Phones Which new phone?

[MYstIC G]

I'd heard about the forthcoming wireless charging, tbh, it's not really clear why this isn't an option at launch, it's not like the tech hasn't already existed for a few years, and to be honest, wireless charging mat would be a godsend for me.

on the apps front i'm just about coping with android, but there are a couple of work-related apps + the oxford english dictionary that i really really miss. also a to-do list app as good as Things on the iPhone wouldn't go amiss. Also wouldn't mind some of my big-name games for the droid.

Because they need to make it an accessory that they can sell to add value to their sales because the EU standardised chargers I'd imagine. My Touchpad has this, it had absolutely no appeal. I can only see this being useful in an office where a corner of your desk can have this on it and you can just chuck your laptop / tablet / mobile on that corner of the desk to charge.

 

[soze]

Because they need to make it an accessory that they can sell to add value to their sales because the EU standardised chargers I'd imagine. My Touchpad has this, it had absolutely no appeal. I can only see this being useful in an office where a corner of your desk can have this on it and you can just chuck your laptop / tablet / mobile on that corner of the desk to charge.

I think the new generation of Fords are adding this to the storage tray under then hand break. I am 50 50 if its a good idea. Charging is good. Not being able to see the phone or use it for Sat Nav ect plus maybe leaving it your phone in the car is bad.

 

[Bigmac]

I wouldn't expect anything less than a 5 star review from you.

It wouldn't surprise me if he worked for Sony.

 

[wolfeeh]

For various reasons I use my smartphone almost continuously throughout the day, a charging mat is the way to go for me and my argument would be that having a charging mat bundled with the phone makes it more of a high-value luxury item anyway but the actual charging mats cost no more to manufacture than does a mains plug from what I understand - a friend of mine has made a charging mat for his s3 purely out of bits and bobs he had laying around his house, not counting soldering equipment and a rivet gun (had anyway) and a couple of cheap electronic components bought for < £1 most people can apparently find the necessary just laying around he's thinking of cobbling together a wiki-how page on it. General point was though its an inexpensive way to add up front value to a phone... Having a wireless charging mat included with one model of phone but not another could have been the deciding factor for me when purchasing.

 

[Poag]

on the apps front i'm just about coping with android, but there are a couple of work-related apps + the oxford english dictionary that i really really miss. also a to-do list app as good as Things on the iPhone wouldn't go amiss. Also wouldn't mind some of my big-name games for the droid.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.taskos
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anydo

Try those two. I use Taskos personally.

 

[MYstIC G]

For various reasons I use my smartphone almost continuously throughout the day, a charging mat is the way to go for me and my argument would be that having a charging mat bundled with the phone makes it more of a high-value luxury item anyway but the actual charging mats cost no more to manufacture than does a mains plug from what I understand - a friend of mine has made a charging mat for his s3 purely out of bits and bobs he had laying around his house, not counting soldering equipment and a rivet gun (had anyway) and a couple of cheap electronic components bought for < £1 most people can apparently find the necessary just laying around he's thinking of cobbling together a wiki-how page on it. General point was though its an inexpensive way to add up front value to a phone... Having a wireless charging mat included with one model of phone but not another could have been the deciding factor for me when purchasing.

totally understand mate but base line is until this becomes an expected standard then it's an accessory because accessories get sold for money. Your SG3 wouldn't go for another £50 more if Samsung put that in the box and said that was why the costs went up.

 

[Bodhi]

It wouldn't surprise me if he worked for Sony.

Nope, just like to see innovation, quality products and good customer service. I have had all 3 from Sony over the past few years, so see no reason to go anywhere else.

Plus this Xperia S is pure sex. And Google and James Bond seem to agree. So ner.

 

[Trem]

Bodhi likes Sony, he always has, I like Panasonic, I always have.

Let the lad have his say and stop being mincers about it

We know Bodhi will praise Sony, thats fine, its only like the Apple fans or the Ford fans or the Land of Leather fans. Having an opinion on something and refusing to change that doesn't warrant the bitching.

