Best (none Apple) Phone?

[Trem]

Galaxy S2, Xperia S or iPhone4S.

Yawn Bodhi, sorry the phone had the wrong manufacturers name.

Bodlar did actually mention 3 makes of phone in what he said.

Cows

 

[Bodhi]

If that is the cornerstone of your argument then you shouldn't of bothered upgrading to the Xperia S yourself. It is based around android 2.3 which can be found on many phones, it has a skin (Timescape) as well and it doesn't have anything extra in the battery department and in fact some people seem to be suffering a connectivity switching issue which is causing the battery to go flat rather fast.

Really? So I could have stuck with my X10 and got a lovely 720p Bravia Screen, a 12Mp Camera, HDMI out, an extra core and lots of other various lovely gubbins that come with the SXS could I? I mean the X10 was on Gingerbread too so must be the same phone!!!

Seriously are you on crack? Or crystal meth or something like that?

Oh and please check your facts, Timescape hasn't been a skin in around 12 months now. It only appears as a widget, which you can easily remove from the homescreen if you so desire. Apart from that the Sony/SE skin is very light, pretty much just the stock Android one with a different colour scheme and some new icons. There's Facebook Inside Xperia (which works occasionally), but that's easy enough to turn off. Certainly 100x nicer to use than Sense and that aboirtion called TouchWiz anyway.

But then if you are looking at a new phone I would suggest the best way forwards is to do what I did, and try some out. The bigger Phones 4 U and CPW's are normally very accomodating at this, I tried the SXS, SGS2, iPhone 4S and Lumia 800 in the Merry Hilll P4U, and found the Sony to be the best model of the 4, with the best screen, nicest UI and best camera. I didn't try any HTC models after the Xperia X1 issues put me off them for life.

Oh and Trem I'd avoid the Lumia 800. Windows Phone makes the baby jesus cry. It's going to take Nokia down with it as well if they don't make it less shit soon.

 

[soze]

Bhodi, did you not say upgrading past the SXS was pointless because all you get is two extra cores a different camera and a different screen? If so all the reasons you just used to justify upgrading to the SXS are pointless?

I am glad you like it but the SXS is not the top of the tree and will not be in 3 months when its spec makes it look like a last gen phone. Sony should have given their flagship phone all the toys not half of them. This phone is either really late to the current gen of phones or its underwhelming for the next gen of phones.

 

[Bodhi]

Bhodi, did you not say upgrading past the SXS was pointless because all you get is two extra cores a different camera and a different screen? If so all the reasons you just used to justify upgrading to the SXS are pointless?

I am glad you like it but the SXS is not the top of the tree and will not be in 3 months when its spec makes it look like a last gen phone. Sony should have given their flagship phone all the toys not half of them. This phone is either really late to the current gen of phones or its underwhelming for the next gen of phones.

No, I said I didn't see what the HTC One X offered over the SGS2/SXS/iPhone 4S other than a couple of extra cores. I then told you what it offered over my previous phone. If that wasn't clear maybe you need a phone with a 720p Bravia screen to read my posts on?

Going by reviews I would say it's at the top of the tree with two others, which I have mentioned a few times. Which is best of those 3 will come down to what you want from a phone. What I think Sony have done is learn the difference between leading edge and bleeding edge, and stuck with tech which is proven rather than let the early adopters take all the pain. Seems quite sensible in my book.

You can also tell from using the phone that, whilst this is Sony's first handset on their own for 6-7 years, it was developed by SE. It still has the SE logo on the back and lots of references in the software to SE. The pure Sony kit will be out later in the year, and we are starting to see some of their innovations already, like the touchscreen you don't have to touch on the Sola. I suspect however, they will be real innovations, rather than just adding more cores and memory.

 

[soze]

I will give you a funny for the wink

I like a lot of the Sony gear and the tablet had some brilliant idea which I am amazed no one has copied. But like you say it is top of the tree with two other both of which are due upgrades.

There is no denying it is a good phone but slightly underwhelming when you are used to greatness from Sony.

 

[Bodhi]

Problem with the SXS is that you don't really see it's strengths, such as that screen, the frankly ridiculous video playback and crystal clear call quality (remember when phones could do that?) and all the other little touches until you actually play around with one, hence why I suggested Embattle do the sensible thing and play around with a few phones rather than listening to reviews. Most of the online journos I have met would struggle to review which way their arse pointed, never mind a phone with more than one button.

