Convince Cain to buy your favoured smartphone - the thread!

[Salty]

I work with these things. A lot of them. The number of iphones that come back with some kind of problem, hardware or software, is tiny compared to the number of androids. The Galaxy S2 is one of the best ones out there, but it still has way more problems and weird shit than the iphone.

Alty,
Well why don't we just give warranty a quick call, huh? Ok.

[Cain]

Interesting.  All of those.

Weird people are willing to drop so much money on devices that seem so fucking glitchy, ill-designed or otherwise not quite working as well as they should.  Still considering what I want, if anything.

[Bruno]

You can get a used Original Droid for cheap these days.

[aanti]

to be honest i think smartphones suck big time. they suck up too much of one's attention..
i have a sony ericsson xperia x10 mini pro (has a actual keyboard) and i put that cyanogenmod7 on it, does it's job (phone, checking mails/some internet stuff/music/camera). but still battery life sucks, especially if you use wifi/music/camera..i have to charge mine every fucking day.
im considering going back to a real phone: no touchscreen (i think thats one of the main battery-drainers), internet, bad 1-3 years contract to pay the rent/price for the device, BUT a bad ass battery life time and simplicity + solid build quality and ease of use..then i could remove the simcard from my xperia, put a 32gb expansion card in it and just use that as music player and camera (5 mp are enough for me)

i dont really need mobile internet, all im doing there is checking mails and train or bus schedules..really i prefer a laptop or a desktop for most things a smartphone tries to be good at..

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

to be honest i think smartphones suck big time. they suck up too much of one's attention..
i have a sony ericsson xperia x10 mini pro (has a actual keyboard) and i put that cyanogenmod7 on it, does it's job (phone, checking mails/some internet stuff/music/camera). but still battery life sucks, especially if you use wifi/music/camera..i have to charge mine every fucking day.
im considering going back to a real phone: no touchscreen (i think thats one of the main battery-drainers), internet, bad 1-3 years contract to pay the rent/price for the device, BUT a bad ass battery life time and simplicity + solid build quality and ease of use..then i could remove the simcard from my xperia, put a 32gb expansion card in it and just use that as music player and camera (5 mp are enough for me)

i dont really need mobile internet, all im doing there is checking mails and train or bus schedules..really i prefer a laptop or a desktop for most things a smartphone tries to be good at..

Smartphones suck for you, and suck up too much of your time.

Battery life could be better; I only get about two days out of my iPhone before it goes dead.

I don't talk on the phone if I can help it, but I use the other features a lot; notes, itunes, mapping, camera, text, email, read books, and occasionally check forums or look something up on the internet. Having those resources available is incredibly worth it to me, and rather than being a time suck, it allows me to get stuff done during what would otherwise be frustrating downtime waiting for a class to start or a friend to meet me.

Each person's needs and uses are going to be different.

[Bruno]

The touchscreen itself doesn't use much power, the large LCD does.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I have a cheap dumbphone that i use almost exclusively for pd when im not at my computer and texting villager and taking pictures of myself for wompage. Totally get what youre saying nigel.

[Cain]

I mainly want it so when I'm on a trip (like today) I can still check emails and things while out of my building, and so when I go on holiday in the summer, I'll have something more portable than a laptop to email home with.  The plans I'm looking at all include all-you-can-eat data packages, since that is my main interest in having one.

[Triple Zero]

Come to think of it, I think a large part also depends on where you are. Cause part of iPhone's success was they came out with some relatively sweet (for US standards) deals on voice/data packages. While in the Netherlands, you pretty much want a HTC or Samsung device (which run Android) because they allow you more control. The only people I know here that own an iPhone are of a generation older than me, the kind that sometimes gets a bit intimidated by computers, but not even all of them because Android phones are easy enough to use as well.

Did you try checking some UK computer/electronics forums? I found some here (Dutch, unfortunately) that have a strongly moderated discussion topic on what is the current state of the art in smartphones, monitors, laptops, netbooks, etc. and discuss best-buy, cheap options and top-of-the-line models. Since your needs sound quite common, it should be fairly easy after reading such a topic to make a pick and feel confident that you made the best choice available at the time--which is the point, after all. At least, it is for me. As I said elsewhere, I really don't follow hardware developments very closely (which is why you haven't heard me name any specific models, sorry) but after reading up on a relevant thread about the type of thing I was looking for, got me up to speed real quickly, as they discuss just the important specs and aren't bullshitting you like electronic stores that list only half the specs but different ones on every item so you can't really compare them (which is when I walk up to one of the Macs that are on display, open Safari, look up the full specs online, click through to the price comparison chart, find the item is being offered for 20 euros cheaper at XYZ, order it online right there in the shop* and walk out, receive item next day)

Oh yeah and given it seems that writing emails on it is quite important to you, I'd really suggest getting a model with a slide-out keyboard. They can be a bit harder to find [sometimes it pays to wait a bit until a new model with slide keyboard comes out], but a friend of mine swears by them.





