Phone

Headhuunter

So in a fascinating diversion from the usual "what bike?" thread, I'm asking "what phone?"

I've been due an upgrade for a while and haven't got round to getting it sorted because I don't really know what I want. I'd like a smart phone with email etc (currently have a Nokia X6) but other than that I'm not sure. The Samsung Galaxy range looks fancy... I was thinking the S2? Are any of the lesser models any good? Someone said that they have LED screens which gives better colour etc.

How about the HTC Desire range... Which one of these is worth considering?

Anything else?

Ta....

mudcow007

my mrs has a S2, she love it but the battery life seems to be absolutely shocking

isnt the S3 out soon though aswell?

Paul E

I have an S2, the thing that kills the battery is having loads of apps running that need data from the network all the time like facebook, that mullers the battery, as long as you don't over use it it's fine, I have had a day and a half out of mine with reasonable use, if I know I'm not going to use data I do flick the data connection off anyway which helps a lot.

The S3 is out in a few days but no idea when the networks will start selling it.

bails87

Nokia 3210.

It's got snake, no polyphonic ringtones, but they're just a fad anyway.

mudcow007

bails87 wrote:

Nokia 3210.

It's got snake, no polyphonic ringtones, but they're just a fad anyway.

is it steam powered aswell??!

richVSrich

HTC One X is meant to be amazing - I'm a fan of android

Runoutofgears

My ”grown up” family own the following between them:

Mr ROOG HTC Wildfire, Oh so slooow, Recharge every 2 days
Mrs ROOG Samsung galaxy S2, Fast operation, Recharge every 2 days
Miss ROOG 1 Apple iphone 3, Speed Good, Recharge every day
Miss ROOG 2 HTC Desire S, Speed Good, Recharge every day

Like all things phone, it’s out of date by the next quarter, HTC One seems to be the next in line with Galaxy S3 to follow I think.

In my experience battery life for smart phones seems to be as dependant on your use profile, (including your use of Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS etc) as the particular device, unless you know different.

My personal choice is the Samsung galaxy S2 if you don’t mind the fairly large size. Galaxy S3 or may be worth waiting for.

spasypaddy

samsung galaxy s3 is being announced tomorrow, dont make any decisions until you see that.

anonymousblackfg

I don't know, whatever you go for don't drop it into the bike lane from the pavement then step into the lane to pick it up without looking! thatnkyou pedestrian, in some ways I wish your cracked screen had been acompanied with 110kg of bike and rider ploughing straight into you at full beans. luckily I swerved.

SimonAH

I have a Desire HD and hate it so much I'm appropriating MrsAH's 3GS when she gets an upgrade to a 4 next week.

tgotb

Xperia Active - fully waterproof (its predecessor drowned), talks ANT+, and there's even a dedicated (ie not clunky) bike mount available...

Rigga

HTC one X is supposed to be amazing with a quad core processor and as good a screen as the S2 but as someone else said, wait until the S3 is out which is the next couple of days.

Boy Lard

I have the HTC OneX and it is bloody awesome. Blows the iPhone out of the water, (but there again, I hate the little Apple, so don't read too much into that). I was really unhappy with the battery life though, till someone explained to me how Icecream Sandwich works, and to stop using task killers and battery savers and just let the phone make its own mind up. After a week or so I was getting 2 full days on one charge, assuming I wasn't gaming on it and with just a normal 1-2 hours internet browsing per day. I am most impressed with the internet browsing, but I also love how nice it is to do the normal things, like make a call and text. I also use Dropbox a lot and was very pleased to have my storage space increased by 23Gb after installing it on my phone.

Would definitely recommend.

bompington

Boy Lard wrote:

just a normal 1-2 hours internet browsing per day... on my phone.

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen, civilisation as we know it is at an end

dhope

Headhuunter wrote:

So in a fascinating diversion from the usual "what bike?" thread, I'm asking "what phone?"

