iPhone4 / N8 - what if you lose signal while on the internet?

Since the n95, I started to heavily depend on the ability to check and answer my email while on the go,   so all my mobiles ever since have been smartphones. Once you taste complete mobility, you won't go back. Promise. My wife also switched to smartphone and she won't go back either.

Here in Santiago, while on the subway, it's quite common that if you're not with the mobile company that has monopolized the existence of subway-placed antennas, you're on your own. Your milleage may vary, some will say. The fact is, you may completely lose signal while on the train.

With no signal, and a number of internet-based applications running on your phone, your applications get disconnected while working. That *will* happen, and what I'l compare here what happens when both the iPhone4 and the N8 get disconnected. 

iPhone running applications when signal failed:

• iPod
• Skype
• Twitter
• Skype
• Facebook
• Daily Booth

N8 running applications when the signal failed:

• Skype (trying to log in)
• Ovi Store
• E-Mail (mail for exchange account)

Observed behavior:

• iPhone applications handled the disconnection. Phone keep responsive during the signal loss, even though connected applications wouldn't work.
• N8 became unresponsive. 

While I love the N8, it has exactly the same issues I've reported elsewhere about the n97mini and the 5800xm: The mobile depends too much on the internet connection. The"Ovi Chat" could hang the 5800xm when getting disconnected. NM for Email keeps leaving the n97mini unresponsive for some time when entering the subway because of the signal loss. I admit, though, that skype may not be the best behaved internet-usage application, but still, the iPhone4 won't freeze the way the N8 did. 

That said, if I compare the N8 against the N97mini and the 5800xm, its behavior is already much better, though it still doesn't behave the way the iPhone4 does. There's still room for improvement on the N8's internet-disconnection handling or in how it still lets some processes take over the whole device's CPU queue while trying to connect.

So, which one is better? Well that still depends on what you want to do with your mobile and how good is the signal level in the places you connect to the internet. I love both devices for different reasons, and I think the overall handling of the situation was better with the iPhone4, but that's my take, and the N8 can still fix that.