[Gold Joinee Spaca-Sweeney(GA)]

Right, its that time of year (or 18 months) when 02 kindly let me upgrade my phone for a shatload of cash.

My options are:

iPhone 4 at a one of cost of £200 and 35 quid a month

or move to an android base.

02 have no good nokias and im not a blackberry fan.

The only things i want it to have:
GPS
Wi-Fi
and Geocaching.

Charging from USB would be good too.


GAZ! WHAT DO I DO!?

[SJ cDave]

Gold Joinee Spaca-Sweeney(GA), on 09 September 2010 - 08:30 AM, said:

The only things i want it to have:
GPS
Wi-Fi
and Geocaching.

Charging from USB would be good too.

I'm an Android fanboy* these days, so I'm not going to be able to give an unbiased opinion.

*(Going to try to get into their London party next week)

[Gold Joinee Spaca-Sweeney(GA)]

I was looking at the Samsung Galaxy S, anyone heard anything good?

[HJCotW Spacemonkey]

Get my phone. Jamie has it too, and Laura is upgrading too it, cos it's awesome - the Sony Xperia X10.

MoT
HJCotW

[Gaz]

The Galaxy S is a nice phone with a really good display (and if you see Swype running on one, that's pretty bloody nifty), but if I were going the Android route - and I have considered it, because it does have its appeals not least of which being Google Navigation - I'd still go for an HTC Desire, which is the UK version of the much better looking Droid Incredible that's annoyingly only available in the US. HTC's Sense skin for Android is widely regarded as the best, whereas Samsung's TouchWiz is a bit more basic and comes with some crappy preinstalled Samsung apps, and in a lot of ways seems to be trying to look as much like an iPhone as possible (and if you're going to go for something different, it may as well *look* different or it kind of defeats the point!).

My main hangups with Android phones are the battery life being poorer (and in some cases, abysmal), the weaker and much messier app store, and (admittedly this is more my taste than anything else) the fact that the games are about 2 years behind what's available on an iPhone. The ability to customise virtually everything is nice, but ultimately having a clock in a different font is buggerall use if you've run out of juice before the end of the day. I also seriously dislike carrier clag and being beholden to networks for software updates (unless you want to start rooting things and poking about with custom ROMs), and you do get that on Android phones.

If you do decide to go the iPhone 4 route I don't think you'd regret it - the (overblown) antenna issue aside, it's an amazing device. The screen is awesome, the camera is one the best on any phone regardless of megapixel count and it takes snaps better than my old 8 megapixel point and shoot, and of course the the quality and quantity of stuff in the app store is leagues ahead of what anyone else can offer. It also has stonking battery life - I now leave wifi and GPS on pretty much all the time and use it for at least a couple of hours or so a day browsing/playing games (i.e. screen on, music playing, data being sent/received), and I regularly get 2 or 3 days between charges. Being frugal, I've managed to get nearly a week on one charge before.

If you can afford it though, the cheapest way to do it is buy one unlocked from the Apple store and change your O2 contract to iPhone simplicity (O2 will swap your old sim for a micro sim for free: http://shop.o2.co.uk...phone/12_months)

I'm on their 12-month one and get the same minutes/texts as you get with the £35 a month tariff, but it costs me £15 instead and the contract is 6 months shorter - and even if you keep it for 18 months, it's still cheaper.

Total cost of buying one on £35 pay monthly is £200 + 18 x £35 = £830
Total cost of buying one from Apple then bunging in a Simplicity sim is £499 + 18 x £15 = £769

Knock off the trade-in on an old iPhone, and the up-front cost goes down by a couple of hundred quid too. And if you write it off against tax as a business phone for your photography, you could whittle it down even more.

Other possible options would be to hang on and see if O2 offers a decent deal on the Nokia N8, which looks quite nice and it seems they've finally sorted out their terrible OS, but until final unit reviews come in I'd still be wary. Nokia have had some serious issues of late (the N900 being a brick with a half-finished OS and the N97 being an absolute disaster) so they really need to prove they can still knock out a decent smartphone. Or, coming in from a completely different tangent, a Palm Pre. Web OS is really very, very nice, there's a new version of it due soon too, and now HP own Palm it's going to get the support it deserves.

EDIT: Re; Sean's post, the xperia was one I was going to mention as well but forgot. I had a play on an x10 mini and it's a really nifty little phone.

This post has been edited by Gaz: 09 September 2010 - 10:11 AM

[Gold Bismuth Shortt]

I'd go for android, can't sing it's praises enough!

I'm on the HTC wildfire which is smaller and more compact that the Desire and it's fantastic, incredibly interactive and I don't know what I did without it. I'd say go have a play with one; HTC, Sony; Samsung etc, see what you think, I knew I wanted one as soon as I saw the weather apps

I got it on a stupidly cheap contract with T-mobile - £15 pm with good minutes, texts, internet and flexibooster, but then again when I called to upgrade they gave me heaps more than on the website since I said I was going to leave!

[Gold Joinee Spaca-Sweeney(GA)]

Just managed to wangle the Samsung Galaxy S for free on T Mobile for £30 a month, barginous!

[Distant Joinee Mandoran]

HTC Desire, but I am an Android fanboy-Apple hater in equal measure.

[Gold Joinee Spaca-Sweeney(GA)]

Right, as of tomorrow i will be iFree and clear.

I've had the Samsung now for a few days, here are some notes...

1. The OS looks a lot like the iPhone, good, i liked the way it worked and it means that this new phone is pretty easy to get used to.
2. Its a lot lighter and thinner than the 3g 16gb
3. It has MKV and AVI support, no HDMI out but has an analogue out which seems to work well.
4. The ability to drag and drop to the phone and then play straight away for video, images and music is just awesome, no more crummy iTunes to pass everything through and it'll play whatever i download.
5. It supports media servers, i can view what the PS3 media server is sharing but have yet to get it to work out the file types and play them, work in progress.

6. I seem to have traded Apple for Google, another company that in it's own sinister way wants to know everything i am doing at all times.
7. There are a few more "useless" applications that i am never going to use that i cant uninstall, i've hidden them on an out of the way screen.
8. The android market is not as 'refined' as the iStore in that there is a lot more "stuff" on it. I suppose that is the balance between being open source vs. program vetted.
9. The samsung music player and the built in speaker is not as good as the iPhone, that's prob becuase the iPhone is an iPod with a phone attached whereas the samsung is a PDA that plays music.

[SJ cDave]

Gold Joinee Spaca-Sweeney(GA), on 14 September 2010 - 05:15 PM, said:

7. There are a few more "useless" applications that i am never going to use that i cant uninstall, i've hidden them on an out of the way screen.

Root it, run a nandroid backup (incase the apps are used in a way you did not realise), then install the Titanium Backup app, and you can uninstall them.