What did MrHH think of his iPhone? (if it's broken and crap then someone else must have sold it to you, honest Guv)

cjcp

I have a HTC Desire. It does the job, although the whole touch-screen-button thing for texting still annoys the cr@p out of me. I feel like I'm learning to bleedin' type again using a screen. The Blackberry is much more efficient for typing.

bails87

cjcp wrote:

I have a HTC Desire. It does the job, although the whole touch-screen-button thing for texting still annoys the cr@p out of me. I feel like I'm learning to bleedin' type again using a screen. The Blackberry is much more efficient for typing.

Try swiftkey, or download the gingerbread keyboard, both are a huge improvement over the standard one.

king_jeffers

spasypaddy wrote:

samsung galaxy s3 is being announced tomorrow, dont make any decisions until you see that.

Agree, I'm going for this. Upgrading from HTC Desire - will never get an iphone. ever.

Headhuunter

dhope wrote:

Headhuunter wrote:

So in a fascinating diversion from the usual "what bike?" thread, I'm asking "what phone?"

What did MrHH think of his iPhone? (if it's broken and crap then someone else must have sold it to you, honest Guv)

He loves it! He's always on the damn thing... messaging other iphone owners, on the net etc. Actually I never realised how much free wireless net there is around, he really doesn't need any kind of data package, there's always some cafe or pub or Cloud which he can log into....

rick_chasey

HTC Battery life is poor.

From experience and someone who is in a position to know this kind of thing.

okgo

Whatever the latest iphone is.

None of that cheap plastic crap.

Monkeypump

Headhuunter wrote:

dhope wrote:

Headhuunter wrote:

So in a fascinating diversion from the usual "what bike?" thread, I'm asking "what phone?"

What did MrHH think of his iPhone? (if it's broken and crap then someone else must have sold it to you, honest Guv)

He loves it! He's always on the damn thing... messaging other iphone owners, on the net etc. Actually I never realised how much free wireless net there is around, he really doesn't need any kind of data package, there's always some cafe or pub or Cloud which he can log into....

So why not his 'n' his then?

I'd recommend the iPhone anyway, especially with more than one in the household.

prawny

I've recently put my prejudices aside and swapped from an HTC Desire to an iPhone 4. The Desire din't have anywhere near enough internal memory but the new One X/S phones have sorted this. HTC batteries are shocking, iphone is better, not by an enormous amount but charges WAY faster so doesn't seem as bad.

No flash on the browser is a bit of a shame but not a major problem, don't watch vid's on my phone much anyway and you can still watch stuff on youtube, BBC news App and others.
Also although they bang on about all the apps you can get on iOS devices, there are a few really good ones that are Android only and the iOS equivalents are both not free and not as good.

The main issue with the new Android phones for me is if you want a decent one you have to have one with an enormous screen. If they did an HTC One S with 32gb of internal memory I'd be tempted but I think I'll be staying apple now as much as it pains me. That is unless they also go the way of 4.5inch plus screens too

My iPhone just works. it's not perfect, but it's pretty close.

king_jeffers

prawny wrote:

The main issue with the new Android phones for me is if you want a decent one you have to have one with an enormous screen. If they did an HTC One S with 32gb of internal memory I'd be tempted but I think I'll be staying apple now as much as it pains me. That is unless they also go the way of 4.5inch plus screens too

Can you put a memory card in the one s or is it sealed up?

UndercoverElephant

King Jeffers wrote:

prawny wrote:

The main issue with the new Android phones for me is if you want a decent one you have to have one with an enormous screen. If they did an HTC One S with 32gb of internal memory I'd be tempted but I think I'll be staying apple now as much as it pains me. That is unless they also go the way of 4.5inch plus screens too

Can you put a memory card in the one s or is it sealed up?

The One S has no slot.

bails87

prawny wrote:

The Desire din't have anywhere near enough internal memory but the new One X/S phones have sorted this

Prawny makes a good point about the Desire. Pitiful internal memory, and certain stuff has to be on there rather. Short of rooting the phone, I've put as much as possible onto the SD card, and I still regularly get the 'memory full' error message that appears when you're under 15mb of internal memory left. At that point the phone stops receiving emails to avoid filling any more space. Which doesn't make much sense seeing as my gmail app takes up a tiny 244KB.

