Anti-iPhone day at Download Squad

The iPhone gets a lot of attention these days, and rightly so. It's an attractive phone/media player with a beautiful interface. And Apple brought the idea of an innovative finger-friendly multi-touch display to the masses. But you know what? The iPhone isn't for everyone. There are plenty of things it can't do, or that you can do better with another device. And while the price of the phone continues to drop, you have to pay a rather pricey phone bill every month if you really want to make use of the phone.
With that in mind, Download Squad brings you anti-iPhone day. Throughout the day, we'll be looking at alternatives to the iPhone. To kick things off, I wanted to review some of the posts of DLS past that have already shown that there's little you can do with an iPhone that you can't already do with a Wndows Mobile-based phone.
Program Launchers
Somewhere between the time when Steve Jobs first demoed the iPhone and the day it actually hit the shelves, third party developers decided it would be cool to create an iPhone-like interface for Windows Mobile. Probably the most interesting project is FreeStyleWM, which started out its life as WhoNeedsAniPhone.
But not every third party developer wanted to replicate the iPhone interface. Some were just inspired enough to go out and create their own easy to use, finger-friendly program launchers and other applications. Thus GoodWin and iSwish were born.
Meanwhile, before the iPhone was even threatening your pocketbook, folks were puting out software that takes Windows Mobile and makes it feel like an entirely different operating system. Over a year ago, we brought you a roundup of applications designed to make Windows Mobile look and feel a bit more like Windows XP or Vista.
Programs

But it's not all about fancy application launchers. It's also about applications. Apple generated a lot of buzz by putting a version of the Safari browser on the iPhone which lets you access practically any web page. You can zoom in and out of web sites smoothly to get an overview or to read the text. But Safari for the iPhone can't handle Flash video. You know what can? Opera Mobile 9.5 for Windows Mobile.
Opera renders pages quickly, allows you to download files easily, and has that nifty zooming interface that iPod users have come to know and love. It also supports Flash Lite 3, which allows you to watch YouTube and other Flash videos.
But what about media players? That's where the iPod/iPhone really excel, right? Well, kind of. Sure, Apple's media player is slick. But it can't play OGG or WMV files or any number of other audio and video formats. So while MortPlayer, GSPlayer, TCPMP, and CorePlayer for Windows Mobile might not be as pretty as iPhone software, they're certainly a whole lot more functional.
For more information on Windows Mobile alternatives to iPhone applications, check out our article on some of the best text entry, multimedia, and other applications for Windows Mobile.

[ Via: Download Squad ]
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