Baby's First Smartphone

[sosolidshoe]

So, I am seriously considering taking the plunge and getting my first smartphone. I've spent too long nurturing my burning hatred of Apple to let the effort go to waste now, so the iPhone is out. WP7 looks....limited; I can understand the appeal for someone who wants to just turn on the device, make a call, read an email, then shove it in a pocket and forget about it, but it's not for me.

So, Android it is then. It is at this point that I attempted to go online and make a rational and informed choice, then realised just how little I actually know about smartphones. Hopefully you chaps can help.

First off, I want to buy outright. I've had really terrible experiences with contract mobiles in the past, on several networks, so I'd much rather just buy the handset and get a pay-as-you-go SIM. My budget is fairly fluid, but I'm a miserly git so I'd prefer not to fork over £500 unless it's absolutely necessary. I'm in the UK, but network is not an issue I have to consider, I'm buying based on the hardware and software, not the service.

Feature wise, the phone must be WiFi enabled, as I don't see the need to pay ludicrous amounts of money for mobile data when I have a wireless network at home, and free WiFi hotspots nearly everywhere I would take the device. I want the system to be as customisable as possible; right now I know sod-all about tinkering with phones, but if I buy one I fully intend to learn, and I don't want to be stuck with artificial limitations. The main function of the phone will be that of a personal organiser, managing appointments, reminders, alarms and so on, ideally through voice commands - I've read about several interesting apps based around the "JARVIS"(from the Iron Man films) concept, and I imagine such things are pretty intensive hardware-wise, but I don't know enough to decide whether I actually need one of the fancy dual-core models. It will also function as my MP3 player, so a 3.5mm jack and the battery power to support a decent set of can headphones would be ideal; battery in general is a concern come to think of it.

A friend suggested the Nexus S, and told me that it's "raw" implementation of Android lends itself well to customisation, but on looking, it's not actually that much cheaper than the latest fancypants stuff like the SGS2, and the tradeoff in hardware appears, at least to someone used to working with desktop-sized systems, to be quite significant. Anyway, any advice you can give is welcome.

Cheers.

 

[PrkChpXprss]

Virgin Mobile pay-as-you go plan works well for me.

 

[etmorgs42]

Yeah the vanilla android in the Nexus S is nice but it is getting outdated. Don't be too discouraged though because there are still development communities for the major Samsung GSII phones. Just do your research. XDA developer forums are a good place to start if you want to find out the customization available for your potential phone.
Check out the Galaxy S II I9100 Forums
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1055

 

[mobusta1]

It is at this point that I attempted to go online and make a rational and informed choice, then realised just how little I actually know about smartphones.

You say this and then you also say that the iPhone is out?

............ok

 

[Andrmgic]

"As customizable as possible" only leaves him with Android anyway.

Android is the linux of cell phones.. albeit with far more marketshare than Linux will ever have.

Nexus S would be a good choice.. so would a Galaxy S II. Nexus S will get updates faster and can be purchased more cheaply than the SGS II.

 

[mobusta1]

You can customize the iPhone just as much as an Android with a simple 2 minute jailbreak.

 

[CHANG3D]

Android is the linux of cell phones.. albeit with far more marketshare than Linux will ever have.

Ummm... Android is just another GNULinux distribution... What the heck are you talking about?

 

[CHANG3D]

You can customize the iPhone just as much as an Android with a simple 2 minute jailbreak.

I think this claim as been completely disproven countless of times... so stop spreading utterly false propaganda.

heck, we can even change our keyboard without rooting.

 

[Staples]

I've never had an iPhone but I do have an Android phone and I kind of wonder where the iPhone really lacks in customization to Android. I'd be interested to hear what we are even talking about? The only real way to get advanced customization options on Android is to root it and load another ROM. I think the idea that Android is leaps and bounds beyond iPhone in this respect is greatly exaggerated.

Anywho, my advice is that a smartphone, any smart phone will be a huge leap for you. If you are going to spend a lot of money, might as well spend another hundred on something you like. I care about resolution and ZERO Androids even match the resolution of the iPhone so I had to compromise in order to stay with Sprint.

