in a close second to the iPhone with a 4.3" display and a slightly thicker design. And lastly the HTC phone is the largest structurally compared to the other two, but the smallest when looking at only screen size, coming in at only 3.6".

Another feature to be quickly noticed when viewing all the phones side by side is that the Apple phone and the Samsung phone both only offer one method of character input into the phone, and that is by a single touchscreen interface on the one side of the device. The HTC phone however offers two methods of input, a touchscreen much like the ones on the Apple and Samsung phones, and a full-sized slide-out keyboard that is displayed if you slide the devices screen to the side. Personally I do not prefer one method of input over the other, but if you are one who needs a physical keyboard, then the HTC might be more in your favor.

The last noticeable feature of the phones are the buttons that lay on the bottom of the front screens. With the iPhone we only see one button at the bottom, which is commonly referred to has the Home button. It got its name from literally what it does, bringing you to the home screen of the device. This can be a good thing if you like simplicity, but some can say it doesn't properly utilize space having only one button on the front. Unlike the iPhone however, the HTC and Samsung both contain four buttons on the front. The HTC's outermost buttons are multipurpose and can be used to do many different tasks depending on what screen you are on or app you are in. The button on the middle left location bring you to the Start Page of the phone, which contains apps and other setting features. The button on the middle right is a back button, which just brings you to the previous page you were on in your phone. Lastly, the Samsung's left most button brings up a quick menu of shortcuts for things like settings and editing the current page. The middle left button is the home button, which again just bring you to the home page. The middle right button is the back button and the last button is a search button, which allows you to instantly search the web or the app you are in.

Overall the first impressions of all the phones are were good in my opinion. If I had to pick a phone as the overall aesthetic winner I would pick the Samsung device. It contains a modest sized screen, which is good for me because i'm not concerned with having the largest screen, as well as many buttons to allow you to easily access different features of the phone.