Smartphone recommendation

[Lamp]

My Mrs recently got the HTC Wildfire. Its nice at an entry level & does everything you want a smartphone to do, but the screen resolution is sucky, it can't run Angry Birds without lagg, & the battery life is truly shite. So I'm looking to get a smartphone for myself. Not sure whether to go for the iphone4 or a top notch Android. Any recommendations?

 

[Billargh]

I'm going to suggest an HTC Desire HD, cause I have one, and tis lovely. Battery life however, not so great.

 

[Ch3tan]

iphone 4 if you want a decent screen res and good battery life. It shits all over the Desire's battery life, the Desire Hd has a larger screen but the same res as the Desire, so looks worse.

The standard Desire or nexus s are your best bets for an android phone, the desire HD's battery and resolution really let it down.

 

[Lamp]

(the thing with the iphone 4 is cutting the sim card down to micro SIM size.....should be fun...will have to get a whole bunch to practice on )

 

[Ch3tan]

You can get a hole punch style cutter that will do the job... are you going to buy offline and go giff gaff? You are in London so I'd recommend looking at the 3 one plan as well. The data coverage and speed is far better than o2 / giff gaff. Yes you'd be in a contract, but it would be the same cost (maybe less) over the term.

 

[ford prefect]

I agree, Iphone is still the best on the market. Recently got a free HTC Desire HD from three on one of my contracts - nice phone, but nowhere near as good as my Iphone. I will say though that Iphone 5 is due out later this year, so might pay to wait.

 

[Ch3tan]

Iphone 5 is not confirmed, its a big ole rumour still.

 

[ford prefect]

As I understand it the only thing that hasn't been confirmed is the release date. I daresay they will launch it for the Christmas market, they would be mad not to.

 

[Ch3tan]

No specs, no leaks, just rumour. I'm sure they'll release something, they always announce around June / July. However whether it's a brand new phone, or just a small revision of the 4 is up for debate.

 

[Moriath]

i got HTC Legend and it running fine for meh

 

[Syri]

I'm quite happy with my iphone 3gs so far. I wanted something that had a pretty good software selection, and that just worked. It fits that bill perfectly. I've got a decent selection of games, mostly quick mini-games, but a few bigger titles in there too. I've also got a few apps to help with learning Japanese, which I want to try. I've also got things like currency converter, unit converter, directory lookups and all sorts of other bits and pieces like that. It's a handy device to have on the go, the only thing you need to look out for is battery life. I can get 2 days average use on a full charge, but if you leave everything active all the time, use push email and also leave all of the default alerts on, it can really drain it quick.
I've not used Android much, some of my relatives have Android phones, but at the time I got my phone, it didn't seem that appealing, especially in the apps. Android's app store is catching up though, and they do have a few advantages. I didn't really want to mess around with different customisations of the ui, apps written for different hardware specs and all that kind of thing. I don't mind a bit of tinkering with my pc, but I'd prefer not to have to tinker with my phone as well. It may be that Android will, or already has, become better at handling the differences across handsets, but at the time I made my choice, Android just didn't seem quite unified enough. I'm sure that some of the current Android users on the board can give a much better idea of what Android is like at the moment.

 

[Lamp]

Interesting....the official Apple Store are doing the iphone4 sim-free for £300 less than Expansys (which I always thought was fairly competitive on price....apparently not)

 

[Ch3tan]

You what lamp? iPhone 4 is around 450, if anywhere is charging more I'd be seriously wary! You sure the price wasn't in euros or something?

 

[ford prefect]

Tis £510 for the 16gb and £612 for the 32gb on applestore atm. You are probably better off going with a contract - I do mine through a business contract but my sister got the 16gb version for £69.99 at three with a 24 month £35 contract - 2000 minutes unlimited data which seems reasonable.

 

[inactionman]

The new HTC Incredible S is a pretty good phone; however there's loads of new phones coming out soon. Most with dual-core processors.

The Sony Experia Arc looks pretty nice, if a bit form over function. Unfortunately Sony have a woeful history of software updates, although they are better than Samsung.

 

[GReaper]

iPhone Buyer's Guide

You'll be buying it 9 months into the cycle, it's up to you if this matters to you or not. I wouldn't pay full price for a phone which is 9 months old given that most phones these days seem to have a life span of around 2 years, but that's just my opinion.

