[HRH Gold Joinee Sheli]

Right. I have narrowed down my new phone choices to either...

An iPhone (3 or 4? Not sure...)

OR

A Samsung Galaxy S2

I have a little list in my head of pros and cons about each, but I don't really know too much about them so I might be totally wrong. I really like the idea of Siri, but I'm not sure I'll use it properly... and I LOVE swype on the S2. There are also things about both which I think would annoy me... eg, the iPhone is apparently quite fragile, and I'm afraid I'll drop it and crack the screen. The S2 I am worried will annoy me because I won't be able to put my music on easily (as my music is all in iTunes...)

At the moment, they are neck and neck. Which would you choose, and why???

[Gold Joinee Spaca-Sweeney(GA)]

Galaxy S2, it's essentially an iPhone but without iTunes (for me that was an advantage - Angry Birds is free!)
You have the ability to plug in a miniSD card, lovely large screen and all good there!

[GJ Drought]

in terms of fragility, all current phones are pretty sensitive, but you can get a decent silicone case that will absorb the shock really well . ive dropped my iphone a bunch of times and its fine!

[Gaz]

I would always choose the iPhone out of anything vs android because I dislike the lack of cohesive and elegant design in android, but that's another issue - out of what's on the market though, those are probably the best two of the bunch.

The iPhone 4 screen is actually as tough as nails - it's gorilla glass (as most decent phones are these days). It's no more or less fragile than any other phone I've used even though it has two glass surfaces. You probably would want to get some sort of case or back cover so it's less slippery if anything - mine was forever sliding off of surfaces because it was so shiny!

One thing I would suggest is having a look at the screen of an S2 if you haven't used one before. It's lower resolution than the iPhone 4/4S, but not so much you'd probably notice/care. However the big difference is that the S2 is SAMOLED whereas the iPhone4 is LCD. SAMOLED screens work slightly differently and tend to have fabulous contrast so black is really, really black but the colour can sometimes come over as oversaturated/too intense. On the flipside, some people like the vividness. And the iPhone 4 display is still widely considered to be the best out there because it's so sharp and dense - but most people consider the S2 screen second best.

It's completely a personal taste thing, but worth checking out if nothing else is a decider.

[PJ Hannah B-R]

Don't worry about the fragility of the iphone - just get a bumper. I've dropped mine LOADS of times and have no bother.

I've had my iphone about six months and I LOVE IT. LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT. Use it for everything.

[joinee coolio]

I had an iPhone 3G and found it very annoying; it froze all the time, constantly required updating, and completely died for several days when it got stuck in a loop when I updated it where the update wouldn't complete, and Apple basically said it was my fault as the interval since I'd last plugged it in meant that two updates had been released and it was getting confused! The only fix for that (as revealed by Google) was to manually keep trying to update in the hope that it would finally accept the update and after about 9 hours of trying (not all in one go) it finally worked. Personally I didn't know I was signing up to such a responsibility when I bought a phone!

I sold the iPhone for £180 and got myself a Samsung Galaxy S, which for a more generous contract is £15 per month cheaper and I love it! When I got my iPhone it was still locked into 02, so I probably was on an over-expensive contract, but I still think the contracts are more favourable on a Galaxy S.

The Galaxy S does everything I wanted my iPhone to do, and in the way that I expect it to. Maybe I would have found the iPhone more intuitive had I been a Mac user, but it just didn't make sense to me. I was constantly Googling how to do things (or asking Gaz!).

Also, the Swype system on the Galaxy S is the best thing in the world and I can't believe other phones still make you tap out words letter by letter. I completely intend to get the next Galaxy when my contract is up.

[Gaz]

Re: the next galaxy - if you mean the Galaxy nexus, one of Janey's friends is a Samsung blogger and was disappointed by it. She reckons even though it's older, the S2 is still the better phone by some way.