Choose Me a Phone

[Advantage]

I managed to kill my mobile yesterday (an old Motorola Razr V8) by dropping it all of two feet onto the carpet so am now on the hunt for a replacement. As you can tell by my previous phone, I'm not a big phone consumer so I'm not up to speed on what's what. I've been with Vodafone since I had a carphone fitted to my Ford Sierra, so I'm unlikely to change networks/price plans any time soon.

Vodafone do offer existing customers the a freebie choice of upgrades but I've only heard of two of them so what do you make of my choices:

Blackberry: 8900 Curve, Pearl 3G, Torch/Torch white or 8520 Curve.

Nokia: 6303, 6700 Purple, C5-03, C5-01, or C3 Grey/Pink

HTC Desire

LG Viewty Smile

Sony Ericsson Elm

Samsung: Monte/Monte Pink, Galaxy Ace or Nexus S/Nexus S white.

I've always preferred a flip phone ever since my Micro Tac but these seem to have died out of fashion, mainly for the satisfying way you can hang up on some one, so unless I get my wallet out (unlikely) I'm stuck with the above selection. Over to you...

[rogerch]

This one

You can afford to drop this one, and it's doesn't seem like a bad phone, on my shopping list.

[Advantage]

That one is not on my list!

(and I've really never ever heard of that one!)

[andydclements]

Desire should be good, personally I have the Desire Z as I wanted a qwerty keyboard, but the main elements of the handset are the same.

[rogerch]

Whilst this is only an opinion, GO ANDROID you'll curse yourself if you don't.

Sony Ericsson is rubbish (I've got one) I don't like LG's production quality on anything.

Check the SD capacity don’t take it for granted, quite a few will only address 8-16 gig.

Get WiFi, so you can use Skype.

All = Huawei 8150

[Sparky]

The Nokia interface really isn't doing well compared to Android. Go for the Desire - you'll be well made up.

[Simon350S]

Make sure it's Andriod based then you can get yourself a nicy shiny Sonos system from me and control it for free thus filling your life with unlimited music

[shaf007]

Check out the Desire HD currently the best phone on the market..Great phone

[Advantage]

Despite the fact that it looks like a ZX81 and is the size of a shoebox, an HTC Desire Z is on the way. Thanks all for your input.

(anyone who's in my phonebook, be prepared for odd text messages or strange silent phonecalls over the next few days as I fumble around with it...)

[Bibs]

[pete]

need to carry a charger with you as battery life not too good

[andydclements]

Pilko, good choice. I'm with Pete re battery life, but you can improve it greatly if you switch off blue tooth and wireless when you don't need them.

[pete]

any feedback on new phone?

[Advantage]

Ah, well a combination of low stock and a million Bank Holidays have conspired to leave me phoneless for a while now.

Y'know what? I don't miss it too much so far...

[nolotusyet]

need to carry a charger with you as battery life not too good

Agree, battery life on Desire came as a shock after a decade of Nokias. Try a Powermonkey for backup.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Traveller-Monkey-Universal-Charger/dp/B000JUBTYC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1304458563&sr=8-1

[gghc87]

Any good ?

[Advantage]

I've got my sticky paws on it.

(Although, as a side note - WTF is wrong with the service industry in this country? I dropped Vodafone an email yesterday saying "where's my phone?" and they replied telling me it had been delivered to my local Vodafone store on the 19th April! This despite me ticking the "send to home address" box and then no one at Vodafone or anyone at the store thought it necessary to let me know it was sitting on a shelf for two weeks. Numpties ) Anyway...

It's a strange little device. Completely unintuative in its functionality. Now I quite like touch screens, I've got one in my Esprit, but this one is a bit crap. Activating any of the buttons requires a tap or press of such violence you think you're going to crack the screen. Unless, of course, you happen to just lightly brush the button next to the one you're aiming at - then it will accept that input without question. I've already experimented with browsing TLF via my broadband connection - pointless. It's all there and you can do the whole pinch + expand stuff, but again the touch screen interface makes navigating the pages and clicking on links a frustrating affair.

The slide out qwerty keyboard makes composing texts relatively easy, but to send them you're back to selecting buttons on the touch screen. You can use the little mouse type button on the end of the phone too, but that is almost as random in its function as the screen. I don't have banana fingers but dammmmnnnn...

Ever the self improving luddite, I had a quick look through my phonebook (managing to quickly cancel the call to the AA after attempting to scroll down - frikkin touch screen!) and pressed 'call Home' just to make sure the most basic function of the thing is operational. The phone in the lounge started ringing so I deemed that experiment a success. Right up until it dawned on me that I had no idea how to hang the phone up.

It's currently syncing its contents with the HTC website which will give me time to see how many of the photos etc from my old and broken Razr I can salvage.

(I remember when all this was trees...)

[Laura]

You just need a 12 year old to show you how to use it!

[Bibs]

I'm getting my free upgrade early in a couple of weeks. Now I'm a big Android fan and now have a honeycomb tablet and the iPhone 5 is out next week.

Android or iPhone? Which should I get? I've got my Android fix through the tablet, I can sync contacts through gmail to Outlook (and ultimately the iPhone) so would I be better off with diversity or linearity?

[ramjet]

What the hell are you talking about Bibs?

[Bibs]

Ask the kids

[oneshot]

Android all the way

[rogerch]

Android

Android

Android

Android

Android

And if you don't like any of them try an Android

[Bibs]

But that's the thing.

I've got an Android device at the cutting edge, the OS is advanced of the phone version, I'm running 3.2 so the phone will seem out of date and if I want any Android functionality I've already got it.

[Moxie]

Wait until October 4 and get an iPhone 5.

http://www.wired.com...k-iphone-event/