Been playing with another couple of cool bits with it over the last couple of days too. First there is the Power Manager, which, as you might expect, is a lot like Juice Defender, in that it turns stuff off at night and when the battery gets low. Easy to do with an app granted, but good to see it on here as a standard feature.

The other bit is LiveView manager, which lets you tell the phone what apps you want to load when various accessories are plugged in, say music player when you plug the headphones in, or the TV Launcher when you plug it into HDMI. You can do similar things with the NFC tags, but haven't got mine sorted yet (didn't get any in the box )

It really is full of "Surprise and Delight" as marketing folk would call it, if they weren't on lunch, LinkedIn or staring out the window....

 

[Ch3tan]

But why did it not launch with ics Bod? It looks nice enough, but size is correct, for a new phone it is months behind the curve

 

[Embattle]

Really? So I could have stuck with my X10 and got a lovely 720p Bravia Screen, a 12Mp Camera, HDMI out, an extra core and lots of other various lovely gubbins that come with the SXS could I? I mean the X10 was on Gingerbread too so must be the same phone!!!

Seriously are you on crack? Or crystal meth or something like that?

Oh and please check your facts, Timescape hasn't been a skin in around 12 months now. It only appears as a widget, which you can easily remove from the homescreen if you so desire. Apart from that the Sony/SE skin is very light, pretty much just the stock Android one with a different colour scheme and some new icons. There's Facebook Inside Xperia (which works occasionally), but that's easy enough to turn off. Certainly 100x nicer to use than Sense and that aboirtion called TouchWiz anyway.

But then if you are looking at a new phone I would suggest the best way forwards is to do what I did, and try some out. The bigger Phones 4 U and CPW's are normally very accomodating at this, I tried the SXS, SGS2, iPhone 4S and Lumia 800 in the Merry Hilll P4U, and found the Sony to be the best model of the 4, with the best screen, nicest UI and best camera. I didn't try any HTC models after the Xperia X1 issues put me off them for life.

Oh and Trem I'd avoid the Lumia 800. Windows Phone makes the baby jesus cry. It's going to take Nokia down with it as well if they don't make it less shit soon.

Personally I didn't know your previous phone, hardly comes as a shock it was another Sony. Those things you list aren't really anything that'll massively improve your usage on a day to day basis although I've very little doubt you'll claim otherwise, I mean people could say the same about the One X over the Xperia S with more cores, a bigger screen, ICS, etc. While both are the top end of each manufacturers range it could be argued that when taking in to account price the HTC One S is perhaps more the direct competition to the Xperia S.

Kind of ironic trying to say about me checking my facts when you clearly didn't read about how HTC Sense 4 has been improved to make it less of a Hippo.

I'm still slightly favouring the HTC One S over the Xperia S for my personal use.

 

[TdC]

If people really interested. I'll be picking my my HTC One X wednesday evening it seems. I'll use it in the normal manner I have described above and post up the results.
If anyone has any other questions i'll be happy to answer those too.



That said, if your really into battery life. Get a Droid RAZR and then buy the MAXX kit. Gives it a 3800mha battery rather than a 1800

I am, Poag mate. Also, re the battery kit upgrade: I got one for my Desire. Extends phone life from <1 to >3 days between charges, with everything on and medium online usage. This is what worries me about the One X tbh, with it's non-CRU battery :/

 

[Poag]

Indeedy, it is one of those things I was concerned about.

I bought myself a Trent battery pack a few months back. Probably one of the best accessory purchases i've made in the last few years. Its always in my bag, so if my phones low and i'm still on the go. Plug my phone in and stick them both in my bag. 30-45 mins later, full charge

Also good for long car/train trips!

My phones been shipped and i'll be picking it up tonight \o/

 

[Embattle]

So did you manage to get it then?

I've just ordered my One S, sadly with bank holiday weekend it'll be a little bit of a wait until it gets here.

 

[throdgrain]

My son got his HTC One today, he reckons its great.

 

[soze]

After looking about I am going to Stick with my BlackBerry until June see what the new iPhone is like. Looks like Work will be getting me a HTC despite my protests so no android on my personal phone.

 

[Embattle]

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/05/htc-one-x-vs-one-s/

 

[Poag]

Heya. So yeah i picked up my One X yesterday.

Its massive...seriously. However big you think it is...its bigger.
Took it back this morning an exchange for a One, much better size, more SGS2 size than Note size.