What Android phones have done to try to compete in this arena is make their screens bigger to get their resolution higher. 4.3 inches is bigger than I'd like but this is what I had to settle for a resolution that is STILL lower than an iPhone.

 

[FadedSpark]

You can customize the iPhone just as much as an Android with a simple 2 minute jailbreak.

No. You can't. I spent 9 months with an iPhone trying to get the thing to not suck at having live content on the homescreen, not 2 minutes. Troll elsewhere.

The iPhone has a very solid experience, don't get me wrong, but in the world of smartphones, WebOS is tied for customization... and is quickly passing apple in that regard. (Overclocked touchpads anyone? )

Find a location that has live versions of every type of phone you are considering using, and spend 15m with each. The one you get along with best, is the best choice.

I've never had an iPhone but I do have an Android phone and I kind of wonder where the iPhone really lacks in customization to Android. I'd be interested to hear what we are even talking about? The only real way to get advanced customization options on Android is to root it and load another ROM. I think the idea that Android is leaps and bounds beyond iPhone in this respect is greatly exaggerated.

Anywho, my advice is that a smartphone, any smart phone will be a huge leap for you. If you are going to spend a lot of money, might as well spend another hundred on something you like. I care about resolution and ZERO Androids even match the resolution of the iPhone so I had to compromise in order to stay with Sprint.

What Android phones have done to try to compete in this arena is make their screens bigger to get their resolution higher. 4.3 inches is bigger than I'd like but this is what I had to settle for a resolution that is STILL lower than an iPhone.

The brilliance in android's customization lies mostly in the homescreen for me. Widgets, layouts, multiple launchers, different ways to hide your apps, lockscreen options... The first thing you stare at on an iphone are the unlock bar and a page of apps. the first thing you stare at on android is a nearly blank canvas (Aside from carrier bloat Apple wins there. )

I can change nearly every facet of my forward experience on android without root, and I only use it nowadays to kill bloat on a new phone (Or unlock it. ) but with my old iPhone 4 I had to jailbreak to be able to put my icons wherever I wanted instead of 1 by 1... <_<

 

[mobusta1]

No. You can't. I spent 9 months with an iPhone trying to get the thing to not suck at having live content on the homescreen, not 2 minutes. Troll elsewhere.

The iPhone has a very solid experience, don't get me wrong, but in the world of smartphones, WebOS is tied for customization... and is quickly passing apple in that regard. (Overclocked touchpads anyone? )

Find a location that has live versions of every type of phone you are considering using, and spend 15m with each. The one you get along with best, is the best choice.




The brilliance in android's customization lies mostly in the homescreen for me. Widgets, layouts, multiple launchers, different ways to hide your apps, lockscreen options... The first thing you stare at on an iphone are the unlock bar and a page of apps. the first thing you stare at on android is a nearly blank canvas (Aside from carrier bloat Apple wins there. )

I can change nearly every facet of my forward experience on android without root, and I only use it nowadays to kill bloat on a new phone (Or unlock it. ) but with my old iPhone 4 I had to jailbreak to be able to put my icons wherever I wanted instead of 1 by 1... <_<

Maybe you're just mentally incapable of getting it work then? I have plenty of live content on my phone. Weather apps, toggles, pictures and whatever else you could possibly thing of. I personally think most of them suck though (both on iphone and android) and it just creates clutter so I use it at a minimum.

 

[mobusta1]

I think this claim as been completely disproven countless of times... so stop spreading utterly false propaganda.

heck, we can even change our keyboard without rooting.

a keyboard huh, wow, last time I used one of those I was riding around on a dinosaur

 

[Staples]

The brilliance in android's customization lies mostly in the homescreen for me. Widgets, layouts, multiple launchers, different ways to hide your apps, lockscreen options... The first thing you stare at on an iphone are the unlock bar and a page of apps. the first thing you stare at on android is a nearly blank canvas (Aside from carrier bloat Apple wins there. )

I can change nearly every facet of my forward experience on android without root, and I only use it nowadays to kill bloat on a new phone (Or unlock it. ) but with my old iPhone 4 I had to jailbreak to be able to put my icons wherever I wanted instead of 1 by 1... <_<

Thank you for the enlightenment. Not too sure everyone cares about home screen customization (actually I do) but I doubt the vast majority do. The widgets are nice, especially the weather one that Motorola puts in their phones. My gf has a Nexus S and wishes she had that widget.

