What Phone?
polycounter
Ok. So I get home and my girlfriend has decided she needs an Smart phone... I dunno. I just want a phone for texts. And the occational phone call for a taxi.
Anyhoo. I hate shopping for gadgets I dont know alot about. It takes me bloody ages to find what I'm after then it takes me longer to find it at the lowest price possible. So I thought I'd just ask you guys what you'd suggest. Heres the requirements.
Browser phone. Java and Flash enabled (Most important!..she would die without bloody frontierville)
Camera not needed.
Under £300 sim free or would consider contract.
Is Android the way forward? Any advice on that.
Thoughts?
Anyhoo. I hate shopping for gadgets I dont know alot about. It takes me bloody ages to find what I'm after then it takes me longer to find it at the lowest price possible. So I thought I'd just ask you guys what you'd suggest. Heres the requirements.
Browser phone. Java and Flash enabled (Most important!..she would die without bloody frontierville)
Camera not needed.
Under £300 sim free or would consider contract.
Is Android the way forward? Any advice on that.
Thoughts?
Replies
Looks like it sells for £2-300 in the UK
[ame]http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B003NCWVH2/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&qid=1285954920&sr=8-1&condition=new[/ame]
I was really excited about the Motorola Backflip, it is cheap and was the only android phone with a real keyboard that at&t offers, but the thing is terrible. Its pre-loaded with all sorts of shit, default search is YAHOO and can not be changed, honestly YAHOO shit on a google phone, wtf. It is slow, laggy and read reviews that it likes to crash and is basically a piece of shit phone. The Aria actually has a similar CPU(600mhz) but the Aria is buttery smooth and the backflip laggy, poorly optimized.
I played around with the Samsung Galaxy S(likely sold under a different name in EU) and it seemed reallllly nice, but was out of my price range. Ony way this would be affordable is with a contract.
Then of course there is the Droid, which is supposed to be very good, and the Nexus one, which may be hard to come by but is the real "Google" phone.
Also, yes android is the way forward. I'm not really a fan of apple's system which is limited only to their devices(also, multitasking lololol). With android you have multiple options when it comes to hardware, and price.
Everything the iPhone 4 does, my EVO does also. HD Video (the EVO has a mini-hdmi out port), 8 Megapixel camera, and a 1GHz processor. I can upgrade my mini SD card to give myself more storage, and it uses a standard mini-USB port to charge and transfer data (no overpriced cables).
I'm not trying to create an iPhone vs Android thread. Just giving some points as to why I wouldn't force myself into one carrier, when I can get an equivalent on just about any other network.
It's honestly the best Android phone I've tested. Greatly recommended!
dont forget the kick stand.
I'm waiting for the Motorola Droid 2 World Edition and I'll be picking that up the day it's available. The current model is only a CDMA version (which was the only reason why I didn't buy the R2D2 edition), which means you're locked with Verizon. It's not a huge problem if you're in North America and are happy with Verizon as your carrier.
But I would highly recommend just about any HTC handset and staying away from the iPhone... Unless you like being bent over and then have a 10-foot spiked club inserted into your asshole. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Good:
1. Very response, even with the 600mhz processor i've yet to find much that slows it down.
2. Android is awesome, and HTC's version of android seems to have an acceptable amount of bloatware. Sure there is a bunch of preloaded apps you cant uninstall, but you can remove them from the desktop layouts and totally customize is so you'de never know they were there unless you go looking for them.
3. Text to voice feature is nice, sometimes very unpredictable but it makes for hilarious gtalk conversations.
4. Android app market is awesome, lotsssss of free and useful apps.
5. Multitasking is great, and it can run a seemingly unlimited amount of apps without any performance issues.
6. Google maps GPS, this was actually one of the main reasons i got the phone, i have an outdated garmin GPS that wanted me to pay $100+ just to update the maps, so i decided fuck it, i can get a new internet phone with gps for that price. Having gmaps is really awesome, no more worrying about typing your location absolutely perfect OR ELSE like garmin gps.
7. The optical dpad is really nice when you have a button that is too small to click or isn't responding on the touch screen for whatever reason, really happy to have it.
8. Reception is fine, no worse(possilby a little better?) than my old phone, which is all i can ask. I'm not expecting a really good "phone" out of this, but it seems perfectly capable.
9. SIZE, fits perfectly in 5th pocket, dont have to worry about putting it in a pocket that may contain coins or car keys etc. I dont know what i would do if it was any bigger, probabbly have to get a man-purse.
Bad
1. As expected, the cramped keyboard in vertical mode is a pain. The keyboard in horizontal mode is better, but this phone really doesnt have the best keyboard, it is workable however, and expected considering the small size of the screen.
2. Rotating from horizon/vert mode can sometimes be unpredictable, you really need to have it level and not tilted too far away/twoards your body from, this may just take a little getting used to. Also it seems like in some apps the functionality isn't there at all, like google calender, which i dont understand.
3. The home/search buttons below the screen are a bit too close to comfort, i often press then while holding the phone or while writing a message. I wish i could disable the search button all together, because i've yet to really find a use for it.
4. The "internet" icon goes to a at&t/yahoo site, i dont know if there is a way to change the "homepage" for now i just removed the internet icon from my desktop and added a shortcut to www.google.com.