I've just had a clearout, and I've got maybe a week before I need to go through apps clearing caches and saved data to claw back another 10MB. It's a PITA. Can't believe the problem is so under-reported, considering techradar, cnet etc all had the Desire as the best phone around at the time.

rick_chasey

bails87 wrote:

prawny wrote:

The Desire din't have anywhere near enough internal memory but the new One X/S phones have sorted this

Prawny makes a good point about the Desire. Pitiful internal memory, and certain stuff has to be on there rather. Short of rooting the phone, I've put as much as possible onto the SD card, and I still regularly get the 'memory full' error message that appears when you're under 15mb of internal memory left. At that point the phone stops receiving emails to avoid filling any more space. Which doesn't make much sense seeing as my gmail app takes up a tiny 244KB.

I've just had a clearout, and I've got maybe a week before I need to go through apps clearing caches and saved data to claw back another 10MB. It's a PITA. Can't believe the problem is so under-reported, considering techradar, cnet etc all had the Desire as the best phone around at the time.

I have exactly the same.

rick_chasey

My contract will run out soon.

Looking at a Galaxy S2 probably.

Seems the same spec roughly as an Iphone, only it's a fair bit cheaper. As much as I want access to the apple app store, and as much as I want it to be rubbish, I can't bring myself to pay so much more just for that.

dhope

Rick Chasey wrote:

My contract will run out soon.

Looking at a Galaxy S2 probably.

Seems the same spec roughly as an Iphone, only it's a fair bit cheaper. As much as I want access to the apple app store, and as much as I want it to be rubbish, I can't bring myself to pay so much more just for that.

I figure they're both expensive but the app store makes the difference for me. I ended up just buying a 4S off contract. £500 for the phone but then an £8 contract. Given the use it gets and the fact I could flog it for £300 in a year then it's not obscene.

Hold off on the S2 as the S3 isn't too far off.

prawny

Rick Chasey wrote:

bails87 wrote:

prawny wrote:

The Desire din't have anywhere near enough internal memory but the new One X/S phones have sorted this

Prawny makes a good point about the Desire. Pitiful internal memory, and certain stuff has to be on there rather. Short of rooting the phone, I've put as much as possible onto the SD card, and I still regularly get the 'memory full' error message that appears when you're under 15mb of internal memory left. At that point the phone stops receiving emails to avoid filling any more space. Which doesn't make much sense seeing as my gmail app takes up a tiny 244KB.

I've just had a clearout, and I've got maybe a week before I need to go through apps clearing caches and saved data to claw back another 10MB. It's a PITA. Can't believe the problem is so under-reported, considering techradar, cnet etc all had the Desire as the best phone around at the time.

I have exactly the same.

That's the only reason the desire went. Other than the music player the iphone is no better. (ok maybe the camera too)

Rick, if you want an iPhone I would either;

a get a contract from somewhere like mobiles.co.uk with something cheap like a wildfire or galaxy ace that they give rediculous cashback offers on, ebay the phone boxed and buy a sim free iphone or.

Buy a sim free iphone and get a giffgaff sim.

£10 a month gets you 250 mins Unlimited texts and Unlimited internet, proper unlimited too, none of this unlimited* business.

Iphone contracts are extortionate, for no other reason than people are willing to pay for them.

Another benefit of iPhones over android devices is that the resal value is way higher.

I recycled my 1 year old desire for £70odd I bought a 2 year old iphone 4 for £220 and could recycle that for £240 now if I wanted to.

gabriel959

Got the S2,

got that on a £19/per month deal, for free with 300 min, 300 text and Unlimited Internet with T-Mobile.

The phone is great, really fast, the battery isn't a problem if you are prepared to spend £15 on an official extended battery (2000mah vs 1650mah).

Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3 is now out officially as well. The Play Store is very good and most apps are cheaper or even free compared to their Apple equivalents.

Most of the apps for Apple are because their browser is dire, who needs an app to access a newspaper website or a company page anyway? No flash either...

Only reasons to get an Apple are their resale value and their accessory range.