 

[Lunas]

You can customize the iPhone just as much as an Android with a simple 2 minute jailbreak.

Umm no you can't I have both and no the ipod/iphone sucks in compare to android and with android you don't need to jailbreak to customize it you can customize it out of the box also with the idevices jailbreaking is required with every update and now that apple is doing ota updates you are in for a new world of shit.

 

[mobusta1]

oh cool, you also don't root i assume?

 

[Lunas]

Not what I said; I said you don't need to do that with android you do need to jail break the idevices and when you do jailbreak you need to maintain that jail break by not updating till the community exploits it and has a jailbreak I did the whole jailbreak song and dance with my ipod touch with each software update you had to re jailbreak it to customize it after that I spose it is easy enough just download winterboard but I have had that crash my ipod nessitating a wipe.
Don't get my dislike for them wrong they are decent if you want to be told what you can do with your phone. They are a very basic device that I would tell anyone who just wants a smart phone to get but if your a enthusiast amd like to customize every thing or want to have the freedom of a flexible operating system. ios is not the system you want.

 

[Andrmgic]

Ummm... Android is just another GNULinux distribution... What the heck are you talking about?

I should have been more specific.. I know Android uses a Linux kernel.. and I was merely saying that Android on phones will always be more popular than Linux on actual computers.

 

[sosolidshoe]

I should probably have left the Apple comment out it seems. For the record, I am sure the iPhone is a fine device, I simply dislike the company's policies and so refuse to buy their products.

0mega: I did try going to a Carphone Warehouse to get some advice, alas what I actually got was an unending sales pitch from someone who'd evidently not hit their quota of WP7 contract sales yet. It became so annoying I had to leave before I tried out more than two devices.

Staples: For me, with my ludicrously large gorilla-hands, larger screen size is actually an advantage.

Thanks for the advice so far, keep it comin'

EDIT: Oh yes, just to check; what's the deal with unlocking? The SGS2 is about seventy pounds cheaper if I buy a network-specific pay as you go version rather than the raw SIMfree handset. Is unlocking it to run on other networks something I can do myself, or am I going to have to spend the money I saved getting it unlocked anyway?

 

[FadedSpark]

Maybe you're just mentally incapable of getting it work then? I have plenty of live content on my phone. Weather apps, toggles, pictures and whatever else you could possibly thing of. I personally think most of them suck though (both on iphone and android) and it just creates clutter so I use it at a minimum.

I eat sleep and breathe modifying my phones. I've created root packages, rom packages, and even scored a leak of the official 2.2 for my old phone.

I've jailbroken and fixed many a trashed iPhone/iPod, Experimented with different launchers (WP7 Beta was nice on my iPhone 4. ) and all sorts of wonderful stuff.

Aside from iWP7, everything sucked. Only one that stuck around that was any use was my nice weather enabled lock screen, but even that nuked my battery life.

a keyboard huh, wow, last time I used one of those I was riding around on a dinosaur

So what do you do, just will your text messages in to being? Thought not. Stop trolling.

I should probably have left the Apple comment out it seems. For the record, I am sure the iPhone is a fine device, I simply dislike the company's policies and so refuse to buy their products.

0mega: I did try going to a Carphone Warehouse to get some advice, alas what I actually got was an unending sales pitch from someone who'd evidently not hit their quota of WP7 contract sales yet. It became so annoying I had to leave before I tried out more than two devices.

Staples: For me, with my ludicrously large gorilla-hands, larger screen size is actually an advantage.