*using a few tricks to confuse keyloggers and changing my online banking password as soon as I get home just to be on the safe side

[Telarus]

With an Android device, you can root it and put on your own copy of the OS (thus, burninating most of the spy-ware that every single mobile carrier pre-bundles to these phones).

[Cain]

Price-wise, it seems that all of the varying models are much the same.  The only relatively cheaper models I noticed were some older Blackberry and iPhone 3GS models.

And yeah, the keyboard thing might bug me.  Or not, as I actually have relatively small hands, so typing with it might not be so bad.  I'd mostly use it to read them rather than reply, I suspect...especially when I'm on duty, I'm never too far from my laptop (30 minutes at worst).  During my travels, it would probably just be updates to facebook and emails going "I am still alive.  Please send bail money", which wouldn't be too bad for typing.

I'll definitely snoop around some forums though, and see what they say.

[Triple Zero]

During my travels, it would probably just be updates to facebook and emails going "I am still alive.  Please send bail money", which wouldn't be too bad for typing.

You can probably preload those email texts as templates before you travel, anyway.

[aanti]

I mainly want it so when I'm on a trip (like today) I can still check emails and things while out of my building, and so when I go on holiday in the summer, I'll have something more portable than a laptop to email home with.  The plans I'm looking at all include all-you-can-eat data packages, since that is my main interest in having one.

what about a small tablet then ?
edit: i never used a tablet myself, but i found this thing here interesting:
http://makeplaylive.com/

[navkat]

My post in Alty's thread re: my personal experience with both the iPhone 4S and the Samsung Epic (Galaxy S1 phone) may interest you.

Galaxy S waaaaaay less buggy since I rooted and flashed CleanGB ROM using ClockworkMod. Rooting the phone gets rid of bloat and much of the network and device manufacturer's contrived limitations since Android is based on the Lixux OS model but it voids the warranty and sometimes violates your TOS. It basically strips the phone down to the basic operating system functions and the bare bones necessary to communicate with your network provider. This adds/opens you up to all sorts of neat functionalities that the provider and manufacturer deliberately break because they want you using the device the way THEY want you to use it. It also means that you're relying on the Open Source community (read: hax0rz) to provide you with a stable, functional interface. More often than not, the community is honorable and competent: trying and succeeding in creating a good end-product that they've guinea-pigged on themselves before release but you're always going to get some idiot in the bunch who's "riced up" their phone, going for flashy, battery-consuming bullshit and/or not knowing what the fuck they're doing. However, these days, devs aren't taken seriously in the community unless they document and support their shit and bugs are well documented in that community. Someone else has always guinea-pigged the ROM for you, bitched about it angrily to the dev and forced that dev to fix his mistakes. Good luck getting that kind of support and responsibility out of your carrier or the manufacturer.

Make certain if you root and flash, you read up on all the bugs. Follow tutorials on YouTube from well-known and respected members of the Android community and you should be fine. As a matter of fact: before you buy either the iPhone OR the Galaxy S, get the fuck off PD, go read xda developers, Android Central and whatever community is dedicated to jailbreaking the iPhone.

Last bit of advice: KICK TIRES IN THE STORE. Demand to hold a working model of the phones in your hand ON EACH AND EVERY NETWORK. Here, in the states, iPhone for Sprint has different shit on it than say, TMobile or ATT. This gets even weirder for Android from manufacturer to manufacturer. Take pics with the store's phone and look at the quality (make sure you clean the fingerprints off the lense first!) compare shit like screen res, surfing, speed, and open some YT vids. Visit all the sites you frequent most to see how they translate onto the device. Check for skipping, crappy sound quality/speaker crackling and whatever else you know will annoy the shit out of you in a week. Use the shit out of it. If they give you crap (they won't), tell them you are not signing a 2 year contract on a device you know won't last the length of the contract in both quality and longevity/viability/up-to-dateness and if they want your sale, they'll drop the bullshit and tell you the REAL pros and cons, not just point to some specs on their signage. Pick the guy who looks like the biggest geek in the store who's probably modded the fuck out of his phones for a couple years and ask him what he likes best out of the carrier's offerings but bear in mind, he's still a salesman. He's going to try to sell you the model he's going to get the biggest cut on.

Now get off PeeDee, get on xda and GOOD LUCK. We're mostly end-users on here who only have one or two phones at a time. Those pimply-faced little shits on the dev sites collect these fucking things and have a lot of spare time to fuck with them.

I hope this helps a bit.

[Triple Zero]

XDA yes that's one of the places my friend reads a lot, too.