Current rumours are that the next model might not be announced at the next WWDC, it might be delayed until September. Just rumours on various sites so far though.

 

[MYstIC G]

iPhone is not worth buying until next version hits at this point in the release cycle.

 

[Lamp]

The HTC Incredible S does look nice...but read a review and although they rated it at the upper end of Android phones, they still said the battery lets it down, it doesn't run Android 2.3, and they felt it was a stopgap phone until they released something better later on.

What are the dual core smartphones coming out?

 

[inactionman]

Processor and display are much better, the wildfire is a budget smartphone. The incredible's processor is as fast as you can get in a single core phone. The display is the same res as the desire hd, but slightly smaller in size. Battery life is supposed to be pretty good for a smartphone. Engadget review here.

As for dual core phones, the lg optimus 2x is out now I believe. There's a dual core samsung coming (galaxy s 2), the motorola atrix (not out until june I believe), the htc evo 3d and many more.

 

[Ctuchik]

Recently got a free HTC Desire HD from three on one of my contracts - nice phone, but nowhere near as good as my Iphone.

I'l take it if you don't want it..

My poor Sony Ericsson k750i is starting to fall apart on me now.

Looking for cheap android phones but they don't exist yet

 

[Ch3tan]

Looking for cheap android phones but they don't exist yet

Only if you've been living under a rock. The San Francisco from Orange, or whatever it's called outside of the UK.

 

[inactionman]

It's actually ZTE that make it, it's called the ZTE Blade.

Else the HTC Wildfire is actually quite cheap these days. The Motorola Defy is a bit pricier, but is a good fairly ruggedised android phone.

 

[inactionman]

Regarding the Incredible S, yes battery life is a problem (but apparently less so than my Desire HD), but if you want a high end smartphone (apart from the iPhone), you need to recharge it once a day. It also gets gingerbread at the same time as the old-style desire range (June or so).

There's actually not too many gingerbread phones available currently (due to manufacturer fuckwittedness). The Nexus S is probably the best of them, due to it being a Google experience device, so it gets vanilla android and regular updates.

Apart from that, it's the new Sony phones. The Arc is supposed to be quite nice, but form over function. The Play is supposed to be an interesting gaming machine, but it's display is frankly sub-par.

Personally I'm waiting for, preferably, the first Google experience dual-core handset.

 

[Ctuchik]

Only if you've been living under a rock.

Yes i probably have when it comes to this.

I pay somewhat attention to the snazzy stuff but haven't got a clue when it comes to budget because it's not as fun to dream about that.

Had a look on that ZTE phone but i have only found the "scrooge" version with 256 mb ram, not the 512 you lot in the UK get.

Owell, gonna be either that or the wildfire.

 

[inactionman]

If you look at the wiki apparently they all look to have 512Mb of RAM (apart from the 'defective' ones sold in Hungary), just the firmware may disable half of of it for no good reason. until you get froyo (or better from modaco) on their.

 

[MYstIC G]

I'l take it if you don't want it..

My poor Sony Ericsson k750i is starting to fall apart on me now.

Looking for cheap android phones but they don't exist yet

there's some £30 t-mobile one about it was on HotUKDeals

 

[Fast]

20 best mobile phones in the world today | News | TechRadar UK

The desire running 2.3 is amazing. Android just gets better and better.

 

[nath]

Would love to get myself a Desire as a replacement for my Hero and stopgap before the dual core mobiles get good but they're still so ruddy expensive :\.

 

[Ch3tan]

buy mine bitch

 

[ford prefect]

I actually quite like android but its biggest stumbling block is always going to be its open source nature and the apps market. Developers must be sick to death of having to retool apps for every version and every new handset just to give them consistent functionality, look and feel.

Also the new way Google are distributing android to handset manufacturers is also going to be an annoyance too. Their announcement that Google are going to pick a specific chipset and processor for future versions of android and are going to code it for that is going probably going to help App developers, but is going to cause all kinds of issues as far as handset release dates are concerned, but from Google’s point of view I suppose it means that first released handsets and tablets will have all the bells and whistles on.

I think it will be a while before it really compares to IOS.