The two are only marginally different in size, but the extra width the X has makes it feel seriously bulky and not comfortable in the hand at all. Also not usable one handed very well.

I've only just finished charging the S (been out most of the day) so i'll see how it does overnight for a test

 

[Zenith.UK]

I've given up on Bodhi's posts now. I just skip past them because he shows as much loyalty to Sony as an iPhone owner does to Apple.

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks.
I *personally* really like Sense, so OneX is a candidate for my upgrade. A large portion of my phone's time is attached to dock, running Gnav as satnav. A larger screen would be good for that. If, like Poag, I find it's too big then I'll drop to a OneS.
My wife's GS2 is really good but I find the screen colour/contrast overkill. The word atm is that the GS3 will be launched May 22... my exact upgrade date. I'll assess all the candidates with real models in my hand before deciding which one to go with.

 

[Poag]

Dont forget that with contract phones they dont always let you change models. Not always but sometimes.


So i havn't done much with it yet. I took it off charge at 100% last night about ~10pm. Woke up at 9am this morning, 97% battery remaining. Most of which was used by my laitude session it seems.
I'll let it run from this point and see how far over the weekend i get with "normal" usage

 

[JBP|]

Just dropped my S2 whilst sitting on the back door step and shattered the screen, gorilla glass my arse

 

[Lamp]

Heya. So yeah i picked up my One X yesterday.

Its massive...seriously. However big you think it is...its bigger.
Took it back this morning an exchange for a One, much better size, more SGS2 size than Note size.

The two are only marginally different in size, but the extra width the X has makes it feel seriously bulky and not comfortable in the hand at all. Also not usable one handed very well.

I've only just finished charging the S (been out most of the day) so i'll see how it does overnight for a test

How does the S compare to the SGS2?

 

[Tom]

I'm still on a Nexus One. I'm waiting for the Galaxy S3. Sick of running low on internal RAM

 

[Poag]

Ok so after a day out an about using the OneS, its pretty good.

24 Hours on battery and i had 37% left at the end of the day. This includes some 4 hours of screen on time, playing games and reading reddit (some girly films were on so had to pass the time).

The screen is, for me, just the right size, the phones very similar to the sgs2 aside the harsh corners so its nice and easy to hold landscape and two thumb the enitre screen.

The new Sense is pretty good, theres alot of decent design decisions for the homescreen, background accounts sync and web integration. The lockscreen options I am particularly impressed with and run the Productivity lockscreen myself. It shows up all my notifications and todays calendar entrys. Dragging any of these to the ring opens that app.

I am slightly concerned about the camera, it seems to like using a high compression ISO which is a bit meh.
Also the small amount of available storage is annoying. After all the app and cache partitions are setup you are left with just under 10gb or storage space, and no SDcard. Had to move some of my spotify to streaming to fit it all on and leave some room. Not so much an issue for me as i'm on Three one Plan

Theres a bit of bloat on the system which is annoying, i've used Nova Launcher to hide maybe 10 apps. Once there are some decent ROMs out i'll be going over and stripping this stuff out (could root it and do it, but I want to get some "big standard" feelings for it first)

 

[Bodhi]

I've given up on Bodhi's posts now. I just skip past them because he shows as much loyalty to Sony as an iPhone owner does to Apple.

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks.
I *personally* really like Sense, so OneX is a candidate for my upgrade. A large portion of my phone's time is attached to dock, running Gnav as satnav. A larger screen would be good for that. If, like Poag, I find it's too big then I'll drop to a OneS.
My wife's GS2 is really good but I find the screen colour/contrast overkill. The word atm is that the GS3 will be launched May 22... my exact upgrade date. I'll assess all the candidates with real models in my hand before deciding which one to go with.

Well its your loss, personally your entire second paragraph pretty much sums up what I was saying, so try an SXS before you slate it. However I obviously cannot give any Sony kit a good review as its fanboyism. Claerly fanboyism. I mean I'm typing this on an Acer Aspire, whilst watching an LG telly and the missus is on my iPad 2, so clearly I'm a fanboy!

But tbh, I don't really care. If you want to spend your life with an inferior phone then be my guest, as I already have an SXS it doesn't really affect me. Interestingly the only bit of bloat I have found on this phone is Facebook Inside Xperia, which doesn't really bother me enough to want to root. All the rest was turned off by default, as a result in day to day use it absolutely flies. Seems to benchmark higher than other dual cores too. You mean there might be more to life than hardware specs?