Thanks for the advice so far, keep it comin'

EDIT: Oh yes, just to check; what's the deal with unlocking? The SGS2 is about seventy pounds cheaper if I buy a network-specific pay as you go version rather than the raw SIMfree handset. Is unlocking it to run on other networks something I can do myself, or am I going to have to spend the money I saved getting it unlocked anyway?

To unlock the phone, you need to root it with a vulnerable kernel (15m job if you're compeltely comfortable with android mods, MUCH longer and riskier if not ) then download a free app from the market. Took 10m total for me.

My advice on the phone situation, is go back to carphone, as they have the largest selection from what I hear, and if you really start getting pitched at tell them straight up you aren't buying today, you're looking at devices to find one that fits you.

 

[Andrmgic]

I should probably have left the Apple comment out it seems. For the record, I am sure the iPhone is a fine device, I simply dislike the company's policies and so refuse to buy their products.

0mega: I did try going to a Carphone Warehouse to get some advice, alas what I actually got was an unending sales pitch from someone who'd evidently not hit their quota of WP7 contract sales yet. It became so annoying I had to leave before I tried out more than two devices.

Staples: For me, with my ludicrously large gorilla-hands, larger screen size is actually an advantage.

Thanks for the advice so far, keep it comin'

EDIT: Oh yes, just to check; what's the deal with unlocking? The SGS2 is about seventy pounds cheaper if I buy a network-specific pay as you go version rather than the raw SIMfree handset. Is unlocking it to run on other networks something I can do myself, or am I going to have to spend the money I saved getting it unlocked anyway?

There are other benefits to buying an unlocked phone.. the unlocked version doesn't come pre-loaded with any carrier crapware and doesn't have a carrier logo on it. Unlocking can usually be done yourself, but it may not be free depending on with the method is.. sellers like NCKZone on ebay can sell phone unlock codes, etc that you can enter yourself for many models.. not sure if the SGS II is one of them.

I'm not sure those things are worth it if a carrier is offering the phone as a pay as you go option and you are happy with the service. I know that in the US, a phone like the SGS II would never be available as a "go phone" or similar device and carriers shove a data plan down our throats..

Might be worth it to save the $70 in your case.

 

[Greenstuffs]

I'm trying to get away from android, just waiting for the next iOS phone. The way i see android is that android fanboys thinks they are smarter than anyone because they can run a script and load roms on their phones.

I'm just tired of all the android BS, like bloatware, bad battery life, bad software, never ending waiting for updates, fragmentation. If phones weren't locked i guess i could at least wait for a "better" rom.

Now with all the bootloader locking BS i think i just won't touch another android phone again, for what? hey ios is locked but at least the software is very polished, apps. Sure google has nice apps like google maps, but thats not the meat when the whole system just can't handle itself, you would wonder why the phones are still lagfest after 3 years in the market?

 

[FadedSpark]

I'm trying to get away from android, just waiting for the next iOS phone. The way i see android is that android fanboys thinks they are smarter than anyone because they can run a script and load roms on their phones.

I'm just tired of all the android BS, like bloatware, bad battery life, bad software, never ending waiting for updates, fragmentation. If phones weren't locked i guess i could at least wait for a "better" rom.

Now with all the bootloader locking BS i think i just won't touch another android phone again, for what? hey ios is locked but at least the software is very polished, apps. Sure google has nice apps like google maps, but thats not the meat when the whole system just can't handle itself, you would wonder why the phones are still lagfest after 3 years in the market?

Sure, if you buy HTC and motorola you're left with locked bootloaders. Samsung, you're stuck with locked recoverys but the bootloader is perfectly serviceable.

And on batterylife, the biggest issue with android is people leaving too much running. I never run in to any issues with my SGS2, email syncing, facebook every 30m, wifi or 3g ALWAYS on (no 2g fall back with my network) and occassionally bluetooth, I always make it through the day and I'm a HUGE user.

