Best Slide Phone With GPS & Bluetooth?

NWLondoner

My 18 month contract with BT Mobile expires in January and am looking at getting a new phone & supplier.

I want to PAYG as in the current climate i cannot risk being tied to another 12/18 month contract.

I ideally want a Slide Phone as i need to carry it in my trouser pocket all day.

Main features must be GPS & Bluetooth.


N95/N96 look great but wondered if any others the people rave about?

alfablue

The n95 is quite chunky for a slide phone, you would get a better "pocket profile" with an n82 (I have this in my pocket). Also the sliding makes it possibly less robust, and the gps receiver is in the bottom of the n95 rather than the top in the n82, which apparently has some effect on signal (no experience of this though). I use Sports Tracker with the phone, it's great (and Nokia Maps or Garmin XT on it for in-car or on foot sat nav).

Also, I wonder if pay as you go is the best way to go, accepting what you say about the contract, but the phone is available on Orange for £25/month with maybe 400-600 minutes etc. In one year it costs you £300, would a non contract phone be much cheaper?

fuzzynavel

I have a N95 and the slider has to be opened to use the GPS.....major inconvenience.
It is also slow to aquire a satellite.

NWLondoner

fuzzynavel wrote:

I have a N95 and the slider has to be opened to use the GPS.....major inconvenience.
It is also slow to aquire a satellite.

not too worried about having to open the slider for GPS. I have 2 garmin devices. I want to GPS as a back up and for when i am not using a bike.

andyp

Don't get the N96 - it has widely publicised performance issues. The N95 remains a good phone but try and get the 8GB one (it's faster). The N81 is pretty good too.

hopper1

andyp wrote:

Don't get the N96 - it has widely publicised performance issues.

:shock: :shock: :shock:
What issues Andy?
I have an N96, no probs so far, and as it has a more powerful receiver, it doesn't need to be open to work!
:? :?

andyp

The N96 is slower than the N95 in many use cases despite it using a later version of the S60 software.

fuzzynavel

NWLondoner wrote:

fuzzynavel wrote:

I have a N95 and the slider has to be opened to use the GPS.....major inconvenience.
It is also slow to aquire a satellite.

not too worried about having to open the slider for GPS. I have 2 garmin devices. I want to GPS as a back up and for when i am not using a bike.

You must be really paranoid about getting lost!
The N95 battery life cannot even come close to one of the rechargeable Garmin devices either. Once that GPS is on my N95 will be drained in about 3 hours.
On a mobile the GPS is a secondary thought so will never be up to the standards of a device designed from the ground up to be a GPS tracker

The Garmin Etrex is a small GPS device https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=6403...it is discontinued but there are still some around for sale from about £60.
It doesn't do maps but it will do about 500 waypoints if you don't mind travelling by grid references.

cougie

You dont need the slider to be open on the n95 ? The new nokia maps prog is great - much better than the previous version - gets position quicker than the old one.
Sportstracker is very good but most i have had is about five hours of riding. Battery life is prob about half of the garmin-but this is basically a free system.
Not that impressed by the full on bike gps yet - will wait a few years before getting one.

alfablue

I can extend the use of my GPS on the n82 indefinitely with this neat AA battery charger, it is only a little larger than the battery itself - just a fiver from ebay



Nokia Maps is excellent, does all my in-car sat nav, and last weekend while on foot exploring Oxford I easily navigated to all sorts of points of interest (museums, pubs, restaurants) with the hundreds of points of interest in the mapping. Saved loads of time. Its just really handy to have sat nav in your pocket whenever you need it.

Sportstracker is great.

fuzzynavel

alfablue wrote:

I can extend the use of my GPS on the n82 indefinitely with this neat AA battery charger, it is only a little larger than the battery itself - just a fiver from ebay



Nokia Maps is excellent, does all my in-car sat nav, and last weekend while on foot exploring Oxford I easily navigated to all sorts of points of interest (museums, pubs, restaurants) with the hundreds of points of interest in the mapping. Saved loads of time. Its just really handy to have sat nav in your pocket whenever you need it.

Sportstracker is great.

Alfa,

I am not knocking the software on the N-Series Nokia's. I have downloaded a free program called "amaze" which is pretty good but is still in the beta stages so it has some flaws but I still like it. I just think the hardware needs a bit of work.
I used sports tracker in my car on a couple of occasions for a laugh and once it actually finds the satellites it is not bad and there is plenty of data to look at.. Obviously different areas will have better/worse access to the satellites and maybe I am just unlucky with my geographic location.

fuzzynavel

alfablue wrote:

I can extend the use of my GPS on the n82 indefinitely with this neat AA battery charger, it is only a little larger than the battery itself - just a fiver from ebay



Nokia Maps is excellent, does all my in-car sat nav, and last weekend while on foot exploring Oxford I easily navigated to all sorts of points of interest (museums, pubs, restaurants) with the hundreds of points of interest in the mapping. Saved loads of time. Its just really handy to have sat nav in your pocket whenever you need it.

Sportstracker is great.