Sacre Bleu!

Although the way you treat phones you might be better with a JCB Toughphone or something like that.

 

[Bodhi]

But why did it not launch with ics Bod? It looks nice enough, but size is correct, for a new phone it is months behind the curve

Judging by the number of people whit other devices who have upraded to ICS and instantly wanted to go back to GB/HC, I'm really not too fussed. It's got quite a bit of ICS stuff in there already (the UI looks IDENTICAL to the ICS betas on the Arc S) so am happy for them to get it working as they got GB working.

 

[Raven]

Sony Ericsson man shit phones. clunky, plasticy, badly wired wastes of time. There, it's been said. Now lets move on.

 

[soze]

I just bought a brand new HTC Radar from eBay for £136 I will give Mango a try for a couple of months while I wait for the next generation of phones. My Blackberry is on eBay for £260, I can get £190 form the phone recycling sites so what ever happens I will make a profit and get to try a new phone out.

 

[Poag]

Interestingly the only bit of bloat I have found on this phone is Facebook Inside Xperia, which doesn't really bother me enough to want to root. All the rest was turned off by default, as a result in day to day use it absolutely flies. Seems to benchmark higher than other dual cores too. You mean there might be more to life than hardware specs?

Theres more bloat than you think on any phone. Just most of it is hidden from the average user and runs in the background.

For the One series tho the bloat mainly consists of apps i have the pro version for and the normal version is installed on the phone as unremovable, which is irritating.
Additionally rooting phones is a good prospect, as it allows you to install something like this

http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigtincan.android.adfree

And block ads not just on your phone apps, but websites aswell. Conserving battery life

 

[Poag]

I have a 4S atm. Its battery barely lasts me 12 hours.

I leave home at 6am, listen to spotify for the 2.5 hours to work, down to ~60% battery. By lunch it'll be down to 35-40% (better signal near the office, on the train signal comes and goes so it noms battery quite rapidly)

If i was to play any games on it it'd be flat by midday without fail. On the journey home it leaves the office fully charged. By the time i get home, having played a few levels of angry birds, it down to 30-45% depending on how quickly my hands get sore holding it up


Want to know a shocker?

This is the exact same battery profile I got out of my SGS2, if not slightly worse.
They are all the same when it comes to battery, the only difference is how they look draining it.

So I'm at work, after my first commute in with the new phone. I checked the phone just before i got into waterloo and was on 89% battery. Playing a couple of games on the tube (about 20~ mins play time) and a reboot (cell got stuck, not sure why will have to see what happens on the way home) its down to 82%.

Biggest battery uses were Cell Standby 41% & screen 30%, then mediaserver and spotify with 8% each. Angry birds was a 5% drain.

 

[Poag]

For the record tho. My OneS didn't come with ebats headphones so i'm still using my £10 non brand sony ones i've had for about 4 years. Music was full, good quality and probably better than the iPhones music. Beats was on and seemed pretty good. I'll turn it off on the way home and see if it makes a difference.

i've replaced the default keyboard with my personal favorite SwiftKey. I have tasker turning off my wifi when i leave home so i get some battery saving from that, although not much as it only used 4% on the way in today.

 

[PLightstar]

For the record tho. My OneS didn't come with ebats headphones so i'm still using my £10 non brand sony ones i've had for about 4 years. Music was full, good quality and probably better than the iPhones music. Beats was on and seemed pretty good. I'll turn it off on the way home and see if it makes a difference.

i've replaced the default keyboard with my personal favorite SwiftKey. I have tasker turning off my wifi when i leave home so i get some battery saving from that, although not much as it only used 4% on the way in today.

Does That OneS have a Card slot, or can you use only inbuilt memory? My Contract is coming up in June, still not sure whether to get the bigger X or this one.

 

[Poag]

Does That OneS have a Card slot, or can you use only inbuilt memory? My Contract is coming up in June, still not sure whether to get the bigger X or this one.

No SD card slot, this is the biggest downer for me too

HTC have assigned 2.5gb to app storage, which is a bit much imo, the Nexus S had 1gb i think and i dont think i even filled that Your left with 9.93gb of storage to use yourself.

The X doesn't have a card slot either, but does have 32gb of space.

As strongly as I can tho, go into a phone shop and handle the S and X before buying/upgrading. The X will not be for everyone even if you think "hmm i need that space" just due to the size they've made it.