 

[Greenstuffs]

Sure, if you buy HTC and motorola you're left with locked bootloaders. Samsung, you're stuck with locked recoverys but the bootloader is perfectly serviceable.

And on batterylife, the biggest issue with android is people leaving too much running. I never run in to any issues with my SGS2, email syncing, facebook every 30m, wifi or 3g ALWAYS on (no 2g fall back with my network) and occassionally bluetooth, I always make it through the day and I'm a HUGE user.

Some people may never have a choice, the carriers gives you apps that are always running and you are never be able to uninstall unless you get into work and root the phone, now on some phones are very hard, to do like the Droid 3 which i had it for a week but that it was so well locked that i had to give up on the phone. No way i'm running all the vcast shit.
Now running a droid charge and pretty much my wireless phone spends most of the time charging. yeah i know LTE radio and such but still 6-8 hrs of battery life is pretty ridiculous if you ask me.

 

[Lunas]

titanium backup with root access allows you to uninstall anything you want if you get the donate version you can freeze apps...

 

[FadedSpark]

Some people may never have a choice, the carriers gives you apps that are always running and you are never be able to uninstall unless you get into work and root the phone, now on some phones are very hard, to do like the Droid 3 which i had it for a week but that it was so well locked that i had to give up on the phone. No way i'm running all the vcast shit.
Now running a droid charge and pretty much my wireless phone spends most of the time charging. yeah i know LTE radio and such but still 6-8 hrs of battery life is pretty ridiculous if you ask me.

If that's a huge issue for you, as it is for me, hold off for the upcoming samsung LTE phone for verizon, it's been all but confirmed.

They're having a big launch announcement later in september.

titanium backup with root access allows you to uninstall anything you want if you get the donate version you can freeze apps...

But again, you have to be comfortable with that stuff. I used to have the exact same mindset as if everything to do with modifying the phone was NBD, and it really wasn't for me, but the general populace is clueless. Some people just can't grasp it, and don't care to.

Working retail definitely helped me stop being so meh about everything XD I can speak idiot when it comes to phones now.

 

[CHANG3D]

So what do you do, just will your text messages in to being? Thought not. Stop trolling.

That's pretty much exactly what he is saying. But I just willed this message into existence too, so I can't say too much about that! While I still have this ability, let me also will a corset model and another edgier fashion model into my room. FYI, I am actually seeing them, but just separately. I love my life! Now if I can get them together in a room...

 

[sosolidshoe]

Woah woah woah, hold on a moment. I've been doing some searching around to try and inform myself better based on the advice in this thread; is it true that Android's Voice Commands feature doesn't actually work with the contacts stored on your phone, as opposed to Google's slightly-scary cloud-based address book? If so that's mind-bogglingly dumb, it was one of the major features that attracted me to the OS, but there are threads on Google's support forum which state the above.

Come to think of it, does it work properly for UK users yet, or is it still Americans-only? I remember reading that was an issue with it back at release but had assumed it was fixed by now.

 

[Zorachus]

Nexus-S is a great phone still, root it and install Oxygen 2.2.1 ROM with Matr1X 5.5 kernel, and you have one bad ass phone, as fast and smooth as any dual core phone out today, with long lasting battery life. Plus you can get it super cheap nowadays

Also can't go wrong with the pricier Samsung Galaxy SII, bigger screen with newer tech and dual core, and run Oxygen ROM on that beast and you have the best phone out today, but you will pay a premium for this phone.

 

[austinwachukwu]

Are you on Verizon? Get a Kin TwoM...it's good for kids, it has wifi, but doesn't have a data plan

 

[Deleted member 108676]

I think this claim as been completely disproven countless of times... so stop spreading utterly false propaganda.

heck, we can even change our keyboard without rooting.

Someone doesn't like when people talk bad about their precious.

Umm no you can't I have both and no the ipod/iphone sucks in compare to android and with android you don't need to jailbreak to customize it you can customize it out of the box also with the idevices jailbreaking is required with every update and now that apple is doing ota updates you are in for a new world of shit.

Holy fuck dude, use some God damn punctuation.