Bodhi is an almighty bitch though, smelly cow-bitch.

*runs*

 

[Yoni]

I have an experia (for work) and hate it, I also have an iPhone 4 which I have now had a year and I think it is great still. The quality of apps are just superb.

Some background ; until late 2010 I was an HTC fanatic, however the quality of the phones for me were shite. I then got a Samsung galaxy and although I liked it, the battery life sucked as did the adds. When I came to Sweden the iPhone was the best value for money and I decided to see what all the hype was about.... I wasn't disappointed at all.

I also have a blackberry (for work) it is the best of the three if you email a lot, however I do not like the browsing or apps at all.

Yes two phones for work, the local company are with Telia, however group only use blackberrys for emails and Telia do not sell them here.

 

[old.user4556]

I had a really good long play with my mate's Galaxy S3 last night.

Sorry what? This is meant to be the latest and greatest? Bitch please.

What I dislike:

- it still feels laggy, it does not have the iPhone 4 slickness (he agrees...) and response when moving home screens, contacts, songs etc. The latest Samsung handset and I still prefer my two year old handset.
- it feels like a kids toy
- the OS is simply ugly, there is nothing appealing about it from a design perspective. It feels benign and uncool.
- it's too big
- the app store is still no patch on Apple's

What I like:

- the camera is good, very repsonsive
- it's very thin
- it's more flexible than iOS (everyone knows that, nothing new there)

I won't be getting an S3, don't kid yourself that this is an awesome handset.

 

[caLLous]

On the other hand though, it is an awesome handset.

 

[Ono]

S3 laggy? I find that hard to believe. I can only assume that it is not on ICS or has it set up really shit.The fact that you state that you find the OS ugly tends to make me think the later. Imagine if you kept the default windows setup on your PC and were not allowed to change anything apart from the wallpaper. That's what Apple is saying. I use Go Launcher on my S3 and it is flexible and far from ugly.

A lot of comment has been made about build quality - well, the iphone is glass. The S3 is not because they wanted it to be light. YOu feel the iphone more in your pocket despite the size difference. And on the size of the S3, I can gurantee you that phones will be getting larger screens and not smaller. It evolves with what people want out of their phones. The trend is to go towards surfing and videos hence the upping of screen size. Apple itself is going that way if the leaked iphone 5 stuff is true.

I agree with you about the marketplace vs app store but online content is just going to converge over the next 2-3 years as developers get theiir arses into gear.

YOu obviously aren't going to get an Android phone so can only suggest you look at the Nokia Lumia or wait for the iphone 5.

 

[Trem]

As I said I now have a Galaxy SII and I went from an HTC Desire to this phone. Apart from the better camera the SII is no better/faster/nicer than the HTC. Yes it has a bigger screen but......I dunno......who cares? I wish I had ignored everyone and gave the Lumia 800 a bash, just for a change.

 

[Ono]

The S2 is better than the Desire in smoothness and internal memory. I went to same upgrade route before I got the S3.

The new Windows Nokias are interesting though. Great design but the OS is still quite an unknown.

 

[Lamp]

Note2: £544 SIM free. Available from mid October

 

[soze]

When people say "Well xxx Samsung has a quad core 1.4 the apple is so behind" I like to reply with "Yeah well the iPhone does not need one to run the home screen". Have all the widgets in the world is nice if you like that kind of thing but if widgets are not important to you then the simple apple OS is a masterpiece, everything is simple and in an intuitive place and it never lags on the home screen ever.

 

[soze]

Note2: £544 SIM free. Available from mid October

I have a friend who travels 3 hours a day on the train who swears by the note range the ability to carry a kindle in your phone that readable is a big selling point for him.

 

[dysfunction]

My S3 doesn't lag at all and I like to have widgets and personalise my phone just how I like it.

So therefore the iPhone must be shite.

*ahem*

 

[old.user4556]

S3 laggy? I find that hard to believe.

