Sorry this isn't some hilarious April Fools prank, but…

Living and working in the Scottish Highlands, I move frequently throughout the day to areas of differing cellphone service.

For example, at home, I only get a signal if I leave the phone near the window. A mile away in the nature reserve where I walk the dog, I get a great signal. Up in Inverness, you can go from a full-strength 3G signal to "no service" within a couple of hundred yards. Overall the average signal strength around the Highlands might be best described as slow and patchy.

Which is a problem, because I use an iPhone. Supposedly the best phone available, except it suffers from two significant faults.

    1. It doesn't handle varying signal strengths well, so your network provider (in my case O2) will often think the phone is out-of-range even when you've got a good signal. Coupled with O2's regular failure to register missed calls and voicemails, and sporadic delivery of text messages, this equates directly to missed calls and the real danger of missed work. Missed work = less money = bad.

    2. Safari, the phone's built-in web browser, is slow.

That gives me two good reasons to dump the iPhone and move to a better phone.

But there's a much better reason…

See, there already exists a very good solution to the slow Safari problem. A snazzy little mobile web browser called Opera Mini has been released for the iPhone. Using unique compression technology it can be five or six times faster than Safari and works well on slow connections.

But alas, this is an iPhone, so when I say that Opera has been "released", what I mean is that it was submitted to the App Store for Apple's approval. Apple is notorious for taking a very long time to approve apps, and is widely despised for rejecting them for seemingly random reasons. Especially if the App is designed to replace one of Apple's own apps, and does the job better.

At the time of writing, with possibly tens of thousands of "power-user" iPhone owners waiting for Opera Mini to be approved, Apple has stalled it in the review process for over eight days. This is bad customer service. Terrible.

Now it's a fair bet that Apple will reject Opera. And lots of people will be very angry, and Apple won't care, because they never do. We've already bought our £400 phones, or tied ourselves in to expensive carrier contracts, so Apple's existing customers don't count. The only people that Apple cares about are its future customers, and that's why it's so important for Apple to maintain the facade that its own software is the best available.

But even if Opera does eventually get accepted, that won't make a great deal of difference to me. I have already had my eyes opened to the fact that being an ethical consumer is incompatible with being an Apple customer.

Now, I'm not alone in feeling this way. And we're all faced with the same dilemma: The iPhone has a great interface and a damn-near-perfect touchscreen. Pretty much any alternative phone will be an egronomical downgrade. You'll end up with something clunky and overly-complicated, with a plastic screen that you have to press on too hard. And you'll lose the lovely pinch-to-zoom functionality that makes web browsing a joy on a small screen.

That's the way it was up until very recently. But now there are some viable alternatives to the iPhone, all of them made by HTC.

So after spending way too much time researching "iPhone alternatives", here's what I would humbly suggest is the range of options available. With all of these you'll get a nice interface, a hard screen that you don't have to press on, and multi-touch capabilities for pinch-to-zoom and other gesturing functions. Plus the very important ability to customise them, and run any add-on software you want, without permission! Price for each is around £400.

HTC Desire

Not easy to find in the UK yet, but should be in the next couple of weeks. I haven't been able to get my hands on one yet but every review I've read and watched compares it to the Nexus One and says it's better. Based on Google's Android operating system but doesn't have voice search which is reportedly a deliberate restriction by Google as they want to keep it for their own handsets.

HTC Legend

Lots of people love this phone so have a look at it for yourself, but personally I don't like the design so I'm not even considering it. Functionality and interface are very similar to the Desire. If you can live with the horrible 'lip' at the bottom of the handset then this is definitely worth considering, it's purely the lip that I don't like.

Nexus One

In theory the most desirable of the three for geeks like me, as it's a 'pure' Android phone, and it's the best looking with an aluminium case. However, Google is already showing up on the ethical consumer's warning radar, and I'm a bit p**sed off at them for using some of my photographs and then making me fight them for payment, so personally I think I'll give the Nexus One a miss.

(The older and somewhat plasticky HD2 is nearly there, although its screen is a little on the small side compared to the alternatives, and it's a Windows-based phone which some people, myself included, shy away from. No problem with Wndows, just not on a phone, thanks.)

For me, then, it's looking like the Desire is the way to go. I'll get my grubby paws on one soon and report back. If the touchscreen is as nice to use as the iPhone then chances are it will be coming home with me that very day, so I'll write more about it once I've lived with it for a while.

Bottom line: If you're a dissatisfied iPhone user / Apple customer, but you've been dismayed by the rubbish alternatives coming out over the last year, then it's time to take another trip to the phone shop and see the latest offerings. There are some very nice mobiles out there.