Alfa,

I am not knocking the software on the N-Series Nokia's. I have downloaded a free program called "amaze" which is pretty good but is still in the beta stages so it has some flaws but I still like it. I just think the hardware needs a bit of work.
I used sports tracker in my car on a couple of occasions for a laugh and once it actually finds the satellites it is not bad and there is plenty of data to look at.. Obviously different areas will have better/worse access to the satellites and maybe I am just unlucky with my geographic location.

alfablue

Hi Fuzzy

Two things that may help (and which you probably already know), the GPS signal lock time greatly reduces if the Assisted GPS setting is used (downloads a tiny amount of data), and when using Sports Tracker, the Access Point needs to be set to none - otherwise tracking freezes, but time keeps going every time it seeks to connect to an access point, as I use my home network as the access point to upload tracks, this is obviously unavailable when I leave home, and until I solved this issue I has a lot of rides of under a mile! The latter issue should be resolved when the finished product is released, but apart from that as a beta release it works very reliably for me.

With Nokia Maps the GPS will find the signal very quickly in most places (seconds) though in my street, which is narrow and with 5 storey Bath terraces each side it takes a little longer. Once it gets a fix it seems to keep it, I was very surprised last week in Oxford that it worked even in the back streets. It is certainly as good as my Dell Axim PDA running Tom Tom and an external bluetooth receiver. (I now use the phone for sat nav and PDA functions so the Axim stays at home).

I think there may be some functional differences between the different phone models, maybe due to the location of the receiver.

I haven't heard of "amaze" - what does it do? I'll check it out.

alan_sherman

I just tried the sportstracker or the first time this weekend on my N78. Pretty good for free. The N78 seems functionally good, but the keypad isn't very good. Still it is free for £25 p/m contracts.

Brixtonbiker

I just got the Samsung i8510 Is much the same as the N96. S60 os, Has 8 mega pixel camera and GPS.Better built than the nokia eg Metal case, takes Micro SD cards so can be expanded. Best phone i have had.

Orange contract from about £25 per month

Mobiles.co.uk have good deals on it.

fuzzynavel

alfablue wrote:

Hi Fuzzy


I haven't heard of "amaze" - what does it do? I'll check it out.

Have a look here for a description...It's like Nokia Maps but I think it is much better

http://handheld.softpedia.com/get/GPS/amAze-Nokia-57738.shtml

alfablue

Wow - free, and with voice guidance! I'll give it a road test, thanks! I have used Tom Tom (but not available for Symbian phones) and I would rate it 8/10 (with my arbitrary scoring system based on ease of use and reliability), Garmin XT (on the Nokia), quite poor - cumbersome and awkward location entry, 4/10, and Navman on a dedicated GPS, very easy to use, 7/10. I would also rate Nokia Maps as 7/10. In what ways do you amAze is an improvement on Nokia Maps?

alfablue

The n85 looks like a more pocketable slide phone than the n95, less chunky.

alfablue

fuzzynavel wrote:

alfablue wrote:

Hi Fuzzy


I haven't heard of "amaze" - what does it do? I'll check it out.

Have a look here for a description...It's like Nokia Maps but I think it is much better

http://handheld.softpedia.com/get/GPS/amAze-Nokia-57738.shtml

Hi Fuzzy

Well, I installed amAze, and for free software it is good, however I don't think it is as good as any of the paid-for sat-nav software. It requires constant linking to the network to download mapping as you travel, the mapping is fairly crude, and it only deals with the first 5 characters of postcodes. Also, the sat nav voice is American. The best bit would be the hybrid maps (combination of satellite imagary and map), unfortunately, there is no data for my area.

I am wondering if you have tried a recent version of Nokia Maps, it must have been an early version for you to prefer amAze. Nokia Maps really is so much slicker, so user friendly and capable. The major downside is it is expensive, but as it is the best available on a Symbian phone of all those I have tried (as Tom Tom isn't available), I have bought it.

fuzzynavel

alfablue wrote:

fuzzynavel wrote:

alfablue wrote:

Hi Fuzzy


I haven't heard of "amaze" - what does it do? I'll check it out.

Have a look here for a description...It's like Nokia Maps but I think it is much better

http://handheld.softpedia.com/get/GPS/amAze-Nokia-57738.shtml

Hi Fuzzy

Well, I installed amAze, and for free software it is good, however I don't think it is as good as any of the paid-for sat-nav software. It requires constant linking to the network to download mapping as you travel, the mapping is fairly crude, and it only deals with the first 5 characters of postcodes. Also, the sat nav voice is American. The best bit would be the hybrid maps (combination of satellite imagary and map), unfortunately, there is no data for my area.

I am wondering if you have tried a recent version of Nokia Maps, it must have been an early version for you to prefer amAze. Nokia Maps really is so much slicker, so user friendly and capable. The major downside is it is expensive, but as it is the best available on a Symbian phone of all those I have tried (as Tom Tom isn't available), I have bought it.

Hi Alfa,

I am no expert on Sat navs. I don't even bother with one for my car on long journeys...I just point in the right direction and only look at the map if seriously lost.
I downloaded the latest version of Nokia maps about a week ago but haven't looked at it yet to see the differences.....I think my phone possibly came with version 2 as it is only a couple of months old.
With Amaze I did notice that it is constantly downloading maps but I have unlimited web access so that is not a problem for me as it updated more than quickly enough for what I was doing at the time. Not having a TomTom means I have no point of reference so maybe Amaze looked better than it actually is.

Brixtonbiker

The N95 version of amAze software works on the Samsung i8510

Review of the phone here

http://www.mobile-phones-uk.org.uk/samsung-i8510.htm

Phone comes with Route 66 but have to pay for maps