The fact you say "I find that hard to believe" suggests you've not tried it for yourself.

I really want to like other handsets out there, but there is one thing that none of them seem to do, and that is the sheer slick movement around the screen. Perhaps "laggy" is not the word, but "not as slick" would be more accurate. My mate was telling me that the phone has some setting that kills the CPU to save battery and he thinks that's what's making it feel less responsive than he was expecting. It feels no different from, say, an HTC Desire imo. When I'm in Currys, I like to have a play with the latest tablets and always think "nope, still not as nice to use as an iPad".

Smartphones can have all the derpcore processors in the world, but at the end of the day the big breakthrough for me will be a smartphone that lasts a few days of reasonable use. That is something that was glaringly different between the S3 and the iPhone 4 - we both took our phones off the charger at roughly the same time and we were away for a whole day off-roading. I took some photos, made a couple of videos (as did he) and at the end of the day (around mid-afternoon) he had less than 40% battery whilst I had about 60% left. Not exactly a scientific test, but I was expecting somewhat better battery performance from the latest handset generation.

It seems that two years on, we've got slightly bigger screens and slightly better cameras; that's it. I would expect the iPhone 5 to be the same.

 

[ECA]

Pretty much, until we develop better battery tech then smartphones will be limited.

It's like having a fiat panda and a ferrari F1 car, and powering them off a 50hp engine..... there is a big limiting factor that stops you actually taking advantage of ones superiority.

 

[old.user4556]

Taking Apple as an example, if they released exactly the same phone as my dated iPhone 4, but it lasted 5 days from moderate use, I'd 'upgrade' in a flash.

 

[Ono]

I have indeed tried it. As you'd expect, most of the guys at work have the iphone and we're constantly comparing them on all settings for all tasks.

Pretty much all are surprised by the smoothness and the screen on the S3 (even though the 4s has retina) and many are shocked by how nice it is to be able to customise the phone with widgets. Oh, and I haven't even bothered to bring the devil's creation that is itunes into all this yet.

If I were buying a phone now I'd get the S3 still. If the S3 didn't exists and I was thinking of updating my S2, I would wait for the Nokia Win 8 phone or the next top of the range Andorid phone.

 

[Ono]

Hmmm, maybe I was wrong abouit the new iphone!

 

[old.user4556]

many are shocked by how nice it is to be able to customise the phone with widgets

Have they also heard the news that the Spice Girls have broken up?

 

[Ono]

YOu see, you jest, but people who know nothing but the Apple ecosystem are genuinely surprised. Even small things like having a weather and clock displayed on the homescreen or an agenda display like Pure Calender Grid without the need to launch the app are not things they see on IOS.

 

[old.user4556]

I never really saw that as an advantage over iOS, it was just a different way of doing it. Maybe I'm not a widget person.

 

[soze]

My problem with Widgets came from there being far too many. I was always farting about with icon sets different clocks bla bla bla but it always ended up the same 6 icons on my desktop with the simple single slot clock. Having my next 3 appointments or 3 emails did not appeal hence the lack of them on the iPhone not being an issue. Different strokes for different folks though.

 

[old.user4556]

I found the widgets on the HTC were woefully unreliable when it came to updating, so had to launch the apps separately anyway.

Not sure if that was just HTC Sense being gay, or what.

 

[dysfunction]

My problem with Widgets came from there being far too many. I was always farting about with icon sets different clocks bla bla bla but it always ended up the same 6 icons on my desktop with the simple single slot clock. Having my next 3 appointments or 3 emails did not appeal hence the lack of them on the iPhone not being an issue. Different strokes for different folks though.

Exactly!!!

Some people love messing about with icon sets etc. There are some very impressive customizations around all that stuff to make a run of the mill android look unique.

But as you said different strokes...

 

[Trem]

Oh, and I haven't even bothered to bring the devil's creation that is itunes into all this yet.

This^^^^^^^ is why Apple can kiss my saggy balls. iTunes is riddled with cat AIDS