5. Battery life is not impressive, we'll see how it is after the battery is "broken in" but expect to have to charge the phone every 1-2 days, every night when actually using the phone.
Overall its a very smooth, slick phone, and i feel like most of the annoyances here i will get used to/find a work around for. Would definitely recommend it, great phone for the price.
-Try syncing this with an Outlook Exchange account. it's just amazing how well this works: all my calendar data and work emails, on the go! And it only took 1 minute to setup!
-HTC apps are actually almost all improvements over default Android Apps. Their Sense and Calendar apps for example work very very well.
-The keyboard, well the crampedness is offset by the excellent autocorrection, it almost always changes a word that consists out of a bunch of mistyped letters, into the correct one.
-You can change the homepage, it's somewhere in the settings menu. Mine was Google though, so your provider might have had a hand in setting it to AT&T.
-You can do a lot to save battery life. Just don't leave Wi-Fi and Mobile internet on. You can even install Juice-Defender to automatically switch it into flight mode while you sleep, to save power on the cell connection (uses like 40% of the battery life in my case)
Oh and, now that a crew member has one too: maybe it's worth considering installing Tapatalk for polycount? Makes forum browsing much smoother...
I'll try and find it where the option is on my phone (hopefully it's the same for you).
EDIT:
For the Nexus One, you bring up the settings > Accounts & Sync > Auto Sync
Under that, there is manage accounts so you can choose which you want to sync and which you don't. Simply uncheck the Auto-sync feature to disable all of them.
Hopefully that helps.
Love it to death.
http://www.meteor.ie/apps/android_phones/
Apparently I should stay away from the LG, as they don't make good phones? The guys at the till tell me LG's freeze. Is this true? I read a review online and it said one of the cons for this model is it only runs Android 1.8, while the others run 2.1. Do Android phones not operate like PSP's? (e.g. firmware updates etc) Even if they are modded? Can they be modded? If I shouldn't go for the LG I'd go for the Sony Ericcson which I am shaky on cause I hate their interfaces but it has a decent size screen which the samsung does not, and of course runs Android 2.1. Which of the 3 models would people reccomend?
Jailbreak and unlock it, tis legal for now.
I got Tmobile on mine.
I own HTC Desire, which is android 2.2 phone. Pretty sweet, a lot cheaper than iPhone 4. Unlimited data, unlimited calls, phone - all for under 20 euros a month. Great deal. iPhone 4 would have been, at minimum, double that.
Pro's:
Great responsiveness.
Durable (I have the rubber sleeve on it though so...>.>)
Multi-tasks great.
Very Vibrant Colors.
Crisp clear in call sound.
Netflix is making an Android Mobile App
Best of all: I can surf polycount on my phone with no problems
8mpx camera (finally a ref camera worth a shit)
16gb storage upgradable to 32. ^.^
Cons:
Battery lasts 2 to 3 days at best! Usually 1 to 1 1/2.
Took me a while to figure out how to change all the sounds
It will rape your computer for every media file you have on it if you dock, seriously...
You have to reboot the phone every 3-4 days otherwise it decides you can't make or receive phonecalls with sound...which well is kind of irritating.
It can over multi-task and lock up short term. I just pressed auto-update all apps and well, it did just that. Auto Updated 10 at once which was great, until it tried to install them all at once, it finally que'd them up properly, but it was totally locked up for about 5 minutes while it figured out what to do, and then it just finished.
How was that annoying having your friends' phone numbers show up in your contacts? Too much scrolling?
So yeah, my vote is for the HTC Desire.
Yeah, for my x it ganked all my gmail contacts and facebook contacts (even ones without numbers) and put them on the list of contacts...went from 12 numbers I actually call to like 85 contacts... but you can set up bookmarking and lists for contacts so you can actually get it back to where its manageable, just has like a super Rolodex for any possible contact you've ever had in there... just takes time.
All I really used my old phone for was texts so it seemed to make sense getting this as it gives me many more and I can use the net. And faff around with android apps. I'm happy with it, but I reckon there are better deals if you actually want to make many calls.
http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/San-Francisco-from-Orange-in-grey
Well when 150 people or whatever show up in my phone contacts, many of them old highschool friends or people like Adam Bromell, who I do not actually want to call on my phone.... Yeah its annoying.
A little more on the HTC aria:
Overall, this is a wonderful compact little computer. I don't even consider this a phone, its a computer, i use it to browse the web, look up maps/gps, gtalk, email, ebay, play games, etc.
Overall, as a phone. IT SUCKS. Its a shity phone, scrolling through the contact lists far too often = accidentally calling someone, no real buttons to answer or hang up the phone is very annoying, the interface for adding/deleting contacts is terrible, seriously there is no button for "add" or "delete", you have to start typing a number and then click another thing to add, and you have to go through like 3 pages of BS to delete a contact, again, you'll accidentally call the person if you dont press the button just right.
At the end of the day I dont really care, because I make very few calls on my phone, I love this thing as a tiny little computer that has internet everywhere I go, but I wouldn't suggest it to anyone who needs a reliable phone that they use often, you know, as a phone.